The Progressive Economics Forum

More on the Conference Board and TILMA

January 8, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

Ellen GouldÂ has notedÂ that the Conference Board’sÂ reportÂ projects gains for industries that are explicitly exempted from TILMA: utilities, energy, mining, forestry, and fishing. The Conference Boardâ€™s analysis was based on a “draft negotiatorsâ€™ text” (see page 39). However, the actual agreement whollyÂ or partly exempts the industries listed above (see pages 19-20 and 22). These exempt industries could conceivably still benefit from lower […]

TILMAâ€™s Bogus Logic

January 5, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

The Conference Board estimates that TILMA will add $4.8 billion to British Columbiaâ€™s economy. Even if one accepts the Conference Boardâ€™s assumptions, this figure should be $2.4 billion (as explained below). However, some of these assumptions are highly questionable. The Conference Board argues, â€œThe commercial services and wholesale and retail trade industries will benefit from [TILMA]. Increased trade liberalization will […]

Poor Thinking: Neil Reynolds on Measuring Poverty

January 5, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

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 – according to consumption surveys […]

TILMA’s Bogus Math

January 5, 2007 Erin Weir 3 comments

The Government of British Columbia has finally released the Conference Board study projecting that TILMA will add $4.8 billion to the provincial economy. Seeing the study’s methodology (or lack thereof) makes this projection seem even sillier than Marc and I had suggested. The Conference Board â€œscoredâ€ eleven industries in seven regions on the following arbitrary scale of TILMA’s speculated impact […]

The Danish Model

January 4, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

A useful piece on the ‘new’ Danish Economy and why it works by Jonathan Cohn, a senior editor at the (American) New Republic and a senior fellow at Demos, a US-based national, non-partisan public policy, research and advocacy organization. NEOLIBERAL UTOPIA AWAITS. Great Danes by Jonathan Cohn Post date: 01.03.07 Issue date: 01.15.07 If you want a lower standard […]

Hewers of Wood, Pumpers of Oil and Gas

January 3, 2007 Erin Weir One comment

The Dominion Institute has recruited twenty great Canadian thinkers to write about what the country might look like in 2020. The fourteen essaysÂ currently posted include Don Drummond’s neo-classical analysis of manufacturing and productivity and Jim Stanford’s excellent analysis of Canada’s reliance on natural resources. Jim’s main argument, that Canada’s unmanaged resource boom is damaging other industries and our natural environment, […]

Canada’s Incredible Shrinking Government

January 3, 2007 Andrew Jackson 3 comments

I recently had occasion to re-read Jim Stanford’s contribution to an excellent CCPA book on Paul Martin’s Record (Hell and High Water), in which Jim pointed out that fiscal retrenchment in Canada under the Chretien government had been far, far more severe than the OECD norm. Few Canadians seem to perceive just how exceptional Canada has been compared to the […]

New Report Card on Child Poverty in Canada

January 2, 2007 Andrew Jackson 2 comments

http://www.campaign2000.ca/rc/index.html Campaign 2000 have released a new report card based mainly on some number crunching by the Canadian Council on Social Development.Â Among the more interesting findings: The child poverty rate has been essentially unchanged over the past three years (2001- 2004), (and indeed gradually rising by the most commonly used post tax LICO measure). It remains well above the […]

Vista’s Little DRM’r boy

January 2, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

Andrew Brown says the dark side of Microsof’s new Vista operating system is a nasty digital rights management system. Oh the relentless greed of the movie industry. In cahoots with Microsoft they are seeking to guarantee their billions in profits and to ensure Tom Cruise can continue to make $20 million a movie. Making the upgrade I have no need […]

Can the US emulate single-payer health care?

January 1, 2007 Marc Lee One comment

Where I live in BC, the provincial government is doing its best to subtlely undermine public health care, rather than make the reforms countless commissions have recommended to make the system better. A full frontal assault is not possible due to the continuing popularity of a public model, but perhaps they think that if they mismanage the system enough and […]

Happy New Year

January 1, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

Best wishes to all for 2007. Thanks to all who stop by the RPE blog to read and add their comments to articles and stories we think are important. This blog began in June 2006 with me starting to post items of interest, but without really telling anyone about it. It gained strength over the Fall once more bloggers joined […]

Saddam Hussein

December 31, 2006 Erin Weir 2 comments

There is not much positive to write about either Saddam Hussein or the American invasion of Iraq. In his October 11 column, Andrew Coyne lamented North Koreaâ€™s nuclear test, but suggested that it would have been even worse had Saddam Hussein still been in power. On October 13, the National Post ran the following letter from yours truly under the […]

Dion-omics Redux

December 30, 2006 Erin Weir 7 comments

I would like to initiate some discussion about Stephane Dion. I do not see much reason for optimism about his economic policies, but am interested in reading alternative views. After observing that many progressive Canadians seem supportive of Dion, Murray Dobbin convincingly argues that a Liberal majority government would not be more progressive than the current government. However, even Dobbin […]

Unpaid Taxes

December 30, 2006 Erin Weir Leave a comment

One wonders how much the Government of Canada could recover by offering an amnesty to tax evaders who come forward and pay up, followed by a serious effort to identify and prosecute those who do not. The Times December 30, 2006 Mystery billionaire pays $200m in back tax – and keeps a state afloat Chris Ayres in Los Angeles $200m […]

Inequality DOES Matter

December 29, 2006 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

Â http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1979785,00.html A return to the politics of envy could serve us well As inequality grows, the country becomes nastier. We should be seriously unrelaxed about the existence of the filthy rich Peter Wilby Friday December 29, 2006 The Guardian I hope the employees of Goldman Sachs and other City firms who netted a reported Â£9bn in end-of-year bonuses – with […]

