Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Carrie Arnold examines our current state of knowledge about the prevalence and effects of long COVID. Tanya Lewis discusses the particularly acute risks COVID-19 creates in the course of a pregnancy. And Violet Blue writes about the dissonance involved in an ongoing pandemic having been erased from our culture. 

- Shandel Menezes reports on the wholesale corporate buyout of what was previously affordable housing, with the result that a basic human need and right is being priced out of reach. Cory Doctorow discusses how dollar stores and other corporate giants are systematically squeezing out every possible dime (and undermining every possible competitor) from rural and underserved communities. And Marc Fawcett-Atkinson points out how the federal government's current subsidy for groceries in northern communities services primarily to goose profits rather than to make food available. 

- Robert Kuttner discusses what comes next as neoliberalism is exposed as having nothing to offer the vast majority of people other than exploitation and precarity. And Martin Regg Cohn argues that the future of democracy depends on our winning battles for information, truth and equality over well-funded forces pushing the opposite of each.  

- Finally, Scharon Harding reports on the EU's proposed effort to entrench some right of repair for consumer electronics - though its plans are based on keeping control in the hands of manufacturers rather than consumers and independent providers. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Rita Trichur writes that an attempt to boost the economy solely through monetary policy will predictably lead to even worse inequality - meaning it's necessary for governments to instead intervene through fiscal policy to ensure that growth is shaped to be fair and inclusive.

- Gabriela Schulte reports that a majority of Americans support a wealth tax to rein in existing inequality. And Joseph Choi reports on the Biden administration's plans for at least some tax increases on the people and corporations who can most afford to pay them.

- Jim Stanford calls out Uber for attempting to gut existing employment standards by permitting a far lesser set of protections to apply to its workers compared to people in more traditional employment relationships. 

- Max Fawcett writes about the dangers posed by a housing market which is pulling in massive amounts of investment wholly out of proportion to any rational explanation. And Amin Barnea discusses the need for regulation of the financial markets to ensure they don't function as casinos which always return money to the house.

- Finally, Taslim Jaffer highlights how we all have privilege of some sort - and need to use it to ensure that others don't face injustice.

[Edit: fixed typo.]

Tuesday Evening Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Stephanie Taylor reports on the Saskatchewan Health Authority's warning that we can't afford to loosen the province's COVID-19 rules - which of course was followed immediately by Scott Moe loosening the province's COVID-19 rules. And Matt Gurney points out the need for guidance as to what people can do while only partially vaccinated.

- David Moscrop highlights how the thousands of COVID-19 deaths in Ontario long-term care homes to date could have been avoided. And Paola Lorrigio reports on the new revelations that doctors presented numerous life-saving options to the Ford government, only to have every single one them rejected as costing too much to be worth the bother.

- Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen discuss the connection between Finland's relative equality and consensus-based policy-making, and its stellar rankings in measures of personal well-being. And conversely, the damage COVID-19 has done to previous social progress in Canada would seem an obvious culprit in the misery we're experiencing even compared to other countries faced with the same pandemic.

- Torsten Bell reminds us that the main effect of refusing to make sick leave available is to ensure that people keep putting themselves and others at risk by going to work while ill.

- Finally, Oliver Milman discusses how even locked-in levels of climate change are rendering tropical areas uninhabitable. And Roland Geyer writes that we need to end the use of fossil fuels to limit our climate breakdown to remotely tolerable levels, rather than counting on offset or credit trading schemes.

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Nathan Robinson writes that there's every reason for younger people - in the U.S. and elsewhere - to support the principle of socialism based on a desire to achieve gains for everybody rather than only a privileged few:

A better definition, at least as far as the economic dimension of socialism, is the concept of “worker control.” What socialists have disliked is the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small number of people. What they have demanded is that ordinary working people get their fair share of the wealth. Some socialists have believed strongly in the power of government, others have believed that worker cooperatives or syndicates could give workers their share. Matt Bruenig of the socialist People’s Policy Project has proposed a large “social wealth fund” that would distribute returns on public assets to the people as a whole, while Bernie Sanders (now running for president again) has put forth a plan to give employees seats on company boards and give ordinary workers guaranteed shares of stock.

The specifics vary, but what all socialists have in common is a dislike for the class system, where some people work incredibly hard all their lives and end up with nothing, while other people get to make money in their sleep just by owning things. Socialists think that if you work for a company, you ought to reap rewards when it succeeds, and you ought to have a say in how it’s run.

But there’s more to it than that. In my book, ”Why You Should Be A Socialist,” I argue that what socialists have in common is a sense of “solidarity” with people at the bottom, no matter who they are. As the famous socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs said 100 years ago, “while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

That commitment may seem radical: who wants to be of the criminal element? But socialists think in terms of universals: we think everyone deserves healthcare and housing, not just the people who prove themselves morally worthy. Sanders was criticized when he said that inmates should be able to vote. But that was an admirably socialist thing to say: some rights should not have exceptions.

A lot of socialists’ day-to-day focus, then, is not on restructuring who owns the “means of production,” but on looking at the lives of people at the bottom and figuring out how to make them better. And we have this commitment because of solidarity: you want the same things for everyone else that you have for yourself.

