Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Arwa Mahdawi writes that the outsized influence wielded by billionaires makes them something beyond merely wealthy people. Tom Whyman challenges the worship of the excessively wealthy as a particularly destructive religion. Robert Reich points out that the means of accumulating a billion dollars bear no relationship to the public good. The New York Times' editorial board rightly notes that the concentration of wealth is an impediment to overall growth (to say nothing of shared prosperity).  And Rashaan Ayesh points out how that concentration continues apace, with the U.S.' wealthiest 1% now approaching the total riches of the country's entire middle and upper-middle classes.

- Meanwhile, Grace Blakeley writes that any effective plan to combat the climate crisis need to include systemic challenges to the current power of capital and its exploitation of everybody and everything around it.  And Michael Jacobs comments that the crisis of capitalism can't be solved with the same thinking that created our current imbalanced system.

- The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives offers some proposals which would do far more to make life affordable than tax cuts. Heather Scoffield discusses how the Cons limit their ability to respond to the needs of the public by refusing to acknowledge any value to tax revenues and the services they fund, while PressProgress notes that five companies alone are claiming billions of dollars in free tax giveaways from Jason Kenney's UCP while Alberta's people face grinding austerity.

- Pamela Palmater argues that the Trudeau Libs should take up a radical agenda to fight climate change and pursue reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, while Julia Rodgers suggests that a minority government should be expected to be more accountable. But Matthew Hayers offers a reminder how a distorted electoral system has created exactly the wrong incentives for any of those purposes.

- Finally, Tiffany Gooch makes the case for Canada to start living up to its commitments (and international standards) in funding foreign aid.