Archive for the ‘Debates’ Category
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How is Ottawa going to pay off its COVID-19 debt? With any luck, it won’t have to
Tuesday, April 28th, 2020
… the country’s long-term fiscal game plan is likely to look like the one that financed the Second World War… In the 30 years after the war, Canada did not pay off the national debt. It even added to it… The reason was economic growth. The debt was large and growing, but the economy grew slightly faster. That’s how Canada got rid of its war debt without literally paying it off… borrowing costs, low then, are at record lows now.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, jurisdiction
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COVID-19 prompted previously unthinkable spending from Ottawa. Here’s how it will reshape our future
Saturday, April 25th, 2020
… just two months ago… COVID-19 management gripped our economy and we collectively decided to put health and well-being above — far above — economic growth and fiscal discipline… but few foresaw a lockdown that is now more than six weeks long, with many more to come. Few could predict that the cost would be so enormous. But the most surprising part? The consensus that it’s all still worth it is holding strong.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, Health, ideology, participation
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COVID-19’s impact: not recession, but a completely different economics
Saturday, April 11th, 2020
… sectors hit first like education and child care, retail, personal services and restaurants [are] more female-dominated… They are paid less, are more likely to have part-time or temporary work, and are less likely to have or be able to enforce protections like sick leave and sick pay… the service sector’s gender-skew challenges governments to improve existing income supports to prevent desperate and counter-productive economic survival plans.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, women
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Let’s think big about what a post-pandemic Canada looks like – and let’s do it now
Friday, April 10th, 2020
How do we prepare our health-care system for the next epidemic? How do we make social welfare more comprehensive and compassionate? Do we do this by revisiting the idea of a guaranteed annual income? … Yes, it will cost money. We will incur huge deficits. But as Bob Rae and Mel Cappe wrote, “We are all Keynesians now.” … National commissions are not new to us… who should lead this national commission on recovery? Why, Mark Carney, of course.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
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Women, younger workers bear brunt of one million job losses in March
Thursday, April 9th, 2020
… slightly more than one million people lost their jobs in March, easily the largest one-month decline in data that go back to 1976… Another 2.1-million people worked less than half their usual hours, or were away from work, bringing the total number of affected workers to 3.1 million… Young workers endured a brutal month. The number of employed people aged 15 to 24 dropped by nearly 400,000, or 15.4 per cent, with the decrease almost entirely in part-time work.
Tags: economy, Health, participation, women, youth
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Canada will need a new industrial policy for a new world
Tuesday, April 7th, 2020
The pandemic is like an x-ray that reveals flaws in our social and economic body that we can no longer ignore… The drive to outsource everything possible in the name of the cheapest possible product has left far too many stranded in precarious, poorly paid work… The gaping holes in the social safety net laid bare by the pandemic make clear that we’ll end up paying one way or the other, either in higher prices needed to provide decent wages, or in expensive social benefits.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Guaranteed basic income in a time of need
Friday, April 3rd, 2020
Milton Friedman, that leading apostle of small government and swaggering free markets, had something to say about new ideas. He succeeded in making his ideas seem like common sense. “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around,” he said. The COVID-19 crisis offers the opportunity for Canada to stop merely discussing basic income. It’s time to get going with this common sense.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
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Ottawa steps forward as COVID-19 crisis puts provinces in desperate straits
Thursday, April 2nd, 2020
… temporary programs have a way of turning into permanent entitlements. Through the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit, which pays suddenly unemployed workers $2,000 a month, “we might have backed ourselves into some sort of universal basic income,” … We may have accidentally federalized welfare… The problem with creating a basic income more or less by accident is that no one knows how to pay for it, or how it would adapt to regional realities.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, jurisdiction, poverty
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Their work is keeping Canada safe. But they earn a fraction of the national average
Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
From food processing to warehouses to delivery services, the workers deemed essential to maintaining the country’s vital supply chain are significantly more likely to be low-wage and racialized compared to the rest of the labour market… “We have to really look at governments to respond in a longer term manner by increasing minimum wages, easing access to unionization, and increasing both protections and enforcement under minimum employment standards”
Tags: economy, Health, participation, standard of living
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Coronavirus has shown us we were living in an economic fairy tale
Monday, March 30th, 2020
… in late 2008, something extraordinary happens. Instead of allowing the system to fail as capitalism calls for, governments bail out the system. By doing so, they save the same people that created the crisis in the first place, effectively guaranteeing their wins and socializing their losses.
The “real” value of your cash is destroyed as new money is created out of thin air and the system is bailed out… Everyone once again believes in the fairy tale.
Tags: economy, ideology
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