Jim Webb, Democratic senator-elect from Virginia, writes in the Wall Street Journal: Class Struggle November 15, 2006 The most important-and unfortunately the least debated-issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the […]
Read moreThere is a crisis of poverty and homelessness in Canada. A poll released by the CCPA yesterday found that Canadians across all regions and demographic categories feel that the gap between rich and poor is growing. There are major challenges that require attention, such as fighting climate change. A poll in the Vancouver Sun the other day found that almost […]
Read moreWhat is the economic cost of a boil water advisory for two million people in Vancouver? (Ironically, it has been raining a lot – but households and businesses cannot easily capture it.) How about the cost of restoring power to a hundred thousand homes after a freak storm? Or the cost of sandbagging properties on the coast to prevent a […]
Read moreA good-news story out of Latin America that the Inter-American Development Bank is forgiving the debts of five extremely poor countries, including Bolivia and Nicaragua. Debt relief under the IMF/World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) program only relieved a portion of their debts (and they had to go through major structural adjustment program hoops to get that). The devil […]
Read moreMilton Friedman’s legacy was to completely ignore the issue of inequality – of outcomes, of starting points, and of opportunities. So it is fitting that the CCPA launched a new research project today on inequality in Canada. A good question to ask whenever you hear policy proposals is: what does this do to inequality? The proposals from Harris and Manning […]
Read moreFriedman is dead but continues to wield influence from beyond the grave. Here is a story on Mike Harris and Preston Manning’s commentary that the Harper government is not right-wing enough and laying out their Friedman-esque version of Canada: ”Excessive government taxation and spending limit the economic freedom of individuals and businesses by reducing their incomes and transferring economic decision-making […]
Read moreHi 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 […]
Read moreOn the verge of becoming law, Europe’s REACH legislation on toxic chemicals is a huge step forward. It requires that chemical companies prove their products are safe before introduction in the marketplace, as opposed to the status quo (in the US and Canada, too) where chemicals are innocent until proven guilty, which can take decades. Now it looks like, backed […]
Read moreFirst, a clever arrangement of quotes on monetarism from the New School, starting with Friedman’s intellectual roots, followed by some critics and defences: “[Recessions] are essentially a result of a supply of money that is too small, and to that extent are monetary phenomena…Complaints about excessive habits of saving are in such circumstances calculated to confuse the mind of the […]
Read morehttp://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, based mainly on studies of the 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 […]
Read moreThis article in the Vancouver Sun features a new report saying that we are not near “peak oil”: In sharp contrast to popular doomsday scenarios in which an oil supply crash triggers a global economic crisis, a U.S. energy think tank says the world has almost four times the oil supply envisioned by the pessimists. Cambridge Energy Research Associates … […]
Read moreThe bureaucrats at International Trade Canada seem to think that their job is to negotiate “free trade” deals with anyone who is willing to sit at the table opposite us. For years they have salivated at the idea of a Canada-EU trade agreement; they were among the first to hop on the WTO’s Doha Round bandwagon; and they were perhaps […]
Read moreWhen 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. But I visited one once.) That’s how I feel about the Department of Foreign Affairs and […]
Read moreWhaddya 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 […]
Read moreThe Fraser is on a roll. After taking some time settling into the big chair, new Executive Director Mark Mullins has unleashed a torrent of new releases in the past couple months. Few of these are “new” in the sense of original material, mostly they are updates of previous reports with spanky new ISBN numbers. Let’s look at a couple. […]
Read moreSome fascinating stuff on Economist’s View today. Below are two reposted articles on how notions of equity are deeply rooted in our brains. We may be smarter monkeys but the parallels are all too clear. Also check out this post on neoclassical indoctrination at the Chicago School. Thoma’s condensed version is here and the full pdf from In These Times […]
Read moreStatistics Canada’s Human Activity and the Environment 2006 report (summary from the Daily here and full report here) looks at transportation. The term “externality” is not stated but economists will see it between the lines. An interesting finding in the report is that while transportation has been contributing to higher greenhouse gas emissions, regular air pollution from transportation has declined […]
Read moreThis is not good. But doing something about it (i.e. internalizing the externality) is too offensive to corporate Canada – and apparently from the article, corporate everywhere. Call it “smart regulation” or “risk management”, the way our regulatory system is set up means that the bodies have to pile up for the sake of sufficient scientific evidence before we regulate […]
Read moreThanks to Scott Sinclair for bringing a couple items to my attention. Below are two recent articles from the trade journal, Inside US Trade, Canada Moves Toward Ending Wheat Monopoly As Sought By U.S., and Canada Changes Drug Rules To Meet U.S. Demand On Data Exclusivity. It is interesting that capitulation to the US is not limited to softwood lumber. […]
Read moreA few months back, the BC government launched a “conversation on health care” that will last almost two years and will feature forums around the province engaging people on what they would like their public health care system to be. Having such discussions should be seen as a part of a health democracy, even though we have had numerous tomes […]
Read moreThis 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. He has been a strong opponent of minimum […]
Read moreWe 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 […]
Read moreThe dust has now settled on the Tories’ decision to tax income trusts. The government deserves credit for dealing with this issue even though they had promised to do otherwise. While there is some fury on Bay Street and among some retirees, the reality is that the government and corporate Canada were playing a game of chicken, and at some […]
Read moreMonday’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 […]
Read moreThe Conservatives are at it again. As reported in the Globe and Mail on October 31, federal Finance Minister Flaherty is reviving and polishing-up the Conservative Party’s ill-conceived election proposal to end taxation of individual capital gains if the proceeds are re-invested. Light taxation of capital gains compared to wages is undoubtedly a gift to the rich. In the 2003 […]
Read morehttp://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 […]
Read moreIn 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 […]
Read moreOne more for the softwood file: a commentary by Gordon Gibson from the Globe last week. Gibson regularly flies the flag of the ultra-right wing Fraser Institute but I generally find him to be an interesting commentator on many issues, even when I disagree with him. Perhaps it is because he has real life experience in politics, unlike the ideological […]
Read moreSFU economist Jon Kesselman makes the links between rising homelessness and BC’s abysmal welfare rates in this commentary from the Vancouver Sun: A whole $6! Every day! Imagine that you wake up each morning with six dollars burning a hole in your pocket. Let’s see: How might you spend your money? Maybe contemplate breakfast, a midday meal and supper […]
Read moreIt’s amazing how much can be explained by supply and demand. The big crisis in waiting lists in recent years has been concentrated in a few procedures, mostly knee and hip replacements and cataracts. These surgeries have been made much more widely available in recent years due to the advent of relatively non-invasive day surgeries in place of long hospital […]
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