OK, not the “law of one price” you learned in undergrad trade theory. I’m talking about plain old prices at the cashier. It has long bugged me that the price listed on a sales tag is not the same as the money that comes out of our wallets to complete the transaction. Most of the time it is provincial and […]
Read moreWith credit to Edward Sussex who sends this summary ” This UNDP-IPC paper concludes that the real per capita income of the vast majority or the first eighty per cent of any nation (vast majority income – VMIpc), is of particular interest in comparing the income levels and income inequality of countries. It finds that average income measures are not […]
Read moreIn policy terms I have been concerned about regressive impacts of a carbon tax, and was pleased to see that BC’s carbon tax is being partly recycled into refundable tax credits for low-income families. But the $10 per tonne carbon tax starting in July is rather small (2.4 cents per litre), and in spite of a tripling of the rate […]
Read moreWhen we think about renewable energy most of us imagine solar panels and wind mills. Few of us think about trees and crops. But these latter items are getting mainstreamed as new sources of energy – burning them for electricity generation and converting them into liquid fuels – with no small amount of controversy attached. The premise of bioenergy in […]
Read morePremier McGuinty and other commentators like to emphasize that federal revenues from Ontario exceed federal spending in Ontario by about $20 billion annually. Although this total partly reflects the overall federal surplus and federal spending outside Canada, it is usually presented as a transfer of expenditure from Ontario to other provinces. A standard story is that, back in the days […]
Read moreThe lead editorial in today’s Toronto Star essentially restates McGuinty’s case more coherently than yesterday’s reports. The supposed problem identified is that, if Ontario becomes a “have-not” province, it would continue to pay more into Equalization than it would get out. This scenario is not nearly as strange as The Star makes out. Equalization has always been funded by all […]
Read moreFor a while, the Ontario Premier was looking quite reasonable in his dispute with the federal government. As Jim Flaherty charged that Ontario’s economic woes reflected a lack of provincial corporate tax cuts, Dalton McGuinty correctly responded that a lower rate of tax on profits would entail a large fiscal cost and provide little assistance to Ontario’s currently unprofitable manufacturing […]
Read moreMy take on today’s Labour Force Survey follows: Rising Unemployment For a third consecutive month, more Canadians entered the labour market than found jobs, pushing the number of unemployed workers above 1.1 million for the first time since November 2006. In April, all of the modest increase in employment was self-employment. One must ask whether Canadians are becoming self-employed voluntarily […]
Read moreMargaret Wente, circa August 2005: The other day I stuck the nozzle in the tank of my dainty little SUV and paid for my first $50 fill. It was a shock, but I knew it was coming, and I know it’s going to get worse. … Theoretically, I know my car dependency is bad (and my SUV dependency is even […]
Read moreToday’s excellent Globe Report on Business story on Potash Corp CEO William Doyle http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080508.wrpotash08/BNStory/energy/home scarcely requires additional commentary. But here goes – Apparently, his stock options are now worth $600 Million, up from $7 Million at the end of 2003. This huge windfall reflects soaring potash prices, up from $100 to $600 per tonne over more or less the same […]
Read more … is homes. Check out this astonishing admission, as reported by CBC: St. Paul’s in downtown Vancouver, one out of every four beds is being used to treat the homeless, drug addicts and the mentally ill, said [Lorna Howes, the director of acute and community mental health for Vancouver with the Vancouver Coastal Health authority]. We are spending money on […]
Read more“Post-secondary education plays an important role in ensuring there are highly trained people to fill the many positions that will be left vacant by the wave of retiring baby boomers,†says BC Minister of Advanced Education Murray Coell in a news release announcing the creation of a new doctoral degree program (in gerontology) at Simon Fraser University. The release ends […]
Read moreIn another interesting presentation on research in progress at the StatsCan conference, David Green and Pierre Brochu report that increases in minimum wages in Canada are associated with significantly longer job tenure for less educated, low job tenure workers – at least for the short-term period following the minimum wage increase. One possible implication is that employers benefit from higher […]
Read moreBrian Murply and Paul Roberts from StatsCan presented an interesting and potentially very useful and important study to this week’s StatsCan Socio-Economic performance. The effective personal income tax rate is typically computed – across various data sources – as total taxes paid as a ratio of total or taxable personal income. This ratio of two overall averages is accurate enough […]
Read moreAlthough it was probably overshadowed by the census release, Ralph Goodale appeared to jump on Marc’s deficit bandwagon last week. Some paragraphs in the early portion of his National Post op-ed seemed like they belonged on this blog: He [Harper] has taken this nation to the brink of a deficit – the first in more than a decade. And it’s […]