Stiglitz on Galbraith and Friedman

December 28, 2006 Marc Lee 4 comments

A nice summary of the legacies of Galbraith and Friedman, with a strong plug for Galbraith and what the economics profession lacks due to his death. I should note that the Progressive Economics Forum will be creating a John Kenneth Galbraith Prize at this year’s Canadian Economics Association meetings. Jamie Galbraith has given his backing and will be in Halifax […]

Morgan Stanley (Stephen Roach) Thinks Labour and Left are in for a Good Year

December 23, 2006 Andrew Jackson 2 comments

http://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/index.html#anchor4105 Global: From Globalization to Localization Stephen Roach | New York On one level, there seems to be no stopping the powerful forces of globalization.Â Not only has the world just completed four years of the strongest global growth since the early 1970s, but in 2006, cross-border trade as a share of world GDP pierced the 30% threshold for the […]

Are Wages the Key to Productivity Perfomance?

December 21, 2006 Andrew Jackson 2 comments

I have posted below a response by a senior Government of Caanda official to my earlier post on why the Canadian econmy is operating below capacity – the core subtance of which is to suggest that wages are too low to stimulate needed productvity gains. A somewhat usuual, out of mainstream response… > This was a nice note Andrew. I […]

Neil Reynolds on Inequality

December 15, 2006 Andrew Jackson 8 comments

Another over the top tirade in today’sÂ 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.)Â Â Mr Reynolds appears to be entirely unfamiliar with the best comparative empirical resarch on the topic, generally available fromÂ from the Luxemburg Income Survey (ww.lis.org) Â which specializes in comparative […]

Economic effects of unions

December 14, 2006 Marc Lee 9 comments

Given some recent discourse on unions in our comments area, I decided to reach back to a fairly comprehensive literature survey on the empirical evidence about unions. The report comes not from the CCPA, CAW or CLC, nor does it come from the ILO, but from the World Bank. It is a rather weighty tome, published in 2002, and can […]

A Surge in Wealth Inequality

December 14, 2006 Andrew Jackson 4 comments

There was a fair amount of media coverage of the new dataÂ on assets and debt from the 2005 Survey of Financial Security released by Stats Can last week (Daily, December 7); less so of the very useful companion research paper on wealth inequality by StatsCan researchers Morissette and Zhang published in the latest issue of Perspectives. http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/75-001-XIE/11206/high-1.htm As noted […]

Manufacturing Shipments Fall

December 14, 2006 Erin Weir Leave a comment

An article in Statistics Canadaâ€™s Daily notes that the value of Canadian factory shipments hit a two-year low in October. Because manufacturing includes petroleum products, this development largely resulted from the recent oil-price drop. The inclusion of resource-processing industries means that the value of “manufacturing” shipments partly reflects commodity prices. In my view, the more interesting statistic is that the […]

Signs of Life in Canadaâ€™s GAI Movement

December 14, 2006 Arun DuBois Leave a comment

It is the policy that dare not speak its name. For the better part of the last 20 years, the idea of a guaranteed annual income (GAI), a government funded unconditional annual income floor below which no family or individual can fall, has been met with ridicule, dismissal, silence and, more often than not, legislation that does the exact opposite […]

Who Will Have a Good Holiday?

December 13, 2006 Andrew Jackson One comment

As we head into the Christmas holidays and many of us look forward to spending some time away from work with our families, it’s worth noting that there is greatÂ inequality among Canadian workers in terms of access to paid vacation leave, and big gaps compared to other industrial countries. The statutory minimum in Canada varies by province, and is just […]

Subsidies in the oil patch

December 12, 2006 Marc Lee 2 comments

Eric Reguly on the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance and Big Oil, from today’s Globe: Oil sands may be federal Tories’ Achilles heel … For the opposition parties, the beauty of the oil sands is that you can point to them. The visuals are appropriately disturbing. You can see the gaping holes in the earth, you can measure the water flows, […]

Scientists call for action on toxic chemicals

December 11, 2006 Marc Lee Leave a comment

A letter to the Prime Minister from Scientists For A Healthy Environment, which doubles as an effective critique of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act: Dear Prime Minister, We are writing to encourage your Government to make significant improvements to Canada ‘s overarching pollution law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). Canada has a growing pollution problem that is a threat […]

Time to Nationalize Ticketmaster

December 11, 2006 Marc Lee 9 comments

I balked at purchasing some tickets this weekend because of the rapacious service charges of Ticketmaster. The cost of the tickets was already pretty high, at $38.50, but that just seems to be the going rate these days. Generally, I do not begrudge the escalating cost of live performances because artists make most of their money this way, and the […]

Is the Canadian Labour Market Really Operating at Capacity?

December 11, 2006 Andrew Jackson 2 comments

(This note was prepared for a meeting of trade union economists with Paul Jenkins, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, to be held on Monday, December 11, 2006.) Introduction The Bank of Canada believes that the Canadian economy is currently operating â€œjust aboveâ€ capacity, justifying this weekâ€™s decision to leave interest rates unchanged despite a noticeable slowdown in economic […]

Back-of-Envelope Math on TILMA

December 9, 2006 Erin Weir 3 comments

It seems to me that, compared to an international free-trade agreement, TILMA provides none of the potential benefits (i.e. tariff reductions) and all of the costs (i.e. regulations harmonized to the lowest common denominator and businesses suing governments). As Marc noted below, the Government of BC claims that TILMA could add $4.8 billion to provincial GDP.Â A Government of Quebec […]

TILMA’s fuzzy math

December 8, 2006 Marc Lee One comment

BC and Alberta signed a new agreement earlier this year to reduce interprovincial barriers to trade. The Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) is due to go into effect in April 2007. Apparently Saskatchewan and Ontario are now considering signing on as well. While it is widely believed in business circles that there exist large barriers to trade within […]

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