Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Dyani Lewis writes that we know enough to ensure clean indoor air if we care enough to work on limiting the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses. 

- Jane Philpott and Danyaal Raza observe that the Libs are endangering both the short-term affordability of needed medication and the long-term development of a national pharmacare plan by giving in to lobbying from big pharma. And Euan Thomson writes about the need to fight against a right-wing model which treats puritanical and profit-driven "recovery" schemes as the only response to the crisis of drug poisonings. 

- Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington warn against relying on corporate consultancies as a substitute for a functional and well-resourced public service. 

- Steven Greenhouse points out that major businesses are engaged in old-school union-busting to prevent workers from having a voice in their pay and working conditions. And CBC News reports on a massive human trafficking ring which shows there's no limit to the depravity of employers seeking to trap and exploit workers. 

- Finally, Max Fawcett writes about the dangers of Pierre Poilievre's aggressive know-nothingism. And Marc Fawcett-Atkinson rightly calls out the spread of anti-science hokum among white males in particular. 

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Paul Wells highlights the futility in telling people to stay home when they lack a home to stay in. And Robyn Urback discusses the simple test of character involved in the choice of some leaders to abandon people at sea.

- Megan Linton discusses how neoliberal health care treats people as disposable. The Star's editorial board points out how we're currently sending our health care workers to war without adequate equipment, while Catharine Tunney reports on the federal government's recognition only after the fact that it didn't have sufficient personal protective equipment. And Jane Philpott comments on the need to protect the health workers working to care for people through the course of the pandemic.

- Michael Enright interviews Hugh Segal about the prospect of a basic income - and the extra value it would carry in a crisis (particularly as the federal government makes excuses about lacking information to distribute even the barest of benefits to people who need them). And Mark Blyth points out how the U.S.' debt-driven economy with few social supports or shock absorbers makes it particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, while Madison Hoff notes that a shutdown is calling needed attention to the U.S.' obsession with work over welfare.

- Owen Jones writes about the need to fight to ensure the new world which emerges from COVID-19 is actually an improvement on the one that's allowed it to cause so much damage. And Dorothee Benz takes note of the corporate media focused primarily on profits rather than lives.


- Finally, Ian Welsh offers a needed warning against the impulse to rally around bad leaders in a time of crisis.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your year.

- Armine Yalnizyan writes about the ongoing struggle for workers' rights a century after the Winnipeg General Strike:

Most workers have no channels for acting, or even talking, collectively. That may be changing. Here in Canada, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers launched a campaign in May to organize Foodora’s bicycle and car couriers in Toronto, in hopes of providing access to basic workers’ rights. In June, 300 Uber drivers in the Greater Toronto Area formed a union with the United Food and Commercial Workers to push back against unfair labour practices. 

Workers are starting to rediscover the role of collective action and unions because there seems to be no bottom to how some employers will exploit them. 

...

One hundred years ago, people rose up against the status quo. Today, people are rising up against attempts to dismantle the status quo, turning back the clock on hard-won rights and freedoms.

- The Economic Policy Institute charts what should be some of the U.S.' top economic priorities for the year to come.

- Don Pittis offers some suggestions as to how to turn the tide to fight the climate crisis in 2020. Doug Cuthand muses as to how we'll remember the coming decade. And Rick Salutin writes that we're out of time to merely hope for the best rather than engaging in immediate action.

- The Victoria Times-Colonist's editorial board recognizes the problems in leaving long-term senior care in the hands of the private sector. And R E Klaber and S Bailey study the importance of including kindness as a governing principle in health care, rather than focusing solely on immediate dollars and cents.

- Finally, Jane Philpott makes the case for the decriminalization of drug possession as the solution to the opioid crisis.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Joseph Stiglitz discusses how the failure of neoliberalism to provide gains for any but the wealthiest few has led to risks to the democratic systems which have been treated as tied to laissez-faire economics. And Armine Yalnizyan challenges the false assumption that increased inequality can be justified in the name of competitiveness.

- Sarah Lawryniuk writes about the potential for Jason Kenney's wanton destruction of Alberta's public sector to produce massive social unrest along with economic damage. Rethinking Poverty writes about the importance of having policy designed by the people who experience its consequences, rather than being imposed out of ignorance by privileged people who presume anything that doesn't affect them personally must not matter. And Ash Sharkar writes that the UK's election may determine whether citizens see any hope of dealing with collective problems at the ballot box.

- Thomas Walkom puts Kenney's trumped-up complaints in perspective compared to the the enormity and importance of the global climate crisis. And Stephen Buranyi calls out the new form of conservative climate denial, which involves barely acknowledging the danger but refusing to do anything to actually cut greenhouse gas emissions.

