Who’s Better, Who’s Best

The Wellesley Institute blog compares and contrasts a recent CCPA publication with the World Wealth Report: Two days, two reports, two very different worlds   The World Wealth Report 2007 released on Wednesday by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini reports that the very rich (so-called high net worth individuals – HNWI) are getting even richer. And the forecast is the extremely […]

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Wage and profit shares

The CCPA released a study today by PEF steering committee members Ellen Russell and Mathieu Dufour. Rising Profit Shares, Falling Wage Shares is the published version of research they presented during the PEF session on ineuquality, at the CEA conference. The full study is available here and the press release says: Canada’s economy grew steadily and workers’ productivity improved by […]

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PEF session on taxation and social democracy

Stephen Gordon’s presentation from our PEF “taxation and social democracy” session at the CEA meetings is now online at his blog, here. The other presenters on the panel were Andrew Jackson, Erin Weir and Marion Steele. I was the discussant for the session, so I will take Stephen’s cue and jot down some of the things I thought most noteworthy […]

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Fortune Magazine’s Plutocracy index

I’m not a big fan of business journalism. For the most part, it’s a lazy, sycophantic, uninspired, biased, occasionally self-interested (in a conflict-of-interest sense) and worse yet, boring business. I should know, I was once part of the fold. In my experience, at least half of financial journalists are in it for the food (gotta love annual report/annual meeting season […]

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Immigration and Wages

A study released by Statistics Canada today concludes that “Immigration has tended to lower wages in both Canada and the United States.” Of course, immigration is but one of many influences on wages and class divisions are of far greater economic significance than any supposed conflict between immigrant and non-immigrant workers. Nevertheless, this issue has the potential to be quite […]

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We Are The Champions! (Except for Iceland)

Having just finished arguing that inequality is an inevitable result of personal marriage decisions, William Watson has declared Canadians the “strike champs” of the OECD in today’s Financial Post. A new British study suggests that labour disputes cost about 200 days per 1,000 workers per year in Canada, which is apparently far more than in most OECD countries. Four thoughts […]

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And they call it homogamy

The educational homogamy meme has put a burr under my saddle. While I do think it is an important element in understanding inequality trends, what concerns me is the insinuation that this explains most of the rise in inequality, a position taken by Margaret Wente and William Watson to sound off that there is nothing we can do. Guess what? […]

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Business Week: The Poverty Business

While William Watson and Margaret Wente are shrugging their shoulders at growing inequality in Canada, and endorsing policies that would make our income distribution more like that of our southern neighbour, concerns in the US about rising inequality are actually getting a better hearing. An example is the following article in Business Week (The Poverty Business: Inside U.S. companies’ audacious […]

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Family Income Inequality

    Further to my earlier post re Margaret Wente on Inequality  http://progecon.wordpress.com/2007/05/15/margaret-wente-and-inequality/ the  Ottawa Citizen ran two letters today, from Armine Yalnizyan and myself, responding to Bill Watson’s similar view that  we can’t do anything about inequality since it is driven by personal marital choices.   The Ottawa Citizen Tuesday, May 22, 2007 Re: Why we need more Pretty […]

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Margaret Wente and Inequality

I highly recommend a new StatsCan (Andrew Heisz) study of income inequality and redistribution – with one significant quibble. Heisz confirms a great deal of what we know – family after tax income inequality has been growing apace in the 1990s, driven above all by increased inequality of market income. http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11F0019MIE/11F0019MIE2007298.pdf This is a methodologically sophisticated study. It confirms the […]

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Inequality in Ontario

More good work from the CCPA: Ontario’s rich-poor gap is huge: study Report shows wealthiest 10% earn 75 times more than poorest 10% April Lindgren The Ottawa Citizen Tuesday, May 08, 2007   TORONTO – The income gap between Ontario’s richest and poorest families is greater than ever before and the most pronounced in the country, according to a study […]

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Climate change winners and losers

The New York Times reports on the inequities generated by global warming below. The April edition of The Atlantic also featured a story on the same theme, but it was really poorly done. While the article makes a few interesting observations of what might happen in different parts of the world, Gregg Easterbrook, from Brookings, was more inclined to treat […]

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The equity considerations of congestion pricing

Lance Freeman of Columbia University argues against congestion pricing: The Equity Considerations of Congestion Pricing Getting stuck in traffic is fast becoming one of those necessary evils that everyone complains about but seldom does anything about it. Or at least anything that seems terribly effective. Neither additional road building nor public transit seemed to have had a major impact on […]

