The Canadian Union of Public Employees has launched a great new blog, Imagine What We Could Do, about the things Saskatchewan should accomplish by raising resource royalties. It draws upon this blog’s analysis of how the province could collect more resource revenue and outlines public expenditure priorities for those funds.
Read moreOne of my main undertakings on this blog has been to debunk Jack Mintz’s relentless advocacy of tax cuts for large corporations. However, I also give him credit when he proposes good policy, such as raising potash royalties and the small-business corporate tax rate. This past week, he was out with a paper on the latter subject. The small-business deduction […]
Read moreAndrew Scheer has been elected House of Commons Speaker. I met him in 2004, when we were federal candidates in adjacent Regina ridings. I was the no-shot NDP candidate against then-Finance Minister Ralph Goodale and he was the long-shot Conservative candidate against veteran NDP MP Lorne Nystrom. At the end of that summer, we were both headed east. I drove […]
Read moreI was watching CNBC and happened to see this panel about how the number of Americans killed by natural disasters has declined over time. It was also noted that, in early 2010, fewer people died in Chile’s earthquake than in Haiti’s earthquake. The discussion quite reasonably outlined how improvements in emergency preparedness, building codes, and infrastructure help to protect people […]
Read moreAmazingly, BC’s government has joined its official opposition in proposing to restore the provincial corporate income tax rate from 10% to 12%. The same government that cut from 12% to 10% would now reverse itself as part of a last-ditch effort to save the HST. Revenue from a higher corporate tax rate would help finance a lower HST rate. According […]
Read moreThe parenthetical reference to Canada in my last post prompted several good comments. This post attempts to summarize and address them. Dr. Stockhammer has co-authored a paper with estimates for Canada, but he would be the first to note that they are mechanical and not necessarily relevant to policy. He finds that Canada’s domestic economy is wage-led, with a higher […]
Read moreEarlier this month, I served as the discussant for a presentation by Engelbert Stockhammer, an economics professor from Kingston University in London. He was speaking at a conference organized by the workers’ representation to the International Labour Organization (ACTRAV). Stockhammer reviewed two antithetical strategies for economic growth. The pro-labour strategy aims to increase wages by promoting collective bargaining, raising minimum […]
Read moreSome progressives worry that the new Conservative majority will dismantle the Canadian state. Hard-nosed economic conservatives like Andrew Coyne and Terry Corcoran worry that the Conservatives will not actually cut government spending. I have suggested that the Harper Conservatives will cut, but not as much as the Chretien Liberals. This debate would benefit from some numbers. Chretien slashed federal program […]
Read moreSeveral Toronto Star and Globe and Mail columnists have suggested that the Conservative majority resulted from too little strategic voting for the Liberals. In every federal election that I can remember, the Liberals have appealed for progressive votes to stop the Conservatives (or their Reform-Alliance predecessors). A major flaw in this logic is that relatively few ridings are close Liberal-Conservative […]
Read moreMy fellow bloggers are being too negative about yesterday’s election results. A Harper majority is very bad. However, I have trouble imagining it cutting public programs more than Chretien’s majority did. The Conservatives and Liberals have long been rather similar on economic issues. The NDP replacing the Liberals as one of the two predominant parties is hugely positive. Canadian social […]
Read moreI do not know if the Conference Board intended its latest release on sluggish investment in machinery and equipment to be taken up during the election campaign. However, as Canadian Press reports: The Conference Board report comes at a time when the issue of corporate taxes is a key demarcation point among the parties in the election campaign, with the […]
Read moreAs I noted in my post about income splitting and in commenting on Armine’s post about Tax-Free Savings Accounts, federal Conservative tax promises entail significant fiscal costs for provincial governments. I expanded that thought into the following op-ed, which appears in today’s Toronto Star. In the same vein, the federal Conservative policy of increased incarceration imposes costs on provincial jails. […]
Read morePEF members Louis-Philippe Rochon and Mario Seccareccia have organized a conference on “Contemporary Capitalism: Its Financial Circuits, Its Transformation and Future Prospects†on May 31 and June 1 in Ottawa, right before the PEF summer school and Canadian Economics Association conference. Click here for the program. For more information, please contact lprochon2003 [a] yahoo.com
Read moreMunir Sheikh, former head of Statistics Canada and of tax policy at Finance Canada, has an op-ed in today’s Globe: “A Canada-U.S. tax gap means a Canada-U.S. tax transfer.†As he notes, “any U.S. citizen, resident or company earning income in Canada is subject to U.S. tax, with a credit for Canadian tax paid or accrued.†So, slashing Canada’s corporate […]
Read moreYesterday’s Jeffrey Simpson column was entitled, “Walking the Line on Corporate Tax Cuts.†Incredibly, he walks the narrow 1.5% line between the Liberal and NDP proposals. To his credit, Simpson takes an open-minded look at the evidence, which indicates “no discernible links†from corporate taxes to employment or investment. On this basis, he accepts the Liberal proposal to raise revenue […]
Read moreA thousand economists, including a fair number of PEF members, have signed the following letter in support of a financial transactions tax. The Guardian has published a story about the letter and posted the list of economists. UPDATE (April 15): This PDF version of the economists’ list is slightly updated and much easier to navigate. Dear G20 Finance Ministers and […]
Read moreThe Progressive Economics Forum has the following line-up of sessions for this year’s Canadian Economics Association conference on June 3-5 at the University of Ottawa. Thanks very much to Nick Falvo for coordinating our conference activities and putting this schedule together. We are also hosting a summer school the day before and announcing our essay contest winners at the conference. […]
Read morePerhaps the most compelling villain on Star Trek: The Next Generation was the Borg, which seeks to assimilate other groups into its hive. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute seems to be performing this function for Canada’s conservative pundits (although corporate-tax cutters also resemble the Ferengi). Yesterday’s Globe featured an op-ed by Brian Lee Crowley, former President of the Atlantic Institute for Market […]
Read moreThe Ontario Nurses’ Association has released a research paper by PEF-member Salimah Valiani on health and healthcare in rural and northern Ontario. It analyzes socio-economic and environmental forces that contribute to lower health outcomes, labour-process data drawn from focus groups with front-line nurses, and how to alleviate the nursing shortage.
