For many years now, the year 2010 had an almost mythic quality to it. More than just a decade-ending round number (we never collectively named that decade; I like “the naughties” myself), it had deep meaning for BC because THEY WERE COMING. The Olympics. Vancouver 2010. In the early days, utopian olympianism ruled the province. For some, hosting the games […]
Read morePerhaps the contradiction is more apparent than real. If so please set me straight. The inequality folks like Wilkinson and Pickett argue – convincingly, to my mind  – that those at the top of the income spectrum do hugely better on a wide range of objective well being indicators (eg longevity) than those at the middle and bottom. But the […]
Read moreHere is a keeper – an IMF study that argues that loss of working class bargaining power is an underlying cause of financial crises, and that retoration thereof is key to reducing debt. The abstract – “The paper studies how high leverage and crises can arise as a result of changes in the income distribution. Empirically, the periods 1920-1929 and […]
Read moreI was talking about carbon pricing and BC’s carbon tax recently and Michael Byers asked me about the prospects for a progressive carbon tax in terms of its rate structure. My first answer was that I liked the idea but was not sure how that could work in practice; that is, tax carbon and deal with inequality through the income […]
Read moreOur latest Climate Justice Project report, Every Bite Counts: Climate Justice and BC’s Food System, has been unleashed on the province. I have to admit that this was one of the most challenging research projects I’ve ever been part of – the food system is complicated, and overlaying climate change and social justice issues added to that complexity. Thankfully, I […]
Read moreThe cover of last week’s Economist magazine boasted the headline “Grow, dammit, grow!†above a picture of a bald man looking up at a tiny sprout of hair on his pate. As the Great Recession continues to grind on with no end in sight – with growth remaining anemic and unemployment stubbornly high in North America and Europe – mainstream […]
Read more The ILO and the IMF are holding an important high level conference in Oslo on the “Challenges of Growth, Employment and Social Cohesion” on September 13. In advance, they have released an important joint discussion paper. The summary  – highly reflective of the ILO contribution but not contradicted by the IMF contribution – makes a number of the key points […]
Read moreThe Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, is an important book. It is not a huge tome, as one might expect from such a broad topic, weighing in at just 265 pages of text (including lots of figures mapping inequality against some health and social statistic, and some clever cartoons). […]
Read moreWith summer comes a lightening of my work load, so I’ve finally found some time to dive into a few interesting books. These are all related to my ongoing research interests (I do have some fiction sitting around waiting for a real holiday, with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna at the top of the pile): The Story of Stuff by Annie […]
Read moreA few years ago an important study, by Marc Frenette, David Green and Kevin Milligan, Revisiting Recent Trends in Canadian After-Tax Income Inequality Using Census Data, was published by Statscan. It did not get much profile but its implications for the current census debacle are startling. The authors summarize: … [E]xisting data sources may miss changes in the tails of […]
Read moreThat the HST will take a bite out of family budgets is clear to everyone. The main question right now is just how big of a bite. Two studies released in BC earlier this week asked this exact question but came to very different conclusions. On Monday, the Fraser Institute released a paper arguing that lower and middle income families […]
Read moreAlex Usher is a frequent commentator on post-secondary education in Canada. He regularly blogs for the Globe and Mail at globecampus.ca. Yesterday, he wrote an open letter to leaders of Canada’s three major political parties in which he offered advice on post-secondary education policy. I found the following passage to be particularly provocative: First, scratch anything that vaguely resembles a […]
Read moreOver at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Stephen Gordon has posted Michael Veall’s data, updating his past work on the rising income share of top income recipients (expressed as a share of market income declared by adults for tax purposes, and excluding capital gains.) Veall presented his main findings at the CEA meetings. The data were extracted by Statscan from tax data. […]
Read moreThe comments on my post about Ignatieff and corporate tax cuts have turned into a debate about Quebec’s recent budget. In particular, Stephen Gordon has thrown down the gauntlet: The Quebec budget includes measures to increase incomes of low-income households. Why would self-described progressives dismiss that? . . . Just what is the goal of the PEF? Because I’m having […]
Read moreThe Ottawa Economics Association (OEA) held a conference today and yesterday evening. The usual suspects were in attendance saying the usual things: Mark Carney spoke about the need for China to understand the risks of the “paradox of thrift” (see my post from earlier today) that will be unleashed by fiscal consolidation. Don Drummond sang from the productivity choir book […]
