So just as I was about to leave to give a lecture on taxes (and why high tax Nordic countries are not in economic ruins), my tax return for 2006 arrived in the mail. This is truly good news because I got a big refund. In all, I paid about 20% of my income in taxes last year, which seems […]
Read moreIn a column written before this weekend’s presidential run-offs, Mark Weisbrot unspins the misleading numbers behind the French elections: Economic Misinformation Plays a Major Role in French Election The elections in France demonstrate the power of faulty economic analysis, and more generalized problems with arithmetic, to shape ideas and possibly the future of not only a nation, but a continent. […]
Read moreUnfortunately, it looks like the Finance Minister may be folding on foreign-affiliate interest-deductibility.
Read morePerhaps telegraphing some of his coming remarks in Halifax when he joins the Progressive Economics Forum for the inauguration of the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics, James Galbraith reflects on his father’s The New Industrial State. If you find yourself in Halifax on June 3, noon, please join us at Dalhousie’s McCain Building, Room 2017 (note this is a […]
Read moreDani Rodrik says it is much better to be poor in a rich country than it is to be rich in a poor country (top and bottom deciles, that is, for “rich” and “poor”): The correct answer is that a poor person in a rich country is three times better off than a rich person in a poor country (given […]
Read moreThe following, from today’s Toronto Star, includes some commentary from yours truly: The China syndrome: A new condition characterized by the apparent reluctance of a certain national government to embrace an emerging, global economic power May 05, 2007
Read moreMarc’s recent post prompted me to look at transcripts from the Senate hearings on “issues dealing with interprovincial barriers to trade.” The following passage caught my attention: The Chairman: Let me suggest something that tantalized me when I first looked at this question well over 30 years ago, and more recently — the economics of it. I think one of […]
Read moreAsking business whether to get rid of government regulations is much like asking a barber whether to get a haircut. Nevertheless, the Conference Board’s main (and only) evidence in projecting TILMA’s benefits for BC and Saskatchewan were surveys of business organizations and government departments. In our paper, Marc and I noted some serious problems with the BC survey as well […]
Read moreNaomi Klein takes a look past Wolfowitz to the real corruption at the World Bank: World Bank sullied before Wolfowitz It’s not the act itself; it’s the hypocrisy. That’s the line on Paul Wolfowitz, coming from editorial pages around the world. But it’s neither the act (disregarding the rules to get his girlfriend a pay raise) nor the […]
Read moreOut of the blue yesterday I got a call from the Chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce, Jerahmiel S. Grafstein. An honour, I suppose, because he was personally inviting me to testify before the committee on interprovincial trade barriers. I was somewhat caught by surprise and had no idea who he was (turns out he’s a […]
Read moreHockey players are not the most sophisticated breed of human animal out there, but among the lot Shane Doan is one of the classier ones. So it is a bit much to hear Doan being called out on the legislative mat – in the House of Commons of all places – for being Team Canada’s captain, all over some passing […]
Read moreAs noted in December using 2002 figures, Saskatchewan imports more from its prospective TILMA partners than it exports to them. The 2003 figures are now available: Saskatchewan’s trade deficit with Alberta was $2.1 billion and its trade deficit with BC was $0.4 billion. Since there are currently no significant barriers to inter-provincial trade, signing TILMA would not significantly increase inter-provincial trade […]
Read moreIt truly boggles the mind how people can contemplate flying to Iceland in order to board a boat to watch global warming happen in Greenland. So this is capitalism’s response to climate change. Sigh. A holiday at the end of the Earth: tourists paying to see global warming in action By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor Published:Â 03 May 2007 Bored […]
Read morePrivate equity has raised more concerns on the other side of the Atlantic than in North America. Andrew Jackson made some comments on the topic on RPE a month ago. Whether David Dodge has been dropping in on RPE is not clear (we will FOI his browsing history), but at any rate, it is welcome for him to weigh in […]
Read moreHow Denmark Paved Way To Energy Independence Thirty-Year Plan Uses Wind, Taxes, Pig Fat; Consumers Pay More By LEILA ABBOUD April 16, 2007; Page A1 HORSENS, Denmark — Nothing goes to waste in the new Danish Crown slaughterhouse in eastern Denmark. Even the inedible fat of 50,000 pigs killed and processed here each week is used to heat the plant. […]
Read moreAs Joe Kuchta points out, the Conference Board’s assessment of TILMA’s potential effects on Saskatchewan embodies the same basic flaws as its previous assessment for BC. Joe also notes that, like its predecessor, the Saskatchewan assessment features what appear to be arithmetic errors.
