For years, Don Drummond of TD Bank has publicly observed that business investment in Canada is lagging far behind soaring profits and called for further corporate-tax cuts to spur investment. He never seemed to perceive a contradiction between the fact that corporations are not reinvesting their record-high after-tax profits and the claim that even higher after-tax profits would boost investment. In a […]
Read moreOn Friday, the National Post’s lead editorial suggested that inter-provincial trade barriers are significant enough to validate the Quebec-separatist view that “Canada is not a real country.” The following edited response from yours truly is printed as a “Counterpoint” in today’s edition. UPDATE (August 16): BC’s Minister of Economic Development has responded to my op-ed. In a recent editorial, the […]
Read moreFollowing the National Post’s complete endorsement of TILMA on Friday, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star ran columns on Saturday that were relatively skeptical of this agreement. As both columns note, the joint statement released by the Premiers in Moncton leaves the door open to making the Agreement on Internal Trade more like TILMA without committing to do so. […]
Read moreThe term “hedge fund” sounds so innocent because hedging is protecting against risk. But hedge funds are precisely the opposite: largely unregulated, they are pools where millionaires put their cash, to then have it leverage (borrow) lots more money, in order to make speculative bets in the financial markets in a way that makes the whole financial system a lot […]
Read moreThe following passage is from “Why England is Rotting” in the June 11 issue of Maclean’s: London’s role as a financial centre on its way to eclipsing New York City has provided a vision of prosperity which, it is assumed, trickles down to the population at large. But it is a city in which increasingly only those on welfare, or the […]
Read moreThe premiers cannot agree on how to cooperate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One might think that ten middle-aged white men might have more in common, but no. In all cases, vested economic interests trump climate goals, even though, as the Stern review points out, the cost of doing nothing will be much greater than the cost of action. Apparently, […]
Read moreMoonlighting from his CCPA gig, Ben Parfitt has this to say about airlines, climate change, forests and offsets in a feature article for the Georgia Straight: The airline industry, among others, is banking heavily on offsets taking flight. So, too, it appears, is the British Columbia government. No fewer than three people currently report directly to Premier Gordon Campbell on […]
Read moreSharpen your pencils, open your spreadsheets, everyone. It’s contest time! Following up on a recent post noting the major financial conflict of interest of the Canadian Medical Association calling for more private health care options, we can expect more ideological rhetoric to come in the next year as new CMA President Brian Day takes the helm next week. But as […]
Read morePEF Steering Committee member Mathieu Dufour passed along this message: For the French readers amongst you, there is a debate currently going on in Le Devoir about the disconnect between wage and productivity growth. I first wrote an Op-Ed stating said disconnect and asking how long we were going to ask people to increase their productivity without paying them more. […]
Read moreAs background to the “flight from risk” which underpins the growing financial crisis in the US and Europe, see the latest annual report from the Bank for International Settlements published in June, especially the chapter on financial markets in the advanced industrial countries. The BIS is a kind of central bank for central banks. http://www.bis.org/publ/annualreport.htm While cautiously stated, it’s not […]
Read moreMy take on today’s release follows: Job Numbers As Statistics Canada noted, “Employment was little changed in July.” Employment growth in Alberta and Ontario was largely offset by job losses in the other eight provinces. As a result, the Canadian labour market created 11,300 new positions in July, far fewer than in previous months. Some commentators argue that the Bank of […]
Read moreLast week, while I was out of the country and away from this blog, the Government of Saskatchewan formally rejected TILMA. The news release announcing this decision quite reasonably unveils working groups to address the few inter-provincial problems that may exist, but strangely refrains from outlining any of the strong arguments against TILMA. However, media reports reflect the Minister’s success […]
Read moreLinda McQuaig takes on the Security and Prosperity Partnership: Since the SPP initiative was officially launched in March 2005, the public has been effectively shut out of the process. There’s been little awareness, let alone public debate, about what’s going on. The key advisory body in the SPP is an all business group called the North American Competitiveness Council, made […]
Read moreI am big on big investment spending. I’ve argued for years that weak business investment undermines our job creation, our productivity, our incomes, and our competitiveness. I’ve proposed lots of policy measures to stimulate more investment spending: public as well as private. But what’s happening in northern Alberta is enough to nauseate even a Soviet-esque advocate of mass capital accumulation […]
