Is the US in a Recession?
Six leading US economists take on this question in the NYT, and it doesn’t sound good: Â http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/opinion/16recession.html
Read moreTaxing the Rich
Niels Veldhuis of the Fraser Institute takes me to task today in a Letter to the Editor in response to the story, ‘Tax the rich more in Canada, study urges” (Nanaimo Daily News, Dec. 12). He claims that “the story focusing on the report by Canadian Labour Congress economist Andrew Jackson is seriously misleading… the report conveniently ignores the impact […]
Read moreWhat to Do About Sovereign Wealth Funds? Private Equity?
I’m not one of those who are inclined to see sovereign wealth funds as especially dangerous creatures, especially if the alternative is private transnational corporations. I’d like Canada to have more funds of our own, on the model of the Norwegian oil fund, though we do have one large one in the form of the CPP Investment Fund. Still, real […]
Read moreCorporate Taxes: The International Race to the Bottom
A nice commentary by Kristian Weis in the OECD Observer http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/printpage.php/aid/2229/Corporate_tax_warning.html
Read moreThe Dollar and the Manufacturing Jobs Crisis
Jim Stanford and I appeared before the Industry Committee yesterday to speak to the impacts of the high dollar, particularly on manufacturing. Chaired by James Rajotte, the Committee has done some good work on manufacturing and has worked in a relatively constructive and not totally partisan way to develop some useful reports and recommendations. Their report last year did urge […]
Read moreTaxing the Rich
CanWest ran a good summary of my study for the CCPA, “Why Charity Isn’t Enough: The Case for Raising Taxes on Canada’s Rich” released today. (pasted in below) Adding to Marc Lee’s recent work on tax incidence, my piece documents the fact that recent changes to personal income taxes in Canada have compounded rather than offset increased ‘top tail’ driven […]
Read morePoverty, Once Again
I’ve posted below a link to a column in the Guardian by Polly Toynbee re the child poverty target in the UK. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2225566,00.html If you follow the comments below her column, it is striking how the response from the right precisely matches the recent discourse in Canada and comes with the same manifest untruths (eg that relative poverty must always […]
Read moreFor Very Hard Core Richard Freeman Fans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgNCFsXGUa0 Freeman is the US’s leading liberal/left moderately pro union labour economist – best known for his book What Do Unions Do? and for a sustained critical engagement with the deregulated labour market model. Here’s an hour long interview on You Tube, as progecon goes multi media!
Read moreSinclair on Binding Enforcement
Last week, Scott Sinclair released an excellent briefing paper on efforts to attach $5-million penalties to the existing Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). The debate about interprovincial barriers has become a four-ring circus: TILMA, the Ontario-Quebec negotiations, proposals to amend the AIT, and federal threats to invoke the trade and commerce power. In all of these areas, progressives need to […]
Read moreFormer Blair minister on why two-tier HC is a bad idea
Just came across this interesting article relating comments by Frank Dobson, former UK health minister under Blair, on the plan by BC liberals to bring in the private sector in health care. Essentially, he thinks it was a fairly bad idea for Britain and advises BC not to go ahead. The following well represents his conclusion: [T]he changes made to […]
Read moreMoving to the United Steelworkers = CLC Job Opportunity
I have accepted a position in the United Steelworkers’ public policy department and will begin working at its Toronto office in February 2008. The Steelworkers are the largest industrial union in North America and one of the two largest industrial unions in Canada. (Jim works for the other one.) The Steelworkers strongly support the NDP and are trying to build a global […]
Read moreFlaherty’s Made-Up Numbers
The following Canadian Press story is an hilariously accurate report of what happened on Wednesday when the Finance Minister appeared before a Senate committee to pontificate about supposed interprovincial barriers: Flaherty’s remarks came shortly before a senior Finance Department official told a Senate committee that interprovincial trade rules cost the country about one quarter of one per cent of its gross […]
Read moreUnemployment Surge
My take on today’s Labour Force Survey follows: Unemployment Although November’s 42,600 increase in employment is striking, the 25,100 increase in unemployment deserves as much attention. While the number of workers employed grew by 0.3%, the number unemployed grew by 2.4%. Proportionally, unemployment growth in the last month nearly equals employment growth over the past year (2.7%). The higher unemployment […]
Read moreArthur Donner on Interest Rates
From Today’s (December 3) Toronto Star Canada’s economy is on the cusp of some very tough times, and it will require enlightened and timely central bank action to ensure that our economy avoids a recession next year. The crux of Canada’s economic problems is related to the slowing U.S. economy which threatens to fall into a recession, the huge increase […]
Read moreScott Sinclair on the Canada – South Korea Trade Agreement
Scott Sinclair, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Opening Statement, Re Proposed Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement Standing Committee on International Trade. Thursday, November 29, 2007 Thank you for the invitation to appear today and for the opportunity to raise some serious concerns about the proposed Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement and Canada’s current approach to bilateral trade agreements. In the time allotted, […]
Read moreTILMA, Ontario and Quebec: The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance
A significant challenge in the TILMA debate has been that journalists often uncritically accept the premise that alleged inter-provincial barriers are a serious problem. Murray Campbell bucked this trend in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, where he drew the link between TILMA and last week’s Ontario-Quebec initiative. Electronically, his column appears under the headline “Premiers try to fix something that isn’t […]
Read more200,000 Served
This morning, someone viewed Relentlessly Progressive Economics for the 200,000th time. Since reaching 100,000 views in June, our previous website has crept up to nearly 122,000 even though we added nothing to its 600 classic posts. Since being created in June, the current website has added 259 posts (including this one) and been viewed almost 79,000 times. Because the old […]
Read moreRe-Regulating Finance
So argues top Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf in a piece that will warm Jim Stanford’s heart: “What seems increasingly clear is that the combination of generous government guarantees with rampant profit-making in inadequately capitalised institutions is an accident waiting to happen – again and again and again. Either the banking industry should be treated as a utility, with regulated […]
Read moreWhither the US Trade Balance?
