I could not make head nor tail of the unsourced numbers in last week’s National Post editorial on the Canada Pension Plan (CPP): If workers were able to take the more than $3,000 they and their employers pay into CPP on their behalf each year and invest it in a conservative private fund, at the end of their working lives […]
Read moreIn his column today in The Guardian, Will Hutton is the latest pundit to suggest Canada’s example from the mid 1990s is the right way to tackle austerity. Hutton’s aim is true. He knows the current proposals for balancing the books will unleash “the needless squandering of [British] lives.” In his effort to point to a more sensible path he makes […]
Read moreAfter watching yet another 0-0 draw, my excitement for the World Cup is more muted than when things kicked off a week ago. In part, it was dismal play by my home squad, England, but it’s deeper than that. Coming right off the Stanley Cup playoffs, even the drama of international competition can only somewhat backfill a gaping hole: this […]
Read moreLast Thursday’s Statistics Canada release of individual and household income data for 2008 marks a new era in the study of poverty in Canada. Instead of reporting only on the Low Income Cut Offs (LICO), as they used to, Statistics Canada reported on three of the most common measures of low income in the same publication (LICO, the low income […]
Read moreThe latest issue of the quarterly Economic Climate for Bargaining publication that I produce has just been posted on CUPE’s website. In this issue I have pieces about: the new spectre that is haunting Europe, this time of a public debt crisis impact analysis of Ontario’s HST tax reform by income group, already discussed below some analysis of recent employment, inflation and […]
Read moreToday the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published analysis and data on the incidence of different US federal taxes by income group. They are a model of summary data and accessibility, with easily downloadable spreadsheet files, that Canada’s federal agencies (whether Revenue Canada, Statscan or the Parliamentary Budget Office) would do well to emulate. The data show the incidence of individual income […]
Read moreToday’s Employment Insurance (EI) figures for April indicate essentially no change in the number of Canadians receiving benefits or in the number filing claims. To put these flat EI numbers in context, April was the strongest month yet of labour-market recovery. Indeed, it saw the largest percentage increase in employment since August 2002. In one sense, today’s numbers confirm what […]
Read moreThis article ‘More pay and more jobs: how Brazil got both’ by Paulo Eduardo de Andrade Baltar outlines how collective bargaining together with progressive government policies in the Lula years have improved the livelihood of many Brazilians. The minimum wage has risen significantly faster than inflation as have bargained wages, significantly raising pay at the bottom and middle. Increased spending […]
Read moreI have an online opinion piece on the federal government’s “innovation strategy.” My piece focuses on how the strategy directly impacts university students. I argue that the federal government’s current strategy creates winners and losers.
Read moreOn Monday, Catherine Swift of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) was on TV expressing outrage that doubling the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) would entail mandatory contributions equal to 20% of earnings. Her logic is that a self-employed person currently contributes 9.9% of pensionable earnings. That figure doubles to 19.8%. This argument misses a couple of points: Employees Pay Half […]
Read moreFurther to my earlier post on the turn to fiscal austerity on the part of the IMF, OECD and G20, it increasingly strikes me that there is a fundamental contradiction between G20 goals going into the Toronto summit. At Pittsburgh, the G20 called for a “Framework for Strong, Sustainable, and Balanced Growth.” “We will need to work together as we […]
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 moreOn Tuesday, the Ministry of Finance released “Ontario’s Tax Plan for Jobs and Growth: Technical Paper on How the Tax Changes Affect People.†This study is an attempt to counter the Statistics Canada study released by the NDP a month ago. Until recently, proponents were claiming that the HST will simultaneously deliver huge savings to business, create loads of new […]
Read moreThis toughly argued lead article in Bloomberg Business Week on the BP oil leak disaster is a keeper – it sets out a very strong endorsement of the key regulatory role of government in curbing the dangerous excesses of capitalism. “This is a moment to think big and creatively. As distant as risky drilling rigs off Louisiana may seem from […]
Read moreThe CAW have released the preliminary results of a tracking survey following the fortunes of 2600 auto industry workers laid off in the early days of or even before the Great Recession. The major focus is on the services received at Action Centres providing some access to re-employment and training opportunities. Written by Sam Vrankulj of McMaster University, the study […]
Read morehttp://www.canadianlabour.ca/news-room/statements/global-unions-statement-g8g20-ontario-summit-take-action-jobs-sustain-recovery As G20 Leaders meet in Ontario, it is clear that the economic crisis that has wreaked havoc on the lives and livelihoods of working people is far from over. Not only is the ’global recovery’ fragile and uncertain, but in the Eurozone the financial crisis has evolved into a wave of speculation against major currencies and sovereign states. The […]