- Meanwhile, the CCPA examines how Canada's wealthiest CEOs continue to increase the gap between their own pay and that of the workers who contribute to their riches. And Paul Willcocks writes that the gig economy serves primarily to transfer risks and responsibilities from corporations to workers.

- Paul Krugman discusses the immense damage done to the people who could least afford it by the U.S.' gratuitous austerity. And PressProgress points out the harm Jason Kenney has done by slashing taxes and services in less than a year governing Alberta, while Chris Turner comments on the $30 million bonfire that is the UCP's fossil fuel war room.

- Finally, Robert Reich writes about the sham of corporate social responsibility. And Ganesh Shitaraman declares neoliberalism to be dead, while surveying the wreckage it's left behind. 

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- PressProgress crunches the numbers on tax loopholes and finds that more and more revenue is being lost to the most glaring loopholes every year. And Andrew Jackson hopes for a sorely-needed response from the federal government to rein in tax avoidance by the wealthy.

- Sam Cooper reports on Vancouver's embarrassing status as a poster child for criminal money laundering.

- Wanda Wyporska highlights the importance of fighting for greater equality rather than allowing it to overtake social cohesion and individual well-being.

- Anna Patty reports on a new study showing how an improved minimum wage could create jobs in addition to boosting standards of living in Australia. And Scott Brown writes about the B.C. NDP's first steps toward including all workers in basic employment protections (including the right to a minimum wage).

- Mark Winfield warns of the risks of panicking about the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, though Mike De Souza reveals that the Libs have made a habit of leaping into reckless action at Kinder Morgan's behest. And Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood writes that we should be focusing on a just transition for both resource sector workers and their communities, while Mitchell Anderson discusses how the Trans Mountain expansion would only exacerbate a trend seeing refinery jobs leaked south of the border.

- Finally, CBC reports on Justin Trudeau's lack of interest in following the UK's ban on single-use plastics.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Matt Bruenig highlights Norway's high level of social ownership, with 76% of non-home wealth in public hands in an extremely prosperous country. And Patrick Collinson reports on the latest World Happiness Survey, showing Norway within a group of relatively equal Nordic countries at the very top.

- Christo Aivalis discusses the elements of economic democracy, as well as the need for the NDP to offer voters a clear option of social ownership:

(H)owever important things like Medicare, education, and social security were, they did not constitute the outer boundaries of the social-democratic project. Put another way, what fundamentally distinguished social democracy from liberalism was a conviction of who should control the economy, with liberals saying it should be within largely private control, and social democrats claiming that, through various means, the economy should be controlled publicly.

Canadian social democrats, simply put, need to re-embrace the value in challenging private property’s dominance over the state. This isn’t to say the party is without existing ideas on this front. Andrea Horwath’s Ontario NDP is pledging to re-nationalize Hydro Ontario, and is calling for a reversal of many contracted out public services. Similarly, Niki Ashton’s federal leadership campaign made public ownership a central plank, while Charlie Angus had specific policies that would encourage worker and community-owned enterprises. Still, much more must be done on this front, and as we’ve seen, specific lessons are found within the party’s own recent history.

Jagmeet Singh’s NDP has already made impacts on issues like overhauling our tax system with a view towards a more equitable society. But if the party wants to offer a unambiguous distinction between itself and the ostensibly progressive Trudeau Liberals, a platform predicated on democratizing workplaces and the wider economy is a fantastic start, especially when aligned with provincial NDP sections willing to promote the same objectives in those jurisdictions where they have the most power.

- Richard Poplak points out the outsized (and unaccountable) role played by Export Development Canada in financing questionable corporate activity.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the difficulty injured workers have securing compensation in the face of abusive practices by Ontario employers. Tim Berners-Lee warns against allowing a small number of massive tech firms to dictate access to content online. And Crawford Kilian argues that a public-sector drug manufacturer is a needed cure for the problems with corporate incentives to encourage overprescription.

- Finally, Bob Ramsay writes that Canada's most privileged people are getting more antisocial with time and increased wealth, as charitable contributions as a share of income plummet among those with the most to give.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Wanda Wyporska highlights the UK's corporate executive fat cats, and argues that it's long past time for the public to stop rewarding them:

So let’s put fat cat pay in context. Yes it has come down slightly, as Sir Martin Sorrell has seen his pay cut from £70 million to a mere £40 million and organisations such as The Equality Trust have campaigned for pay transparency. But excessive CEO pay is also a hygiene issue for business and has been highly criticised throughout 2017. However, as we have calculated, the average CEO earned 242 times the wage of a minimum wage worker, 197 times the wage of a care worker, 108 times the salary of a nurse and 91 times the salary of a teacher. An indictment of the huge gap between those choosing Ferraris and those visiting foodbanks.

Furthermore, as an insurmountable bank of evidence shows, in countries with high levels of inequality (the UK is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world), there are also higher levels of physical and mental ill health, obesity, incarceration and crime and lower levels of social mobility, educational attainment and trust. So there’s a wider story than just fat cat pay.

Income inequality is a component of and result of a range of other inequalities, such as pay gaps experienced because of barriers such as race, gender and disability. The Equality Trust welcomes the Government’s commitment to legislation forcing companies to disclose their pay ratios and we shall be campaigning on this issue at our Pay Compare campaign. By highlighting the difference in pay between a footballer and the groundsmen, a CEO and the cleaners and the Vice Chancellor and university staff, we hope to demonstrate how unequal our pay systems are, how differently society values individuals, and how we can change this.

