The Progressive Economics Forum

Mel Watkins on Foreign Take-overs

June 28, 2007 Andrew Jackson One comment

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=6c433a24-f12a-4584-9706-9f123ded8234 A good piece from today’s Ottawa Citizen. I’ve been similarly struck by the concern re foreign state involvementÂ in our resource sector, combined with evident lack of concernÂ about loss of domestic control of resourceÂ development. Whether we would get that fromÂ greater Canadian capitalist ownership of resource companiesÂ as opposed toÂ more public owneship and regulation is a […]

The hidden costs of homelessness

June 27, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

are high, according to a new report, summarized by Gordon Laird in the Toronto Star: According to a new report from the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, Shelter: Homelessness in a Growth Economy, homelessness is costing Canadian taxpayers $4.5 billion to $6 billion a year. Canada in 2007 collectively spends more managing homelessness than it spends on international […]

Manufacturing and Construction

June 26, 2007 Erin Weir 4 comments

Recent commentaries from CIBC and Export Development Canada argue that the manufacturing crisis is not eroding job quality. Both note that a surge in construction employment, added to the relatively few new jobs in non-renewable resource extraction, nearly equals the number of manufacturing jobs lost in recent years. As emphasized on the front page of yesterdayâ€™s Financial Post, this argument […]

PEF session on taxation and social democracy

June 26, 2007 Marc Lee 3 comments

Stephen Gordon’s presentation from our PEF “taxation and social democracy” session at the CEA meetings is now online at his blog, here. The other presenters on the panel were Andrew Jackson, Erin Weir and Marion Steele. I was the discussant for the session, so I will take Stephen’s cue and jot down some of the things I thought most noteworthy […]

Private Equity and Casino Capitalism

June 24, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?article1231Â Brussels, 21 June 2007: Launching a new report â€œWhere the house always wins, Private Equity, Hedge Funds and the new Casino Capitalismâ€ the worldâ€™s peak trade union body, the 168 million-member International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), today issued a global warning to pension funds over investment in private equity and hedge funds. At its biannual General Council meeting, top […]

Lawsuits Galore

June 22, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

While the Saskatchewan governmentâ€™s decision to take the federal government to court over Equalization has captured more headlines, the Saskatchewan government is also helping to finance legal action against the federal government’s handlingÂ ofÂ the Canadian Wheat Board: Sask. backs CWB lawsuit The Leader-Post (Regina) Thursday, June 14, 2007 Page: D1 / FRONT Section: Business & Agriculture Byline: Angela Hall A group […]

What Did the IMF Say?

June 22, 2007 Erin Weir One comment

Under the headline “IMF Admonishes Canada,” theÂ Financial Post reported on Wednesday: The IMF added its voice yesterday to the growing chorus of observers urging Canada to undertake a 21st-century overhaul of its financial system, saying it should create a single securities regulator, open its banking system to foreign competition and mergers and tear down interprovincial trade barriers. . . . […]

Alberta Opposes Rate Hike

June 21, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

Relatively high inflation in Alberta seems to be the only justification for raising Canadian interest rates. In this context, it is tremendously significant that the Government of Alberta itself opposes increasing rates. Of course, higher interest rates imply a higher Canadian dollar. Alberta sells oil and gas, the prices of which are denominated in US dollars. As the Canadian dollar […]

CIBC and Oil Royalties

June 21, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

More fascinating stuff from that CIBC report follows: While many of the big names in the mining and metal processing industry have been spoken for, there are even larger capital inflows potentially still ahead in the energy sector. Thanks to the oil sands, and a still laissez-faire attitude towards ownership of those resources, Canada represents anywhere from 50-60% of the […]

Marxists at CIBC?

June 21, 2007 Erin Weir 3 comments

The following excerpt is from the much-reported study released by CIBC last week: The Bank of Canada, eying an economy operating above its non-inflationary speed limit, will welcome the dampening influence of an even stronger currency on both economic growth and inflation. A couple hundred thousand additional factory job losses, while far from derailing domestic economic growth, might be a […]

Notes on a potential Telus-BCE merger

June 21, 2007 Marc Lee One comment

The big news story (Globe article here and political analysis here) of the day is the proposed merger between Telus and BCE (aka Bell), and what the government should do about it. Below are a few notes to add some context, and an alternative, to merger mania. First, was it not just a year ago that both BCE and Telus […]

The Green Party Climate Plan

June 21, 2007 Andrew Jackson 3 comments

Elizabeth May and the Green Party can take credit for putting forward a serious climate change plan, based on a $50 per tonne carbon tax, with some revenues from this directed to a reduction of other taxes. http://www.greenparty.ca/en/releases/06.06.2007?origin=redirect Today, they placed in the public realm a study by Marc Jaccard suggesting minimal economic disruption from such a strategy- which I […]

Core Inflation: A Closer Look and a Tentative Forecast

June 21, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

The “core inflation” rateâ€™s jump to 2.5% for April 2007 (released in May 2007) was great cause for concern among many economic pundits and seemed to prompt the Bank of Canadaâ€™s announcement that it intends to raise interest rates. Of course, 2.5% must be regarded as quite moderate inflation and falls well within the Bankâ€™s own 1%-3% range. However, this […]

Minimum Wages Raise Productivity

June 20, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

The 2007 OECD Employment OutlookÂ incorporates a study (Chapter 3) finding that higher minimum wages raise productivity. In fact, a sophisticated quantitiative study finds that anÂ increase of 10 percentage points in the ratio of the minimum wage to the median hourly wage raisesÂ the level of labour productivity in the long-run by between 1.7 and 2.0 percentage points.Â One possible explanatation cited […]

Generous Unemployment Insurance Systems Raise Productivity

June 20, 2007 Andrew Jackson 2 comments

The annual OECD Employment Outlook – the product of the Directorate for Employment. Labour and Social Affairs (DELSA) can usually be relied upon to provide a well-reasoned counter point to the extreme neo liberalism of the Economics Directorate (ECO) — and the 2007 issue is no exception.) For a summary and details on how to access the report (full document […]

He’s the Maaaap!

