Posts Tagged ‘globalization’
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CERB is done, and it’s not coming back. Staring down the barrel of a recession gun, how are we going to fix this?
Wednesday, May 4th, 2022
… why not just bring back CERB when recession hits next time? Because it was too generous to be fiscally sustainable over the long run and not politically sustainable due to sectoral labour shortages. But today’s EI is not fit for purpose either. With less than four in 10 jobless workers able to access it, it’s too stingy. However, there is a lot of consensus on how to fix EI…
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Protecting domestic generic drug manufacturing is vital to national pharmacare plan
Friday, April 15th, 2022
The federal commitment to national pharmacare presents an opportunity to improve prescription drug coverage for Canadians, reduce costs to taxpayers and patients through increased use of generic medicines, and to strengthen our domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing sector and international supply chain.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, Health, jurisdiction, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Senators overwhelmed by emails, calls pushing conspiracy theories about basic income legislation
Thursday, March 31st, 2022
… there’s nothing new about conspiracy theories but the pandemic has “pushed them into hyperdrive,” fuelling a movement of people willing to believe there’s a global movement to “enslave” humanity… people in these online forums are largely unaware of how the government operates — or how a bill is passed through Parliament — and those knowledge gaps “are easily filled with fantasy.” “It’s easy to see a sinister plot when you don’t actually understand how the government works.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, mental Health, pensions, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
There’s a fix to disinformation: Make social media algorithms transparent
Thursday, March 17th, 2022
In the period of newspaper and broadcast dominance, anyone could find out what news their neighbours were consuming just by opening the paper or turning on the TV. In the social media era, many of those interactions are dark. The solution is algorithmic transparency. But this is easier said than done, because the algorithms are the special sauce in the platforms… So far, lawmakers have listened politely, but not acted.
Tags: featured, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Don’t be fooled by Ontario’s ‘minimum wage’ for gig workers
Friday, March 4th, 2022
Ontario’s manipulative ‘minimum wage’ is an attempt to forestall genuine legislative and regulatory changes… workers at gig platforms already have the right to unionize through normal channels, and achieve genuine collective bargaining rights—they don’t need any special ‘law’, just clarification that they are indeed workers (whether employees or dependent contractors) not independent businesses.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Ottawa can strike a blow against precarity with stronger protections for gig workers
Monday, February 28th, 2022
What is really needed to stop the spread of misclassification is to start with the presumption that a worker is an employee, unless a case can be made that they are a bona fide independent contractor. A clear and relatively simple test can be established to determine whether someone is a legitimate contractor — i.e., do they set their own prices, perform work that is not the company’s “core” business, and have their own business doing the same work that they market independently? — or a misclassified employee.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Is there a made-in-Canada solution to high inflation?
Saturday, January 1st, 2022
Inflation and the pandemic have a lot in common: both attack household incomes, both hit low-income households hardest, and both demand government action to support incomes. Social assistance rates must rise, as they should have years ago. Minimum wages must rise. Federal transfers to low-income Canadians should increase. Painful 20th century policy prescriptions to cut inflation by squeezing the life out of the economy, through increasing interest rates and reducing government supports, are no answer to our 21st century problems. They will only make our problems worse.
Tags: child care, economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
The migrant worker floodgates have opened. It’s a decision we might come to regret
Wednesday, December 15th, 2021
… public policy is rowing against market forces and demographic trends, to keep things cheap. The larger the share of migrant workers in a job market, the lower the wage growth. In our endless search for a cheap deal, let’s not pit ourselves as consumers against ourselves as workers… This nation of immigrants, the tenth-largest economy in the world, has two wishes, one of which will be granted: lower prices or better jobs.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Human Rights Day: Individual rights come with collective responsibility
Friday, December 10th, 2021
People opposed to COVID-19 restrictions… commonly refer to [UDHR] Article 3: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Conspicuously overlooked is Article 29, which… recognizes there will be times like this when reasonable limits on individual freedoms are necessary for the collective good. Protecting the public from a deadly pandemic is certainly important to our global health and to our shared humanity.
Tags: featured, globalization, Health, ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
We Finally Seem Ready to Take on the One Per Cent
Saturday, November 20th, 2021
Starting in the early 1980s and especially in the mid-1990s, social programs were cut and never restored, and no one suffered more than those at the bottom while those at the very upper end saw their wages (and stock options) begin to soar… But things change, sometimes quickly, and sometimes for the better. A minimum tax on corporate wealth was long seen as a pipe dream. Not now. Some 140 countries have just agreed to a minimum global corporate tax of 15 per cent… The pandemic has been a major accelerant.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »