Archive for the ‘History’ Category

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Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In

Sunday, September 1st, 2019

Markets are constructed by people, for purposes chosen by people — and people can change the rules. It’s time to discard the judgment of economists that society should turn a blind eye to inequality. Reducing inequality should be a primary goal of public policy.

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Economists of all stripes have for centuries advocated for universal basic income. Here’s why

Wednesday, February 20th, 2019

Now the UBI is back, supported by an unlikely coalition of allies: progressives eager to renew the “War on Poverty” and libertarian billionaires from Silicon Valley. This is paralleled by enthusiasm overseas… Perhaps there’s room for a grand compromise of the kind envisioned by Mill, Friedman, Galbraith and others: a universal basic income that brings the end of traditional welfare programs. But if UBI becomes yet another hybrid of welfare and workfare, history suggests it’s doomed to fail.

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What Are Capitalists Thinking?

Sunday, August 12th, 2018

Back in the days when our economy just grew and grew, we had a government and a capitalist class that invested in our people and their future… And, funny thing, during all this time, socialism didn’t have much appeal. But ever since, the median income picture has been much spottier, hardly increasing at all in inflation-adjusted dollars over 18 long years. And those incomes at the top have shot to the heavens.

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How Factories Made (and Unmade) Us All

Monday, June 18th, 2018

… this becomes a key aspect of the factory. Its purpose is not just to make things cheap, but to make them ever cheaper. When unionized factory workers got too expensive, the companies moved to the south, and then to Mexico, and then to China… The day will surely come when Chinese brands outsource their designs to factories in Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Sierra Leone. And if they ever outsource them to the U.S. or Canada, it will be only when we can offer cheaper labour than the Ethiopians.

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9 Times Canada’s Labour Movement Made History and Shaped the Country We Live in Today

Wednesday, September 27th, 2017

… it’s not that hard to find examples of how the labour movement helped shape the country we live in today. Whether they’re fighting for shorter work days or better wages, the labour movement has done more than just improve working conditions for ordinary people – by standing up to powerful elites, time and again, Canada’s labour movement set in motion series of events that changed the course of history and moved Canada forward. Here are just nine examples…

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The missing middle

Sunday, September 3rd, 2017

Since the Great Recession, temp work has grown 12 times faster than permanent employment for so-called prime-age workers, or those between the ages of 25 and 54… prime-age workers are finding it increasingly difficult to secure permanent jobs – there were 52,000 fewer of them working in permanent positions last year than there were in 2008… The cohort with the highest skills, meanwhile, are enjoying the biggest pay raises.

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Why the talk of saving the middle class has a sadly familiar ring to it

Wednesday, March 1st, 2017

… this is not about entitlement. It’s about an expectation that used to be born from healthy economies that spur job growth and offer benefits to boot. By this I mean the “sustained, inclusive economic growth” … On-call shift work, precarious employment, depleting health care benefits from those employers who still offer them. Pensions? … The trickle-down economics argument didn’t hold water. Financialization won… Instead of reinforcing the idea of aspiration, we have gifted to the next generation uncertainty.

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The secret to strong economies isn’t faster growth, it’s no recessions

Tuesday, August 16th, 2016

Most of the world’s wealthiest and best-governed countries got there without super-rapid bursts of growth. Denmark… frequently ranked as one of the happiest countries in the world, never experienced what anyone would call an economic miracle… in the 1990s, the country lowered its unemployment rate without having to dismantle its welfare state… In the next generation, the emerging economies may return to these 19th century patterns.

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Was the ghost of Marx haunting Brexit?

Friday, July 1st, 2016

It certainly looks like a class struggle, doesn’t it? On one side are the winners in the global capitalist economy – well-educated, well-to-do, young, mobile, well-spoken, confident. On the other side are all those who have fallen behind, the losers – those without education, without prospects, sidelined by age and infirmity, crude, frightened, confused, inarticulate and very angry… The new global proletariat, finding itself increasingly marginalized and threatened, is now fighting back.

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These Liberals get economics

Tuesday, October 27th, 2015

While it is possible to disagree with the Liberal platform on many points — for example, the narrative of a middle class in decline contradicts my reading of the evidence — its level of economic literacy is remarkably high for a political manifesto… Chrétien came to power campaigning against the consensus of opinion among economists… Justin Trudeau has not made that mistake.

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