The Progressive Economics Forum

If you need help with your tax return, don’t ask Neil Reynolds. His latest attack on the New Democrat proposal to collect modestly more tax from Ontario’s super-rich stated that “the province’s highest marginal rate on personal income would rise, federal and provincial rates combined, from 46.4 per cent to 49.4 per cent – meaning that [...]

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 [...]

The fiscal implications of corporate income tax (CIT) cuts are a key issue in the current debate. Federal cabinet ministers and Neil Reynolds have boldly asserted that lower CIT rates will increase CIT revenues. As Andrew and I have pointed out, this claim is implausible and not supported by the government’s own Department of Finance. [...]

Last weekend, I pointed out that Neil Reynolds had misleadingly presented figures on capital-gains realizations as being capital-gains tax revenues. Tuesday’s Report on Business included the following item: Correction – January 4, 2011 U.S. capital gains tax realizations fell to 3 per cent of gross domestic product in 1987, when the rate was hiked. Incorrect [...]

Neil Reynolds’ latest Globe column promotes the myth of costless tax cuts by replicating Kurt Hauser’s month-old Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Hauser’s Law” is the notion that American federal tax revenues have consistently been about 19% of GDP since World War II despite significant changes in statutory tax rates. The implication is that higher tax [...]

Neil Reynolds has issued yet another diatribe in the Globe, “A Shameful Spending Spree”  He argues that  inflation adjusted government spending per person has  grown by about 50% over the past 30 years. He uses 1982 as the base year. Was all this inflation-plus spending really necessary? Yes, it includes health costs and education costs [...]

This blog’s readers will not be surprised at me questioning Neil Reynolds (although my last post on him was somewhat complimentary.) However, his latest Globe and Mail column was organized around an especially odd claim: The average Canadian household, for example, spends $14,800 (Canadian) a year on personal income taxes, the most expensive purchase – [...]

This blog has often criticized columns by Neil Reynolds. But he had quite an interesting one in yesterday’s Globe and Mail. In a nutshell, the column argues that used clothing donated from western countries has limited the emergence of garment manufacturing in Africa, thereby stunting that continent’s industrial development. Reynolds emphasizes this research as an [...]

The Globe and Mail’s mini-budget coverage was such that, even after Marc’s thoughtful and thorough critique, a couple of important criticisms remain to be made. It identified Bruce Campbell as “executive director of the left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives” (page A5). In addition to several economists from banks and finance companies, it quoted representatives of [...]

Canada’s corporate-income-tax rates are fairly low compared to other G-7 countries. Advocates of further Canadian corporate-tax cuts have responded to this reality in two ways. First, they promote alternative measures indicating that corporate taxes are higher in Canada than elsewhere. Second, they compare Canada to a much broader range of countries. In the latter vein, The [...]

Neil Reynolds has discovered that a fraction can be increased by reducing its denominator. Because labour productivity equals output divided by employment, he claims that “In manufacturing, you measure success by the number of jobs you eliminate.” By definition, a given volume of manufacturing output produced by fewer workers implies higher manufacturing productivity. However, it [...]

Neil Reynolds is at it again in today’s Report on Business (not available on line), defining poverty out of existence by questioning the reliability of standard statistical measures. His main point in a somewhat confused argument is that poverty rates are over-stated by conventional income-based measures such as the LICO. Reynolds argues that the poor [...]

Another over the top tirade in today’s Globe from Neil Reynolds for whom “equality is the stuff of gulags and guillotines.” (Dion Gets it Wrong on Real Freedom. Globe and Mail. December 15.)   Mr Reynolds appears to be entirely unfamiliar with the best comparative empirical resarch on the topic, generally available from from the Luxemburg Income Survey [...]

The Globe and Mail’s Neil Reynolds does a hatchet job on Sweden. Alas, conservatives have called for the end of the Swedish welfare state for a long time, and this smear job may postpone the day that Canadians start looking at Sweden as a model we may want to emulate. Truth be told, I have [...]