Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Francine Prose offers a reminder that everything else happening in the U.S. is secondary to the imminent threat of an authoritarian takeover. Ed Burmila highlights how Donald Trump can't afford the usual PR tactic of throwing somebody else under the bus for abusive behaviour due to his reliance on total impunity to keep his goons behind him. And Noah Berlatsky observes that the Trump regime's public statements can't be evaluated based on truth or falsity when they're aimed solely at laying the groundwork for perpetually increasing violence.

- But Luke O'Neil writes that the sense of solidarity on display in Minneapolis offers ample reason for hope that fascism won't ultimately win out. And Robert Worth discusses how plenty of people are finding homes for themselves in the resistance to Trump's occupation. 

- Meanwhile, Kate Connolly reports that the international response to Trump's capriciousness includes Germany's examining the prospect of repatriating gold currently held on U.S. soil. 

- And both Jason Markusoff and David Climenhaga note that the already-limited appeal of Alberta's separatist faction is declining all the more as the consequences of being more tightly tied to Trump become inescapable.

- Finally, Caitlin Johnstone rightly notes that the few people sitting on obscene levels of wealth and power can't have reached that position through anything resembling a healthy worldview. And Oxfam documents the continued concentration of wealth at the top of the income spectrum.

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Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Harold Varmus and Rajiv Shah write that the CDC's willingness to parrot the Trump administration's desire for less COVID-19 testing is forcing states and other actors to take up the job of providing appropriate public health advice. And David Climenhaga points out the rightful frustration of Alberta parents and education workers who have been told that the social distancing rules applicable to every other building in the province will be ignored in schools - even as the U.S. sees soaring rates of infection among children.

- Leilani Farha and Kaitlin Schwan offer a reminder that homelessness is a matter of life and death in the midst of a pandemic. Victoria Gibson discusses the Toronto families being torn apart by inadequate housing. And Dan Darrah highlights the problems with a real estate market administered primarily to build stores of wealth, rather than to ensure that people of all income levels have a reasonable place to live. 

- The Economic Policy Institute studies the advantages in wages, sick days and health benefits held by union workers compared to unorganized labour. But Bob Hennelly writes that with corporate wealth getting more concentrated and unions losing ground, workers in general are being treated as perpetually more expendable.

- Finally, Philip Oltermann highlights how Germany is significantly better off for having welcomed far more refugees than other wealthy countries.

New column day

Here, on how we should take Germany's rightful concern over investor-state dispute settlement provisions as an opportunity to reevaluate what we expect to accomplish through trade and investment agreements such as CETA.

For further reading...
- Peter Clark, Michael Geist and Scott Sinclair discuss Germany's objections to new trade agreements with Canada and the U.S. in particular, while reminding us why we should be wary of handing undue power to the corporate sector as well. And Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder and Rhea Tamara Hoffmann discuss (PDF) Germany's past experience with ISDS in detail.
- Meanwhile, Patricia Ranald notes that similar issues are developing as Australia debates an agreement with South Korea.
- Finally, Thomas Walkom and Jim Stanford weigh in with their own concerns about CETA, while the Council of Canadians applauds Germany's stance.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- John Studzinski describes how a sense of social responsibility and a country-wide commitment to making jobs available have placed Germany in a better economic position than its European neighbours:

Let me highlight some of the features unique to the Mittelstand model that I believe everyone should learn from – and imitate if they can. The first is what we might call the Mittelstand ethos – that business is a constructive enterprise that aims to be socially useful. Making a profit is not an end in itself: job creation, client satisfaction and product excellence are just as fundamental. Taking on debt is treated with suspicion. The objective of every business leader is to earn trust – from employees, customers, suppliers and society as a whole. This ethos chimes with the values of prudence and responsibility with which every schoolteacher hopes to imbue their pupils. Consequently, about half of all German high-school students move on to train in a trade. Business and education are natural bedfellows.

The second essential feature of the Mittelstand model is the collaborative spirit that generally exists between employer and employees. This can be dated back to the welfare state that Chancellor Otto von Bismarck established in the late 19th century to head off what he saw as the menace of socialism. Its modern-day equivalent is the system of works councils, which ensures that employees' interests are safeguarded, whether or not they belong to a trade union. German workers expect their employers to keep training them, enhancing their skills. In the post-reunification recession, it seemed only natural to German workers to offer flexibility on wages and hours in return for greater job security. More recently the government protected jobs by subsidising companies that cut hours rather than staff.

A third feature of the Mittelstand model is the determination of German companies to build for the long term. To this end, they tend to keep core functions such as engineering and project management in-house, while outsourcing production whenever this proves more efficient. Mittelstand companies are overwhelmingly privately owned, and thus largely free of pressure to provide shareholder returns. This makes them readier to innovate, and invest a larger proportion of their revenues in R&D. There are Mittelstand companies that file more patents in a year than do some entire European countries. It is one of the underlying reasons for their exporting success, even when their goods seem expensive.
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(T)here is much that non-Germans could learn from. To close the gap between education and business, companies should take a greater interest in their local schools and colleges. If you haven't got spare cash for sponsoring gyms or computer equipment, go and talk to sixth-formers or degree students about what you do. Find out what graduates aspire to. It will help you to work out how to attract the next generation.

If you want to get more out of your employees and suppliers, consult them; invite them into your confidence. Don't complain: "We're not like the Germans. It won't work here." Think of a different way. Try harder.

The same applies to governments. Let me mention one simple legislative option. In German law, the owner of a family business who passes it on to the next generation can avoid paying inheritance tax if, during their tenure, they have increased employment and thereby benefited the economy. What better signal could a government give than by favouring those who create employment?

- Sixth Estate comments on the Cons' deceptive efforts to dictate Saskatchewan's electoral boundaries, while Lawrence Martin sees the lies as evidence that the Cons are rotting from the head down. Meanwhile, Alice thoroughly describes the independent boundary development process in Canada and notes that "gerrymandering" isn't the right term to describe the Cons' interventions.

- Chris Hannay discusses how our current governments are missing the point of social media - including with up to eight points of revision and control over every single Tweet.

- Finally, Duncan Cameron writes that the editorial boards and political adversaries criticizing the NDP's Unity Act should instead be recognizing the opportunity created by the party's success in bringing Quebec voters into a discussion as to how to make federalism work.