The Progressive Economics Forum

Caledon Study on Income Splitting for Seniors

December 3, 2006 Andrew Jackson One comment

http://www.caledoninst.org/Publications/PDF/609ENG%2Epdf Tax Fairness According to Canada’s New Government Ed Tamagno and Ken Battle, November 2006 Federal Finance Minister Jim Flahertyâ€™s surprise announcement on October 31, 2006, shutting down income trusts was front page news across Canada. Little media attention, however, was given to other changes to the income tax system announced at the same time. These include two of particular […]

Income Splitting Redux

December 1, 2006 Erin Weir 2 comments

On October 31, Finance Minister Flaherty announced that pension income could be divided between spouses for tax purposes. More recently, he mused about allowing spouses to divide all income for tax purposes. This latter proposal would benefit an affluent minority at the expense of important public programs and create a disincentive for women to engage in paid employment. Income splitting […]

Confused in Alberta

December 1, 2006 Marc Lee 2 comments

From the Edmonton Sun: Tory leadership contender Ted Morton says Alberta should cut the amount it contributes to federal transfer payments so it can build more roads and sewers for an influx of workers. Speaking on an Alberta radio talk show (Rutherford-CHQR-CHED), Morton says it makes no sense for Ottawa to pay out employment insurance to keep workers in Atlantic […]

Recession watch: Krugman edition

December 1, 2006 Marc Lee Leave a comment

Paul Krugman is in the bears’ camp for 2007 (thanks to Economist’s View for posting NYT Select content): Economic Storm Signals … Before I explain what the bond market is telling us, letâ€™s talk about why the economy may be at a turning point. Between mid-2003 and mid-2006, economic growth in the United States was fueled mainly by a huge […]

Making Sense of China

November 27, 2006 Jim Stanford 3 comments

I visited China for two weeks earlier this month, at the invitation of the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing.Â I gave a series of lectures on economics and labour relations to several classes of bright, eager, and surprisingly free-speaking graduate students. China’s economy has been growing at about 10% per year for over a decade, and the […]

“Advantage Canada”= A True Blue Corporate Agenda

November 23, 2006 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

The only surprise in the long-term economic strategy document unveiled by the Finance Minister today is its complete lack of balance. Everything corporate Canada and the right-wing think-tanks wanted is there in spades. What it lacks is any sense that the market economy must be regulated in the public interest to make sure that it works for working families. Consider […]

Squeal in the Dark, Part II

November 20, 2006 Jim Stanford 2 comments

Hi Everyone… I promised I’d provide more details on our great debate with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade regarding trade economics, in particular the likely employment effects of their proposed Canada-Korea FTA. The federal critique variously described the CAW study (which predicted significant post-FTA job losses in the auto industry and other high-value sectors) with the following […]

Big Payoff from Pre School Programs

November 15, 2006 Andrew Jackson 4 comments

http://www.upjohninst.org/publications/newsletter/TJB_1006.pdf In a major study for the Upjohn Institute, Timothy J. Bartik calulates the macro economic impacts of high quality universal preschool education for the US,Â based mainly on studies of theÂ impacts of a well-studied, high quality program (the Chicago Child-Parent Centre program, a half day program for four year olds with 2 teachers per 20 children.) He estimates […]

A Squeal in the Dark

November 14, 2006 Jim Stanford 3 comments

When I was growing up on the farm in Alberta, our family had a saying: “If you throw something out into the dark and hear a squeal, it means you hit the pig.” (OK, I didn’t really grow up on a farm in Alberta.Â But I visited one once.) That’s how I feel about the Department of Foreign Affairs and […]

Jeffrey Sachs’ Conversion?

November 14, 2006 Jim Stanford 3 comments

Whaddya make of Jeffrey Sachs these days? He was the guy, was he not, who brought free-market shock therapy to Russia and Eastern Europe. But today he is out there championing the virtues of the welfare state. Here’s a recent missive from no less than Scientific American (Oct 16 2006 edition). It sounds just like what me and Marc Lee […]

Far Right Economist Appointed as Department of Finance Adviser

November 7, 2006 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

This is bad news indeed. Right-wingers are no strangers to the hallowed halls of the Department of Finance (Jack Mintz held this position in the past before heading off to the CD Howe Institute), but for my money Crowley is much more a Fraser Institute clone right-wing ideologue than credible professional economist.Â He has been a strong opponent of minimum […]

On Conrad Black and Corporate Greed

November 6, 2006 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

We all suffer when greed is the creed http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1939867,00.html If you doubt the malign effects of big business out of control, consider Conrad Black’s downfall Will Hutton Sunday November 5, 2006 The Observer There has rarely been a better time to be a plutocrat. This is an unrivalled era in which both to acquire great wealth and keep it. Taxation […]

Reflections on the Stern Review

November 1, 2006 Marc Lee One comment

Monday’s release by the UK government of the Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change could come to be seen as one of those pivotal events in shaping public policy. I hope so, anyway. This report takes the accumulation of scientific knowledge about the present and potential future impacts of global warming and translates them into the language of […]

Where is All That Income Tax Revenue Coming From?

October 31, 2006 Andrew Jackson One comment

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/agency/stats/final-e.html Here’s the link to the historical income tax data which some people asked for. The most recent year for which full data seem to be available is 2003 (or the links don’t work for 2004 tax year.) In an earlier post, I suggested that the “puzzling” excess of personal income tax revenue growth over personal income growth likely reflected […]

Economic Policy Institute (US) on Minimum Wage

October 28, 2006 Andrew Jackson One comment

In a joint statement issued on Wednesday, October 11, five Nobel Prize winners and over 650 other economists endorsed a statement urging a raise in the minimum wage. The statement asserts that a modest raise in the minimum wage (in the range of a $1.00 to $2.50 per hour), with future increases indexed to protect the workers’ purchasing power, “can […]

The Manufacturing Crisis

October 26, 2006 Andrew Jackson 4 comments

http://canadianlabour.ca/index.php/jobs__economy/1021 Here’s the link to a paper we (the Canadian Labour Congress) released this week, and which was the background paper for an Ontario Federation of Labour conference. The recommendations are a work in progress among union economists, and comments on them would be welcome.

