Archive for the ‘Debates’ Category
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Exploiting Canada’s resources can be a fool’s game
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
Feb. 22, 2012
Canada has one of the worst productivity records in the industrialized world. Upon productivity improvements household incomes depend, not burgeoning household debt. When you ask why median household incomes stagnated for a long time in Canada, and why the lowest-income Canadians have gotten poorer, one reason (among many) is low productivity… If nothing changes, taxes will certainly have to rise on them just to deal with aging alone, unless those who remain in the work force are more productive… Without better productivity, forget real income growth.
Tags: economy, globalization, privatization, standard of living
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The world’s losing its workers. How will we compete?
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
Feb. 11, 2012
The world’s supply of working-age people will soon be shrinking, causing a shift from surplus to scarcity… There are currently almost five working-age Canadians whose income taxes pay the pension and health-care costs of each retiree; within 20 years, there will be only three. As a result, according to Ottawa, health-care costs will double and social-service costs will rise by a third… Immigration has spared Canada from the worst of aging, but immigrants adopt host-country family sizes very quickly, so they’re a temporary fix.
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living, youth
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Sweet spot for low-wage earners: after-tax salaries of $30,000 or more a year
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
Feb 10 2012
… low-wage workers experience the biggest jump in financial well-being, personal skills and connections to family and community when their after-tax incomes rise to between $30,000 and $40,000. “This is when a single wage earner moves from merely existing to living,” says Peter Frampton, executive director of the Learning Enrichment Foundation, which is conducting the research in partnership with the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)… “We think this shows in very real terms what a person needs to earn to feel a sense of financial and personal well-being,”
Tags: budget, participation, standard of living
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Prime Minister Stephen Harper boasts about Canada’s economic performance while jobs vanish and pensions shrink
Friday, February 10th, 2012
Feb 09 2012
What we are seeing is a power shift. Governments and corporations are limiting their risk exposure at the expense of their citizens and employees. This trend is not new, but it accelerated sharply in 2012. We knew Harper had no intention of bolstering public pensions. But no one imagined he would make life harder for seniors, without any warning or public discussion.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, pensions, standard of living
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Why isn’t EI reform on Harper government’s radar?
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Feb. 01, 2012
A system that treated each jobless worker equally regardless of the local environment would encourage labour mobility and improve productivity. No wonder Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall damns the existing system as a “huge disincentive against getting people to go where there is a job. The principle infused into this ought to encourage people to go where the work is.” … Whatever the reason, reforming employment insurance so that all workers are treated equally, however much it would benefit the economy, is a can the Tories appear to have kicked down the road.
Tags: budget, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Bow Down Canadians, Corporations Are King
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Jan. 30, 2012
What kind of society beggars those of its citizens who worked all their lives and now want to retire in dignity while privileging the rich and super-rich by slashing their income taxes and allowing them to transfer wealth to their children untouched? … Since the mid-1980s, and accelerating with the signing of the Canada-U.S. “free trade” deal, the guiding principle of neo-liberalism seems to have been “Ask not what your economy can do for you, ask what you can do for your economy.” … The economy is now defined as the narrow interests of global corporations.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, globalization, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
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Squeezing the middle
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
Jan. 23, 2012
Most Canadians are guaranteed nothing by our lean, mean, globalized economy. Even university-educated specialists (like accountants or programmers) have been squeezed by new technology, and by trade rules which allow corporations to outsource any job to the lowest global bidder… About the only structural protections most Canadians have going for them are public programs (like health care, education and pensions), and unions (to help equalize their power with employers). Yet these are under attack, too, from the same governments that allow (even glorify) the social irresponsibility of corporations. Governments are cutting the social wage as employers try to slash money wages.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
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Surely Harper Doesn’t Want More Poor People. Or Does He?
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
11 Jan 2012
As the Fraser Institute’s Niels Veldhuis observed, “taking money from successful Canadians and redistributing it to lower income Canadians will only decrease the incentives for lower income Canadians to become successful.”… Minimum wage laws and the right to be represented by a union infringe on the economic freedom of employers and employees, they say. Having a legislated minimum wage must inhibit a prospective employee’s freedom to choose an even lower wage… as Canada’s standing on the economic freedom index rises, so do the number of billionaires and the ranks of the poor and struggling
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
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Pay at the top
Thursday, January 5th, 2012
Jan. 05, 2012
There is no justification for anyone running a hospital to be paid two or three times more than Ontario’s Premier or even the Prime Minister (Hospitals Scrapping Executive Perks – Jan. 4). We need a law that limits public-sector salaries to those of the Premier ($200,000-plus)/Prime Minister ($300,000-plus), with the justification that everyone else’s job simply can’t be more rigorous than that of the top dog. Even at those lowered salaries, competent people would be lining up to apply. And when their over-the-top pensions kick in, taxpayers can keep paying them for many more years.
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
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Five ways to boost Canada’s economy
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
Jan. 01, 2012
Keep Canada’s future retirees from sliding into poverty… Six leading Canadian pension experts… recently urged an expansion of the CPP… Build critical infrastructure… From crumbling bridges and choked roads to inadequate public transit, the needs outstrip available funds… Deregulate the relics of the pre-Internet economy… Low-cost competitive telecom services are a must-have… Unleash the innovation potential of Canadian companies… Canada spends 1 per cent of GDP on business R&D, compared to 1.6 per cent among wealthy countries
Tags: budget, globalization, ideology, pensions, standard of living
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