Archive for the ‘Employment Debates’ Category
The Structural Revolution
May 7, 2012
There are several overlapping structural problems. First, there are those surrounding globalization and technological change. Hyperefficient globalized companies need fewer workers. As a result, unemployment rises, superstar salaries surge while lower-skilled wages stagnate, the middle gets hollowed out and inequality grows… The current model, in which we try to compensate for structural economic weakness with tax cuts and an unsustainable welfare state, simply cannot last. The old model is broken… Structuralists face a tension: How much should you reduce the pain the unemployed are feeling now, and how much should you devote your resources to long-term reform?
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Toronto incubates new brand of business-charity hybrids
May 01 2012
Social enterprises are business-charity hybrids. They aim to do well in the marketplace in order to do good in the community. The concept is not new. Long before anyone was theorizing about it, Maritimers were doing it. Dairy famers built co-op creameries to cut their costs and stabilize their communities… These grassroots initiatives were one of the best anti-poverty programs ever conceived… In the ’60s, it petered out. Today’s social enterprise movement is a digital, secular, urban renaissance of that tradition.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
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The professional-class bubble is bursting
Apr. 28, 2012
The Great Reset has hit the professional classes too. Young professionals are facing a painful double squeeze. The cost of a degree has gone way up, and the economic benefit it confers has gone way down. Think twice before you encourage your daughter to go to law or med school, especially if she’ll have to borrow heavily to do it. On top of that, these young professionals are starting their working lives later than ever before. By the time they are credentialed and hit the work force, they’re in their early 30s… The professional classes can’t escape the gales of change that are ripping through society. They’ll adapt. But they’ll never be so comfortable again.
Tags: economy, standard of living, youth
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Greed loses its glamour, even on Wall Street
Apr 24 2012
… a few isolated voices — left-wing economists, academics, social activists, labour organizers, church leaders and corporate renegades — warned that Canada was becoming a highly inequitable nation… The volume went up a couple of notches last fall when thousands of young people took to the streets chanting: “We are the 99 per cent.” … Last week brought two developments that couldn’t be shrugged off or attributed to left-wing agitation. The first was a shareholders’ revolt at one of Wall Street’s biggest banks… “This is a shot across the bow of every corporate boardroom in America,”
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
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What is Dutch Disease, and How To Cure It
April 16, 2012
We need more industries that add value to our resources (rather than exporting them in raw form); that generate more high‑income, high‑quality jobs; that embody technology and innovation; and that contribute to greater suc‑cess in world markets. These policies, and the fiscal tools that could fund them, formed part of the 2012 Alternative Federal Budget (published in March by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives).
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Liberals warn teachers, doctors over pay
Apr 12 2012
Mired in debt and at risk of an election by late May, Ontario’s minority Liberal government took dead aim at teachers and doctors Thursday in a bid for public support to keep their wage hike demands to zero. Education Minister Laurel Broten warned elementary teachers of 10,000 layoffs unless they accept a pay freeze while Health Minister Deb Matthews told physicians “I am here to stand up for taxpayers.”
Tags: budget, economy, tax
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Tax cuts would hold aging workers
April 12, 2012
At a time of continued concern about the federal deficit, it may seem strange to suggest that the way to deal with rising retirement costs and looming labour shortages in Canada is for the federal government to collect less tax from workers. But unless we undertake a major overhaul of Canada’s progressive income tax system to bring tax policy more in line with public policy, a growing number of older Canadians are going to leave the workforce, taking their skills with them and reducing their ability to save for a more secure retirement in their later years.
Tags: economy, globalization, pensions, poverty, standard of living
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All’s not lost, Ontario. The future is green, not black
Apr. 07, 2012
The province has one of the planet’s densest concentrations of institutions of higher education. If effectively employed, it could help Ontario pivot to confront the global economy’s long-term trends. The most important of these trends is a multi-decade shift from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy… The shift to carbon-free energy will be akin to what economists call a “general purpose technology” transition… It will spur the invention and delivery of a torrent of new technologies, goods and services in every sector of the global economy… Ontario can be in the vanguard of one of the biggest technological revolutions humanity will ever experience. The future is green, not black.
Tags: economy, standard of living
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Where are our jobs going to come from?
Apr 05 2012
How are we going to grow the economic pie? Where will the jobs come from?… The Harper budget did provide an answer. We go back to the future, as hewers of wood and drawers of water: Dig out as many resources as we can, extract as much oil as possible from the tarsands and lay down as many pipelines as fast as investment permits. Damn the environment and damn the pesky environmentalists… We must find new ways to grow the economy to create the jobs and the revenues we need to fend off the creeping Me-Me-ism that threatens to destroy the Canadian ethos of sharing and lead ultimately to the tribal politics of the Tea Party.
Tags: economy, standard of living
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How about ‘Buy Canadian’ for resource projects?
Mar. 14, 2012
We need a national strategy to maximize Canadian content in Canadian resource developments. Canada, for example, could impose a “Buy Canadian” requirement on future mining projects, similar in spirit to the Buy American rules… If we limit our national economic ambitions to digging stuff out of the ground, all we’ll ultimately have left is a big hole in the ground. But if we’re thoughtful and pro-active about leveraging our resource wealth into all-round economic and industrial development, we’ll have much more to show after the resources are gone.
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living
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