The Tyee ran a piece by yours truly that is an edited-down version of my UCC Blues blog posts from last fall. David Beers did an amazing editing job on my reworked article: My Rich Kids Reunion UCC circa 1915. A tax-the-rich economist goes home to Upper Canada College. By Marc Lee Published: February 13, 2008 I don’t talk it […]
Read morePerhaps the strangest thing about my reunion was coming to grips with my own status as an Old Boy, albeit disconnected from the Old Boys network. Those connections were quite apparent during the reunion but the clique-iness I remember from my school days was not really present at all – as Old Boys at a reunion we were cast in […]
Read moreI took the bus to Association Day, Upper Canada College’s annual “open house”, where the school teems with students, parents, Old Boys like me, and an striking number of blond teenage girls. Heading up Avenue Road, the clock tower looms up the hill (officially it is the Rogers clock tower, a donation from long ago by the Rogers family that […]
Read moreTomorrow I jet to Toronto for my 20th anniversary high school reunion. Like any such reunion, it will be interesting to see just how far the hairlines have receded and bellies expanded. But I cannot help feeling that my reunion will be different. See, I went to Upper Canada College, our country’s most elite private school. I was an outsider […]
Read moreI expect some folks who oppose the Occupy movement will weigh in on merit – that the top 1% are deserving of their riches because they include people who pay a lot of wages and salaries for ordinary folk. That is, the story of hard-working, risk-taking entrepreneurs who should not be punished for being successful. I don’t really have any […]
Read moreIn August Canadian Business magazine published my article on why inequality is bad for business. It is produced in full below. Last week the International Monetary Fund, not known for left-leaning views, released a series of articles entitled “Why Inequality Throws Us Off Balance”. One of the papers is by Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry entitled “Equality and Efficiency: Is […]
Read moreMy recent paper that found the top 1% of earners actually pay slightly lower tax rates than the bottom 10%, and much less than those in the middle- to upper-middle range, seems to have touched a nerve with my proposal that the rich actually pay more in taxes. For the defenseless and concerned wealthy out there, worry not, because Randall […]
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