Am I the only one who detected a distinct note of spin-doctoring in the write-up of Statistics Canada’s eye-popping labour force release yesterday? Here are the first two paragraphs of the release: “Following gains at the beginning of 2008, and little change from April to June, employment dropped by 55,000 in July. The unemployment rate edged down 0.1 percentage points to 6.1%, as many people, particularly […]
Read moreFriday’s eye-popping employment numbers (55,000 lost jobs, the worst one-month toll since the 1991 recession), combined with the previous week’s negative GDP numbers (down 0.1% in May, the fourth decline in six months), have raised once again the spectre that Canada’s total economy is teetering on the edge of “official” recession. The suspense is growing as we head toward the […]
Read moreJames Galbraith bats this one out of the park: Years ago, I realized that the free-market, supply-side crowd, true conservatives who’d ridden high with Reagan, dislike Bush as much as I do. I speak of the hard money, low-tax, Wall Street Journal, deregulate-and-privatize team, the nemeses of my youth, people like Bruce Bartlett, Paul Craig Roberts, the late Jude Wanniski. […]
Read moreMy take on today’s grisly Labour Force Survey follows: Private-Sector Meltdown Canada’s private sector eliminated 95,000 jobs in July. In other words, nearly 1% of Canadian private-sector jobs disappeared in a single month. The creation of 30,000 public-sector jobs and 11,000 self-employed positions offset less than half of this loss. Although manufacturing accounts for below a fifth of private-sector employment, […]
Read moreOn the eve of the Beijing Olympics, recognition should certainly go to the scores of workers who toiled to build the stunning spors palaces and who have made China into the economic powerhouse it is today. Instead, many have received layoff notices and warnings to leave the Chinese capital, as the New York Times reported today. A remarkable 4 million […]
Read moreYesterday, the Premier’s hand-picked Climate Action Team released its final report to the government. As is often the case with government, the CAT consisted of a range of “stakeholders”, although with one glaring omission: no representation from labour. The CAT has been deliberating for several months on how to meet the 2020 target of a 33% reduction in greenhouse gas […]
Read moreI was recently trolling through Statistics Canada (LICO – After Tax) data on CANSIM and discovered to my slight surprise that the incidence of poverty (or low income as StatsCan politely prefers to describe it) has fallen very significantly among the elderly (age 65 and over.) I knew the rate was relatively low and had been falling, but it has […]
Read moreLast Thursday the Vancouver Sun ran an opinion piece by yours truly entitled “BC’s minimum wage should not be a poverty wage.†I drew attention to the fact that between March 31 and May 1 this year, all other nine provinces increased their minimum wages and, as a result, BC now has one of the lowest minimum wages in the […]
Read moreMichael Masters’ recent testimony before the US Congress is being widely cited in support of the proposition that speculation is having a big impact on upward and downward movements in commodity prices. As a long-standing futures market insider, he argues quite persuasively that institutional investors such as hedge funds have entered commodities futures markets in a huge way – a […]
Read moreYesterday, I appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs at Queen’s Park. The committee is reviewing the Ontario Health Premium, as required by the legislation that implemented this levy. My assessment of the premium starts from the premise that the Government of Ontario needs more revenue not only for healthcare, but also for industrial development, education and […]
Read moreAs reported by Julian Beltram of Canadian Press: The federal government has started the new fiscal year in a rare deficit position, announcing yesterday it was $517 million in the red after two months as tax cuts and a slowing economy sliced into revenues. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said revenues fell $1.6 billion combined in April and May, 4.1 per […]
Read moreCanada has the third-lowest business taxes of ten countries examined in a study released as part of KPMG’s 2008 Competitive Alternatives report. The spin from KPMG has been that “If the provinces follow the federal lead and reduce their rates as well, Canada’s advantage will be enhanced.” Canadians should be asking a different question. If we already have a substantial “tax […]
Read moreRob Rainer of the National Anti-Poverty Organization has audited the federal Liberals’ Green Shift plan for anti-poverty measures and found it lacking a comprehensive approach. I’ve excerpted below the main points in his brief, which is not on the NAPO web site and should not be taken as the voice of NAPO on the matter (the brief also has footnotes […]
Read moreA well-intentioned article in the Vancouver Sun seeks to explain carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. A worthy objective, but the article really aims to pigeonhole various alternatives in terms of political parties. It ends up taking a far-too-simplified view that goes something like this: The debate is being played out in British Columbia, where the Liberal government and New Democratic […]
Read moreWith this whole Internet thing, I have not cracked a copy of The Yellow Pages in years. Somehow I assumed that at some point they would just stop delivering them in favour of online distribution or give me the option for a CD-ROM. Alas, no. So after receiving the bulk that is the Yellow Pages on my doorstep this week, […]
