Vale, the company against which my union has been on strike since July 2009, released its first-quarter earnings this evening. The release deflates Vale’s rationale for demanding labour concessions and confirms that the strike is hurting its bottom line. The company wants to eliminate defined-benefit pensions for new employees and drastically reduce the bonus paid to workers when nickel prices […]
Read moreThe National Institute on Retirement Security in the U.S. produces some really excellent reports which should be more widely read, and not just on pensions or retirement income. Last week they published a good report, Out of Balance?  comparing public and private sector compensation over the past 20 years, written by two professors at the University of Wisconsin. This report […]
Read moreLast week’s announcement by GM that is has fully repaid the loans it received from the U.S., Canadian, and Ontario governments (years ahead of schedule, and with interest) was greeted in most circles as another positive sign of the auto industry’s modest recovery. Since the dark days of last June (when Chrysler was shut down entirely), the Canadian auto assembly […]
Read moreOn Friday evening, I was in Kingston listening to a speech by western Canada’s best Premier. The following morning, I awoke to discover a far less coherent op-ed by the other three western Premiers on The Globe and Mail’s website. They were trumpeting Friday’s unveiling of the New West Partnership. As the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour and the Jurist have […]
Read moreIn February, Canada experienced its slowest economic growth since October 2009. Of course, no one expected the initial rapid rebound out of recession to continue forever. Monthly growth of 0.3% corresponds to annual growth of 3.7%, which is quite strong by historical standards and stronger than the 3.2% US growth estimated this morning for the first quarter. Yesterday, Statistics Canada reported […]
Read moreThe Canadian Bankers Association are deeply opposed to meddling with a pension system which they say is working just fine. Which is understandable, albeit self-serving, given their dominance of the high fee mutual fund industry and the significant profits earned on spreads between low interest GICs and bank lending. The banks do just fine out of leaving individuals without decent […]
Read moreA substantially revised version of my earlier blog post http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2010/03/01/beware-the-canadian-fiscal-model has been published as a Global Labour Column. It attempts to rebut Paul Martin’s prosletyzing in Europe on the virtues of his fiscal restraint program in the nid to late 1990s. http://column.global-labour-university.org/2010/01/beware-canadian-austerity-model.html
Read moreThe CCPA released a report of mine, critiquing federal regulatory policy. Called Canada’s Regulatory Obstacle Course, the brief looks at the latest development in federal deregulation, the Cabinet Directive on Streamlining Regulation (CDSR, announced in the 2007 budget), but situates it in the context of ongoing deregulation that has been underway since the 1980s. The CDSR is pernicious because it […]
Read moreThe Greek crisis has prompted numerous commentators to remark on the dangers of a monetary union which has no common fiscal policy. From the perspective of euro members, the external value of the euro is threatened by large deficits and growing public debt in the so-called PIIG countries, notably Greece and Portugal. There is no effective mechanism in place to […]
Read moreG20 finance ministers released a communique last week, as did G20 labour and employment ministers. These are straws in the wind which tell us what is likely to take place at the June Toronto G20 summit. Not to put too fine a point on it, panic about the prospects for global capitalism has been supplanted by growing complacency. The meeting […]
Read moreThe real world economic review is still accepting votes from the public for the “Revere Award for Economics”. This is to be awarded to the three economists “who first and most clearly anticipated and gave public warning of the Global Financial Collapse and whose work is most likely to prevent another GFC in the future”. This is a follow up to […]
Read moreYou know that you are doing something right when the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) starts making up new pejorative terms. Last Friday’s Toronto Sun included the following op-ed on the Taxers (with a capital “T”): Calls for new and higher taxes are coming from the usual tax-hike proponents (AKA Taxers); public sector unions, lobby groups like the Canadian Centre for […]
Read moreMark Carney saw a bogeyman on Tuesday morning. He was spooked into removing his conditional commitment to hold interest rates, which would otherwise have expired at the end of June. By signalling that it might raise interest rates ahead of schedule, the central bank drove the Canadian dollar from 98 US cents on Monday to 100 US cents on Tuesday. […]
Read moreI have a short Climate Justice publication out for Earth Day today, looking at the breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions by income quintile in BC, then asking what is fair when it comes to mitigation policies. I draw on some fairness criteria from the international literature on fair emission reductions, and test out two stylized alternatives to meet a one-third […]
