Archive for the ‘Economy/Employment’ Category
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Globalization should be fixed, not junked in age of Trump
“if globalization is to benefit the majority, strong social protection programs must be put in place.” … They include changes in labour laws and employment insurance to better protect those in “precarious” work, as well as strengthening health protection with such badly needed measures as pharmacare. Social programs built in an era of long-term employment and work-related benefits must be refashioned to meet the realities of the new economy.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, tax
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Canada is doing well … but we could do so much better
I suggest (once again) a flexible HST — raise it on elective spending (luxury goods, complex financial transactions and the mere velocity of money in financial markets) to eliminate the deficit, and reduce taxes on small personal and corporate incomes to ease the conditions of the most vulnerable and provide affordable stimulus… and shift stimulus from the sterility of traditional welfare, other than where there is no practical alternative because of the acute needs of the seriously disadvantaged…
Tags: budget, economy, Health, jurisdiction, poverty, privatization, standard of living, tax
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Time for a new narrative on NAFTA
NAFTA captures the worst features of corporate-led, profit-driven globalization — providing transnational businesses unconditional access to markets with no requirement to invest where they sell and the right to scour a continent in search of the cheapest labour, weakest regulations and biggest tax breaks… It’s a set of rules designed to ensure the benefits of trade are enjoyed mainly by global investment bankers, multinational corporations and the privileged class. Job creation is an added (albeit secondary) benefit, but not the likely outcome.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living
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Play the Trump cards right, and Canada’s auto sector will benefit
By stopping the migration of industrial capital toward Mexico, Mr. Trump will actually help Canada’s auto industry – and other manufacturing sectors equally damaged by NAFTA… instead of trying to defend a flawed deal that has hurt working people in all three countries, Canada should enthusiastically endorse the principle that trade must go both ways – and take advantage of this opportunity to imagine a different way of managing globalization.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living
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How Canada could actually become a world leader in pension innovation
Bill C-27, legislation to facilitate the offering of target-benefit (TB) pension plans… [which] integrates the best elements of the traditional DB and DC plans: an explicit target pension benefit; a recognition that long-term compounding of investment returns makes the target benefit affordable; and it offers fair and sustainable risk-pooling and clearly spelled-out property rights and obligations among the employer, employees, pensioners and the pension-management organization.
Tags: economy, pensions, standard of living
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Justin Trudeau needs to keep his EI promise to sick mothers — soon
Thousands of mothers who have been waiting for the Liberals to keep their campaign promise to pay them the Employment Insurance sickness benefits they were entitled to under the law… four years of fighting… has left the government with a hefty and climbing legal bill. You and other taxpayers have spent $2.2 million so far, to prevent women from collecting the EI sickness benefits that they paid for and were legally entitled to.
Tags: disabilities, ideology, rights, standard of living, women
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With automation (not trade or immigrants, as Trump claims) taking jobs, it’s time to consider a universal basic income
… 47 per cent of existing jobs in the United States are vulnerable to automation in the next 20 years… This is what is really driving the populist revolution… It is only jobs that are being destroyed, not wealth… Or rather, it’s not a disaster unless having no work means no money or self-respect… The UBI would provide everybody with enough to live on. Since everybody got it, there would be no stigma involved in living on it.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Canada should strengthen the safety net for precarious jobs
… temporary work has seen the most growth since 1997, particularly in services sectors such as health and education. Part-time employment has grown in line with total employment and seen an increase of 30 per cent between 1997 and 2015… Governments looking to reduce the incidence of non-standard work should be wary of heavy-handed legislative interventions and focus instead on bolstering social policy frameworks.
Tags: economy, featured, Health, ideology, participation, pharmaceutical, women
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‘All for ourselves and nothing for other people’: The takeover of economics by neoliberalism
Inequality, flat incomes, work-life imbalance and unsustainable debt can all to a large extent be traced to this deliberate government policy. Just reversing it would start a recovery. That means returning EI to an actual insurance program, reinstating the federal Canada Assistance Plan which provided strings-attached (read: humane rates) money to the provinces for social welfare, increase the minimum wage to living-wage levels, enforce and enhance labour standards and their enforcement, and make it easier, not harder, for unions to organize.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
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Do Canadian policy-makers understand how alarming it is that their ‘stimulus’ has proven an utter failure?
Households and provinces are using federal stimulus to bail themselves out of the debt they gorged on for years, not to stimulate… exports of manufactured goods have failed to respond to a lower exchange rate… The Bank of Canada had expected a quick transition from energy to non-energy export growth. Instead, exports of all manufacturing goods have essentially stagnated over the past year… more of the same ineffective medicine isn’t what will get us to better economic health.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living
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