Inequality is not inevitable and we can reduce it.

- Meanwhile, Eric Levitz discusses the U.S.' increasing levels of poverty and consumer debt even as economic indicators linked to high-end wealth are seen as positive.

- Jo Littler asks what a more equal society should look like, with particular emphasis on the need to achieve improved equality of actual outcomes rather than pointing to theoretical opportunities. Stephen Tweedale writes about the importance of recognizing the intrinsic dignity and humanity of all people, rather than allowing meritocratic principles to excuse treating some people as more equal than others. And Peter Hicks comments on the value of a range of measures of poverty for different purposes - particularly to distinguish between alleviation and prevention.

- David Suzuki asks that we finally heed longstanding warnings about the environmental damage we're doing to our planet.

- Finally, Michael Harris hopes that 2018 will see Justin Trudeau and his party grow up - though I'd be inclined toward the view that Trudeau has already developed into exactly what he'd planned.

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Courage Coalition discusses why economic justice is necessary for social equality. But Ed Finn writes that instead, Canada is pushing people into serfdom:

Today's big business executives are not so outspoken, at least not in public, but privately they could make the same boast. Their basic agenda is not that much different from that of their 19th-century forerunners, whom they envy and seek to emulate. And what's really scary is that they now have amassed almost as much of the political and economic power they need to recreate the "bad old days" of the industrial robber barons.
...
This flinthearted exploitation of child labour may never be repeated in Canada, mainly because there are so many children in poorer nations who can more easily be exploited. But don't rule out the possibility that much of our adult work force will be driven back into a modern-day version of serfdom. With our labour laws impaired and laxly enforced, with workers' unions and bargaining rights weakened, with well-paid manufacturing jobs being replaced by low-paid part-time or temporary work, the regression of our labour force into 19th-century-style servitude is far from a dystopian fantasy.

Canadians should take a good hard look back at the age of absolute corporate power that doomed millions to dire poverty and serfdom in the late 1800s. If they did, they might be more concerned about having to relive that blighted and benighted past -- and become active in the struggle to avert it. 

- And Andrew MacLeod reports on the CMHC's thorough rejection of Christy Clark's attempt to lock vulnerable people into housing prices they can't afford.

- Carolyn Ray writes that instead of doing anything to rein in the abuses of banks who are simultaneously slashing jobs and closing branches while raking into economy-distorting profits, the Libs are attacking the credit unions who offer the most important alternative source of financial services. 

- Finally, Ben Chapman writes about the results of Finland's test of a basic income - which finds that people with some basic economic security are actually showing a stronger inclination to seek out work. And Tom Parkin examines the federal NDP leadership candidates' respective plans to put an end to poverty - while highlighting the importance of recognizing that as a feasible and necessary goal.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Danny Dorling sets out how a more equal society leads to benefits for everybody. And Annie Lowrey discusses Richard Reeves' take on the separation between the top 20% of the income spectrum and the rest of the U.S. - particularly in preventing social mobility.

- Meagan Gilmore points out how the Libs' sad excuse for a child care plan falls short of the principles of universality and accessibility which would actually result in a fair start for children across Canada. And Peter Whitaker writes about Bill Morneau's plans to further erode workers' retirement security by attacking their pensions.

- Raisa Deber raises the broad question of what we should be funding through our public health care system, while Amy Corderoy looks at Australia's similar issues with medical care being treated increasingly as a profit centre rather than a matter of social justice. The CP reports on the needless prescription drug costs we're paying due largely to a failure to adequately regulate or negotiate drug prices. And Jason Chung and Kelvin Ian Afrashtehfar highlight the consequences of dental care being unaffordable for many Canadians - including the development of more serious problems due to a lack of access to preventative care.

- Ipsos examines the generally positive view Canadians have of the concept of a basic income. And Insights West surveys the public's impressions of professions - with business and political professions ranking well toward the bottom.

- Finally, Samuel Hyman comments on the need to call out tax evasion for the socially-destructive activity it is, rather than burying it in euphemisms and excuses. But Marco Chown Oved reports that the Libs are backtracking on their past promises to start coming clean about how tax havens are used to siphon money away from Canada's public purse.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Roy Romanow writes about the dangers of focusing unduly on raw economic growth, rather than measuring our choices by how they actually affect people's well-being:

At the national level, the picture that emerges over the past 21 years is a GDP rebounding post-recession but Canadians literally continuing to pay the price. From 1994 to 2008, the living standards domain rose 23 per cent. Then it plummeted almost 11 per cent and has yet to recover. Gains made on reducing long-term unemployment and improving the employment rate were lost. Income inequality is rising. And, despite increases in median family incomes, millions of Canadians struggle with food and housing costs. When living standards drop, community, cultural and democratic participation follow suit. Surely, this is not our vision of equality and fairness in Canada.

(Canadians) were hardest hit in the leisure and culture domain, which declined by 9 per cent overall. We’re taking less time enjoying arts, culture, sports — even vacations — the very activities that help define us as individuals. On the eve of Canada’s sesquicentennial, household spending on culture and recreation is at its lowest point in 21 years.