Read moreBrowsing through the letters to the editor in the two big Vancouver dailies this morning, I came across a letter from BC Premier Gordon Campbell responding to the recent Census findings of declining median incomes for workers in this province. The letter was published in both newspapers: a longer version under “Purchasing power and globalization” in the Vancouver Sun and […]
Read moreThere is an interesting opinion piece in The Tyee this morning, aptly named Dying for the Rich, which points out the links between inequality and life expectancy. The article’s author, Crawford Kilian, should be praised for bringing up an angle that was virtually ignored by media commentators in their coverage of the recent Census findings of growing inequality, even by […]
Read moreLast December I testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging, making the point that public health care need not fear an aging population. Today, I was invited back again to comment on their draft interim report and in particular the issue of how to address the fact that some provinces have a larger share of seniors than others, and […]
Read moreThe annual trade union statement to the G-8 was posted today at-Â Â http://www.tuac.org/e-docs/00/00/02/3F/document_news.phtml I think its a pretty good analysis of the economic conjuncture, and the needed policy response. The Executive Summary is pasted below: 1. The crucial issues on the G8 Summit agenda — climate change, development and Africa — remain central for the Global Labour movement which […]
Read moreIn contrast to last week’s Census release highlighting stagnant individual earnings, today’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) release trumpets rising family income. The political right critiqued coverage of last week’s release for emphasizing individual rather than family income and for not capturing the tax-and-transfer system’s equalizing effects. In particular, the Prime Minister indicated that his government had cut […]
Read moreA salvo from our very own Nick Falvo in today’s Toronto Star: Outrageous but predictable violence Nick Falvo The murder trial of a group of Canadian Forces reservists accused of beating a homeless man to death has grabbed many a headline. But as disturbing as it has been for most of us to read about the trial, the incident could […]
Read moreI just got back from a week in New York City with my wife, in which, among other things, we went to see five Broadway shows (I know the best way to get cheap tickets now). It was during the intermission to Rent that it finally hit me that something must be done about a fundamental injustice in our society. […]
Read moreA great tragedy for the political left has been that, although we represent most of the population’s economic interests, we have only occasionally garnered majority support in the electoral arena. The US Democratic primaries have recently become focussed on the main segment of the American population that has often voted Republican even though its economic interests would be better served […]
Read moreI was recently appointed to the National Statistics Advisory Council and, in that capacity, was present on Thursday and Friday at the last Council meeting for which Ivan Fellegi will hold the post of Chief Statistician. Having served more than 20 years in that post, Fellegi is something of a legend in a town where the typical Deputy Minister serves […]
Read moreIn his latest Maclean’s column, Paul Wells suggests that the Prime Minister’s apparent anger toward various public officials and agencies reflects not his personality, but his ideological crusade against government. Of course, as Wells observes, the Canadian state was greatly diminished during the years preceding Harper’s government. However, Harper undoubtedly aims to continue the trend and is on record arguing […]
Read moreWhat is going on out in Canada’s wild and woolly financial system? First, the Bank of Canada convinces the Department of Finance and the Conservatives that it “needs” expanded powers to purchase a broader range of securities (see my earlier post for why their arguments are not very convincing). And then, earlier this week, a small notice on my Scotiabank […]
Read moreThink back to last October-November. The Canadian dollar went psycho for a few days — rising as high as $1.10. Then it came back down to mere parity with the greenback (leaving us a mere 25% over fair value, measured by PPP). Some time after that, then-Governor Dodge indicated in Senate testimony (on December 6) that he was “relieved” by […]
Read moreMarc recently trumpeted this blog for being ahead of the public debate on several economic issues. However, we have perhaps been slightly behind the curve in commenting on yesterday’s release of income statistics from the 2006 Census. It indicated that, from 1980 through 2005, the median income among full-time Canadian workers remained flat. The median income of the top fifth rose by […]
Read moreWhat follows are my speaking notes for a recent McMaster Labour Studies/CAW educational event – a fair bit of it condensed from some of my earlier pieces but this update may be of interest…. I will talk about our two economies in two senses, growing class divisions, the growing gap between workers and the corporate elite and growing regional/sectoral divisions […]
Read moreFinancial market speculation masquerading as investment is driving me crazy. The business press fails to understand the distinction between buying an asset the delivers a stream of income in the future (a dividend) and buying an asset because of anticipated higher resale price in the future (a capital gain). It is a fundamental difference, and while I have little objection […]
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