Read moreThe Vancouver Sun is two for two! Another front page headline, this time pressing the case for bulk purchasing of pharmaceutical drugs. Bulk purchasing is but one of many policy options for reducing the cost of pharmaceuticals, and is generally the one that is the most palatable politically as it does not overtly challenge Big Pharma. Other, more potent options, […]
Read moreAsks the Vancouver Sun with its banner headline today. There is a general expectation among the public that someone is looking out for their interests. Concerns generally only arise when there is an e-coli or SARS-like outbreak. Not overtly mentioned in the article below (though it promises to be part one of a series) is the link between the concerns […]
Read moreAgnès Poirier Thursday August 2, 2007 The Guardian Le Tour is dead, long live le vélo! The French vélorution began the day after Bastille day, or day one of the vélib – short for vélo-liberté. With it, millions of Parisians have been able to forget the shame of the Tour de France and make the road theirs, 24 hours a […]
Read moreIn the folklore of economics, the famous Laffer curve made its first appearance in the mid-1970’s on a dinner napkin. US economist Arthur Laffer was sketching out to his dinner companions the relatively simple proposition that if taxes are raised too high, at some point revenue from taxes will actually fall. With exceptionally high taxes, people will avoid them by […]
Read moreNouriel Roubini invokes the great, but relatively unknown, Post-Keynesian economist, Hyman Minsky, in his latest dispatch about the state of US financial markets and economy. Minsky made the point that finance and financial markets matter, and in fact can have disastrous consequences for the real economy if left unchecked, and therefore institutions like prudent regulation and central banks are essential […]
Read moreThe CCPA’s Manitoba office released today an oped by Adrian Measner, the former CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board: The Harper Government and the Canadian Wheat Board By Adrian Measner When a federal government is elected there is an expectation that they will develop sound policy by consulting with both the people directly affected by policies and Canadians as a […]
Read moreI just watched Sicko for the second time last night. The catastrophe that is US health care is a clear demonstration that universal, public health insurance works a whole lot better that a system based on for-profit private insurance companies. So, I was thinking about the Canadian system in comparison with Europe, and wondering why we do not have more […]
Read morehttp://canadianlabour.ca/updir/Working_People_Deserve_More_Paid_Vacation.pdf Here’s the link to a mini study on statutory rights to paid vacation timey just posted to the CLC web site – we fall well short of European standards and there is a surprising amount of variation in Canada.
Read moreGiven the odd rumbling in Ottawa that the feds might make mortgage interest deductible from income tax, this article from the New York Times provides some interesting background on the origins of this deduction in the US, the impacts it has had, and the current state of play. The full article is rather lengthy; this excerpt captures some of the […]
Read moreIf our governments cannot get their heads out of the sand and start building some housing for those who desperately need it, we can expect more negative images of BC and Vancouver. As captured by The Washington Post: When the Winter Olympics open in Vancouver, visitors will find one of the most alluring cities in North America, a green and […]
Read moreI did not follow the Conrad Black trial, but enjoyed reading Mark Steyn’s mammoth post mortem. In contrast to Marc Lee’s excellent commentary on this blog, Mark Steyn is a die-hard supporter of Black. The post mortem’s main argument is that Black’s legal team did an extremely poor job. In one sense, blaming the lawyers is simply the last ditch […]
Read moreThanks for Harper’s for reminding us what the grandfather of economics thought about groups like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, the Recording Industry Association of America, PhARMA and all of the other thousands that are part of the “business industry”: The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from […]
Read moreNew CEPR Paper Looks At Venezuela’s Economy During the Chávez Years For Immediate Release: July 26, 2007 Contact: Dan Beeton, 202-293-5380 x104 Washington, DC: A new paper from the Center for Economic and Policy Research looks at the Venezuelan economy during the last eight years and finds that it does not fit the mold of an “oil boom headed for […]
Read moreThe August issue of the Journal of Primary Prevention is dedicated to articles on homelessness, addictions and mental illness. It has a US focus but many of the problems will be familiar to Canadians, too. A guest editorial (pdf) kicks off the issue by scoping out the problem, with a good summary of studies on the hidden financial costs to […]
Read moreThe US National Bureau of Economic Research have just published a fascinating dissection of top income earners, the ones we know have grabbed a rapidly escalating share of all income. This study provides a wealth of detail on the incomes of those we would suspect to be in the top 0.1% or higher (in 2004 the top 0.1% of US […]
Read moreI watched most of last night’s debate among Democratic Party presidential candidates and vaguely got wind today of Clinton panning Obama’s indication that he would meet with the presidents of Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. What struck me was that all the candidates who answered this question seemed to accept the lumping together of all these leaders into the […]
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