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Working Income Tax Benefit

  From the Toronto Star March 23, 2007, p. A21. Working poor get little relief from Flaherty Upon closer inspection, the Conservative finance minister’s Working Income Tax Benefit falls way short of the original proposal first floated by his Liberal predecessor Ralph Goodale, notes John Stapleton   March 23, 2007 There was much anticipation that the latest federal budget would […]

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Krugman: America’s Disappearing Middle Class

From the keynote speech delivered by Paul Krugman at the Economic Policy Institute’s recent conference on The Agenda for Shared Prosperity: A History of America’s Disappearing Middle Class By Paul Krugman …One thing I’ve been noticing on multiple debates in public policies — climate change is another one — is there seems to be an almost seamless transition from denial […]

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35,000 Manufacturing Jobs Gone in One Month

This morning, Statistics Canada released its Labour Force Survey figures for February. My analysis, which was included in the CLC’s press release, follows: Manufacturing Crisis Deepens Canada lost 35,000 manufacturing jobs between January and February. This staggering one-month decline pushes the cumulative loss to 250,000 since Canadian manufacturing peaked in November 2002. Most of February’s devastating decline took place in […]

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More progressive economics

Announcing the Center for the Applied Study of Economics & the Environment, a new US grouping of progressive economists. Here is their manifesto: Real People, Real Environments, and Realistic Economics The wealth and power of humanity in the 21st century could be used to create a far better world. We write as economists who are troubled by environmental degradation and […]

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Review of “Dimensions of Inequality in Canada”

Published in The Tyee, as Divided, We’re Falling: Book Review of Dimensions of Inequality in Canada Edited by David A. Green and Jonathan R. Kesselman UBC Press ISBN 0-7748-1208-7 August 2006 http://www.ubcpress.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=4518 Review by Marc Lee A poll last Fall by Environics for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that three-quarters of Canadians felt that the gap between rich […]

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Galbraith on US inequality

Another teaser from James Galbraith, who will be joining us at the Canadian Economics Association meetings to inaugurate the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics, and will also be presenting on a panel on inequality. His presentation might go something like this: Bush’s beltway boom By James K. Galbraith   The rise of the Democrats brings some much-needed attention to […]

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More “truthiness” from the John Ibbitson

Yesterday, the CCPA released a study on inequality filled with statistics about how life has changed for families with children. John Ibbitson shrugs his shoulders and responds with a polemic. He provides some “balance” by trashing right-wing think tanks, too, but in typical Ibbitson fashion provides not a shred of evidence for anything he says. Here’s the column and some […]

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The growing gap and Canadian families

The CCPA released a study today, part of a mega-project on inequality in Canada, looking at changes in income and work hours for Canadian families with children. The report, by Armine Yalnizyan, finds that the top 10% are pulling away. While the report looks at distribution by deciles, it would be interesting to pull a Saez and Veall, to see […]

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Relative Low Wages in Canada

I just received my 2006 issue of Society at a Glance: OECD Social Indicators. (Best seen in living colour!) The OECD now regularly reports systematic national indicators of earnings inequality (Table EQ2.1). I have made wide use in the past of data for the mid to late 1990s circulated in the OECD Employment Outlook, which are now dated. The new […]

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Anna Nicole Smith

I bet you didn’t expect to see this title on Relentlessly Progressive Economics, and it’s not just an attempt to get more Google hits. This story highlights some important questions about inheritance. Not surprisingly, men have lined up for DNA tests to stake a claim on her late husband’s fortune via her baby. While some individuals have been criticized for […]

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Ben Bernanke Speaks Out on Inequality

 An interesting and  informed reflection on the sources of rising inequality -  seen as not reducible to “skill biased technological change”, with the usual cop out that almost all of the answer lies in education and training. http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2007/20070206/default.htm Remarks by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke Before the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Omaha, Nebraska February 6, 2007 The Level and Distribution […]

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Channeling Marx

As we have been hearing about the legacies of the great minds of economics, a name that has not cropped up much lately is Marx. The first article below suggests that Marx’s ideas live with us in the global economy, and growing inequality has awoken the old guy’s spirit. With it we are seeing a resurgence of the word “capitalism” […]

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“Wealthy Taxpayers Seem to Be Getting Wealthier” says OECD

The December, 2006 OECD Economic Outlook (full text unavailable on line) points to sudden tax revenue windfalls in most member countries due to large capital gains and the fact that “the process of income and wealth distributions becoming more skewed has picked up pace lately …. and may be interacting with progressive tax systems to produce more than usual increases […]

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