A notice in my mailbox last week told me that smart meters are going to be installed in my neighbourhood. I’ll admit that the geek in me would like to see real-time information about my energy usage, but as an economist I’m interested in costs and benefits of the program. So far we have seen lots of bold claims in […]
Read moreIn Saskatchewan’s provincial election campaign, the incumbent Saskatchewan Party is promising a scholarship of up to $500 per year for new high-school graduates who undertake post-secondary studies. It claims that this scholarship is worth “THREE TIMES†the annual increase in university tuition fees, which has averaged $146.50 over the past four years. What the Sask Party seems to miss is […]
Read moreFurther to our recent discussions on this blog about the role of private finance and credit in our present crisis, we present a guest contribution from Ralph Musgrave, an economist in the U.K. National debts have risen recently, which has caused excessive and unnecessary consternation. The consternation is particularly unnecessary for countries which issue their own currency, and these are the […]
Read moreI rarely give thanks for Neil Reynolds, but today’s column is a must-read. The point is that taxing large inheritances should appeal not only to those of us concerned about highly unequal outcomes, but also to those simply concerned about equality of opportunity. It may or may not be possible to justify inequalities based on differences in effort, skill, intelligence, etc. […]
Read moreIt’s often said that there aren’t enough rich people in Canada to make a real difference to fiscal policy and, in consequence, the rest of us. Yesterday Canadian Business’s annual special edition devoted to Canada’s richest 100 people hit the stands, where it will stay until Christmas. As a regular contributor I was invited to submit a column. I chose […]
Read moreIn search of some background on the  “Occupy Wall Street†movement, I recently caught up with Rick Wolff. He is a progressive economist and rising alternative  media celeb in NYC (you can hear  his entertaining weekly radio discussion of economic news at http://rdwolff.com/). He (with others like Stiglitz) among other spoke to the Occupy Wall Street teach-in on Tuesday. Below […]
Read moreA common refrain among political pundits has been that all of Ontario’s election platforms are unrealistic given a deteriorating economic outlook. Rather than bemoaning this alleged lack of realism, we should evaluate how each party’s platform would fare in a downturn. The NDP platform is built on the fiscal framework set out in the 2011 provincial budget. The Liberal and […]
Read moreIn response to a pretty moderate Ontario NDP platform, today’s lead Globe and Mail editorial goes off the rails on a crazy train: “disastrous,†“protectionism run amok,†“a fantasy,†“a radical platform that would move Ontario toward a command economy†and “dangerous provincialism.†It breathlessly reports that “Ms. Horwath did not rule out nationalization of the auto insurance industry†and […]
Read moreConservative MP Russ Hiebert tabled his private member bill in the Commons yesterday, calling for changes to the Income Tax Act to require unions (which are income-tax-exempt under the Act … duh! since they are, after all, non-profit organizations) to publicly disclose their financial statements. Here are a few quick points that came to mind in thinking about this odd item. […]
Read moreWell, you’ve heard that kind of line from labour and the left, but now the IMF seems to have been pretty much won over to the argument that global supply chains and technological change are killing more good jobs than they create. In a distinctly gloomy Box starting on p.41 in the latest World Economic Outlook “Slow Recovery to Nowhere?”, […]
Read moreThe time since 2008 has been a crucial historical moment for progressive economists to pull back the green curtain that surrounds the operation of the for-profit banking system, and expose that system for what it is: a government-protected, government-subsidized license to print money. The problem is, as soon as you start saying things like that, people conclude you are some kind […]
Read moreThanks to Arthur Donner’s Economic Comment for bringing this to my attention. The official line we hear everyday is that the Canadian fundamentals are great, while other countries are in deep trouble because they are spending beyond their means and borrowing too much from the rest of the world. Yet IMF projections show that Canada’s Balance of Payments deficit on […]
Read moreIn August, I blogged about controversy surrounding Concordia University’s Board of Governors. A report co-authored by Bernard J. Shapiro (Canada’s first Ethics Commissioner) had concluded that an unofficial, inner circle of Board members had been micromanaging some of the university’s day-to-day operations, and undermining the President. This had apparently prompted the resignation of the previous two Presidents before the midway points of their respective terms in office. It […]
Read moreNewly-released data indicate that student debt is rising amongst new physicians in Canada. In 2010, 23 percent of medical residents reported having more than $120,000 in education-related debt upon completion of their residency training (as compared with just 17 percent in 2007). (Note: across Canada, average tuition fees for medical students amount to just over $10,000 a year.) This appears to have important implications for Canada’s health […]
Read moreToday’s GDP numbers (a sprightly gain of 0.3% at basic prices in July) ensure that there will not be a so-called “technical recession” in Canada — at least, not yet. Economists have a perverted definition of “recession”, whereby it’s considered official only if real GDP declines 2 quarters in a row. That’s hilariously arbitrary. And the flip side of the […]
