A good-news story out of Latin America that the Inter-American Development Bank is forgiving the debts of five extremely poor countries, including Bolivia and Nicaragua. Debt relief under the IMF/World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) program only relieved a portion of their debts (and they had to go through major structural adjustment program hoops to get that). The devil […]
Read moreMilton Friedman’s legacy was to completely ignore the issue of inequality – of outcomes, of starting points, and of opportunities. So it is fitting that the CCPA launched a new research project today on inequality in Canada. A good question to ask whenever you hear policy proposals is: what does this do to inequality? The proposals from Harris and Manning […]
Read moreFriedman is dead but continues to wield influence from beyond the grave. Here is a story on Mike Harris and Preston Manning’s commentary that the Harper government is not right-wing enough and laying out their Friedman-esque version of Canada: ”Excessive government taxation and spending limit the economic freedom of individuals and businesses by reducing their incomes and transferring economic decision-making […]
Read moreOn the verge of becoming law, Europe’s REACH legislation on toxic chemicals is a huge step forward. It requires that chemical companies prove their products are safe before introduction in the marketplace, as opposed to the status quo (in the US and Canada, too) where chemicals are innocent until proven guilty, which can take decades. Now it looks like, backed […]
Read moreFirst, a clever arrangement of quotes on monetarism from the New School, starting with Friedman’s intellectual roots, followed by some critics and defences: “[Recessions] are essentially a result of a supply of money that is too small, and to that extent are monetary phenomena…Complaints about excessive habits of saving are in such circumstances calculated to confuse the mind of the […]
Read moreThis article in the Vancouver Sun features a new report saying that we are not near “peak oil”: In sharp contrast to popular doomsday scenarios in which an oil supply crash triggers a global economic crisis, a U.S. energy think tank says the world has almost four times the oil supply envisioned by the pessimists. Cambridge Energy Research Associates … […]
Read moreThe bureaucrats at International Trade Canada seem to think that their job is to negotiate “free trade” deals with anyone who is willing to sit at the table opposite us. For years they have salivated at the idea of a Canada-EU trade agreement; they were among the first to hop on the WTO’s Doha Round bandwagon; and they were perhaps […]
Read moreThe Fraser is on a roll. After taking some time settling into the big chair, new Executive Director Mark Mullins has unleashed a torrent of new releases in the past couple months. Few of these are “new” in the sense of original material, mostly they are updates of previous reports with spanky new ISBN numbers. Let’s look at a couple. […]
Read moreSome fascinating stuff on Economist’s View today. Below are two reposted articles on how notions of equity are deeply rooted in our brains. We may be smarter monkeys but the parallels are all too clear. Also check out this post on neoclassical indoctrination at the Chicago School. Thoma’s condensed version is here and the full pdf from In These Times […]
Read moreStatistics Canada’s Human Activity and the Environment 2006 report (summary from the Daily here and full report here) looks at transportation. The term “externality” is not stated but economists will see it between the lines. An interesting finding in the report is that while transportation has been contributing to higher greenhouse gas emissions, regular air pollution from transportation has declined […]
Read moreThis is not good. But doing something about it (i.e. internalizing the externality) is too offensive to corporate Canada – and apparently from the article, corporate everywhere. Call it “smart regulation” or “risk management”, the way our regulatory system is set up means that the bodies have to pile up for the sake of sufficient scientific evidence before we regulate […]
Read moreThanks to Scott Sinclair for bringing a couple items to my attention. Below are two recent articles from the trade journal, Inside US Trade, Canada Moves Toward Ending Wheat Monopoly As Sought By U.S., and Canada Changes Drug Rules To Meet U.S. Demand On Data Exclusivity. It is interesting that capitulation to the US is not limited to softwood lumber. […]
Read moreA few months back, the BC government launched a “conversation on health care” that will last almost two years and will feature forums around the province engaging people on what they would like their public health care system to be. Having such discussions should be seen as a part of a health democracy, even though we have had numerous tomes […]
Read moreThe dust has now settled on the Tories’ decision to tax income trusts. The government deserves credit for dealing with this issue even though they had promised to do otherwise. While there is some fury on Bay Street and among some retirees, the reality is that the government and corporate Canada were playing a game of chicken, and at some […]
Read moreMonday’s release by the UK government of the Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change could come to be seen as one of those pivotal events in shaping public policy. I hope so, anyway. This report takes the accumulation of scientific knowledge about the present and potential future impacts of global warming and translates them into the language of […]
