The Progressive Economics Forum

A new CCPA (National) report by Marc Lee and myself argues that Canada’s tax system needs a “fairness” overhaul and presents a framework for progressive tax reform. Those of you who have been following our tax work so far will find this study a great complement to the BC Tax Options Paper. Tax policy is [...]

An international poll commissioned by the International Trade Union Confederation found very strong support in many countries, including Canada, for the introduction of Financial Transactions Taxes (FTTs), such as the Robin Hood Tax.   Trade unions provided results of this poll in their meetings with world leaders at the G20 meetings in Los Cabos, Mexico. Despite initially [...]

Thanks mostly to the superb campaigning by international development, poverty and environmental activists, there’s been remarkable progress in getting Europe to introduce financial transactions taxes, aka the Robin Hood Tax.    Last month, the European Commission presented a proposal for a broad-based financial transactions tax in all 27 members states of the European Union. At [...]

This is not the stuff of usual protests. Over the past month, a little idea from a Vancouver outfit has mushroomed into a cross-continent movement. Occupy Wall Street, kicked off by Adbusters in July and coming to Toronto this weekend, has already spread to 70 American cities and is going global as protestors challenge society [...]

A thousand economists, including a fair number of PEF members, have signed the following letter in support of a financial transactions tax. The Guardian has published a story about the letter and posted the list of economists. UPDATE (April 15): This PDF version of the economists’ list is slightly updated and much easier to navigate. [...]

Here is the trade union statement to the World Economic Forum, which begins today: A New Reality for Workers? Statement of Labour Leaders to the World Economic Forum Davos, Switzerland, 26 – 30 January 2011

This morning Oxfam launched their “Robin Hood”  (financial transactions) tax campaign in Canada with a press conference in Ottawa and the launch of their website.   Together with Oxfam officials, I spoke in favour of the tax from an economics perspective and Dale Marshall from the David Suzuki Foundation talked about how revenue raised from it [...]

Here is the link to a very good paper by Pierre Habbard of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD. http://www.tuac.org/en/public/e-docs/00/00/06/7C/document_doc.phtml The IMF appears to be consulting quite widely and with some sympathy to proponents of an FTT , so we may yet get a positive report to the G20, opening up a realistic [...]

I highly recommend a very convincing argument for the FTT by Stephan Schulmeister of  the Austrian Institute for Economic Research. His paper   effectively counters the “rational markets” view that high volumes of speculative trading move stock, currency and commodity prices towards equilibrium values based on fundamentals. Instead, such trading moves prices away from fundamentals for [...]

Oxfam are seeking endorsements of this letter by professional economists. If you want to sign on, please notify Sophie Freeman: SFreeman@Oxfam.org.uk Dear G20 As economists from across the world, we call on you to implement a financial transaction tax (FTT). This tax is an idea that has come of age. The financial crisis has shown [...]

The case for a Financial Transactions Tax or FTT has crept in from the margins remarkably quickly. One year ago, the proposal for an internationally co-ordinated “Tobin Tax” on foreign exchange transactions was a dim memory from the early part of the decade. Today, the idea of broadening such a tax to include a far [...]