To begin to narrow the gap, we can build on strengths, such as the education domain. Since domains are highly interrelated, we know that when more people graduate from high school and university, there is a positive effect on health and on almost all aspects of social, economic, and community participation. Strength in community vitality shows Canadians feel they belong and readily help one another. Collectively, we sense that action is required. There is growing support for forward-thinking programs, such as basic income and upstream health care approaches that tackle well-being issues at their roots.

- Neil MacDonald highlights some of the obvious problems with the Libs' plan to go even further down that road with an infrastructure bank. And Dru Oja Jay argues that instead of pushing to put all major infrastructure development under the control of the existing financial sector, the Libs should be working on building a banking system that works for people.

- Carl Zimmer discusses the devastating effect global warming is already having on the Arctic region. And CBC reports on the massive health benefits of eliminating the use of coal power.

- Finally, Chelsea Nash reports on Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand's observation that there are necessarily tradeoffs between facilitating voting and centralizing information in the hands of political parties - and it should come as no surprise that the Cons are trying to prevent the former by claiming their entitlement to the latter. And Althia Raj reports that Thomas Mulcair is leading the charge to restore public funding in order to reduce the influence of big money in politics.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Atrios offers a reminder as to how means-testing tends to make social programs more vulnerable to attack without making our overall tax system more progressive:

We already means test through the tax code. It's called progressive taxation. There's no reason to add an entire additional layer of complexity and bureaucracy and verification to every new and existing government program out there. If we built the highway system today we'd probably toll it for everyone earning above, say, $100,000, but everyone earning less than that would have to get their income verified and a separate form and a special toll free card and would have to pay back the free tolls if they made too much money the next year blah blah blah. We'd have to contract out to private companies to hire "navigators" in order to guide people through the free toll application process. "Make the rich pay more" actually just means "make it harder and more costly for everybody else."

Usually this doesn't even "save" much money, even ignoring the individual cost of compliance and associated bureaucracy. Think rich people get too many nice things from the government? Raise their damn taxes. Don't use it as an excuse to make giving nice things to everyone else so complicated that it practically isn't worth bothering. The net cost of stopping a few Richie Riches from getting free state university tuition or pre-K is yuge. The cost of increasing taxes a tiny bit on rich people generally is essentially zero, except to the rich people in question of course.

- Ben Steverman highlights how the U.S.' Social Security disability benefit - like far too many other social supports - traps people in perpetual precarity by threatening to take away benefit from anybody seeking to earn income. But then, as Laura Ip notes, the norm for working Canadians is to be within two missed paycheques away from disaster - meaning that there's an urgent need to strengthen multiple strands of our social safety net.

- Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the pathetic level of enforcement of employment standards in Ontario which has given rise to an epidemic of wage theft.

- Elizabeth McSheffrey reports on the Saskatchewan government's admission that it likely won't be able to fully clean up the mess from Husky's North Saskatchewan River oil spill, while Allison Martell and Rob Nickel note that two previous spills from pipelines in the area went unreported in the previous year. Jordon Cooper highlights the importance of effectively regulating pipelines while contrasting that goal against the Sask Party's desire to be seen as serving the oil industry. And Tristin Hopper's story on the onetime (and future?) plan to exploit the tar sands through a nuclear explosion should remind us of the damage the oil sector is happy to inflict for a perceived cheap buck.

- Meanwhile, the Associated Press points out the myriad of unprecedented environmental measures recorded around the globe in 2015. And George Monbiot observes that it's all too rare to see the scope of our climate crisis accurately portrayed in the media.

- Finally, Nick Falvo discusses the importance of improved data to address homelessness and other social problems. And Kathleen O'Grady and Noralou Roos make the case to make academic research more accessible to the people who can use it in practice.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Lawrence Ezrow writes that the disconnect between the public and policymaking that's done so much harm to the U.S. isn't quite as severe in more equal countries. And the Equality Trust is looking to ensure that the UK's political parties make the reduction of inequality into a core policy objective.

- Jordon Cooper comments on Saskatchewan's desperate need for a seniors' care plan - rather than the current practice of matching photo ops with selloffs and failing services. And Robert McMurtry reminds us of the dire need for a strong federal role in a national health care system.

- Ralph Heintzman reports on how federal civil servants are being forced to use their positions to serve as Con talking point dispensers. And the Star calls for some oversight to ensure that public money isn't used for partisan advertising purposes - though we might want to start by allowing our existing watchdogs to do their jobs rather than having to jump through a ridiculous set of hoops just to get basic information from the government.

- Meanwhile, Kathryn May exposes the Public Service Commission's refusal to allow a federal prosecutor to run for office, signalling just one more area where avoiding "politicization" seems to mean nothing more than silencing anybody who might challenge the Harper Cons.

- Matthew Behrens notes that C-51 represents just one more step - if a particular obtrusive one - down a longstanding path of intrusion into personal activities based on specious spin about terrorism.

- Finally, Michael Harris offers the Harper Cons a sure-to-be ignored lesson in mercy.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jacques Peretti discusses how corporate elites rewrote our social contract in a concerted effort to the inequality we're fighting today - and suggests it's well past time to push back in the name of moral economics:

Politicians have now, as then, conspired in their own diminishment — outsourcing foreign policy to Washington, saying there's nothing we can do about global capitalism.

