The Progressive Economics Forum

The Occupy Wall Street protests hinge on injustice, in particular a malaise with the current economic system that has brought us a tremendous inequality and the rise of the super-rich, or top 1%. But surely that is just the US? Alas, no. The figure below shows the change in BC labour income (wages and salaries) and [...]

A notice in my mailbox last week told me that smart meters are going to be installed in my neighbourhood. I’ll admit that the geek in me would like to see real-time information about my energy usage, but as an economist I’m interested in costs and benefits of the program. So far we have seen [...]

In Saskatchewan’s provincial election campaign, the incumbent Saskatchewan Party is promising a scholarship of up to $500 per year for new high-school graduates who undertake post-secondary studies. It claims that this scholarship is worth “THREE TIMES” the annual increase in university tuition fees, which has averaged $146.50 over the past four years. What the Sask [...]

Further to our recent discussions on this blog about the role of private finance and credit in our present crisis, we present a guest contribution from Ralph Musgrave, an economist in the U.K. National debts have risen recently, which has caused excessive and unnecessary consternation. The consternation is particularly unnecessary for countries which issue their own [...]

I rarely give thanks for Neil Reynolds, but today’s column is a must-read. The point is that taxing large inheritances should appeal not only to those of us concerned about highly unequal outcomes, but also to those simply concerned about equality of opportunity. It may or may not be possible to justify inequalities based on differences [...]

It’s often said that there aren’t enough rich people in Canada to make a real difference to fiscal policy and, in consequence, the rest of us. Yesterday Canadian Business’s annual special edition devoted to Canada’s richest 100 people hit the stands, where it will stay until Christmas. As a regular contributor I was invited to [...]

In search of some background on the  “Occupy Wall Street” movement, I recently caught up with Rick Wolff.  He is a progressive economist and rising alternative  media celeb in NYC  (you can hear  his entertaining weekly radio discussion of economic news at http://rdwolff.com/).  He (with others like Stiglitz) among other spoke to the Occupy Wall [...]

A common refrain among political pundits has been that all of Ontario’s election platforms are unrealistic given a deteriorating economic outlook. Rather than bemoaning this alleged lack of realism, we should evaluate how each party’s platform would fare in a downturn. The NDP platform is built on the fiscal framework set out in the 2011 [...]

In response to a pretty moderate Ontario NDP platform, today’s lead Globe and Mail editorial goes off the rails on a crazy train: “disastrous,” “protectionism run amok,” “a fantasy,” “a radical platform that would move Ontario toward a command economy” and “dangerous provincialism.” It breathlessly reports that “Ms. Horwath did not rule out nationalization of [...]

Conservative MP Russ Hiebert tabled his private member bill in the Commons yesterday, calling for changes to the Income Tax Act to require unions (which are income-tax-exempt under the Act … duh! since they are, after all, non-profit organizations) to publicly disclose their financial statements. Here are a few quick points that came to mind in [...]

Well, you’ve heard that kind of line from labour and the left, but now the IMF seems to have been pretty much won over to the argument that global supply chains and technological change are killing more good jobs than they create. In a distinctly gloomy Box starting on p.41  in the latest World Economic [...]

The time since 2008 has been a crucial historical moment for progressive economists to pull back the green curtain that surrounds the operation of the for-profit banking system, and expose that system for what it is: a government-protected, government-subsidized license to print money. The problem is, as soon as you start saying things like that, people [...]

Thanks to Arthur Donner’s Economic Comment for bringing this to my attention. The official line we hear everyday is that the Canadian fundamentals are great, while other countries are in deep trouble because they are spending beyond their means and borrowing too much from the rest of the world. Yet IMF projections show that Canada’s [...]

In August, I blogged about controversy surrounding Concordia University’s Board of Governors. A report co-authored by Bernard J. Shapiro (Canada’s first Ethics Commissioner) had concluded that an unofficial, inner circle of Board members had been micromanaging some of the university’s day-to-day operations, and undermining the President. This had apparently prompted the resignation of the previous two Presidents before the midway points of [...]

Newly-released data indicate that student debt is rising amongst new physicians in Canada. In 2010, 23 percent of medical residents reported having more than $120,000 in education-related debt upon completion of their residency training (as compared with just 17 percent in 2007). (Note: across Canada, average tuition fees for medical students amount to just over $10,000 a year.) This appears to have [...]