Since 2011, Canada’s Largest Companies Have Avoided Paying Over $60B in Taxes: Here’s What We’re Reading

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Here’s what we’re reading today.

1. For every dollar corporations pay in taxes, Canadians pay $3.50

“At a time when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made tax fairness a centrepiece of his government, the Toronto Star and Corporate Knights magazine spent six months poring over tax data to determine how much income tax corporations are really paying.

“We found the amount of tax most big companies pay has been dropping as a proportion of their profits for years, and not only because the corporate tax rate has been cut repeatedly. Canada’s largest corporations use complex techniques and tax loopholes to reduce their taxes significantly below the official corporate tax rate set by the government.”

Toronto Star

2. What being a bike courier taught me about our broken economy

“When I couldn’t make ends meet as a freelancer, I started delivering food to hungover teenagers”

The Walrus

3. Trump allies say Tillerson has ‘not learned his lesson’ and cannot continue in job for long

“A senior U.S. official said foreign diplomats and leaders often ask if Tillerson is speaking for the administration and when he will depart. Another White House aide said White House officials, diplomats and other Cabinet secretaries largely deem the former ExxonMobil chief executive ‘irrelevant.'”

Washington Post

4. AI isn’t just compromising our privacy—it’s destroying our free will, too

“By replacing human-curated judgement with data-backed judgement, AI ultimately narrows our field of vision and reduces our social and economic choices—in retail, dating, entertainment, education, health care, and job opportunities. Taken individually, the nudges of mercantile and political interests may be of little consequence. But en masse, our lives become more and more subtly influenced and molded by the companies we let make decisions for us.”

Quartz

+1: Former Facebook exec who suggested social media was destroying society: I love Facebook  – Gizmodo

5. Everybody should be very afraid of the Disney death star

“The future of media is going to a very long, very expensive great-powers war. There’s no question that, as of 2017, the streaming rebels are winning. With this deal, the empire just struck back.”

The Atlantic