But it's not up to them, it's up to us to be uncompromisingly moral at a moment when the criminal immorality of 30 years of misguided economic policy has been revealed.

The free market doctrine is over, and there’s an open goal. A once in a lifetime opportunity to rewrite the rules. It doesn’t require another Labour manifesto, nor call to "revolution".

We need a thousand surgical strikes to our economic system – ideas already out there from teachers, health workers, economists, even the enlightened super rich – which add up to one big idea, called morality.

So be radical. Be like a banker. But do it for good.

- Meanwhile, Bryce Covert highlights the opportunity to offer solutions to inequality as the G20's finance ministers acknowledge the problem for the first time. But Mainly Macro notes that we should fully expect corporate interests to keep trying to warp the system in favour of further wealth accumulation - though Ian Welsh is optimistic that they'll fail in the effort.

- Nate Cohn notes that a new "parent agenda" - based on improved parental leave, child care and affordable education - offers somewhere to start in providing an alternative vision. And Will Hutton offers his suggestions to fix a broken economic system:

The problems in the British economy and society run deep. Put at its rawest, our private institutions do not provide sufficient public good to justify their unreformed autonomy. A democracy has both the right and the duty to ask tough questions of the effectiveness of all its institutions, public and private. To insist that private institutions can only be reformed if they provenly fail – as the current centre-right consensus insists – and that public institutions must, as far as possible, simulate private ones, is to accept that the only good order is private.

If there are no networks of reciprocal obligation, and no acknowledgement that human beings associate in a society they can construct, redesign and reform around those principles, then we are all reduced to atomistic consumers and workers – serfs who are no more than notations in the spreadsheets of companies and public bodies alike. Business, too, is part of this framework. Wealth generation is not some magic left to firms and individuals in their low-taxed private garden: it reflects how companies are owned, financed and incentivised within a framework of public law – and thus what risks are run and what innovation and investment is undertaken. Business is healthier in a healthier society: it cannot be blind to social obligations. There is of necessity an inter-relationship with the democratic state. Without this recognition politicians are turned into journeymen with no great purpose, and into the vacuum pour nationalists, populists and the weird. We can do better.
...
The starting point is to ensure the foundation of any capitalist economy – the company – works as it should, and that legally, constitutionally and culturally, companies are purposed to do what they can do so well. To argue for the reform of capitalist enterprise should not be interpreted as “anti-business”; rather it is to be anti-dysfunctional business. For at their best, companies are organisations of genius, solving problems, innovating and delivering great goods and services. They should not be allowed to degrade into instruments of stock market speculation, so that managers are governed by the new god – the share price – and the temptations of their own colossal self-enrichment.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson makes the case for Canada's budgets to invest in public well-being, rather than slashing away at it.

- Finally, Nahanni Fontaine calls for Canada to take long-overdue steps toward genuine equality for indigenous women.

New column day

Here, on this week's confirmation from the Broadbent Institute that Canadians severely underestimate wealth inequality - as well as the strong popular support to reduce the wealth gap.

For further reading...
- The Norton/Ariely study of the views of Americans on wealth inequality is found here, and discussed further here, here and here.
- And Danielle Kurtzleben writes that actual wealth inequality in the U.S. has only been getting worse since 2010.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Eric Reguly opines that the best way to ensure that banks (and other businesses) operate under the law is to make sure that individual executives are held accountable for failing to do so:

(I)f fines and the odd firing are no deterrent to bad bank behaviour, what is? The obvious answer is shareholder rage. The trouble is, shareholders are not enraged. They have not grabbed pitchforks and torches and stormed CEOs’ houses when the multibillion-dollar fines are paid to secure settlements. Instead, they meekly accept the fines as if they are a cost of doing business, a sleaze tax, if you like.

In some cases, the bank shares actually rise when the fines are announced. The reason? Because in each of the settlements, the fines could have been far worse and, in no case, have the penalties threatened to put the banks out of business. The era of destroying terminally vice-ridden companies is, apparently, long gone. The last time that happened was in 2002, when Arthur Andersen, one of the Big Five accounting firms, was convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents in the Enron case. Some 85,000 employees eventually lost their jobs. Regulators and the governments that employ them no longer have the appetite for collateral damage in the form of massive job destruction.
...
Unless senior executives are put on criminal trial or, at a minimum, marched out the door in shame, shorn of their lavish bonuses and corporate golf-club memberships, the rotten culture of the banks will not change. Why would it? The traders in the currency scandal who worked for HSBC, Citi, UBS and other biggies decided that the chances of them getting caught were minimal and kept going. And if they were to get caught, it would be the bank – that is, the shareholders – not them, who would be on the hook for fines worth fortunes.

The bank fines are getting so big and frequent that you can be forgiven for suspecting a mutually beneficial racket is in progress. The banks pay big fines for settlements that leave their businesses and executive ranks largely intact. The regulators typically pocket some of the fines and pad out government treasuries. Shareholders are the main losers. To break this absurd cycle, and to encourage banks to operate morally, a little prison time would do the trick.

- And Bessma Momani reports on both the unfortunate reality that governments haven't made the effort to cooperate in ensuring that corporate income is taxed at all, and the tentative steps being taken by the G20 to correct that gross loophole.

