The Progressive Economics Forum

I have just ordered what sounds like an excellent new book from an old friend and former colleague, Gerry Caplan. Review from AfricaFiles follows: AfricaFiles Title: The betrayal of Africa Author: Gerald Caplan Category: Africa General Date: 4/5/2008 Source: Groundwood Books Source Website: http://www.groundwoodbooks.com Summary & Comment: “There is a widespread assumption among rich countries [...]

I’m deep into figuring out what the new BC carbon tax means for different income groups. But stumped by some anomalous results from the modeling, I took a detour and ended looking at my own output of GHGs. Living in hydro-power-rich BC, our electricity is almost entirely GHG-free, and in the rest of the home [...]

Here’s a nice piece by John Stapleton published by the CCPA – pointing out that most past downturns have seen improvements to social programs, rather than the cuts imposed last time around in the late 80s early 90s.  http://www.policyalternatives.ca/documents/Ontario_Office_Pubs/2008/Last_Recession_Spook.pdf

One of my weekend projects was doing the family taxes. The good news: my effective income tax rate was 16.1%, which seems pretty reasonable to me. My boss, who makes more money, maxed out his RRSP contibutions and got his effective rate down to 14%. These numbers would creep up if we add in CPP [...]

While driving down the 401 recently, I listened to some upstate New York radio and heard a great ad from New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness. This organization resembles the CCPA’s alternative budget initiatives, although its Better Choice campaign is reminiscent of the CLC.

I’m struck by the extent to which the media stuck to the story of  a dismal US economy/resilient Canadian economy in reporting on Friday’s labour force numbers. See eg the Saturday Globe and Mail report. In fact,  Quebec and Ontario combined lost 47,000 full-time jobs in March, and the Maritime provinces also showed signs of [...]

Andrew will undoubtedly post a more comprehensive analysis of today’s Labour Force Survey. What strikes me is that, despite all of the gloomy news about an impending recession, Canadians continue flooding into the labour market in search of paid work. In March, the creation of only 14,600 new jobs drew 57,100 more people into the [...]

I’ve pasted in below my contribution to the latest issue of Canada Watch, edited by my old friend Danny Drache of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto. It’s part of a special issue on what Deep Integration of North America could look like with George W. Bush out of the [...]

Most environmentalists would probably say no. But I’m going to make the opposite case here. The thing we need to remember about economic growth is that over long periods of time the products we consume and the processes by which we produce them change dramatically. As my old prof Dick Lipsey pointed out repeatedly, we [...]

It is my great pleasure to announce the winners of the first John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics: Mel Watkins and Kari Polanyi Levitt will share the Prize. The award was largely on the basis of their pioneering work around foreign (US) investment and ownership and multinational corporations back in the 1960s and 1970s. Both [...]

Most of the focus in terms of policy responses to climate change has been on mitigation, or ways in which we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, with targets and timelines to that end being developed (or at least contemplated). But even if we were to slash those emissions to zero tomorrow, there will still [...]

On the anniversary of TILMA coming into force, nine national business associations and the professional association representing non-chartered accountants have demanded “bold action” on inter-provincial trade. The press release alleges that “the emergence of new trade barriers threatens to further balkanize the Canadian economy” without naming a single “new trade barrier”. It repeats the unfounded [...]

Last week I attended a very useful workshop on climate change and green jobs bringing together about 25 people from labour and environmental ngos, in a generally successful attempt to find common ground around climate change policies. I think there was real momentum around the centrality of “green job” creation to moving the climate change [...]