The disparity between workers’ and CEOs’ pay has been rising sharply since the 1960s, when the average ratio was around 20-1. It now stands at above 200-1. Novick’s proposal would increase current corporate income taxes by 10% if a company CEO had a salary ratio of above 100-1, and by 25% for CEOs with a ratio of 250-1 or higher.

From a Canadian vantage point, it is easy to lose track of the sheer volume of discontent, if not outright resistance, around the world to the structures and policies of neoliberal globalization. People everywhere are chaffing at the limits imposed on their capacities to democratically shape and plan their own political and economic lives.

The Liberals need to be clear with Canadians where their long term outlook lies. Is it with the election 2015 idea that we can offer a decent life for young workers, or is it with the idea that job security is a luxury we can no longer afford? After a year of observation, my suspicion is that the latter is their genuine belief, while the former was a tactical choice to win votes.

An adequate basic income for all is a good starting point for the Left to renew its assault on compulsory wage labour. The organization of work could be freed up to take on more cooperative, decentralized and democratic forms in which workers could decide for themselves what work is desired and useful. Such reforms should be welcomed insofar as they would significantly weaken the power corporate job blackmailers currently wield over society.

One thing that’s going to happen — it’s already happening in Rio — is that you are going to get a lot more repression during the Olympic Games; you’re going to get a militarization of the streets. Rio will have 85,000 security personnel trying to make sure there is no disruption and it’s going to be very regimented and very harsh.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement offers sweetheart legal protection for some of the richest people on Earth, making it easy for them to sue us for uncapped amounts, in closed tribunals adjudicated by lawyers with a financial interest in siding with the rich foreigners. Not even revulsion for Donald Trump will provide enough lipstick to pretty up this pig.

Increasingly, Greece is a land inhabited by rich and poor. Sights that were once shocking – middle class men and women rifling through the rubbish cans on streets – are now mundane. That worries Stergiou. Just as it worries Korkidis who foresees more companies fleeing, massive tax evasion returning and the black market flourishing as people try to survive.

Young people in the U.S. are increasingly rejecting capitalism. According to a recent survey conducted by Harvard University, 51 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 do not support capitalism. Only 42 percent said they were in favor of the current economic system.

There is no “New Economy.” The “New Economy” is like the neoconservatives promise that the Iraq war would be a six-week “cake walk” paid for by Iraqi oil revenues, not a $3 trillion dollar expense to American taxpayers and a war that has lasted the entirely of the 21st century to date, and is getting more dangerous.

In recent days Flint, Michigan has been in the news because the city’s water has not only become undrinkable but also hazardous for use in bathing or dishwashing. To save money, the cash-strapped city discontinued using nearby Detroit’s water supply in April 2014 that fed from Lake Huron and switched to the Flint River.