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Poverty no worse for crisis

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

Jun 20, 2012
In 2010 the percentage of Canadians who earned less than Statistics Canada’s “low-income cut-off” and therefore by universal practice are defined as poor actually fell. It went from 9.5% to 9.0%… the rate for 2010 is even lower than in 2007, the previous best year, when it was 9.1%. It’s true that, in terms of absolute numbers of Canadians falling below the low-income cut-off, 2007 was a better year, by 70,000 people. But even so, 2010 represented an improvement of 120,000 from 2009… the rate of low income among single-mom families was 20.6% in 2010, the second lowest it has ever been

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Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | 3 Comments »

No time to give up on tax, EI reforms

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

June 25, 2011
Lower income taxes and higher transfer payments from government largely offset these declines, as they should in a recession… On the transfer payment side, Employment Insurance did much of the heavy lifting. Twenty per cent more Canadians received EI in 2009 than 2008 and among those receiving it, the amount received rose 22 per cent. Bottom line? In 2009, the system worked. Market incomes sagged as a result of recession and the “automatic stabilizers” of the income tax and employment insurance systems kicked in to help offset the damage.

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Posted in Debates | No Comments »

Better life through higher income

Friday, May 27th, 2011

May 25, 2011
… a slick presentation can overcome even the dodgiest substance and if you go towww.betterlifeindex.org, you find a really slick presentation. Click on “My Better Life Index” and you’re met with 34 daisies, one for each OECD country. Each daisy has 11 petals, indicating the country’s performance on a scale of one to 10 on 11 different measures of well-being (income, health, employment, work-life balance, and so on). You can ask for a ranking on each of the petals, in which case, as if blown by a summer breeze, the daisies dance around to reconfigure themselves in order by that variable.

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Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »

Economic news flash: Inequality is complex

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

May 13, 2011
…in most places growth was more rapid at the top than at the bottom of the income distribution. Across the OECD, it averaged 1.4% per year at the bottom, 2% at the top. Canada’s numbers were 0.9 and 1.6, the United States’ 0.5 and 1.9… Almost everywhere there was growth at the bottom. But incomes at the top grew more quickly than incomes at the bottom. In effect, the rich were pulling away… The great bulk of income, and therefore the source of the great bulk of income inequality, is from wages and salaries.

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Posted in Equality Debates | 1 Comment »

The sky-high cost of taxes

Friday, March 18th, 2011

… good cost-benefit analysis would make you judge proposed public expenditure in a very severe light… Taxes cause people to change their behaviour. Tax an activity and people will do it less or, in the case of corporations, they’ll do it somewhere else. They were doing whatever it is you decided to tax because it provided benefits. If the tax kills the activity, the benefits evaporate. Some of our tax rates are pretty high. Push them a little higher and you lose a lot of beneficial activity.

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Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »

What stimulus?

Friday, April 9th, 2010

April 08, 2010
Even if there is a Keynesian multiplier effect, there just hasn’t been that much government spending to be multiplied… Does that mean government had no helpful effect in bringing about the recovery? No. Taxes automatically eased back and employment insurance kicked in as the recession hit and these automatic stabilizers doubtless help explain why private consumption didn’t sag more. … even we who at the financial brink in fall 2008 did rediscover our inner Keynesian nevertheless realize there is a time and place for desperate measures.

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Posted in Debates | No Comments »

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