I'm not much for podcasts but the Alberta Advantage podcast (basically lefty political economy analysis out of Calgary) is often worth a listen. This episode provides an interesting analysis of the role of small business in society.
Specifically, the episode examine the valourization of small business and how that is used to run cover for capitalists. For example, when big business advocates for lower wages, they get pilloried as greedy. When small business advocates for lower wages, the conversation is almost always framed around helping "job creators" in the local community stay afloat.
The episode also interrogates the actual track record of small businesses with regard to workplace safety and wage theft (spoiler: lousy, often made worse by the precarious employment that they offer). And it explores how the media flips the narrative on things like wage theft by bosses to time theft by workers in order to obscure how shitty some employers are.
Finally, the episode (like most of their episodes) spends a few minutes calling out the provincial NDP for their opportunist boosterism around small business, generally to the detriment of the interests of workers.
-- Bob Barnetson
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