Friday, August 12, 2016

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Owen Jones interviews Ha-Joon Chang about the foreseeable harm caused by the UK's austerity, as well as the false claims used to push it.

- The Stoney Creek News rightly argues that Canada Post should move toward posting banking in large part due to the potential to improve the level of service available for vulnerable groups. But Dean Beeby notes that Employment Insurance administration is just one of the many areas where the idea of actually assisting the public has been lost in favour of automation and corporatization.

- The Canadian Labour Congress points out a few of the policies which could offer much-needed opportunities and security for younger workers. And Jared Bernstein writes that an improved minimum wage (one of the CLC's recommendations) has worked exactly as hoped in Seattle, increasing workers' pay and length of employment without any of the threatened side effects.

- Mound of Sound highlights how Justin Trudeau has chosen to make Stephen Harper's industry-dominated National Energy Board his own, while Kai Nagata points out Trudeau's broken promises to put a credible review system in place before ramming through more project approvals. And Christopher Adams examines CAUT's investigation into the dubiously cozy relationship between the University of Calgary and oil-sector funders. 

- Finally, Murray Brewster exposes a Canadian-owned firm's sale of troop carriers for use in the ongoing war in South Sudan. And Don Pittis rightly notes that we should be less concerned with the nationality of a corporation's official ownership than with its actual behaviour.

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