- Josh Bivens highlights the fact that tax cuts and other giveaways to employers haven't done - and can't be expected to do - anything to improve wages:

Mr. Leonhardt pointed out the dismal wage trends for the vast majority of American workers in recent decades and how it would be a heavy policy lift to reverse them. This seems right to me. But then he wrote:

“Washington could definitely do more to help growth: better infrastructure, a less burdensome tax code, a less wasteful health care system, more bargaining power for workers and, above all, stronger schools and colleges, to lift the skills of the nation’s work force.”

As they might say on “Seinfeld,” you can’t “yada yada“ more bargaining power for workers. It’s the most important part of the story.

The root of the U.S. wage problem (which is, in turn, the root of America’s inequality problem) is that most workers aren’t seeing their wages keep pace with overall productivity growth. The policies on Mr. Leonhardt’s list are worthy, but most would not reliably close this gap between productivity and pay. Boosting the bargaining power of workers would.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson suggests that employers need to bear the cost of building their future workforce rather than letting hundreds of billions of dollars sit idle. And Chuck Collins proposes a combination of inheritance tax revenue, and an educational opportunity fund to ensure greater equality both between and within generations.

- The Hamilton Spectator laments the woeful state of child care in Canada.

- And finally, David Miller writes that refusing to do anything about climate change is no longer an option.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Paul Krugman points out the chasm between the policies demanded by businesses to suit their corporate biases, and those which actually best serve the cause of a strong and fair economy. And Michael Konczal highlights the damage done to our broader economy by a narrow focus on financial interests.

- Lisa Pasolli discusses the history of child care in Canada to offer some context to the policy choice that figures to dominate the next federal election. Margot Young makes the case that a new facade can't fix the serious structural problems with income splitting. And the CP reports that Canada's food banks have weighed in on the child care vs. tax bauble debate with strong support for a real child care system along with other improvements to our social safety net:

Canadian food banks are wading into the hot political debate over how best the federal government can help families with kids: give them tax breaks, as the Conservatives are doing, or invest in regulated child care, as the NDP proposes.

In its annual HungerCount report, Food Banks Canada comes down squarely on the side of the NDP.

It says the use of food banks remains 25 per cent higher than it was before the devastating global recession in 2008 and that 37 per cent of those helped are children.

According to the report, almost half of the households helped are families with kids and nearly half of those are two-parent families.

Among other recommendations, the report says the federal government should replace "the current alphabet soup" of child tax benefits with a new child well-being benefit that targets the most vulnerable families.

And it calls on federal and provincial governments to invest in predictable, stable funding for affordable, regulated child care, enabling parents to enter or remain in the workforce.

...

The report says "existing welfare bureaucracies" should be dismantled and replaced with a guaranteed basic income system.

And it recommends expanding eligibility for education and training programs offered through the Employment Insurance program.

It also calls on the federal government to invest in affordable housing.

- Meanwhile, Jen St. Denis talks to Gary Bloch about the effects of poverty and other social determinants of health. Annalise Klingbeil offers some good news in the form of Medicine Hat's progress in eradicating chronic homelessness. And Yvonne Roberts discusses the UK's living wage movement, while Christine Berry reports on its all-party agreement on four crucial elements of an economic policy oriented toward well-being.

- Finally, Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson write that the benefits of generosity include both personal and social gains.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Rebecca Vallas, Melissa Boteach and Shawn Fremstad write about the need for a new social contract. And Drew Nelles takes a look at the role of a guaranteed basic income in ensuring a fair standard of living for everybody:

Although implementing basic income would undoubtedly require a reorganization of social assistance provision, with some programs being eliminated or absorbed, it cannot be used as an excuse to dismantle what’s left of the welfare state. Instead, it’s a hopeful idea because it could act as just the opposite: the beginning of a turn away from the anti-tax, anti-social-spending policymaking that has dominated the West since the 1980s.

Indeed, I suspect that the idea of basic income has caught on for the same reason that Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century became a bestseller earlier this year. It neatly distills the era we live in: it reflects our burgeoning concern about class disparity, and it represents a symbolic reversal of the ideology that got us here. The post-recession, post-Occupy age has seen people—if not politicians—begin to reckon seriously with the threats of income inequality and wealth concentration. Basic income is an appealing solution in its simplicity and elegance: why not just give people money? Even if it remains, for now, more of a thought experiment than a concrete policy proposal, basic income is valuable for that reason. It forces us to ask what we owe each other.

- Meanwhile, Natasha Singer discusses how the "sharing economy" is serving as the latest cover for increasingly precarious work:

Technology has made online marketplaces possible, creating new opportunities to monetize labor and goods. But some economists say the short-term gig services may erode work compensation in the long term. Mr. Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argues that online labor marketplaces are able to drive down costs for consumers by having it both ways: behaving as de facto employers without shouldering the actual cost burdens or liabilities of employing workers.

“In a weak labor market, there’s not much of a floor on what employers, or quasi employers, can get away with,” Mr. Baker contends. “It could be a big downward pressure on wages. It’s a bad story.”

Labor activists say gig enterprises may also end up disempowering workers, degrading their access to fair employment conditions.

“These are not jobs, jobs that have any future, jobs that have the possibility of upgrading; this is contingent, arbitrary work,” says Stanley Aronowitz, director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “It might as well be called wage slavery in which all the cards are held, mediated by technology, by the employer, whether it is the intermediary company or the customer.”