TD Economics have released an interesting study on changes in US trade flows as a source of continung strength and offset to their considerbale domestic difficulties. Exports are up, fuelled by the US dollar depreciation and strong global demand. However, exporters to the US, mainly Asian, are holding onto their share of the US market by eating the change in […]
Read moreThe Howe on Interest Rate Cuts
I note that 4 of the 9 economists on the CD Howe’s rather grandiosly titled Monetary Policy Council are supporting a rate cut by the real folks at the Bank of Canada next week, and two of them (including Ed Carmichael from JP Morgan Chase) even call for a half point cut.  http://www.cdhowe.org/display.cfm?page=monetaryReleases The bare majority calling for an unchanged […]
Read moreMore Comments on John Richards, “Tough Love” and Poverty
John Myles (University of Toronto) points out that his research on the decline of poverty among lone mothers, cited by Richards, shows that “soft love†(day care in Quebec) probably has the biggest “social policy effect.†He notes that “tough love†does “workâ€Â in the following sense. Cut other cash benefits to the bone and employment levels among lone mothers […]
Read moreWe May Look Rich, But We Aren’t Rich
Statistics Canada released an interesting but utterly misleading technical paper last week on Canada’s supposed “Reversal of Fortune.” They examined Canada-U.S. comparisons in national income (a concept that is subtly but importantly different from GDP, as I’ll explain in a minute), and decided that Canada has become the star economic performer of the continent. Since 2002, our real national per […]
Read moreJohn Richards on “Tough Love” and Poverty
I was a friend of John Richards many years back, in the late 70s, when we shared a common passion for prairie left populism. He’s a bright guy, and a great writer. What bugs me is that he is still treated as a progressive by the media – based on his very brief history as an NDP Saskatchewan MLA in […]
Read moreUS Recession Watch, or Larry Gets Gloomy
Wake up to the dangers of a deepening crisis By Lawrence Summers Published: November 25 2007 18:51 | Last updated: November 25 2007 18:51 (From Financial Times) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b56079a8-9b71-11dc-8aad-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 Three months ago it was reasonable to expect that the subprime credit crisis would be a financially significant event but not one that would threaten the overall pattern of economic growth. This […]
Read moreThe Ontario-Quebec Deal: TILMA 2.0 ?
Today, Premiers McGuinty and Charest kicked off “free trade” negotiations between their provinces. The key question is whether this process will be a sweeping “race to the bottom” like the BC-Alberta Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) or a focused effort to develop common standards in the few areas where problems may exist. As usual, the rhetoric about “inter-provincial […]
Read moreDeclining Pension Coverage and Rising Inequality
There’s quite an interesting piece on pension coverage in today’s Daily from StatCan. http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/75-001-XIE/2007111/articles/10405high-en.htm The study suggests that some of the statistical series showing sharply declining pension coverage are rather suspect, and they provide a series from tax data showing the proportion of taxfilers with a positive pension adjustment. This is a larger number than contributors to registered pension plans, […]
Read moreIs Canada Facing Acute Skill Shortages?
Given the rapid expansion of the temporary foreign worker program and the frequent complaints of employers that workers are hard to find, one might expect that Government of Canada research would support the view that there are, and will continue to be, pervasive skill shortages. Yet this is not the case. The most recent ten year outlook for the Canadian […]
Read moreThe Australian Election: A Hollow Victory?
Although my knowledge of Australia’s politics is limited, they always interest me. Not only is the country similar to Canada in many ways, but it also had among the most successful labour movements and Labor Parties in the English-speaking world. (The party changed its name from “Labour” to “Labor” in 1912, when it seemed that Australia would adopt American spelling.) […]
Read moreThe Economist on Temporary Foreign Workers
Today’s edition of The Economist magazine includes a good article on temporary foreign workers in Canada. It extensively quotes Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour. The present regime allows employers to import workers from abroad without seriously demonstrating the unavailability of Canadian workers for the job. Once the foreign workers are in Canada, it is easy for […]
Read moreCanada’s Un-Development and the Loonie
The Commons Finance Committee, spurred by my old debating opponent John McCallum, is holding hearings in the next two weeks on the economic and fiscal consequences of the loonie’s unsustainable flight. (I kind of miss crossing swords with John, actually: In the good old days he was the evil but friendly Bay Street banker, justifying federal spending cuts — and […]
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