- But Noah Smith writes that no matter how firmly oil-backed politicians remain in denial, there's no avoiding the fact that the age of fossil fuels is coming to an end.

- Finally, Jane Philpott and Danyaal Raza write that the time is now to put a national Pharmacare program in place.

New column day

Here, on how Donald Trump is just one of far too many politicians trying to undercut needed counterbalances in the media, political systems and civil society.

For further reading...
- Rem Reider's story offers a few examples of Trump's attacks on the press.
- Althia Raj reported on Bill Morneau's complaints about opposition MPs doing their job, while Andy Blatchford addressed his claim that he doesn't report to journalists.
- John Paul Tasker discussed Jane Philpott's attempt to silence critics of the Libs' failures on Indigenous issues (and particularly the implementation of Jordan's principle).
- And Keith Baldrey's year-end interview with John Horgan included the latter's comment on setting activism aside.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Nina Shapiro comments on the price of privatizing public goods. And George Monbiot weighs in on how the Grenfell Tower fire confirms that what corporatist politicians deride as "red tape" is in fact vital protection for people:

For years successive governments have built what they call a bonfire of regulations. They have argued that “red tape” impedes our freedom and damages productivity. Britain, they have assured us, would be a better place with fewer forms to fill in, fewer inspections and less enforcement.

But what they call red tape often consists of essential public protections that defend our lives, our futures and the rest of the living world. The freedom they celebrate is highly selective: in many cases it means the freedom of the rich to exploit the poor, of corporations to exploit their workers, landlords to exploit their tenants and industry of all kinds to use the planet as its dustbin. As RH Tawney remarked, “Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows.”
...
Crucial public protections have long been derided in the billionaire press as “elf ’n’ safety gone mad”. It’s not hard to see how ruthless businesses can cut costs by cutting corners, and how this gives them an advantage over their more scrupulous competitors.

The “pollution paradox” (those corporations whose practices are most offensive to voters have to spend the most money on politics, with the result that their demands come to dominate political life) ensures that our protections are progressively dismantled by governments courting big donors.

Conservative MPs see Brexit as an excellent opportunity to strip back regulations. The speed with which the “great repeal bill” will have to pass through parliament (assuming that any of Theresa May’s programme can now be implemented) provides unprecedented scope to destroy the protections guaranteed by European regulations. The bill will rely heavily on statutory instruments, which permit far less parliamentary scrutiny than primary legislation. Unnoticed and undebated, crucial elements of public health and safety, workers’ rights and environmental protection could be made to disappear.

Too many times we have seen what the bonfire of regulations, which might sound like common sense when issuing from the mouths of ministers, looks like in the real world. The public protections that governments describe as red tape are what make the difference between a good society and barbarism. It is time to bring the disastrous deregulatory agenda to an end, and put public safety and other basic decencies ahead of corner-cutting and greed.

- Jane Philpott rightly points out how double-billing is contrary to the spirit of the Canada Health Act and the goal of an effective universal health care system - though it's worrisome that her response to the growth of the practice is merely to express concern, rather than taking real steps as the minister with authority to actually implement a policy response. And The Sunday Edition discusses how overtreatment and overdiagnosis create both dangers for patients, and added costs for our health care system.

- Gary Younge writes that Jeremy Corbyn has fundamentally changed the rules of UK politics by mobilizing voters who had previously been ignored. Naomi Klein discusses the importance of offering the public a substantial vision worth voting for. Rick Salutin looks at the parallels between Corbyn and Bernie Sanders in winning over younger voters with unabashed left-wing policy, while Matt Taibbi hopes that corporate-focused centrists will no longer be taken seriously when they claim they're the best progressive voters can hope for. And Sam Kriss takes Corbyn's success as an opportunity to recognize that socialist policies are in fact broadly popular.

- Finally, Brett Murphy explores how the trucking industry is set up to exploit drivers. And Graeme Wood reports on a push to ensure that contracting-out arrangements don't serve as a means to evade paying fair wages at Vancouver's airport.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Star offers some lessons from the UK's election, including the powerful appeal of unabashed social democratic policy. Aditya Chakrabortty discusses how Jeremy Corbyn has changed his country's politics for a long time to come. And Gary Younge observes that the gains achieved by Corbyn and Labour represent a victory for hope where voters had previously been told for far too long not to expect anything to get better.

- Meanwhile, Murray Dobbin slams the Trudeau Libs for turning a mandate from voters seeking a more progressive government into a plan to ramp up spending on war.

- Doug Cuthand argues that it's long past time for Canada's federal government to start living up to Jordan's Principle and ensuring fair supports are available for Indigenous children. And the Current discusses how childhood trauma creates health repercussions which last a lifetime.

