My recent paper that found the top 1% of earners actually pay slightly lower tax rates than the bottom 10%, and much less than those in the middle- to upper-middle range, seems to have touched a nerve with my proposal that the rich actually pay more in taxes. For the defenseless and concerned wealthy out there, worry not, because Randall […]
Read moreDown in Seattle, at the Sightline Institute, Clark Williams-Derry chews on those bones of cap-and-trade and carbon tax options. Clark gets it that the Devil is in the details when it comes to design of such instruments to avoid adverse distributional impacts. Carbon Taxes: The Good and The Bad Last week’s Washington Post carried an interesting op-ed that argued for […]
Read moreA dispatch from PEF member (and essay contest winner!) Nick Falvo in Toronto: Just last week, the United Way of Greater Toronto released a report entitled “Losing Ground: The Persistent Growth Of Family Poverty In Canada’s Largest City.” Some of the findings are very disturbing. -After-tax median family income in Toronto is $41,500 ($6,100 less than in 1990, in constant […]
Read moreNouriel Roubini takes a dig at the Bank of Canada: [Yesterday] the Bank of Canada started to get it by, unexpectedly, cutting its policy rate by 25bps; but 25bps is puny given the liquidity crunch in global markets that has also spread to the Canadian markets. 50bps or more was the minimum necessary to deal with a Loonie that is […]
Read moreGeorge Monbiot gives us a good briefing note for the UN’s climate change conference in Bali. While the issue’s should not be understated, I do wonder whether we really need 10,000 people FLYING to Bali to meet “face-to-face”? Surely there is a better technological answer than that. What is Progress? When you warn people about the dangers of climate change, […]
Read moreSeeing more downside to the Canadian economy compared to worries about inflation, the Bank of Canada lowered overnight interest rates today by a quarter-point. The Bank has apparently been reading the PEF blog, as we have been calling for a rate cut for more than two months. (This is also personally reassuring as I decided to go with the variable […]
Read moreFrom 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 moreI was a testator (if I was a woman I’d be a testatrix!) to the Senate Special Committee on Aging today, along with national treasure, Bob Evans, a couple reps from the Canadian Institute on Health Information, and UNB’s Joe Ruggeri. We all pretty much agreed that aging is not the issue it is made out to be. As Evans […]
Read moreScott 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 moreA 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 moreThis 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 moreSo 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 moreTD 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 moreI 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 moreJohn 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 moreStatistics 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 moreI 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 moreWake 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 moreCopyright lawyer Howard Knopf, writing in the Hill Times, summarizes what he expects from the Conservatives in updating the Copyright Act to attack file sharing, all to the benefit of a US entertainment industry that has been feigning injury better than any elite soccer player. Knopf also points out many areas where Canadian copyright law is better than its US […]
Read moreToday, 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 moreThere’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 moreCarbon tax or cap-and-trade? Oh, my ass gets sore sitting on this particular fence. Each has its pros and cons, and for each the Devil is in the details of implementation. And maybe it does not have to be either-or. With data now telling us that things (like arctic ice cover) are worse than the most pessimistic scenarios of a […]
Read moreGiven 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 moreAlthough 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 moreToday’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 moreThe 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 […]
Read moreNouriel Roubini – professor at NYU and noted blogger on the global economy – tends to the gloomy but is now seriously worried about where we are headed. With the Economist now out with a front page story on the likelihood of a serious US recession, his views seem to be entering the mainstream. http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini With the Recession […]
Read moreA lot of people assume that file sharing is a bad thing for artists and their recording labels. This independent study done for Industry Canada, by Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, suggests exactly the opposite: file sharing increases exposure and can increase record sales. Below is the abstract, and after that some interesting post-study commentary – all of which is […]
Read moreDuring the sixteen years that the NDP governed Saskatchewan, provincial expenditures fell from just over 30% to just over 20% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This accomplishment is dubious for a political party committed to using government as a vehicle to redistribute wealth and finance important public programs. Why did the proportion of Saskatchewan’s economy available for these purposes decline […]
Read moreIn business news, shares of Hells Angels Inc and Rock Machine SA soared on the introduction of the Conservative’s new “get tough on drugs” legislation. Industry sources report they are pleased with the new initiative that will push up prices and profit margins. This is seen as a welcome about-face from the federal government compared to the flirtation with decriminalization […]
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