« Older Entries | Newer Entries »
The Occupy movement isn’t going away, it’s going online
Friday, November 18th, 2011
Nov 18 2011
It’s a worldwide movement… And it’s not going away… the current, gross disparity in wealth matches that of gilded ages past. Progressive movements arose in each case to restore balance and a measure of economic fairness… starting with “A revival of crucial public services, especially education, training, public investment and environment protection… Getting in the way of overdue change is a fool’s errand.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Occupy Toronto is not the real threat to civil society
Friday, November 11th, 2011
Nov 10 2011
Certainly this is the hour of our discontent. That discontent is income inequality. The spectacular disparity between the super-affluent and the rest of us is a leading, if not root, cause of widespread ill health, stunted education opportunity, and intolerably high rates of crime and racial discrimination in our communities… Economic injustice is not an act of God, but of man. The now-tattered social safety net we built we can repair. The wealth of nations is jeopardized by allowing the middle-class backbone of our communities to corrode, a process already too far along.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Small business, the romance is over
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
Oct 20 2011
Fact is, the dismal failure rate of small businesses is such that they kill about as many new jobs as they create. About 40 per cent of new businesses fail in their first two years… Our misplaced romanticizing of small business is lousy public policy. We chronically misallocate taxpayer resources to subsidize with tax breaks and other largesse the lifestyle choice of folks who prefer to be their own boss… doctors, accountants, travel and real estate agents, beauticians, the trusts of wealthy families, and recipients of rental income on vacation homes and commercial real estate. None of those are risk-taking job creators.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
99 Percenters are literally sick of being left out
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
Oct 05 2011
The social protest launched so recently as Occupy Wall Street that soon evolved into the “We Are the 99 Percent” movement is not a repudiation of capitalism. The aggrieved 99 Percenters, already with chapters in more than 160 countries in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, including Toronto and seven other Canadian cities, simply want the system to work for everyone… we can act on the warning of these progressive demonstrators. Or we can respond with riot police. But a change is gonna come.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, youth
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Why scrapping stimulus was a bad move
Saturday, September 24th, 2011
Sep 23 2011
With the Great Recession consigned to the history books, austerity became the mantra among the advanced economies that had suffered most from the epic downturn… What a difference a year makes… the “Arab Spring” has been led not by religious ideologues or ethnic nationalists. It has been spearheaded by university-trained youth who’ve known only joblessness and underemployment since graduation… Earlier this month, Harper appeared to abruptly switch his focus to job creation after the latest employment report showed Canadian job creation has gone into reverse, with the country losing a net 5,000 jobs in August.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Should we raise taxes on the rich?
Saturday, September 10th, 2011
Sep 09 2011
Not since the Gilded Age plutocracy of a century ago has there been such a near-consensus… on the need to raise taxes on the rich… But the real story here is the scarcity of objections to Buffett’s call for a level playing field, in which all income groups are able to participate fully in society… Saving the world economy from that explosion of reckless greed has so far cost the U.S. alone about $2 trillion in taxpayer funded Wall Street bailouts… We can have that discussion peaceably in school auditoriums… Or we can have it in the streets. But there will be a reckoning, because the status quo is untenable.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Strikes losing historic leverage
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
Jun 20 2011
Union membership has steadily declined over the past three decades, to a current 30.8 per cent of the non-agricultural workforce. The comparable figure for the U.S. is a mere 12.3 per cent. The sharp drop in union membership is cited as a leading cause of the flatlining of inflation-adjusted middle-class incomes in Canada and the U.S… A 17-month strike at Caterpillar Inc. in 1994 marked a turning point in North American labour relations… striking workers eventually returned to work without a contract. Employers have been playing hardball ever since.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in History | 3 Comments »
America, the world’s sweatshop
Friday, May 20th, 2011
May 19 2011
U.S. and a few Canadian manufacturers have long been relocating in the low-wage U.S. South. They’ve now been joined by European multinationals, most of which also operate in Canada. The Euros leave behind the social-justice practices of their homelands, as keen to squeeze blood from a stone as the most avaricious business operator… The irony here is that employee denigration does not work. German manufacturing pay averages 50 per cent higher than that of the U.S. Yet Germany enjoys a massive trade surplus. And America suffers a ruinous trade deficit..
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Where do our taxes go? Only receipts will tell
Monday, April 25th, 2011
Apr 20 2011
There’s a movement afoot in the U.S. to introduce tax receipts, and I hope it migrates here. That way I’d know my share of the cost of the RCMP, mandatory flu vaccinations, street repair, maintaining our armed forces, and my contribution to our foreign aid… The hostility to taxes and government that many of us feel might be lessened if we knew the necessary uses to which our money is being put. And of course we’d also be better able to demand that spending on ineffectual programs stop… with this simple device of tax receipts for all, we could slay a few myths.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, tax
Posted in Inclusion Policy Context | No Comments »
An ailing Ireland’s lessons for Canada
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011
Apr 23 2011
Economists are loath to attempt to measure the job-creation impact of corporate tax rates. Common sense tells you there can’t be much of a connection between the two if Germany, by far the healthiest European economy, imposes a rate of 30 per cent to Ireland’s 12.5 per cent. There are simply too many factors guiding business decisions to suss out the influence of federal tax rates on corporate profits. And Ireland is a prime example.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Recent Comments