Read moreThe advanced economies, including Canada, risk falling back into recession because of government spending cuts and a looming financial crisis. The Canadian Labour Congress has been calling for our federal government and the G20 governments to respond by putting jobs first. This paper summarizes the economic situation as of the end of September, 2011 and outlines what needs to be […]
Read moreThat’s the only way out of the deepening crisis of the advanced economies, according to FT economics editor Martin Wolf in his column today. “It is the policy that dare not speak its name: the printing press. The time has come to employ this nuclear option on a grand scale. The alternative is likely to be a lost decade. The […]
Read moreWe all know that the wages and compensation individuals receive in private competitive markets reflects their productivity, unless pesky unions and government regulations get in the way–because Economics 101 (and Michael Hlinka) have told us so.  Corporate CEOs are worth every penny their “independent compensation committees” award in compensation and stock options them because they are “creating value” and hedge fund operators are […]
Read morePrime Minister Stephen Harper, who prides himself on being an economist, has characterized his government’s fiscal policy as “expansionary.†If he really thinks the simple fact of running a budget deficit is “expansionaryâ€, he should repeat Economics 101. The correct way to look at the question of whether fiscal policy is expansionary or contractionary is not to look at the […]
Read moreIn an earlier post, I noted that falling real wages as indicated by July and August data from the Labour Force Survey which showed increases of just 1.4% in nominal hourly wages over the past year signalled trouble ahead: “If this trend continues, it is likely to further undermine a weak recovery, negatively impacting upon consumer spending and perhaps serving […]
Read moreHugh Mackenzie of the CCPA has prepared a comprehensive comparison of the election platforms of the three major parties in Ontario’s election. It reveals an enormous fiscal “hole” in the Conservative platform, that will inevitably result in dramatic reductions in public spending if that party wins the October 6 election. The report, released yesterday, added up the value of the […]
Read moreThe meeting of G20 Labour Ministers in Paris on September 26-27, held in advance of the November G20 Summit in Cannes, reached some conclusions which go some (extremely modest) way toward living up to prior G20 commitments in London and Pittsburgh to promote quality jobs and a more progressive labour market model as part of a long-term solution to the […]
Read moreToday CCPA released a new Climate Justice Project report, Fighting Energy Poverty in the Transition to Zero-Emission Housing: A Framework for BC, by yours truly, Eugene Kung (a lawyer with the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre and a steering committee member of the CJP) and Jason Owen (who worked on this project as a student at UBC, now with the City of Surrey). The full report as […]
Read moreToday’s Globe and Mail (page B15) mentions the PEF in a story on the corporate sector’s record-breaking accumulation of cash, a subject about which we have often blogged. Corporate Canada has tripled its cash stash in each of the last two decades. The following Statistics Canada figures are “Canadian currency and deposits†plus “Foreign currency and deposits†for private non-financial […]
Read moreToday’s Ottawa Citizen (page A15) features the following op-ed on Ontario corporate taxes. I have added links to references. I recently discussed this issue on TV Ontario: Corporate Taxes are Low Enough By Erin Weir, Ottawa Citizen, September 27, 2011 Corporate taxes are a major dividing line in Ontario’s election campaign. Liberals and Conservatives would slash the provincial general corporate […]
Read moreToday, the Ontario NDP presented its comprehensive platform costing, including all policies announced during the election campaign. A popular theme among commentators has been that platform costings are unrealistic given the deteriorating economic outlook. As Andrea Horwath noted, her platform includes significant contingency funds. It is also cautiously built on the fiscal framework set out in the 2011 provincial budget. […]
Read moreOn Wednesday, William Watson wrote a comment piece in the Financial Post in which he was critical of Armine Yalnizyan’s recent essay on inequality. In his piece, Mr. Watson alleges that Armine “is guilty of fantastical reminiscence,” particularly with respect to her take on post-secondary education (PSE). Among other things, Mr. Watson points to the fact that PSE enrolment has […]
Read moreThere’s an interesting new research report from Statistics Canada, by Ping Ching Winnie Chan, Rene Morissette, and Marc Frenette, profiling the workers who were displaced in the recent recession, and comparing the outcomes to previous recessions in earlier decades (the downturns of the early 1980s and 1990s). “Workers Laid Off During the Last Three Recessions,” part of StatsCan’s Analytical Studies […]
Read moreOver at the Globe and Mail Economy Lab our friend Stephen Gordon argues that there are only limited revenues to be gained by taxing the rich. He plays around with some back of the envelope calculations based on CRA data on the incomes of those making more than $500,000 – accurately enough, I think -Â and concludes that each percentage […]
Read moreThe IMF World Economic Outlook notes that the desired process of rebalancing global demand from countries with large trade deficits (notably the US) to countries with large trade surpluses (notably China) is not going very well. Relatedly, it points out just how difficult it is for increased demand in developing economies to offset stagnant or falling demand in the much […]
Read more