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World’s 8 Richest Have as Much Wealth as Bottom Half, Oxfam Says
Economic CrisisOxfam bases its figures in part on Forbes’s annual list of billionaires and the magazine’s estimates of their wealth. This year, Oxfam said, new data gathered by Credit Suisse about the global poor led it to lower its estimates of their assets, and revise its findings about how few rich men — the eight are all men — were needed to equal the wealth of 3.6 billion people.
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Economic power to the people!
Economic CrisisSadly little known today, Robinson was a radical, defiantly outside the mainstream. She engaged the orthodoxy of her day in fiery debates, defending the core belief that the free-market profit system was no way to organize the economy and society. In this, Robinson was very much like the Marxist economists of her day, although she was explicit that she was not a Marxist.
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The Basic Income debate
Economic CrisisIf BI is used to top-up low wages, then it will create incentives for employers who used to pay decent wages to reduce wages so they won’t have to compete with companies that benefit from subsidized labour and, in any case, BI will serve as a public subsidy for cheap labour strategies. That means our precious public dollars will be re-directed into the coffers of corporations, not to human needs.
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Basic Income and the left: The political and economic problems
Economic CrisisThe discussion over BI touches on real political and economic anxieties. The attack on the social welfare state, the depreciating power of organized labour and an economy producing increasingly low-wage precarious jobs have led many to search for alternative mechanisms and policies to address these problems. It is no wonder that BI with its promise of streamlined access to minimal economic security has attracted many adherents on the Left.
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NAFTA Kills: Who will Speak for the Working Class?
Economic CrisisA recent report out of the US raises questions about politicians’ (in Canada and the US) obsession with the state of the middle class and highlights why Donald Trump won the US election. It is a sobering picture and an scathing indictment of neo-liberalism – particularly so-called free trade. While the authors don’t say so explicitly the conclusion is inescapable: NAFTA kills.
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Housing in the age of austerity: Toronto’s war on the poor
Canadian PoliticsIt wasn’t always this bad for Toronto’s non-rich residents. In 1970, 66 per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods were middle-income. This was when the labour market allowed for single-income families, when social services were better available to the poor and when affordable housing was constructed according to need.
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Why the system will still win
Economic CrisisThat means facing the probability the EU is now so path-dependent as a neoliberal construction that reform of it is no longer seriously conceivable. It would have to be undone before anything better could be built, either by breaking out of the current EU, or by reconstructing Europe on another foundation, committing Maastricht to the flames. Unless there is a further, deeper economic crisis, there is little likelihood of either.
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Welcome to the new dark ages, where only the wealthy can retire
Economic CrisisWhat we really need is an intergenerational alliance to be forged around the issue. Any attempt to protect the right to retire (with a pension) will also have to address the dire developments in the employment sector that are seriously disadvantaging younger people and now creeping into jobs held by 40-somethings too. Can this cross-generational solidarity be built?
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Alternatives to Capitalism: the Transition Movement meets Degrowth
Economic CrisisCo-founder of the Transition Movement, Naresh Giangrande in conversation with Richard Swift, author of SOS Alternatives to Capitalism and an editor of the New Internationalist Magazine. Brought together in the Caribbean island of Dominica, with Earthbooktv’s Jessica Canham and Timothy Speaks Fishleigh at the Earthbook retreat centre in the mountains of Dominica.
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A Brief History of Canadian Labour Woes
Canadian BusinessIn addition to a loss of union jobs, globalization also accelerated Canada’s shift from a manufacturing to a service sector-dominated nation, further weakening prospects for organizing. Much of this has to do with precarity, as non-standard work provides employers increased flexibility in scheduling, hiring, lay-offs and firing, acting as tools in employers’ arsenals to fight a drive.