June 19, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

Avi Lewis, son of Stephen, hubby of Naomi, has a new show on CBC Newsworld. It is now halfway through a four-week run, with 22 minutes of content Monday to Thursdays (at 7:30 ET and 11:30 PT, to be precise). It is called On the Map, which is a great title except for the fact that it reminds me of […]

OECD praises “flexicurity”

June 19, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

Just in from Paris, some fascinating quotables from the OECD: Governments must do more to help workers adapt to new global economy, says OECD Rather than seeing globalisation as a threat, OECD governments should focus on improving labour regulations and social protection systems to help people adapt to changing job markets. That is the message from the 2007 edition of […]

Surpluses. Then what?

June 19, 2007 Andrew Jackson One comment

The Globe and Mail ran an editorial last Friday (now subscriber only content)Â Their summary reads:Â “We have grown used to the notion that our governments can run up budget surpluses. If only they could show some vision for putting the money to work.Statistics Canada reported yesterday that all levels of Canadian government posted a combined surplus of $29-billion […]

Wages and Inflation by Province, May 2006 – May 2007

June 19, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

Relative to inflation, Albertans are being paid less per hour than they were a year ago. Today, Statistics Canada released Consumer Price Index figures for May 2007. Comparing these figures with the latest Labour Force Survey reveals that Canadian wages grew only 0.8% more than Canadian prices from May 2006 through May 2007. As always, the national figure masks significant […]

Monbiot, Stern and climate change strategies

June 18, 2007 Marc Lee 7 comments

In New Left Review, Clive Hamilton writes a review and critique of George Monbiot’s Heat. There are a number of interesting passages. First, he gives this doozy as an indicator of how grave the issue is in the USA: In recent years wealthy Texans have discovered the joys of sitting in front of a log fire. As it is usually […]

Canada’s New Government is getting old

June 18, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

An article in the Globe wonders what comes next for a Harper government that seems stuck: unable to move up in the polls despite delivering on its most populist proposals, but unable to deliver the goods for its core supporters because of, well, the polls. And interestingly, its best moves have come by doing the right thing and breaking its […]

Caveat emptor: natural gas deregulation

June 16, 2007 Marc Lee 4 comments

Around lunchtime I got a knock on the door, and a good-looking young woman was there to make a sales call for Univeral Gas. She was seeking to convert my natural gas supply under a newly deregulated market. I asked her if she would leave behind materials so that I could think about it. No dice. She wanted me to […]

Wading through the Equalization Swamp Armed Only With 1105 Words

June 15, 2007 Arun DuBois Leave a comment

This post was inspired by my wife, a non-economist (thankfully) who asked me the other day for my opinion on the endless equalization debate. My answer was simple: follow the politics. As every insider knows, the excommunication of Bill Casey, an MP from Nova Scotia, is only the tip of the iceberg of discontent over the Conservative government’s proposed equalization […]

Inequality and progressive taxation

June 15, 2007 Marc Lee Leave a comment

As Andrew Jackson points out, there are some interesting musings in the US about progressive taxation. In a recent post, Mark Thoma cites four good reasons for progressive taxation: Personally, I’m not much on redistribution simply to make outcomes more equal. But there are (at least) three reasons to depart from this. First, when there is change such that makes […]

Context on the Canada Post v. UPS NAFTA ruling

June 14, 2007 Marc Lee One comment

The Globe’s story, Canada Post NAFTA win sets precedent, for UPS vs the government of Canada with respect to Canada Post, is a bit misleading. It comes across as “see, those whiners about investor-state were wrong all along”: Chapter 11 was controversial from NAFTA’s inception because critics charged it would allow foreign investors to challenge, and alter, government policies and […]

The Bank of Canada and Alberta’s boom

June 14, 2007 Marc Lee 5 comments

In the Globe and Mail it is reported: A flurry of increases in the past month has sent Canadian mortgage rates to their highest level in more than five years, and consumers shouldn’t expect a return to the low interest rates they enjoyed in the first half of the decade. The story quotes Benjamin Tal of CIBC World Markets, commenting […]

Randy Burton on TILMA

June 14, 2007 Erin Weir Leave a comment

Hopefully, the radio interview that I just did with Saskatoonâ€™s News Talk 650 will help to counteract Randy Burtonâ€™s column in todayâ€™s StarPhoenix. Burton claims: There is one overarching reason why we should be cautious about accepting the predictions of doom that await Saskatchewan if it joins a trade agreement with Alberta and B.C. The people who tell us less […]

Leading US Neo Liberals Take on the Case for Taxing the Rich

June 14, 2007 Andrew Jackson Leave a comment

http://www1.hamiltonproject.org/views/papers/furman/200706summers_bordoff.htm At the Canadian Economics Association, I presented a paper (to be published by the CCPA Inequality Project this Fall) on the case for more progressive taxation of income. In a nutshell,Â my argument was that the tax side of the tax/transfer system must be relied on more to counter growing income inequality, since only the tax side can close […]

Fortune Magazine’s Plutocracy index

June 14, 2007 Arun DuBois Leave a comment

I’m not a big fan of business journalism. For the most part, it’s a lazy, sycophantic, uninspired, biased, occasionally self-interested (in a conflict-of-interest sense) and worse yet, boring business. I should know, I was once part of the fold. In my experience, at least half of financial journalists are in it for the food (gotta love annual report/annual meeting season […]

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