Read moreOne more for the softwood file: a commentary by Gordon Gibson from the Globe last week. Gibson regularly flies the flag of the ultra-right wing Fraser Institute but I generally find him to be an interesting commentator on many issues, even when I disagree with him. Perhaps it is because he has real life experience in politics, unlike the ideological […]
Read moreSFU economist Jon Kesselman makes the links between rising homelessness and BC’s abysmal welfare rates in this commentary from the Vancouver Sun: A whole $6! Every day! Imagine that you wake up each morning with six dollars burning a hole in your pocket. Let’s see: How might you spend your money? Maybe contemplate breakfast, a midday meal and supper […]
Read moreIt’s amazing how much can be explained by supply and demand. The big crisis in waiting lists in recent years has been concentrated in a few procedures, mostly knee and hip replacements and cataracts. These surgeries have been made much more widely available in recent years due to the advent of relatively non-invasive day surgeries in place of long hospital […]
Read moreDean Baker has a gloomy take on the impact of the housing bubble bursting: After the Housing Bubble Bursts By Dean Baker t r u t h o u t | Perspective Tuesday 24 October 2006 Every new release of data on the housing market provides more evidence that the housing bubble is finally bursting. Compared with year-ago levels, nationwide […]
Read moreNot sure how this one was missed by the filters. Thanks to Paul Willcocks for the snag: … [T]he Harper government – acting on an initiative started by the Liberals – pushed up health-care costs by handing big pharmaceutical companies a three-year extension on drug patents, preventing low-cost competition. The new rules affect about 25 per cent of prescription drugs […]
Read moreIn the current political environment, a government running a deficit is bad bad bad. We have reverted to ideas that dominated economic thought in the 1930s – that budgets should always be balanced. This sentiment is reflected in modern budgeting practices that add contingency reserves and fiscal cushions to already lowballed estimates of revenues, so that even if the economy […]
Read moreKeynes famously quipped that “in the long run we are all dead.” That’s sort of how I feel about the “clean air” act: it does absolutely nothing in the short-run but may have some benefit some time after rising sea levels wipe out half of Greater Vancouver. In spite of all of the talk about real regulation, the proposed act […]
Read moreBilateral and multilateral trade negotiations often go hand in hand, with bilaterals able to achieve results that are more liberalizing than could be achieved on a multilateral basis. If the bilateral agreement is among two major players, however, it can be used to pressure others into signing on. The US is using this as its strategy for global trade talks, […]
Read moreA fascinating defense of Hayek, in response to Sach’s column (posted here the other day). According to Tim Duy, Hayek was more reasonable than we give him credit for being (thanks to Economist’s View for this one): In Defense of Hayek, by Tim Duy: I feel a need to at least quickly defend Hayek against Jeffery Sachs attacks. Sachs leaves […]
Read moreIncome Trust Conversions: Estimated Federal and Provincial Revenue Effects By Jack M. Mintz (1) The recent announcements by TELUS and BCE have given rise to the question as to how much federal and provincial taxes have been reduced by corporations converting into income trusts. Since the time of my last estimate of about $500 million in the fall of 2004 […]
Read moreSaid Prime Minister Harper on the coming Clean Air Act: “This approach will mark a fundamental departure from the approach of the previous government. Canada’s Clean Air Act will allow us to move industry from voluntary compliance to strict regulation. It will replace the current ad-hoc patchwork system with clear, consistent and comprehensive national standards.” Cynicism and all that aside, […]
Read moreI have twice now been invited to join pyramid schemes for my child. The other day we got a letter in the mail from a friend soliciting us to join a “sticker club” (a few months ago, it was a “book club”). Two other children’s names and addresses were on the page, with the instructions that we were to send […]
Read moreA new working paper from the IMF looks at flat taxes and finds they have not lived up to their hype. Thanks to New Economist for posting this one and adding additional commentary. The paper can be found here. The summary: One of the most striking tax developments in recent years, and one that continues to attract considerable attention, is […]
Read moreWhat does a ballot initiative in four US states next month have to do with interprovincial trade in Canada? The answer is that both are attacks on the capacity of governments to regulate in the public interest, based on a theory known as “regulatory takings”. The “regulatory takings” movement is more well known south of the border, and is encapsulated […]
Read moreBen Parfitt, the CCPA’s BC Resource Policy Analysis reflects on the capitulation we know as the new Softwood Lumber Agreement and what is means for BC, the most affected province. Softwood deal will spur more raw log exports By Ben Parfitt The recent vote in the House of Commons ratifying the softwood lumber agreement with the United States may bring […]
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