Read moreThe Progressive Economics Forum is organizing a summer school on economic theory and policy in our nation’s capital on June 2. For more information, please see the following poster or contact David Pringle: dpringle [at] ncf.ca Please download the poster and put it up at your local university campus. Â
Read moreWe already have several posts about today’s front-page Globe and Mail story, but that won’t stop me from piling on. Andrew and Marc have noted that today’s story makes points familiar to this blog’s readers. Indeed, posts questioning the alleged relationship between corporate tax cuts and business investment are almost too numerous to list. Jim, Armine, and I have all […]
Read moreI do not think anyone can disagree with the conclusion of Murray Fulton and Ken Rasmussen that Saskatchewan should “proceed with a thoughtful and deliberate process that ensures that the province is the long-term beneficiary of this asset.†The provincial opposition is advocating a royalty review process to achieve that goal. The government and potash companies claim that the appropriate […]
Read moreFrom the PEF’s mailbag, here is a guest post by Nick Scott, a recent college graduate and aspiring writer with a passion for environmental conservation. He currently resides in the southeastern United States. The United States and the Business of Pollution In light of the recent environmental tragedy in Japan, there has been a growing awareness of the potential threat […]
Read moreSince the Conservatives are promising income splitting, it may be worth revisiting some classic Relentlessly Progressive Economics posts on the subject. Some of the links we posted four years ago no longer work, so my Ottawa Citizen op-ed is reproduced below. While the population totals and tax thresholds have changed slightly, the analysis stands. The Conservatives have somewhat limited the […]
Read moreI missed last week’s federal budget, but was pleased to see the quantity and quality of same-day analysis posted on this blog. Jim wrote an excellent piece, “Corporate Taxation and Investment in the 2011 Federal Budget,†about the corporate tax debate in post-budget media panels. But what struck me was David’s point about how the budget itself did not address […]
Read moreI just want to draw attention to the rules and April 30th deadline for this year’s PEF Student Essay Contest. Please put up this poster at your local university campus.
Read moreAdvocates of low potash royalties have floated some pretty bizarre arguments. Last week, the Saskatchewan Party put out a news release emphasizing that local farmers use some 0.6% of provincial potash output, as though this tiny sliver of domestic consumption somehow complicates the province’s interest in maximizing revenue as a potash producer. Equally strange are claims that Alberta’s oil and […]
Read moreIn a couple of recent posts, I threw down the gauntlet for PotashCorp to disclose how much corporate income tax and Crown royalties it paid to the Government of Saskatchewan. As Bruce Johnstone reports, it has finally done so: While PotashCorp paid $77 million in resource surcharges in 2010, it also paid $82 million in corporate income taxes and $70 […]
Read moreMichael Lewis has a great article in today’s Toronto Star about the windfall that banks are reaping from corporate tax cuts. He quotes three of our favourite bloggers: Toby Sanger, Armine Yalnizyan and Jim Stanford. He also cites a BMO Capital Markets report that I shared with him. Since BMO appears to have removed this document from its website, I […]
Read moreTen days ago, Jack Mintz released yet another paper claiming that international competitiveness requires continued corporate tax cuts. In addition to the usual questionable interpretations, it featured at least one straight factual error. Mintz inaccurately reports Iceland’s 2010 statutory corporate tax rate as 15% (Table 2 on page 7 and Table 3 on page 9 in the PDF). In reality, […]
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