The WTO talks have collapsed. Wait, did I not report that last year? Alas, talks are never really over, the Doha Round never really “dead” as reported in the papers. Just stalled. But as Cameron points out in his rabble.ca column (thanks to Duncan and rabble for sharing columns with RPE), this recent impasse has a lot to do with […]
Read moreLast week, the Green Party issued a press release claiming that a “secret government study backs $50 carbon tax”, which is convenient since the Green Party recently endorsed a $50 carbon tax. My initial response to the Green’s carbon tax was one of skepticism, mostly in regards to the likely non-impact on driving, and the flawed emphasis on tax shifting. […]
Read moreare 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 […]
Read moreStephen 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 […]
Read moreBelow is an edited text of Monbiot’s lecture to the Royal Society of Arts: By George Monbiot, June 2004 Without global democracy, national democracy is impossible. If you don’t believe me, take a look at what has happened to Luiz Inacio da Silva. Before he became president of Brazil, Lula promised to transform the way his country was run. The […]
Read moreThis oped by Daniel Sperling in the LA Times appears to bridge, via California, my and Andrew’s positions on the impact of the Green’s proposed carbon tax: The one sector where carbon taxes will work well is electricity generation, which accounts for 20% of California emissions (and 40% of U.S. emissions). The carbon tax works because electricity producers can choose […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreAvi 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 […]
Read moreJust 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 […]
Read moreIn 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 […]
Read moreAn 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 […]
Read moreAround 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 […]
Read moreAs 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreIn 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 […]
Read moreFrom his rabble.ca column: In a judgment rendered June 8, the Supreme Court of Canada has reversed itself and recognized that freedom of association includes the right to collective bargaining. by Duncan Cameron June 13, 2007 Fundamental labour rights, pursued historically, and recognized under international conventions, must be respected in Canada, according to the highest court in the land. In […]
Read moreRelentlessly Progressive Economics (old site at progecon.wordpress.com) was suspended earlier today by WordPress due to a complaint about copyright violation. We are working to cleanse our posts so that they are within the definition of fair use (though this is contested terrain). Wikipedia’s article on fair use of copyrighted material is here.
Read moreBecause it looks like a simple rebuke of the zealous anti-union tactics of BC’s Campbell administration, observers Back East may have missed this significant ruling by the Supreme Court on Friday. Below is the story from Saturday’s Vancouver Sun, and a commentary from a columnist in today’s Sun. Interestingly, the term “judicial activism” crops up fairly early in the story, […]
Read moreOver at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Stephen Gordon has assembled an interesting comparison of the current expansion vis-a-vis the previous two (roughly, the 1980s and the 1990s), benchmarking performance on a number of key indicators. One of his conclusions is rather unusual: he finds strong real wage growth over the past four years. This is contrary to the numbers I have […]
Read moreThe Economist (Charging around the city: How green and safe are they?) asks about the safety of electric cars on the streets of London. But to me, the big news is that there are electric cars on the streets of London! I mean, how cool is that? I saw a documentary last year called, Who Killed the Electric Car? (wee […]
Read moreSome fascinating and counter-intuitive insights about traffic management from an article in Vancouver magazine. I have tried to de-Vancouverize it somewhat to distill the key insights that are more broadly applicable, but it is ultimately an article about Vancouver, with its somewhat contrary starting point of not having freeways going into the heart of the city: … In 1968, the […]
Read moreWay back in 2003, the CCPA produced a cost-benefit analysis of the 2010 Olympic Games. I think it still stands the test of time, and in any event it was the only such document produced that attempted to distinguish between costs and benefits in a coherent framework (the government tended to confuse the two, with public spending being treated as […]
Read moreThe Caledon Institute’s Sherri Torjman articulates some repairs to Canada’s social safety net. Below are the key elements of the proposal (full paper here). My main substantive critique is that, like its predecessor discussion piece last year, Torjman envisions a strange mix of delivery, going from federal in the short-term to provincial in the medium-term, then back to federal in […]
Read moreLimiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees is a good objective because above that amount the likelihood of runaway climate change (melting of Greenland and the Arctic; release of methane from permafrost in the North) is really serious. So this news that the US is not interested in this issue is depressing. Not that communiques coming out of the G8 […]
Read morePerhaps I’m channeling Hugh Mackenzie here, but I sense this means another opportunity for Big Oil to gouge consumers at the pump, yet again. Ironically, gas gouging has done more to increase gas prices than any plan by the Greens. While some people have defended the practice on environmental grounds, I’d much rather have government capturing those revenues, not Exxon, […]
Read moreChalk up another gimmick for Elizabeth May, with the Green’s carbon tax plan that promises, literally, the world, but falls apart upon examination. Don’t get me wrong: carbon tax may well be the way to go, because of its ease of administration compared to other schemes. But a major issue is that we have little idea empirically on how large […]
Read moreAt this year’s Canadian Economics Association meetings, the Progressive Economics Forum was thrilled to have James Galbraith come to inaugurate the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize and Lecture, to be given biannually, with the first Prize awarded next year at the CEA meetings in Vancouver, which will also be the tenth anniversary of the PEF. Here is the text of the […]
Read moreThe Independent’s take on Zoellick as new World Bank kingpin: Goldman Sachs marches on with Bush’s candidate for World Bank By Leonard Doyle in Washington Published: 31 May 2007 … Mr Zoellick, 53, is a senior executive of Goldman Sachs, who until recently was the deputy US Secretary of State. Before that he was the US trade representative, where […]
Read moreIn this month’s Fraser Forum, Robert Knox attacks the critics of TILMA. Knox, who was one of the folks leading the charge for the Agreement on Internal Trade, mostly takes aim at legal interpretations by Ellen Gould and Steven Shrybman that contemplate areas where TILMA’s broad scope could lead to perverse rulings by trade panels. His counter-argument goes something like […]
Read moreA torrent of discussion in response to Hip Heterodoxy (blogged here) has come up at TPM cafe. The full discussion page, which includes posts by Paul Krugman, Mark Thoma, Max Sawicky and others, can be viewed here. For RPE, I will stick to the self-interest of the PEF, and include only James Galbraith, who is telegraphing, I’m sure, some remarks […]
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