Read moreArthur Laffer had a boldly titled op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse.†This piece has been invoked at least once every ten minutes on each subsequent episode of The Kudlow Report. US tax rates will rise in 2011, when the Bush tax cuts expire. Laffer argues that, to avoid these higher tax rates, Americans […]
Read moreWarning: The following post probably does not belong on an economics blog. Yesterday, CBC reported that Liberals and New Democrats are negotiating a possible merger of the two parties into one. It seems like everyone except Warren Kinsella has denied this report. So, how does CBC respond? It doubles down on its original report by making Kinsella the lead item […]
Read moreThrough a series of speeches and Financial Post op-eds, former cabinet minister Maxime Bernier has been setting out an uncompromising right-wing agenda. He had Andrew Coyne applauding his proposal to freeze public spending. He had Stephen Gordon tweeting in support of his proposal to eliminate corporate taxes. But his latest proposal has already been rebuked by Gordon and is unlikely to […]
Read moreAmong TV financial pundits, I enjoy watching James Altucher. I have particularly appreciated his advocacy of no-nonsense quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, as opposed to the half measures unveiled so far. (My viewership has not been systematic enough to form an opinion of his stock tips.) I was recently pleased to discover that he is also a prolific […]
Read moreIn line with a major shift in thinking at the OECD and the IMF on the most appropriate timing for “exit strategies” from fiscal stimulus, the G20 finance ministers dropped the usual call for continued stimulus through 2010 from their June 5 communique, and highlighted the need for more or less immediate fiscal consolidation. God knows what lies in store […]
Read moreThe Austrian School is a venerable tradition in economics, albeit one antithetical to this blog’s perspective. But it became apparent this morning that we should instead have been studying Hungarian economics. As far as I can tell, a vice-chairman of Hungary’s right-wing governing party (not a government official) made some loose remarks about public finances being so bad that the […]
Read moreThis morning’s Labour Force Survey might be described as showing a consolidation of the recent employment recovery. The number of new jobs was modest in May compared to April. However, there was a significant conversion of part-time employment into full-time employment and of self-employment into paid positions. Both trends are positive for Canadian workers. There were 67,300 more full-time jobs, […]
Read moreAn hilarious aspect of various inter-provincial “free trade†deals is how proponents struggle to identify the barriers they hope to remove. While there are essentially no “trade barriers†between provinces, concerns about labour mobility have a whiff of substance. This morning, the C. D. Howe Institute released a paper by Robert Knox on “Barriers to Labour Mobility in Canada.†The […]
Read moreI just had a telling experience with the CBC in Vancouver. Their show “On the Coast†was doing a piece on the discriminatory experience of a young women who applied for a job at Joey Restaurants. She went through their training period (which consisted largely of tips about how to dress and apply makeup), but at the end of the […]
Read moreThe Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC) – the leading national voice of civil society international development and anti poverty organizations – appear to have lost the two-thirds of their funding which came from CIDA. This is yet another example of the Harper government refusing to fund independent research and advocacy. Over the last while, we have seen the effective […]
Read moreThanks to Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia, from the University of Ottawa, who oversaw and judged our essay contest for 2010. And also thanks to the entrants to this year’s competition, as Marc and Mario reported a record number of entries and a very high quality of writing. Here are the winners: Undergraduate Winner ($500 Prize): Rob Konkel, University of […]
Read moreI am highly recommending Nancy Folbre’s new book, Greed, Lust & Gender: A History of Economic Ideas. It has a slightly racy title (at least for an economics book) and my initial reaction was that the ‘lust’ focus was a bit forced and seemed to be pandering to the need to sell. Greed and gender are associated easily with economic […]
Read moreFurther to my recent post on the last Monetary Policy Report http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2010/05/11/the-bank-of-canada-and-the-recovery/ I cannot claim to be surprised that the the Bank of Canada has decided to begin to raise interest rates, albeit by an initial quarter point from extraordinarily low levels. They are also returning to normal overnight money market operations which will tighten credit to a degree. I […]
Read moreThis morning, the Bank of Canada raised its interest-rate target from 0.25% to 0.5%. Yesterday’s robust GDP numbers had the overwhelming majority of economic pundits arguing that it should and would do so. But just one week ago, when the stock market was plummeting due to the Euro crisis, most commentators and headlines suggested that the Bank of Canada might […]
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