Read moreThis morning, Statistics Canada released Employment Insurance (EI) figures for February. These figures show slightly more recipients nationally, but somewhat fewer recipients among provinces. Statistics Canada confirms that this apparent discrepancy reflects the fact that each province is seasonally adjusted separately from the national total. When seasonal adjustment is tipping the balance between an increase and a decrease, one must […]
Read moreAs promised, here’s my fourth post inspired by the recent Fraser Institute report on taxes paid by Canadian families. I can’t stand seeing people fall simple numbers tricks. And while I realize that I don’t have the time to argue with everyone who is wrong on the Internet, I try to make it a point to call attention to questionable […]
Read moreA new book that looks interesting http://www.columbia.edu/~ma820/The%20New%20Press/Book%20reviews.pdf
Read moreWhen confronted with a document as muddled as yesterday’s Canadian Consumer Tax Index, a major challenge is figuring out where to begin in critiquing it. Indeed, this one Fraser Institute report supplied enough fodder for three separate posts today by Iglika (and she is promising a fourth!) I think that the report’s worst flaws are overstating average taxes and ignoring […]
Read moreThis morning Oxfam launched their “Robin Hood” (financial transactions) tax campaign in Canada with a press conference in Ottawa and the launch of their website.  Together with Oxfam officials, I spoke in favour of the tax from an economics perspective and Dale Marshall from the David Suzuki Foundation talked about how revenue raised from it should be used to help […]
Read moreA recently released Fraser Institute report claims that the tax bill of the average Canadian family grew by a whopping 1,624% since 1961. This is an enormous number, designed to appeal to our sensationalism-hungry media, but it does not provide a meaningful comparison of today’s average tax bill and the tax bill our parents’ and grandparents’ generations faced fifty years […]
Read moreThe Fraser Institute and the CCPA do not typically see eye to eye, but they seem to agree that personal income taxes take up a relatively small fraction of the average tax bill — about 13 – 14%. According to the Fraser Institute’s recent report on the average Canadian family’s tax bill, the average family earned $69,175 in 2009 and […]
Read moreIt’s tax season and people are looking more closely at their incomes and the amount of taxes they pay. The Fraser Institute released their annual Consumer Tax Index report yesterday, claiming that the total tax bill of the average Canadian family now takes up 41.7% of their income. This seems like a big number, which they use to suggest that […]
Read moreThis blog’s readers will not be surprised at me questioning Neil Reynolds (although my last post on him was somewhat complimentary.) However, his latest Globe and Mail column was organized around an especially odd claim: The average Canadian household, for example, spends $14,800 (Canadian) a year on personal income taxes, the most expensive purchase – 20 per cent of income […]
Read morehttp://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/download/promoting.pdf This is quite an interesting and very timely paper from the ILO International Institute for Labour Studies, squarely directed to next week’s meeting of G20 labour ministers. As pressures to cut budget deficits intensify, it argues that job-centered spending measures can in fact reinforce fiscal sustainability while boosting employment. Austerity measures which raise unemployment today can lead to the […]
Read moreThere was some media coverage in the FT and the Guardian on a recent conference on this theme at King’s College, Cambridge, showcasing a new economic institute. A number of videos of presentations can be found here http://ineteconomics.org/ This venture is funded by Soros and includes many well-known progressive economists such as Stiglitz, Akerloff etc. I gather one point of […]
Read moreI have just returned from Calgary and the pension forum organized by Jack Mintz through the University of Calgary. Mintz was, of course, the author of a recent research report to the federal and provincial finance ministers which concluded that the status quo was basically working well, except for a modest proportion of middle income earners who may not be […]
Read moreMy post on the night after Ontario’s budget hit the key features. However, the budget had a couple of other interesting aspects from a federal-provincial perspective. Childcare Funding Some progressive voices trumpeted the provincial budget’s allocation of $63.5 million annually to replace discontinued federal funding for childcare spaces. While the Ontario government finally made the right decision on this file, […]
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Read moreA recent visit by some Regina friends reminded me how affordable public automobile insurance is. They insure two cars, one of which is newer than my car, for about the same rate as my one vehicle in Toronto. My first car, which I registered with Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI), cost about $500 per year. My sense is that an under-25 male would have […]
Read moreThis morning, Statistics Canada provided another piece of evidence that the job market is not recovering nearly as rapidly as Gross Domestic Product. In March, total employment rose by 17,900, but full-time employment was actually down by 14,200. This divergence reflected 32,200 more part-time positions. The modest increase in total employment kept pace with Canada’s growing labour force, but barely […]
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