A year and a half ago I published an updated study on tax incidence in Canada. It found that the Canadian tax system is progressive up to the middle of the income distribution, then flattens out before becoming regressive at the very top. (Interestingly, a short piece on the US tax system by Citizens for Tax Justice just came out […]
Read moreI came across an interesting piece in YES! Magazine about a city in Brazil that took an innovative approach to poverty reduction and practically ended hunger by adopting a food-as-a-right policy. Here is their story in a nutshell (although I recommend checking out the actual article). Belo Horizonte is the fourth largest city in Brazil with a population of 2.5 […]
Read morehttp://news.guelphmercury.com/Opinions/article/409306 Today’s economic update by Jim Flaherty must provide investment in jobs the canadian press November 27, 2008 Ken Georgetti Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty must use today’s economic update to become part of the solution to our ever deepening economic crisis. Governments, leading economists and even the International Monetary Fund agree that cutting interest rates alone will not save […]
Read moreMuch has been written on this blog about immediate responses to the crisis. We have analyzed proposed measures in depth and advocated for bold novel solutions. But it seems to me that we haven’t spent much time looking forward a little past the here and now. Last week, I was contacted by a Montreal-based journalist, Alex Roslin, who was looking […]
Read moreThe Progressive Economics Forum’s open letter is now making the rounds. Signatories include four chairs of economics departments, two former Presidents of the Canadian Economics Association, a former federal Secretary of State (Finance), and a former Quebec Minister of Industry. Here’s the text and the 88 signatories: Open Letter from Canadian Economists on the Current Economic Crisis and the Appropriate […]
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 moreIt’s not often that I get my hopes up about a potential volte-face in the way we talk and think about economics at the policy and political level but this is by far the best news I’ve heard in a long long time. It seems that our very own Jamie Galbraith, scion of John Kenneth Galbraith and keynote speaker for […]
Read morehttp://canadianlabour.ca/index.php/policy_papers I commend to your attention the policy papers which will be presented for discussion and debate at the CLC Convention, which convenes the week after next in Toronto. Progressive economists Mike McCracken and Armine Yalnizyan will help kick-off discussion on the Good Jobs and Growing Gap papers respectively. Though neither they nor the progressive economics community had a direct […]
Read moreAndrew Jackson closes his lengthy and excellent post on the fallout of the US financial crisis with this paragraph (which I repeat here only because Andrew’s post was so comprehensive): We are at a moment when progressives will have to move from critique to prescription. As Naomi Klein argued in the Shock Doctrine, neo liberalism took advantage of past crises […]
Read morePEF member Tom Slee sends this missive challenging the Left: The recent blog post by Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson is a wholesome read. It reminds us that markets and private enterprise deserve less credit than they receive for our current prosperity, such as it is; it lays out the contribution of the state to innovation; it reminds us that […]
Read moreIn my holiday reading were two manifestos – how often can you say that? The first arrived by mail just before the break, the Manifesto on Global Economic Transitions, published in September 2007 by the International Forum on Globalization, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Global Project on Economic Transitions (I will dub this the IFG Manifesto). The second […]
Read moreThe Commons Finance Committee, spurred by my old debating opponent John McCallum, is holding hearings in the next two weeks on the economic and fiscal consequences of the loonie’s unsustainable flight. (I kind of miss crossing swords with John, actually: In the good old days he was the evil but friendly Bay Street banker, justifying federal spending cuts — and […]
Read moreIn New Left Review, Clive Hamilton writes a review and critique of George Monbiot’s Heat. There are a number of interesting passages. First, he gives this doozy as an indicator of how grave the issue is in the USA: In recent years wealthy Texans have discovered the joys of sitting in front of a log fire. As it is usually […]
Read moreAs Andrew Jackson points out, there are some interesting musings in the US about progressive taxation. In a recent post, Mark Thoma cites four good reasons for progressive taxation: Personally, I’m not much on redistribution simply to make outcomes more equal. But there are (at least) three reasons to depart from this. First, when there is change such that makes […]
Read morehttp://www1.hamiltonproject.org/views/papers/furman/200706summers_bordoff.htm At the Canadian Economics Association, I presented a paper (to be published by the CCPA Inequality Project this Fall) on the case for more progressive taxation of income. In a nutshell, my argument was that the tax side of the tax/transfer system must be relied on more to counter growing income inequality, since only the tax side can close […]
Read moreNew from McGill- Queen’s Press, this collection of Mel’s writings – edited by Hugh Grant and David Wolfe with an introduction by Wally Clement- is Canadian political economy at its very best. http://mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=2001 Not only is Mel the leading post Harold Innis exponent of Canadian political economy, he was a key architect of the important synthesis between this intellectual tradition […]
Read morehttp://www.epi.org/ A project of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, this involves some 50 economists and policy specialists in the task of developing a new, progressive US economic policy agenda. The link from the EPI web site leads to some good papers by Jeff Faux on trade, and Richard Freeman and others on unions, as well as a recent presentation […]
Read moreAnnouncing 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 […]
Read moreI shared the podium recently in Sydney with Neal Lawson, who is the chairperson for a very interesting U.K. initiative called Compass.  As far as I can tell, Compass is kind of a cross between a think-tank and an activist network. Its explicit goal has been to challenge the right-wing policies of the New Labour leadership. It functions largely, but […]
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