PM Harper likes to say that it will be costly to fight climate change, but he conveniently ignores the costs that climate change itself is reaping (or has the potential to reap). A year-end report from Environment Canada points at some of the current financial costs associated with climate change. The top story is the shrinking arctic ice cap, and […]
Read moreEarlier today, the Prime Minister announced that four by-elections will be held on March 17. Earlier this week, a most fascinating controversy emerged in one of the affected ridings: Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River (northern Saskatchewan). David Orchard, the Saskatchewan-based activist whose grassroots organization helped Dion win the Liberal leadership, has declared his candidacy for the Liberal nomination. However, Ralph Goodale is pushing […]
Read moreThe following Paul Krugman column confirms my general thoughts about American politics: At one extreme, Barack Obama insists that the problem with America is that our politics are so “bitter and partisan,” and insists that he can get things done by ushering in a “different kind of politics.” At the opposite extreme, John Edwards blames the power of the wealthy […]
Read moreJared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute on just released US data which show a rather starting further increase in US income inequality – apparently the top 1% of families there now get 19% of all after tax income and average over $1 Million apiece. Looks like a blog to monitor, for those who want to follow dismal and other […]
Read moreWhere is Finance Minister Flaherty? by Doug Peters and Arthur Donner. (from today’s Toronto Star) (Doug Peters is the former Chief Economist of The Toronto-Dominion Bank and was Secretary of State (Finance) from 1993 to 1997. Arthur Donner, a Toronto economic consultant, began his career as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of NewYork.) “The credit problems […]
Read moreAn open letter to Susan Riley (Ottawa Citizen) Dear Susan I always enjoy your columns, but feel compelled to modestly take issue with yesterday’s highly critical piece on Layton and the NDP. http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=380c76cc-f1cc-4aa8-84d7-4aadebd0ec1f  Yes, Layton is sometimes unduly macho combative and, yes, the frequent attacks on the Liberals do sometimes grate, especially if they allow Harper to get off […]
Read moreProgressive Economics Forum members are invited to nominate individuals for the first John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics. The Prize will be awarded at the June 2008 Canadian Economics Association meetings and will be accompanied by a keynote lecture by the winner. Nominations will close January 31, 2008. Please send your nominations to PEF Chair, Marc Lee, at marc [at] […]
Read moreToday’s Consumer Price Index numbers indicate that, while gasoline prices and mortgage-interest costs edged-up overall inflation in November, core inflation declined again. When it fell last month, some commentators responded that “one month does not make a trend.” However, as Statistics Canada itself noted, a fairly clear trend has emerged: However, the Bank of Canada’s core index, used to monitor […]
Read moreSix 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 more“It is often harder to move goods and services across provincial boundaries than across our international borders” October 2007 Speech from the Throne As if Erin Weir and I have not already beat this one into submission, another reminder from today’s Globe and Mail that is it NOT easier to trade across the Canada-US border. The main story draws on […]
Read moreNiels 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 moreI’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 moreA nice commentary by Kristian Weis in the OECD Observer http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/printpage.php/aid/2229/Corporate_tax_warning.html
Read moreEarly this morning I finished The Road and cannot resist a plug. A friend of mine who shares a concern for the end of humanity brought it to my attention. I picked up a copy intending to read it over the holidays, but before I knew it I was 50 pages in and could not put it down. Like other […]
Read moreJim 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 moreIf only the news could be this good every week: Serial killer Robert Pickton gets 25 years. Disgraced tycoon Conrad Black gets 6.5 years. Former President of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, gets six years for abuse of power (with more charges pending). Karlheinz Shreiber tells of dirty dealings with the Mulroney government. The Mayor of Ottawa is charged with fraud. And […]
Read moreCanWest 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 moreI’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 morehttp://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 moreCanada’s Environment Minister, John Baird, is in Bali doing his best to undermine any progress towards a new pact on climate change. One of his arguments is that everyone needs to be on board, especially the US and China, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases. However, it is worth thinking about who is responsible for the current problem before […]
Read moreFrom the Latin Americanist: Bank of the South launched Representatives of seven South American countries met on Sunday to formally launch the Bank of the South– a new regional development bank. In a ceremony in Buenos Aires, the bank was established with an initial capital of $7 billion and with the goal of acting as a viable alternative to other […]
Read moreWhat I find so remarkable about Conrad Black’s sentencing to six-and-a-half years in the big house is that none of it needed to happen. Black essentially fell victim to his own hubris: he had a fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and could easily have paid himself for the lavish lifestyle he and Babs thought they deserved. But […]
Read moreA theme I’ve posted on many times before but perhaps worth repeating once again, thanks to this post: How Laissez Faire was Adam Smith?Greg Whiteside writes in The Condo Metropolis Blog (7 December) here: “ADAM SMITH MUST BE ROLLING OVER IN HIS GRAVE RIGHT NOW†“Arguably the father of modern economics, Adam Smith was a proponent of a Laissez-Faire style […]
Read moreLast 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 moreJust 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 moreI 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 moreAs I mused yesterday about Facebook’s lack of respect for privacy in a bid to make billions, along comes a story putting Facebook’s valuation at $15 billion. But I’m not convinced Facebook is poised to take over the world just yet. Myspace once sat on top of the social networking world, and I’m wondering whether Facebook’s greedy compulsion to disregard […]
Read moreThe 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 moreI’ve been on Facebook for almost a year now and have a love-hate relationship with it. For connecting me with old friends, feeling the daily pulse of people I know through status updates, and being a means of coordinating an event or party, thank you Facebook. But I am increasingly disturbed by the callous attitude taken by Facebook with regard […]
Read moreMy 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 […]
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