Read moreToday’s day-after-International-Women’s-Day story in the New York Times by Nancy Folbre links to four indices of gender equity. How is Canada doing? Canada ranks 4th in the Human Development Index (we were number one for eight years) as well as the UNDP Gender Development Index, behind Norway, Australia and Iceland. Norway has been ranked the best country for human development […]
Read moreThere’s a great op ed in today’s Globe and Mail by Ed Broadbent, marking the twentieth anniversary of the unanimous passage by the House of Commons of his eve of retirement resolution to abolish child poverty by 2000. (Ed did, of ourse, later return to the House.) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/how-to-end-child-poverty-tax-the-rich/article1374806/ As Ed argues: “We thought an 11-year agenda to virtually overcome child […]
Read moreI put this post out for comments and discussion since this is an important question for which I don’t have an answer. A 2005 Citigroup report – apparently cited in Michael Moore’s new movie, which I have not yet seen – argues that “plutonomy” – the extreme concentration of income and wealth in the hands of the very affluent – […]
Read moreThe Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a new study today comparing the expenditures of rich and poor Canadians. This approach is interesting because inequality is typically measured in terms of income or wealth. Conservatives sometimes claim that, while temporary fluctuations in income or asset values create the appearance of massive inequality at any given point in time, consumption (and […]
Read moreThe province-wide revolt over BC’s looming Harmonized Sales Tax is reminiscent of protests a generation ago when the HST’s federal parent, the Goods and Services Tax, was born. The rationale for that shift was similar to that of the HST: to switch from an invisible tax paid by producers (the Manufacturers’ Sales Tax) that was passed on to consumers to […]
Read moreSo says a new paper by UBC economist Phil Oreopoulos, Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market? A Field Experiment with Six Thousand Resumes. As a skilled immigrant with a non-Anglo sounding name I find this quite disturbing. As should native-born Canadians who like to think that their country is tolerant and welcoming to all. The paper examines […]
Read moreA year and a half ago I published an updated study on tax incidence in Canada. It found that the Canadian tax system is progressive up to the middle of the income distribution, then flattens out before becoming regressive at the very top. (Interestingly, a short piece on the US tax system by Citizens for Tax Justice just came out […]
Read moreAh plastic. What’s not to love? Convenient? Check. Light in the pocket? Check. Monthly bill summaries? Check. Free short-term credit? Check (provided you pay your bills in full, on time). Benefits (free car rental insurance, points, cash back etc): Check AND… Take from the poor and give to the rich? err… wait a minute. Unfortunately, credit cards — especially those […]
Read moreYesterday the CCPA released a new study on family income inequality in BC by yours truly, which reveals some disturbing statistics about family incomes over the past 30 years. The figure below summarizes our main findings. Among our other key findings: The gap between the wealthiest and the majority of BC families has grown dramatically over the past 30 years. […]
Read moreSo Industry Minister Tony Clement is now insisting that cuts to workers wages will be a condition of any bail-out package for the auto industry. This comes after an economic statement that was going to remove the right to strike and legislate public sector wages, and before a budget that could also include wage cuts or constraints for workers. I don’t recall constraints […]
Read morePopulation health researchers, most famously and consistently Richard Wilkinson, have long drawn attention to the fact that the link between social class and health status is a gradient, such that an individual’s position in the class hierarchy is directly and causally linked to that person’s health status. It is not just that low income people are more likely to be […]
Read moreMargaret Wente (“For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls”, today’s Globe) argues, based on a new book by Charles Murray that “educational romanticism has led us to believe that every student can become at least average, and that the right teaching strategies can close the achievement gap.†Some people are just dumb, and there’s not much that can be done about […]
Read moreThe CCPA’s Climate Justice Project released a new technical paper today on what BC’s targets should be in line with some notion of global equity. It is a nice collaboration between Colin Campbell of the Sierra Club of BC and Cliff Stainsby of the BC Government and Service Employees Union. The paper is, I have to admit, on the dense […]
Read moreYesterday, I appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs at Queen’s Park. The committee is reviewing the Ontario Health Premium, as required by the legislation that implemented this levy. My assessment of the premium starts from the premise that the Government of Ontario needs more revenue not only for healthcare, but also for industrial development, education and […]
Read moreThe Vancouver Sun ran an opinion piece by yours truly that revisits the recent Statistics Canada release of income and earnings numbers for 2006 … Denying income inequality won’t make it go away Iglika Ivanova, Special to the Sun Published:Â Tuesday, June 24, 2008 The May release of the 2006 Census data on earnings and incomes sparked a heated debate about […]
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