Archive for the ‘Policy Context’ Category
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Canada needs more immigrant future citizens, fewer guest workers
Canada should be wary of creating a large pool of low-wage, temporary guest workers with limited rights, some of whom run the risk of turning into illegal residents when their temporary status ends. Employers having trouble finding workers to fill low-skill, low-wage jobs have two choices: attract new employees by raising wages, or find a new pool of people willing to work for less.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, immigration, rights, standard of living
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Why Canada’s job market hasn’t recovered
Many young workers will never recover from their extended bout of underemployment; never reach the wage levels or standard of living they would otherwise have attained. The CLC… wants Statistics Canada to report the underemployment rate in its monthly Labour Forces Survey… to do a better job of counting the underemployed… [and] an employment strategy that supports the creation of better-paid and more secure jobs.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Liberty, Equality, Efficiency
Taking action to reduce the extreme inequality of 21st-century America would probably increase, not reduce, economic growth… within the euro area, countries doing a lot of redistribution have, if anything, weathered the crisis better than those that do less… incentives aren’t the only things that matter. Resources matter too — and in a highly unequal society, many people don’t have them… this isn’t just bad for those unlucky enough to be born to the wrong parents; it represents a huge and growing waste of human potential — a waste that surely acts as a powerful if invisible drag on economic growth.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living, tax
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Auto subsidy debate ignores the real problem: Ontario’s economy
… subsidies… are hardly needed in well-run jurisdictions that focus their energy on education, infrastructure, competitiveness and market access. If we worried less about perfectly level fields and more about fielding the very best team, we’d be attractive to new investors without having to give them special deals at the expense of other taxpayers.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, tax
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Why has Canada given up competing for immigrant investors?
One of the budget items that received little attention was the termination of the 25-year-old Immigrant Investor Program (IIP). It was the flagship immigration tool that specifically focused on attracting global entrepreneurs and investors to Canada… Rather than refocusing and reinvigorating the program, it was turfed, all without providing any economic analysis… They don’t worry about other provinces now aiming for Quebec, which was allowed to continue its unique investor program.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, immigration, rights
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Conservative jobs plan is coherent, relevant, bold — naturally the provinces hate it
An integrated national labour market… requires a national approach — especially as the population ages, participation rates fall, and labour shortages grow more acute… But, say the provinces, the reduction in federal transfers will force them to cut back on priority programs for literacy and at-risk youth. Will it? The amounts involved, about $300-million, are a tiny sliver out of total provincial revenues (in excess of $300-billion) or even federal transfers (at roughly $63-billion, they are up more than 50% since the Tories took power and nearly three times what they were at the start of the last decade).
Tags: budget, economy, jurisdiction, youth
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This anemic recovery
Canada’s economic growth figures are inadequate and the federal government should… make the tax increases on elective, non-essential transactions only… [sales and services] and lower the tax on personal and corporate incomes, stimulating all useful economic activity and continuing deficit reduction… The way to address wealth disparity… is to tax the velocity of money and distribute unstigmatizing income supplements to lower-income, employed people.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
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Ontario’s minimum wage plan locks many into poverty
The items low-income Ontarians must buy are prone to steep price increases. Energy charges for instance, go up at four times the general inflation rate. Shelter costs increase at double the overall rate… the premier could have been less hasty in pegging the earnings of Ontario’s poorest workers to a price index built for the “average” family. As a result of her two decisions — the initial 75-cent boost and the understated cost of living adjustment — minimum wage earners will be left 16 per cent below the poverty line, slipping backward every year.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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None So Blind, Macroeconomics Division
… why did so many macroeconomists feel that they needed to resurrect something Keynesian in feel? Don’t tell anyone, but they were looking at this thing called evidence… The evidence that, at the very least, we don’t live in a classical world is very strong, and in any normal science would long have been considered conclusive… can you imagine a large part of the profession not only ignoring this evidence but doing all it could to excommunicate anyone trying to face reality?
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Profit-loving markets may be in for a rude awakening
… when any value – corporate profits, gross domestic product, fuel prices, bond yields, house prices, mobile phone bills – gets out of whack, natural forces, like human rage, kick in and bring them back to sane levels. The best cure for high prices is high prices; the best cure for low prices is low prices… So what might bring corporate profits, and the stock markets that feed off them, back to levels that could be considered normal? … social justice as well as the inevitable loss of momentum.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
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