- Kathy Tomlinson and Justine Hunter follow up on the flagrant flouting of the Canada Health Act with an expression of outrage from Jane Philpott, coupled with a claim that the federal government is powerless. But lest anybody think this is somehow a new issue which the Libs can be excused for not having recognized, it was a refusal to deal with exactly the same problem *12 years ago* which contributed to the fall of their previous government.

- Finally, Suzanne Goldenberg writes about the massive amount of food which goes wasted even as far too many people face food insecurity.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Per Molander examines new research on the sources of inequality which concludes that massive gaps in wealth and income inevitably arise purely out of chance rather than any individual merit:

Differences in income or assets that are based on differences in capabilities or effort are widely considered to be legitimate, but it is easy to verify that all observed differences cannot be explained in this way. In its 2016 report on the global distribution of wealth, Oxfam International reported that the richest 62 persons in the world own as much as the poorer half of the world’s population, about 3.5 billion people. Clearly, one person cannot be 100 million times as productive as another healthy and reasonably well-educated person. After all, a day and night comprises only 24 hours for all of us, rich or poor.

In a seminal paper on the drivers of inequality, Robert and Ricardo Fernholz have analysed the long-term distribution of wealth in an abstract growing market economy. They assume that the economy generates a surplus which is invested in a financial market. Even assuming that all individuals in this society are identical as far as capabilities, efforts, preferences, and initial assets are concerned, the distribution of assets will become increasingly skewed over time. In the long run, one household will own all the assets. The explanation for this is simple: small variations in return on assets will be magnified over time, because those who are lucky can afford to take somewhat higher risks and will be rewarded with even higher returns, and so on.

Simple as this mechanism may be, it has far-reaching consequences. Even in an imagined world of perfect equals, inequality will develop as a result of our innate tendency towards risk aversion – wealthy individuals can afford to take risks, whereas the less wealthy have to be more cautious. Equality is inherently unstable; even the slightest perturbation of a perfectly egalitarian equilibrium will cause it to degrade into a highly unequal society, where only the self-interest of the richer strata will set the limits.
...
In real societies, individuals differ in both capabilities and efforts. But, because of the self-reinforcing effect of differences, the inequalities that we observe will be completely out of proportion with differences in effort or capabilities. Inequality is largely a market failure. This is what makes the case for redistribution.

- Meanwhile, Seth Klein, Iglika Ivanova and Andrew Leyland highlight the desperate need for a poverty reduction strategy in British Columbia.

- Lola Butcher discusses how a housing first strategy can more than pay for itself by reducing burdens on the health care system and other social programs. And Marc Lee points out that tax incentives and subsidies for landlords figure to be far less effective than direct investment in affordable housing.

- Timothy Sawa and Lisa Ellenwood report on the massive amounts of money wasted on high-priced prescription drugs. And to her credit, Jane Philpott is at least examining how to reduce the cost of inflated drug prices - though it remains to be seen when that will lead to actual policy changes.

- Finally, the CCPA's submission to the SaskForward consultation process examines the futility of austerity.

New column day

Here, on the Libs' pleasantly surprising hints toward enforcing the Canada Health Act - and the Saskatchewan Party's response that it would rather fight for profit-motivated medicine than work on building a sustainable universal system.

For further reading...
- By way of background on the enforcement of the Canada Health Act at the federal level, see here and here as to the Libs' refusal to act which helped to precipitate the fall of the Martin government, and here, here and here as to how matters further deteriorated under the Harper Cons.
- Stefani Langenegger reported on how pay-for-play MRIs in Saskatchewan (along with other similar schemes elsewhere) are at least attracting some scrutiny from Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott.
- And Scott Stelmaschuk points out how the Saskatchewan Party's corporate medicine is predictably endangering sorely-needed funding.

Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Dayen wonders whether the Obama administration's decision to end the use of private prisons might represent the needed start of a movement away from relying on poor corporate services as a substitute for public action:

Private prisons experienced more safety and security incidents. They had higher rates of assaults, inadequate medical checkups and compliance, eight times as many incidents of contraband cell-phone smuggling, and often housed new inmates in solitary confinement units, seemingly for lack of space. The report also detailed several grisly incidents since 2008: three riots in one Reeves County, Texas facility in two months; the death of a corrections officer in a riot in Natchez, Mississippi; and the closure of the Willacy County (Texas) Correctional Center, after inmates burned it to the ground.

