Archive for the ‘Debates’ Category
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Modern free trade era produced slower growth and greater income inequality: study
The defining features of the Canadian economy during the NAFTA era have been slower GDP growth, a surge in corporate concentration, and heightened income inequality… The timing of the study is important given the current government’s intensive policy of negotiating ever-more intrusive NAFTA-like trade and investment agreements with countries like Japan, the European Union, China and others.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
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The unbalanced thinking behind a balanced budget law
While the Conservative goal is ostensibly to balance the books, this is, at best, a secondary goal. Their real priority has to been to cut spending so as to cut taxes, not reduce debt… When the government took office, federal taxes consumed 16.0 per cent of GDP, which has fallen to a forecast 14.5 per cent of GDP this fiscal year. That seemingly small difference translates into $29.8-billion of forgone revenues, enough to have financed any social activist’s dream agenda.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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What’s wrong with Canada? The destruction is still creative
Corporate failure and reorganizations are the norm in a market economy… Joseph Schumpeter… described a “process of industrial mutation… that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.” … members of today’s Canadian Establishment can only be well aware that they are not in power or control… They are all too busy looking over their shoulders.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology
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This is the time to raise fiscal spending, not lower interest rates
… you do not have to be a Keynesian to realize that now is not the time to be focused on fiscal balance… It’s not that the Feds are simply running a prudent fiscal policy – they are running an unnecessarily tight fiscal policy. Strip out interest charges, and Ottawa is running a primary surplus… at the current time, there is actually a $30-billion gap between revenues and program spending – and at just the wrong time both in economic and political terms… Now is not the time to cheapen the currency for a quick-fix antidote that only affects the winners
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living
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For Ottawa, it is time to invest, not cut
… given low levels of debt, there is no real imperative to balance the federal budget this year, especially through new spending cuts… some provinces and, especially, the cities are less able to finance new infrastructure investment than the federal government despite pressing needs… There is no sound economic or accounting reason why we should not seize the opportunity of record-low interest rates to address our long-recognized and serious infrastructure deficit.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living
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Canada’s deficit drama is all theatre
The government’s focus on eliminating the deficit at all costs was misguided and destructive, and undermined the economic recovery. We should stop worrying whether next year brings a small surplus or a small deficit. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is why so much was sacrificed in the single-minded pursuit of a supposedly overarching goal – that the government quickly threw away for short-term political benefit.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology
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Stephen Harper discovers Ontario
Ontario could certainly use Ottawa’s help, regardless of Harper’s motivation. The manufacturing sector does need capital. Exporters do need access to foreign markets that the premier can’t pry open. There will be a time to press for a more far-sighted agenda. Auto plants, construction firms and food processing facilities aren’t a stable, sustainable industrial base. Tax incentives won’t kick-start new industries.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology
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Health unit supports municipal ‘living wage’ policies
Peace & Justice Grey Bruce asked Owen Sound council this week to adopt a policy that would require the city to pay, at minimum, a living wage for all part-time and full-time city employees as well as people who perform physical work on city property. The policy should be tied, the group said, to the living wage established each year by the United Way of Bruce Grey, which takes into account the cost of basic needs and “social inclusion” expenses…
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
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Public investment gives private ingenuity a springboard
Tax incentives won’t trigger innovation… It takes government-led goal-setting backed up with public funds … mission-based investment — to generate transformative knowledge, spawn technical breakthroughs and improve the economic outlook for everyone, including those at the bottom of the income pyramid… governments can pull together multi-talented teams of problem-solvers, spur innovation, marry science and industry and trigger waves of economic growth.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
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Forget fairness, here’s why taxing the rich benefits us all
… if government taxes some of the richest people’s money, and hands it to less affluent households, consumption is likely to increase, spurring economic expansion. This would seem to be a better deal for everyone – even the ultra rich, who are likely to benefit disproportionately from the improved growth… policies that encourage economic growth, like free trade, are only going to be politically feasible if voters perceive the benefits to be distributed across a wide range of people, not just a few.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
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