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NAFTA Kills: Who will Speak for the Working Class?
A 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
For those in Toronto’s growing majority of low income neighbourhoods, things are bad and getting worse. But it wasn’t always this bad. In 1970, 66 percent of Toronto neighbourhoods were middle-income. This was when the labour market allowed for single-income families, when social services were better available, and when affordable housing was constructed according to need.
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Alternatives to Capitalism: the Transition Movement meets Degrowth
Co-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
In 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.
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Basic income: Progressive dreams meet neoliberal realities
The model of BI that governments are working on in their social policy laboratories will not ‘end the tyranny of the labour market’ but render it more dreadful. The agenda of austerity and privatization requires a system of income support that renders people as powerless and desperate as possible in the face of exploitation and that won’t change if it is relabelled as ‘Basic Income.’
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Portland to vote on taxing companies if CEO earns 100 times more than staff
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.
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What’s left of neoliberal globalization?
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.
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After big election promises, Trudeau Liberals sell a future without job security for young Canadians
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.
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The dead end of wage labour
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.
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Olympics, debt and repression
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.