Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Beth Gardiner discusses how the oil industry has long understood how much fossil fuels would damage the Earth's climate (even while fighting tooth and nail to avoid mitigating the damage). And Norm Farrell points out that the U.S.' worsening water shortages pose significant risks to Canada's food supply. 

- Dr. Chinta Sidharthan discusses how new COVID variants are becoming more and more resistant to existing vaccines. 

- The ILO studies wage trends around the globe over the course of the COVID pandemic to date, with real wage growth falling into negative territory while inequality worsens. But Sara Jabakhani reports on the Ford PCs' rejection of every single recommendation to prevent reoccurrences of a construction worker's death in a trench collapse as a prime example of how right-wing governments couldn't be less interested in the safety or well-being of workers. 

- The Star's editorial board makes the case for warning labels on alcohol in light of its outsized contribution to social harms. 

- Finally, Aaron Wherry discusses how Danielle Smith's obsessions with "sovereignty" over substance represents at best a game of political chicken. 

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Dean Baker discusses some of the myths about the effects of corporate globalization - with particular attention to how our current trade and immigration structures are designed to provide easy profits for capital at the expense of labour around the world. And Jason Hickel reports on new research showing how the developed world (or at least its upper class) is extracting trillions of dollars from the countries which can least afford to lose them.

- James Kwak comments on the massive gap between the effects of minimum-wage increases as threatened based on oversimplified economic theories, and the real-world impacts which have been beneficial for workers and the broader economy alike. 

- The International Labour Organization reviews the continued lack of secure employment around the globe. And Ashley Cowburn reports on the UK public's strong support for the idea of reining in CEO income compared to that of a business' general workforce.

- Alexander Kaufman highlights Rex Tillerson's implausible denial that he has any idea Exxon and other oil companies enjoy public subsidies. And Ross Belot points out that based on then Libs' combination of nominal greenhouse gas emissions targets and plans which fall far short of meeting them, we're likely to see yet another public giveaway to the oil sector in the form of carbon bailouts.

- Finally, Dennis Gruending offers his take on the need for a public response to the threat of mass surveillance.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Julie Delahanty discusses the need for Canada's federal government to rein in rising inequality. And Tim Stacey duly challenges the excuse that today's poor people just aren't poor enough to deserve any consideration.

- Amy Goodman interviews Joseph Stiglitz about the serious problems with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Andrea Germanos reports that Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, is joining the chorus pointing out how the TPP will affect public health. And Andy Blatchford points out how the TPP's intellectual property provisions are designed to enrich the U.S. at the expense of Canadian industry.

- Meanwhile, Brad Hornick points out how trade agreements and corporate influence will limit what we can hope to accomplished at the Paris conference on climate change, while Reuters reports on the massive amounts of money still being used to subsidize fossil fuels. But on the bright side, IndustriALL notes that the International Labour Organization has stepped up to the plate in advance of Paris by adopting a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions paired with a "just transition" for workers.

- Finally, Bill Tieleman comments on the Christy Clark Libs' phantom government which manages to make information disappear as soon as truth is in danger of becoming public. And Sean Holman writes that the basic question the Trudeau Libs will face on access to information is whether to presume that "administrative secrecy" should generally trump any public awareness of government decision-making.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Maude Barlow and Sujata Dey point out that the job promises linked to CETA and other new trade agreements are no more plausible than the false ones made in previous rounds of corporate rights giveaways. And the Canadian Labour Congress discusses the secrecy surrounding the new set of deals including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

- Meanwhile, the International Labour Organization documents the connection between collective bargaining rights and greater equality. And lest anybody think there's a tradeoff to be made between equality based on labour rights and growth based on corporate control, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research finds that "flexible" labour markets do nothing to improve productivity or output. (Which, if course, isn't to say that the Cons plan to do anything but stomp on workers for the sake of stomping on workers.)

- Peter Fleming comments on the eroding relationship between productivity, social utility and pay for workers. And in a particularly stark example of how the system is rigged against workers, Chris Thompson reports on the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario's findings about an employer who used the leverage provided by the temporary foreign worker program to sexually abuse employees.

- Stephen Kimber writes that corporate charity ultimately serves only the purposes of the businesses who get to dictate terms to recipients - meaning that we should refuse to eliminate public supports in favour of private handouts.

- And finally, on that front, Duncan Cameron makes the case for a more fair tax system which both reduces inequality and ensures we have the revenue to take care of everybody:

Today, accepting that the rich should pay a fair share of taxes would constitute progress. Through tax cuts, money is being returned to corporations and the wealthy. Personal tax cuts enacted by the Chrétien Liberals in the 2000 budget put one-third of the benefits in the pockets of the richest five per cent of taxpayers.

Economists can be found arguing that taxing the rich reduces incentives to create wealth. True-believing right-wingers argue that the rich are entitled to whatever money they have, regardless of how that money is used or how it was obtained. Cynics simply observe that through provincial sales taxes and the GST, it is possible to soak the poor, always more numerous than the rich.

With greed being presented as a virtue, even the idea that all individuals benefit from redistributing resources through taxation to provide education, health care, recreation, and access to cultural activities for the entire population can seem counterintuitive. Yet the principle that each should contribute to society according to ability to pay retains its power.

Whoever knows financial success already reaps more material benefits than others, and should be called upon to contribute accordingly. Wealth and high income confer rewards; such resources provide the fortunate a greater responsibility for collective endeavours. 

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Walden Bello discusses the need for our political system to include constant citizen engagement, not merely periodic elections to determine who will be responsible to implement the wishes of the elite:

Even more than dictatorships, Western-style democracies are, we are forced to conclude, the natural system of governance of neoliberal capitalism, for they promote rather than restrain the savage forces of capital accumulation that lead to ever greater levels of inequality and poverty. In fact, liberal democratic systems are ideal for the economic elites, for they are programmed with periodic electoral exercises that promote the illusion of equality, thus granting the system an aura of legitimacy.
...
To reverse the process requires not just an alternative economic program based on justice, equity, and ecological stability, but a new democratic system to replace the liberal democratic regime that has become so vulnerable to elite and foreign capture.

First of all, representative institutions must be balanced by the formation of institutions of direct democracy.

Second, civil society must organize itself politically to act as a counterpoint and check to the dominant state institutions.

Third, citizens must keep in readiness a parliament of the streets, or “people power,” that can be brought at critical points to bear on the decision-making process: a system, if you will, of parallel power. People power must be institutionalized for periodic intervention, not abandoned once the insurrection has banished the old regime.

- As a prime example of the problems with the status quo, Eric Lipton exposes how U.S. Republican elected officials see their main job as repeating and amplifying the message of their oil-sector backers. Bronwen Tucker points out that the Harper Cons are likewise taking the side of the tar sands over people and the planet. And Dean Baker notes that the most recent set of international trade agreements goes far beyond even earlier versions in limiting health and environmental regulations.

- Meanwhile, Tyler Cowen offers some suggestions as to how technology could blunt the impacts of income inequality. But it's hard to see how those theoretical possibilities would accomplish much if not accompanied by a concerted effort to spread the benefit around - rather than merely being allowed to evolve in ways that favour the people in control of current capital and technology.

- Indeed, David Kynaston observes that a shift toward private education has only exacerbated inequality in the UK. And every bit of attention and funding directed toward corporatized education represents resources not put toward something more important - such as food for hungry children.

- And finally, the ILO reminds us that it's corporate decision-making rather than anything beyond employers' control that's led to the growing gap between the executive and shareholder classes and people working for a living.