Archive for the ‘Policy Context’ Category
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Does hike in minimum wage cut poverty? Findings say no
Friday, March 18th, 2011
March 18, 2011
Discussions about the effects of increasing the minimum wage are usually dominated by its possible effects on employment. But an unspoken assumption underlying the debate is that increasing the minimum wage does in fact reduce poverty. This assumption turns out to be at odds with the evidence… two recent empirical studies – one for Ontario, another for Quebec – show that the intersection between those who earn minimum wage and those who are in low-income households is surprisingly small.
Tags: economy, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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Our knowledge-based economy can’t afford to be smug
Monday, March 7th, 2011
March 7, 2011
Globalization is no longer just about factory jobs moving to Asia. It’s affecting everything – resources, banking, high-tech services, the whole shebang. Everything is getting bigger, faster and cruelly cost efficient. Fibre-optic cables spanning the continents have made geography irrelevant… Globalization isn’t going away, and it shouldn’t. Its benefits to the enrichment of human life around the world have far outweighed its costs. But the sooner Canada embraces the possibilities of globalization, the further ahead of the curve we’ll be in creating the yet-unnamed jobs and industries of tomorrow.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
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Balance needed in wage debate
Friday, February 25th, 2011
February 23, 2011
… the Canadian Federation of Independent Business… study, Minimum Wage: Reframing the Debate, is not persuasive enough to end minimum-wage policies… It concludes that, rather than use minimum wage hikes to help low-income people, governments should use tax policies such as increasing the basic personal exemption and lowering personal income tax–as well as retraining programs–to help those on minimum wage. It is, in effect, an argument to allow businesses to employ more people at lower wages, while governments pay more.
Tags: economy, ideology, rights, standard of living
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Do we really want to ‘look more like Ireland?’ [corporate taxes]
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
Feb 24 2011
…despite a return to profitability after the recession, Canadian corporations were sitting on buckets of cash last year waiting to decide whether to make the investments in machinery and equipment needed to jumpstart the economy. The belief that lower business taxation automatically leads to significant job-creation, even in the long term, is “a leap of faith,” said Bruce Campbell… “I think it’s more ideologically driven than driven on the basis of empirical evidence.”
Tags: budget, ideology, tax
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Canada holds a losing hand in the arbitration game
Monday, February 21st, 2011
Feb. 21, 2011
The London Court of International Arbitration… Unlike a traditional court, there are fewer built-in safeguards to protect the organization’s independence… Its judges are paid by the parties who use the court, and they’re assigned at the discretion of the court, rather than by lottery or rotation… Critics say the court’s structure serves the interests of the international arbitration business first and defendants such as Canada second. As a result, the court might not be the friendliest venue in which to duke it out with the United States, which accounts for roughly half of all arbitration cases.
Tags: economy, globalization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Debates, Policy Context | 3 Comments »
The real effect of ‘Reaganomics’
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Monday 7 February 2011
In Reagan’s caricature, the central divide between progressives and conservatives is that progressives trust the government to make key decisions on production and distribution, while conservatives trust the market… In reality, the right uses government all the time to advance its interest by setting rules that redistribute income upward… There is no way that government interventions will reverse a rigged market. For some reason, most of the people in the national political debate who consider themselves progressive do not seem to understand this fact.
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After the Great Recession, the Great Regression
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Feb. 7, 2011
Wages, pensions, unemployment insurance, welfare benefits and collective bargaining are under attack in many areas as governments struggle to reduce debts swollen partly by the cost of rescuing banks during the global financial crisis… Europe’s mostly center-right governments are unwinding some cherished gains of the era of social progress that began after World War Two, at the price of widening inequality… But… there is an alternative. Germany’s booming growth, and the parallel recovery in the Netherlands and Austria… is driven by long-term investment in technology and innovation
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
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Toward a lower corporate tax
Friday, January 28th, 2011
Jan. 27, 2011
Instead of cutting corporate taxes, Mr. Ignatieff proposes to jack rates back up to 18% and spend the additional revenue on home care for the elderly and daycare for toddlers. But as the response to similarly ambitious Liberal initiatives in recent years shows, the public has little appetite for a new nanny-state program… Reducing corporate tax cuts will keep Canada competitive and attract investment, at a time when our economic recovery needs all the help it can get. This is not the time for new social programs and grandiose government schemes.
Tags: economy, ideology, tax
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Canada, one of the freest (markets) at last
Friday, January 28th, 2011
Jan 26, 2011
… the Heritage Foundation-Wall Street Journal’s Index of Economic Freedom 2011 says Canada has edged upward in capitalist sentiment and free-market rights in the past couple of years, thereby earning an elite ranking as a “free economy.” In the entire world, only six economies qualify (by scoring 80 points or more on a scale of 1-to-100) for this distinction: Hong Kong (89.7), Singapore (87.20), Australia (82.5), New Zealand 82.3), Switzerland (81.9) and Canada (80.8). Free at last.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Inept regulation fingered in Great Recession
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
Jan 26 2011
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, we have learned for the umpteenth time that it’s wrong to trust the private sector to do the right thing without rigorous government oversight… The bottom line is that epic disasters – like an unsupervised greed on Wall Street that cost eight million Americans and 400,000 Canadians their jobs in the Great Recession – usually have inadequate or corrupted regulation as a root cause.
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization, standard of living
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