Read moreI am really glad Stephane Dion supplemented his Green Shift proposal with a call for a carbon tariff. This is utterly consistent with demands the left has been making for years, namely that the rules of globalization have to be broadened to effectively address the role of environmental, labour, and social standards in determining competitiveness and hence global trade and […]
Read moreAs a fan of satire, I love the medium of cartoons. Here are a few favourites who consistently produce good stuff, and a couple recent posts. Tom the Dancing Bug, explains the economics of gas prices and tells how America was destroyed. This Modern World says Farewell My Lovely Economy and soothes Republican angst. And for Canadian content, it is […]
Read moreAs has been widely reported in the business press, members of the United Steelworkers union employed at the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan’s Allan, Cory and Patience Lake mines voted 96% on Monday night for a strike mandate. The three locals served strike notice on Wednesday, which will put them in a legal strike position tomorrow. The company responded by serving […]
Read moreRegarding the Premiers’ announcement in Quebec City last week, I would reiterate what I wrote a year ago about a very similar federal proclamation by then-Minister of Industry, Maxime Bernier. The main piece of real news is that Premiers have attached financial penalties to the existing Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT): Premiers announced an enhanced and effective dispute resolution mechanism […]
Read moreThis morning, Statistics Canada released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for June. Inflation driven by commodity prices justifies higher wages, but should not prompt the Bank of Canada to hike interest rates. Inflation and Wages Rising consumer prices nullified most of the wage gains that Canadian workers made during the last year. From June 2007 through June 2008, consumer prices […]
Read moreHere’s my self-indulgent Summer vacation blog. John Kenneth Galbraith is rightly renowned for the contrast he drew between private affluence and public squalor in the US. Yet he also argued that public investment is needed to sustain private affluence. What the US has generally – but not always – got hugely wrong is the balance between investment in the public […]
Read moreThe widely publicized CIBC Employment Quality Index would have us believe that average job quality has been improving this year even as the pace of job creation has slowed down, and even as the national unemployment rate has risen from 6.0% to 6.2%. http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/eqi-cda-20080716.pdf I wonder if this is due to the realities of the job market, or due to […]
Read moreStatsCan released a new analytical study today on the decline of Canadian labour productivity relative to the U.S., up to 2003. http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080721/d080721a.htm Main findings are not surprising: Canadian business sector productivity has slipped relative to U.S. productivity (to 87% by 2003). (We know it’s fallen significantly further than that since — Canadian labour productivity has hardly grown at all since […]
Read moreThe Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed this weekend entitled, “California Getaway: High taxes continue to drive businesses out of state,” about how the California State Automobile Association (CSAA) is relocating three call centres to other states. However, the CSAA, an affiliate of the American Automobile Association, is not really a “business”. I assume that, as a non-profit organization, it […]
Read moreMarc Lee took me gently to task a couple of weeks ago for being too modest and not promoting my new book (Economics for Everyone, meant to be a “primer” on economics for trade unionists and other rank-and-file folk) on this blog: http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2008/06/20/economics-for-everyone/ Thanks for your highly kind words Marc, and the prod. Instead, I will draw to your attention […]
Read moreBC’s public accounts for 2007/08 were released yesterday, closing the fiscal year with a surplus of $2.886 billion. This marks BC’s fourth truly massive surplus in a row, after surpluses of $2.575 billion in 2004/05, $3.060 billion in 2005/06, and $4.056 billion in 2006/07. Like all of those budgets, the 2007/08 budget as tabled in February 2007 vastly understated the […]
Read moreI’m recently back from a family vacation, which consisted in driving down to Northern California and back, camping along the way. Our 1992 Corolla keeps on rolling, and in my mind it is better to keep it humming and wait it out for something electric in a few years time, than to buy a new hybrid that emits a third […]
Read moreHere is the latest from the Conference Board: Its outlook projects Canada’s economy to grow 1.7 per cent this year – a far more bullish prediction than the Bank of Canada, which on Tuesday revised downward its growth forecast to one per cent this year. What is interesting is how the CP report calls them “bullish”. Back in February, I […]
Read moreThis morning, the Bank of Canada left interest rates unchanged. It should have cut interest rates because Canada’s slowing economy and overvalued currency are more serious problems than the spectre of inflation. Stimulus Needed Last week’s Labour Force Survey indicated that Canada lost 39,000 full-time jobs in June, pushing unemployment to its highest level in nearly two years. Statistics Canada’s […]
Read moreDuncan Cameron’s comment about the role of agriculture in climate change prompted me to take a closer look at greenhouse-gas emissions from sources other than burning fossil fuels. The final column of the following table is a sectoral breakdown of row 8 from yesterday’s table. All of these emissions are exempt from the Liberal Green Shift.  Sector  Fuel Emissions  Other […]
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