- On the other end of the spectrum, Joseph Heath notes that some within the 1% are now stashing their children as well as their tax-sheltered money in the Cayman Islands to avoid the mere general public. And Darwin offers yet another thorough debunking of the Fraser Institute's spin on taxes.

- Alison examines Canada's international arms sales, including weapons exports to both sides of conflicts in the Middle East. 

- Finally, Robyn Benson previews this weekend's People' Social Forum. And for those who haven't yet seen Canadians for an Inclusive Canada - a group which is seeking to coordinate action against the Cons' anti-family immigration policy - it's well worth a look (and a signature).

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Nora Loreto reviews the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights' Unions Matter:

Unlikely to convince someone who is anti-union on its own, Unions Matter provides the fodder for union activists to be able to make important arguments in favour of unionization. Even more important, the statistics and arguments in Unions Matter could be used by labour activists to convince the ambivalent of the fact that, yes, unions matter.

Section one, "Reducing Income Inequality Through Labour Rights," gives an impressive overview of the role that unions have played to reorganize wealth in Canada. As union density has dropped, Canadian society has become objectively more unequal. The data presented in this section demonstrates that the trend between union density and inequality is not casual, but directly connected.

Unions are not just agents of economic redistribution, though. In section two, "Promoting Democracy, Economic Equality and Social Rights," the articles examine the role that unions have played and should play in defending social rights and fighting against injustice. The section examines how, through activism rather than simply through structural redistribution, unions defend democracy and the human rights of all people, regardless of union membership.
...
Armine Yalnizyan ends her chapter by arguing that the greatest threat to income distribution is the profits amassed by the 1%, and that unions cannot necessarily stop this trend through collective bargaining alone. "Ultimately," Yalnizyan writes, "the long-term impact of unions on Canadian trends in economic inequality is primarily through their political action… and only secondarily through their direct impact on wages."

Indeed, building the necessary campaign to fight neoliberal and austerity measures will require unions to engage in political action. While Unions Matter might not provide union activists with a road map on how to do that, it does offer the requisite facts to shut down any anti-union, right wing argument that might be floating around the ether. 

- And in a prime example of what can happen when the balance of power tilts thoroughly in favour of corporations, Jodi Kantor writes about the complete control employers exercise their most vulnerable employees through erratic scheduling for low-wage workers:

Scheduling is now a powerful tool to bolster profits, allowing businesses to cut labor costs with a few keystrokes. “It’s like magic,” said Charles DeWitt, vice president for business development at Kronos, which supplies the software for Starbucks and many other chains.

Yet those advances are injecting turbulence into parents’ routines and personal relationships, undermining efforts to expand preschool access, driving some mothers out of the work force and redistributing some of the uncertainty of doing business from corporations to families, say parents, child care providers and policy experts.
...
Child care and policy experts worry that the entire apparatus for helping poor families is being strained by unpredictable work schedules, preventing parents from committing to regular drop-off times or answering standard questions on subsidy forms and applications for aid: “How many hours do you work?” and “What do you earn?”
...
(F)lexibility — an alluring word for white-collar workers, who may desire, say, working from home one day a week — can have a darker meaning for many low-income workers as a euphemism for unstable hours or paychecks. Legislators and activists are now promoting proposals and laws to mitigate the scheduling problems. But those who manufacture and study scheduling software, including Mr. DeWitt of Kronos, advocate a more direct solution: for employers and managers to use the software to build in schedules with more accommodating core hours.

- Meanwhile, weinenkel highlights how privatized probation services are turning poverty into a crime in and of itself.

- Bill Curry reports that the Cons' general public-sector vandalism is resulting in newly-unemployed Canadians seeing a delay in the processing of their EI applications, while Jason Kirby writes that a disastrously botched jobs report is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the destruction of Statistics Canada. And Colin Freeze discusses the Cons' broken promise to rein in an intrusive and unaccountable CSEC surveillance apparatus.

- Finally, Iglika Ivanova looks at how tax rates and revenues have actually changed over the past 50 years. And Jennifer Wallner and Daniel Beland respond to the Fraser Institute's spin with a dose of reality:

What the study fails to report is that, thanks to government programs, Canadians are paying less for many of these necessities. Government programs that are paid for by, you guessed it, taxes.

In 1961, there was no universal health care, limited public education, limited public transportation systems and the Trans-Canada Highway wasn’t even open.

...

Keeping careful watch on the quality of programs provided by the government and paid through public taxes is our democratic responsibility.

Failing to acknowledge the necessity of these programs and the individual benefits they provide through collective action is misleading at best, as it deprives us from the big public policy picture through which we should understand taxation.

...

The latest report on taxation is a case in point in using misleading information to infuriate Canadians about taxes rather than make them see the big picture about why taxes are the way they are in the first place, and how the major public programs they finance improve the social and economic life of Canadians.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes once claimed, “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” This was the case in the past and this is even more the case today, regardless of what the Fraser Institute wants you to believe.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Atkins highlights Gallup's latest polling showing that U.S. trust in public institutions continues to erode. And Paul Krugman notes that there's reason for skepticism about the snake oil being peddled as economic policy in order to further enrich the already-wealthy:

Why, after all, should anyone believe at this late date in supply-side economics, which claims that tax cuts boost the economy so much that they largely if not entirely pay for themselves? The doctrine crashed and burned two decades ago, when just about everyone on the right — after claiming, speciously, that the economy’s performance under Ronald Reagan validated their doctrine — went on to predict that Bill Clinton’s tax hike on the wealthy would cause a recession if not an outright depression. What actually happened was a spectacular economic expansion.