The Softwood Lumber Deal

October 26, 2006 Andrew Jackson One comment

This is a column by Kim Pollock of the Steelworkers (ex IWA) in BC re the recent US Trade Court Ruling. I was out of the country at the time, but it strikes me that the basic issue (an un-necesary softwood lumber deal) has been incredibly ignored by the mainstream national media. Our lumber industry is about to be hammered […]

New Zealand Social Report

October 26, 2006 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/ This is worth a look as a serious attempt at an “official” social audit. A good selection of economic and social indicators, and what is interesting is that the report highlights some progessive benchmarks and targets, and some not terribly impressive performance. A brave government indeed, compared to our own.

Surge in Federal Tax Revenues

October 25, 2006 Andrew Jackson One comment

As noted in today’s Globe and Mail,Â income tax revenue growth is significantly exceding GDP growth, surprising Don Drummond of TD Bank. My guess is that current income growth is highly tilted to the very high end of the income distribution, where it is taxed at well above average rates. A quick glance at the revenue stats for the past […]

Oil: Can we give it back?

October 24, 2006 Jim Stanford 8 comments

Every now and then you see a sad story on TV about someone who won the lottery, and then their life went to shit (they gave it all away or lost it gambling, became an alcoholic, etc.).Â They invariably say at the end, “I wish I’d never won the lottery.” I kind of feel the same way about oil.Â I […]

A Looming Global Crisis?

October 18, 2006 Andrew Jackson One comment

Recently in Paris for meetings between the OECD Economic Department and TUAC (the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD), I found my trade union colleagues concerned about the â€œdownsideâ€ risks of an increasingly gloomy economic outlook. The OECD Economics Department believes that there will be a pronounced slowdown in the US – driven by the housing downturn. However, it […]

Business Divided on Industrial Policy?

October 17, 2006 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

Challenges Facing the Canadian Manufacturing Sector â€“ Interim Report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteePublication.aspx?COM=10476&Lang=1&SourceId=149639 This short report briefly analyzes some of the dynamics behind the manufacturing crisis, and summarizes policy recommendations presented to date (mainly by business associations.) It reveals some interesting tensions within the â€œbusiness community.â€ The key factors behind the […]

Autoworkers and emissions controls

October 15, 2006 Jim Stanford 3 comments

A few posts back, Marc Lee was discussing the Harper government’s sudden discovery of the dangers of global warming.Â He mentioned in passing reports that the CAW was opposed to the idea of stronger emissions regulations for vehicles.Â In fact the CAW has been in support of the Kyoto process, Canadian efforts to meet its targets, and the principle of […]

The skinny on METRs

October 13, 2006 Marc Lee Leave a comment

The push for “competitiveness” is often framed around differences in corporate taxation. Our tax rates, it is argued, must be equivalent to or less than those of our competitors so that we can attract the investment we need to increase our standard of living. There is some truth to that in that if our taxes were way out of line […]

What’s up with income trusts?

October 12, 2006 Marc Lee 17 comments

Just weeks ago it was Telus that was the biggest ever conversion to an income trust. Now BCE jumps to the top. This mania for income trusts has me wondering how the rash of conversions from corporate entities to income trusts can make good economic sense. Income trusts are clearly a vehicle by which corporate taxes can be avoided, that […]

Taxing in Scandinavia

October 12, 2006 Marc Lee 8 comments

Jim Stanford and Stephen Gordon are keeping me busy today. Another missive from Jim Stanford in the Globe prompted this post from Stephen that leads to some interesting points of comparison between the Nordic model and the Canadian status quo: Welfare states can be competitive Jim Stanford sets aside our shared scepticism about the WEF competitiveness rankings to make two […]

Debating free trade with Korea

October 12, 2006 Marc Lee One comment

The prospect of a free trade deal with South Korea has set off a mini-debate at Stephen Gordon’s Worthwhile Canadian Initiative. Jim Stanford’s column in the Globe prompted this post from Stephen: Mercantilism at the Globe and Mail Courtesy of Jim Stanford: Why the rush to ink more deals? Where free trade is concerned, Canada is getting worse with practice: […]

Norway to cancel illegitimate debt

October 10, 2006 Marc Lee 2 comments

Kudos to Norway, already a leader in foreign aid as a share of GDP, for cancelling the bilateral debts of five poor nations. The amount of money is not huge, so one might ask why it has taken this long â€“ the 2000 Jubilee campaign might have been a better time. From the story below, Norway actually seems pretty innocent […]

For whom the Nobel tolls

October 10, 2006 Marc Lee Leave a comment

The 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics goes to Edmund Phelps. (Technically, this is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, because Nobel did not actually endow a prize in economics back in 1901; the economics prize was added in 1968.) The essay accompanying the prize can be found here. Below I’ve pasted two differing econo-blog […]

Homo sapiens vs homo economicus

October 10, 2006 Marc Lee One comment

“We are not acquisitive automatons conditioned always to follow narrow self-interest.” So says the UK’s The Times in an article on “neuro-economics”, a sub-field of economics that bridges psychology and neurology in an attempt to understand human behaviour. Alas, rather than an empirical approach to human behaviour, the economics profession has been willing to make the huge assumption about human […]

« 1 … 107 108 109 110 »