Archive for the ‘Economy/Employment’ Category
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Trade deals a threat to Medicare, pharmacare
TISA, as its name suggests, is about services and the core concept is to transfer control of public services from states to corporations, with the transfer being provided by states like Canada and other North and West States but excluding the BRIC countries [which are] somewhat incompatible with the main thrust of neo-liberal globalization… their applications would not only overwhelm the projected savings of pharmacare but most seriously destroy Medicare and replace a democratic based state institution with the antithesis of democratic responsibility, competence and control.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, pharmaceutical, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context, Policy Context | No Comments »
Just what is the TPP (and why should you care)?
The TPP is a template for future economic agreements… between the world’s fast-growing but least developed economies and its biggest but slowest-growing ones… The term “trade deal” is misleading. Negotiators seek to impose on their countries higher standards of working conditions, environmental protection, intellectual property rights enforcement, and purity of food and drug imports.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Economist Adam Smith’s greatest legacy is his balanced approach
He was suspicious of the collusive instincts of producers, and clearly saw the social benefits of competition. He recognized the failure of markets to provide goods such as public sanitation and national defence, and favoured government intervention when the benefits clearly outweighed the costs. He advocated progressive taxation and public education when those ideas were all but unknown… he celebrated the wonders of free markets but also recognized the need for selected government intervention.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, standard of living
Posted in History | No Comments »
Precarious employment a full-blown crisis
Sooner or later workers need to be paid a living wage… Workers need to have more options around buying benefits… Ontario’s Employment Standards Act needs to be updated to reflect this new reality… more than half the workers in the GTHA alone work in precarious employment positions. The Act is silent on fair scheduling. It doesn’t deal with paid emergency leave and excludes more than one million people who work for small companies and don’t have the right to even a single paid sick day.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Ontario’s ‘eye-popping’ shift to low-wage work
Ontario’s low-wage work force has skyrocketed by 94 percent over the past two decades, compared with just 30 percent growth in total employment… the share of Ontario workers labouring for the minimum wage is now five times higher than in 1997… from less than 3 per cent of all employees to about 12 per cent in 2014… Ontario’s outdated Employment Standards Act… is also almost completely silent on the matter of fair scheduling — despite the growing proportion of workers who are saddled with erratic shifts
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Government spending can’t solve Canada’s demographic problems
If Canada’s retirees cannot make a reasonable return on their assets… More of them will be dependent on old-age security (OAS) and the guaranteed income supplement (GIS)… inflated asset prices (equities, housing and the like) have especially benefited the wealthy, thus contributing to rising inequality that, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and others, further impedes economic growth.
Tags: economy, pensions, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Guarantee a minimum income, not a minimum wage
The guaranteed minimum income has been the desideratum of generations of economists and welfare theorists, from the left and the right. The idea is to combine a number of existing income support and benefit programs into one, for which every citizen would quality as of right: no forms to fill out, no eligibility criteria, just a basic entitlement…. Distributional equity is the state’s work. The tools for achieving it are taxes and transfers. Allocating resources efficiently is the market’s job, the tools for which are prices. Wages are prices: let them do what they can do, and help the poorest through the state instead.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Here’s Canada’s way forward on supply management
there is a win-win solution, one that uses part of the system itself… Before dropping the tariffs… we must determine the amount needed to compensate farmers for their quota and for transition assistance… the fund would be large, but it could be paid for over time, using the mechanics of the price-support system… Canada would be able to go to trade talks – including the TPP – with clean hands, unencumbered by supply management and ready to benefit from global opportunities.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Retailers set prices, not supply management
Supply management exists to solve a very specific problem: price volatility. Most countries – including our partners in the United States and European Union – solve the problem with generous farm subsidies… Canada takes a different approach. By allowing farmers to work together to match supply with demand, they earn a fair return for their labour and investment, and Canadians are guaranteed access to a supply of fresh, local, and high-quality food.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Free Trade Deals Put Profits over Public Interest
Trade and investment agreements were designed to be the quintessential globalization mechanism aimed at effectively erasing borders and making the nation state increasingly irrelevant — and impotent. But … The economic meltdown suddenly challenged the notion that the only entity that could efficiently allocate capital (that is, make economic decisions for all of us) was the “market place”… for capitalism to actually succeed (that is, to grow) it needs the check on financial power that the states can provide… There are signs that at least a few countries are trying to get some of their governing power back from transnational corporations.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
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