Nor is it just liberals who have long considered supply-side economics and those promoting it to have been discredited by experience. In 1998, in the first edition of his best-selling economics textbook, Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw — very much a Republican, and later chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers — famously wrote about the damage done by “charlatans and cranks.” In particular, he highlighted the role of “a small group of economists” who “advised presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that an across-the-board cut in income tax rates would raise tax revenue.”
...
(H)ow can you justify enriching the already wealthy while making life harder for those struggling to get by? The answer is, you need an economic theory claiming that such a policy is the key to prosperity for all. So supply-side economics fills a need backed by lots of money, and the fact that it keeps failing doesn’t matter.

And the Kansas debacle won’t matter either. Oh, it will briefly give states considering similar policies pause. But the effect won’t last long, because faith in tax-cut magic isn’t about evidence; it’s about finding reasons to give powerful interests what they want.

- And on the subject of corporate capture, Alan Pyke reports that Michigan's idea of making prison food services more efficient has involved hiring a private contractor which doesn't seem interested in actually feeding anybody. And Jenny Uechl points out Kinder Morgan's sweetheart deal from the National Energy Board which is allowing it to force the public and to foot the bill for a nine-figure pipeline application - from which it would of course claim the profits.

- Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document (PDF) the role of unions in working toward greater equality (h/t to James Bloodworth), while reminding us what role we should expect unions, workers and corporations to play in a healthy society:

Companies have two functions. One is to produce the goods and services which we all need, but the other is to concentrate wealth and power among top executives and generate profits for shareholders. We need the first of these, but not the second. The second has been the mainspring of rising inequality and has provided powerful perverse incentives to top management.

Increasing employee representation on company boards and expanding the share of the economy made up of mutual, cooperative and employee owned companies would begin to tackle growing inequality and the concentration of wealth at the top. More democratic companies tend to have much smaller pay ratios among their staff.
...
As well as smaller income differences and good economic performance, cooperatives, employee owned companies and others in the stakeholder business sector have other advantages. Community life has weakened substantially in rich countries over the last generation but, as Oakeshott remarks, an employee buyout can turn a company from being a piece of property into a community¹. Perhaps a stronger sense of community at work could replace the sense of community that has declined in residential areas.  It is also likely that less hierarchical structures at work could begin to change the experience of work – making it possible for more people to gain a sense of self-worth and of being valued from their employment. Certainly, a sense that you don’t have control over your work, of unfairness, or an ‘effort-reward imbalance’, have each been linked to worse health and wellbeing.

The scales of top pay and of tax avoidance are two indications of how problematic the mismatch between profit seeking and the public interest can be. Other indicators include corporate-funded opposition to scientific evidence of harm associated with company products, such as the role of fossil fuel companies opposing climate science, the manipulation of regulatory bodies set up to safeguard the public interest, and the purchase of political influence on a scale which threatens the effective functioning of democratic institutions.

- Finally, Denis Campbell interviews John Ashton about the importance of greater equality as a matter of public health. And Faiza Shaheen writes that we can't have sustainable development without challenging inequality.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Nick Pearce offers an interesting discussion of conception of equality that should be placed at the core of social-democratic thinking - with one goal in particular standing out as demanding further attention:

(S)social democrats would be more self-consciously political in pursuit of their goals, eschewing some (if not all) of the preference for legally-enshrined social policy targets that characterised the New Labour project. Instead, greater weight would be placed on building durable coalitions of support for political ambitions, widening the ground on which to advance their policies and drawing energy from new social movements. Driven by ideological rethinking and future fiscal limits towards a so-called ‘pre-distribution’ agenda, Labour is already opening up – albeit tentatively – new territory in economic policy for fresh ideas and practical coalitions. It should extend that logic more widely into social policy and political reform, thinking through how it can gain the popular support it currently lacks for tackling poverty, reforming the welfare state, and creating more integrated communities. In each of these areas, it has to find ways of converting political weakness into strength, anchoring its ambitions in new institutions, identities and practices, and in political alliances that are oriented towards the future, not given to defence of the crumbling bastions of the past.

- Meanwhile, Ian Welsh's post on how to properly define an economy offers some hints as to the types of institutions and movements which might form key parts of a progressive coalition. But the Cons are going out of their way to show they value an "economy" measured solely in terms of profit and GDP rather than the needs of Canadians.

- Yves Engler writes that CETA is best seen as attacking democratic decision-making for the benefit of monopolist rent-seekers, while Stuart Trew wonders whether the Harper Cons are legally required to make the deal public (notwithstanding their obvious preference to keep it hidden). And David Martin notes a similar corporatist bent in an impending deal between the US and the EU.

- Finally, the Globe and Mail's interactive discussion of inequality in Canada is well worth a look. But I do note that the proposed solutions are rather limited in scope - with a basic annual income for everybody (as distinct from benefits for the working poor and/or workers in precarious jobs) left off the table altogether.