It’s not hard to figure out why this happens. Private companies win contracts to manage federal prisons by undercutting the Bureau of Prisons’ operational costs. Unlike the government, private prison companies must also take their profit margins out of their budgets. The only way to make that work is to massively drop labor costs, corresponding to a severe degradation of the quality of prison management.
...
That reflects the problem with privatization as a whole. Private companies must carry out a government function—be it water, parking meters, mass transit, or K-12 schools—at a lower cost than the government can provide it, while taking their profit off the top. Time and again, the results reveal that to be impossible, at least if you want to provide the same quality of service. Yet we keep privatizing. Whether it’s Republicans expanding Medicaid or cash-strapped cities handing over bus service to Uber and Lyft, eventually costs shift from taxpayers to the users of the services, oversight becomes impotent as officials grow reliant on outsourcing contracts, and attempts to maximize profits lead to service breakdowns.

- But CBC reports that the worst is yet to come in Saskatchewan as Brad Wall has publicly put SaskTel up for corporate raiding.

- Jacki Andre discusses the hidden costs of living with a disability - which make it particularly unconscionable for Wall's Saskatchewan Party to be trying to squeeze pennies out of people who rely on already-inadequate disability benefits.

- Floyd Perras highlights the multiple factors that contribute to (and exacerbate) homelessness. And Rocca Perla comments on the need to include social determinants of health within medical treatment of patients.

- Pat Rich describes the Canadian Medical Association's rude awakening in finding out that Lib Health Minister Jane Philpott has no interest in its key priorities for improved care. And Alison points out how the Libs are conspicuously trying to wriggle out of their promise to end the unfairness of first-past-the-post politics.

- Finally, Anna MacDonald makes the case for stronger transparency as a means of limiting the harm of global arms dealing. But if there was any doubt that the Trudeau Libs are firmly on the side of weapons proliferation, Helene Laverdiere points out their inexplicable decision to stand against nuclear disarmament.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Liz Farmer discusses the growing body of evidence showing that high-end tax cuts do nothing to build the economy for anybody but the few privileged beneficiaries. And Stephen Kimber writes about the billions of dollars Canada loses to tax evasion every year, while calling out the "taxpayer" lobby groups who are happy to leave the public on the hook for that loss. 

- Heather Stewart weighs on how increased automation stands to exacerbate inequality both between capital and labour, and within the workforce itself. And Matthew Wright comments on the effect of social capital as one of the means by which inequality of opportunity perpetuates itself:

The argument that economic inequality decreases a society’s overall stock of social capital is not new. However, scholars have only recently turned to the question of whether inequality also polarizes people along class lines in terms of standard social capital indicators: level of engagement in ‘civic’ activities, volunteering, trust in other people, and so on. To find out, I use the Monitoring the Future (MtF) Survey series, a nationally-representative survey of roughly 16,000 high school seniors conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research every year since 1976. These are combined with contextual information about economic inequality – the ubiquitous ‘Gini index’ running from perfect equality (scored ‘0’) to perfect inequality (scored ‘1’) for each survey year.

The pattern is both unmistakable and as expected. Figures 1 and 2 plot the average level of social capital on several common indicators against national-level Gini. Respondents are divided into three equally-sized groups according to parental education, which is the best available indicator of socio-economic ‘class’ in these data. The increased vertical spread between these groups moving from left (most unequal) to right (most equal) indicates disproportionate social capital accruing to the better-off. 
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There is strong evidence that socio-economic inequality powerfully shapes social capital disparities between rich and poor.  The obvious prescription is reduced inequality, or as Ric Uslaner puts it ‘don’t get rich, get equal’. That said, even if one accepts this there are many ways one might try to ‘get equal’, and we still know relatively little about what kinds of resource inequalities really matter. Better-off parents spend relatively more time with and resources on, their children, and could help drive the growing social capital disparities observed.  Having relatively better-off parents also provides a more favorable institutional ‘opportunity structure’ in terms of school quality, extracurriculars, community-service opportunities, and even softer factors such as school pride and solidarity. Understanding whether and how these factors play into the relationship between inequality and social capital is necessary if progress is to be made.

- Leigh Phillips nicely sets out the arguments for and against a basic income - while noting that the potential for alliances between progressive and market-oriented supporters may also hint at some of the dangers of pushing a basic income at the expense of other social justice measures. 

- Tom Blackwell takes a look at the prospect that newly-appointed Minister of Health Jane Philpott might be able to use her position to deal with health inequality. And Cliff offers the eminently reasonable suggestion that the federal government can start in reducing poverty and inequality alike by ensuring that citizens under its jurisdiction have at least the same level of funding for public services like education as their compatriots under provincial jurisdiction.

- Finally, Jamie Brownlee and Kevin Walby comment on the importance of access to information (along with its sorry state in Canada).

[Edit: fixed link as per comments.]