It was nice to read the speech. I approve of Carney's message. Here were some lines I found humorous:
Nostalgia is not a strategy
If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu
We are no longer relying on just the strength of our values but also the value of our strength
That's the most insightful and chilling comment I've read in a while. I especially like the "it's not age verification; it's identity verification" part. (That messaging needs to be more commonplace.) The key(s) for organizing data about individuals online will shift from email addresses only to enough stable identifiers to impersonate someone or maybe even steal their identity. Data leaks and fraud will probably increase dramatically given the value-add of these data.
With the level of quashing dissent these days - eg UK police arresting hundreds of nonviolent people with placards denouncing genocide; military deployments in LA and DC - no wonder certain states/ governments support online identity verification laws.
"No Kings" protests are already a non-story in mainstream news today. Tomorrow, they can be prevented from happening in the first place! /s c/aboringdystopia
In a move that I didn't see get any mainstream press coverage, although I learned about it through the Fediverse, the highly influential extension of the federal government, the CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation), quietly redefined affordable housing this year from at most 30% of gross income to 40-45% of gross income (and plausibly 50% by 2035). "Affordable housing" is one step below "market [price based] housing", so spending 50% of earnings on rent seems like the policy's working as intended. Society's @#$%ed
Sources
American-owned Financial Post actually did some useful reporting around this issue. I guess whatever judge decided to quash the strike within hours is a former legal counsel of the Air Canada Corporation; i.e., there is very high apparent conflict of interest in that process and decision. Another bad look for the Carney government.
I agree with the Nobel Laureate in economics, Joseph E Stiglitz, who wrote this.
Of course, when the most profitable companies in the world don’t pay their fair share of taxes, it just shifts the burden on to others.
Apple was so successful in avoiding taxes in Europe that it is estimated that it paid in some years a tax of just 0.005% on its European profits.
Not just a headline. Funny read!
“This kind of despicable affront never would have happened if we were granted all of the journalist spots on the campaign,” noted Ezra Levant of Rebel Media. “We would only ask decent questions, like ‘Is it true that Justin Trudeau is the antichrist’ and ‘Mr. Poilievre, how did you get so handsome?'”
Great article. Nice to see an economist doing such important work. I don't really understand finances. I snipped the parts of the article that helped me understand the finding/headling. There's a great chart in the article of taxation differences since the 1960s too - staggering! Plutocracy in action!
Published in The New York Times with the headline "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires," Zucman's analysis notes that billionaires pay so little in taxes relative to their vast fortunes because they "live off their wealth"—mostly in the form of stock holdings—rather than wages and salaries.
Stock gains aren't currently taxed in the U.S. until the underlying asset is sold, leaving billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—a pair frequently competing to be the single richest man on the planet—with very little taxable income.
"But they can still make eye-popping purchases by borrowing against their assets," Zucman noted. "Mr. Musk, for example, used his shares in Tesla as collateral to rustle up around $13 billion in tax-free loans to put toward his acquisition of Twitter."
Shrinkflation noobs. Never specify the size of a (pseudo-)prepared product. It's better to use abstract terms like large, extra large, and jumbo that can be shrunk down in size without increasing legal liability down whenever you wish to juice your profits a bit (/s)
Definitely not genocide /s
Defunding biodiversity science at a time like this...
Removing downvoting feels intuitively wrong to me (eg, I believe that dissent is a really important part of a healthy democracy). If all those mega-corp platforms are removing downvoting, then I'm pretty confident my intuition on this matter is correct
Man of the people, working families /s