Read moreI have to say I have a soft spot for Margaret Wente. Sure, she is a conservative who sounds off frequently on issues that she really has no business writing about. But, boy. is she a good writer and she has a knack of connecting with the same deeply embedded conservative populism that Harper likes to mine. Today I was […]
Read moreI used to be skeptical of fixed election dates, as an American intrusion into our Canadian parliamentary ways. But having them in BC (introduced in 2001, with the last election mandated for May 2005 and the next for May 2009), I like them. It means that the opposition parties can prepare for an election in advance rather than waiting on […]
Read more   The rich world’s policy on greenhouse gas now seems clear: millions will die Our governments have set the wrong targets to tackle climate change using outdated science, and they know it George Monbiot Tuesday May 1, 2007 The Guardian Rich nations seeking to cut climate change have this in common: they lie. You won’t find this statement in the […]
Read moreThe Globe and Mail has run three major stories about Alcan in the past few days: Act I: “Alcan says tax makes it takeover bait” (April 27) Act II: “B.C. town may fight Alcan” (April 28) Act III: “$7-billion project deepens Alcan’s Gulf ties” (May 1) Alcan is a major Canadian-based multinational that produces aluminum. Bauxite, the basic raw material, […]
Read moreA new edited volume, Whose Canada?: Continental Integration, Fortress North America, and the Corporate Agenda, by Ricardo Grinspun and Yasmine Shamsie, has just come out, featuring many of your favourite left-wing writers. The full book is out from McGill-Queen’s University Press, and can also be purchased through the CCPA. The table of contents can be viewed here. The synopsis follows: […]
Read moreSays Lawrence Martin in his Globe column: In the 1970s, the activists, their views vindicated on Vietnam, were in the vanguard. In this decade, the activists, their views vindicated on Iraq, not to mention global warming, have no such standing.Speak out back then and you were cool. Speak out today and some fount of wisdom with a Fox News mentality […]
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 moreFor more on the themes highlighted below by Jim, my note on trade balances and jobs is now available through the CCPA.
Read moreWell, I finally got my name into the Australian papers. So I guess I can come back to Canada now. (We’re flying home, sigh, in another few weeks.) I worked with the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (sister union, sectorally and politically, to the CAW) to produce a critique of the proposed Australia-China free trade agreement. We used a similar “job […]
Read moreCrawl Across the Ocean, which has infrequent but excellent posts, features an amusing and accurate critique of the Fraser Institute’s “Consumer Tax Index.† MORE (April 29): In particular, this critique points out that the political right defines “essential” very narrowly when measuring poverty or railing about taxes, but very broadly when limiting the right to strike.
Read moreThe Canadian Football League’s season does not begin until June, but debate is already underway about TILMA’s potential effect on its franchises, most of which are for-profit businesses that receive government subsidies. The last federal budget proposed a new Canadian Heritage Sport Fund to promote three-down football, but also proposed to expand TILMA to more provinces. In response to my […]
Read moreJeffrey Simpson has a good column in today’s Globe on the new Conservative climate-change plan. He makes the same point that I did about the impossibility of meeting Kyoto’s first-round targets and the importance taking our second-round targets seriously. He also points out how thin all of these climate-change “plans” have been. To me, a “plan” is a set of […]
Read moreI’ll be sorry to see Governor David Dodge leave the Bank of Canada. To be sure, I’ll take a good deal of critical distance from his and the Bank’s view that we are operating “above capacity” when real wages for at least the bottom half of the work force are flat, and I think monetary policy as a whole should […]
Read moreOne of the more arcane rituals of global economic governance is the annual meeting between G-8 labour leaders and the host of the annual G-8 summit (only Dubya refused to conform to the convention.) The statement to be presented to German Chancellor Merkel in a couple of weeks by CLC President Ken Georgetti and colleagues is, as as per past […]
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