Posts Tagged ‘economy’
Let us now give thanks for Michael Wilson’s GST
Wednesday, February 13th, 2019
The GST was designed to be revenue-neutral; its goal was not increasing government revenue but instead raising it in a smarter, more progressive and more economically efficient way… Value-added taxes tax spending and encourage saving. Traditional sales taxes are regressive, falling hardest on low-income people, but credits for low-income Canadians make the GST progressive. The revenue is fairly stable. The system of input credits makes tax evasion far less likely than under a sales tax.
Tags: economy, ideology, tax
Posted in Governance History | No Comments »
Finnish basic income trial creates happiness, but not jobs
Saturday, February 9th, 2019
In the Finnish experiment, the basic income is below what unemployment benefits pay… The basic income is tax free, but barely enough to live on for someone paying rent, so it keeps pressure on the recipients to join the work force… basic income recipients appeared less stressed, healthier and more confident in the future than a 5,000-member control group of unemployment benefits recipients… those on basic income and the unemployed people in the control group ended up working roughly the same number of days.
Tags: economy, globalization, participation
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Premier needs primer in the value of universal basic income to the economy
Saturday, February 9th, 2019
It might be news to the premier that most poor people in Ontario have jobs — and quite a few put in longer hours than he does. UBI is not a novel concept. Thomas More championed it in Utopia(1516). Canada saw positive outcomes from a 1970s “mincome” experiment in Manitoba, but the project was of insufficient duration to be deemed conclusive.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, housing, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Full-day kindergarten keeps women in the work force. Let’s not mess with it
Thursday, February 7th, 2019
… since its full deployment, study after study has demonstrated the benefits for children and families. According to the University of Manitoba’s 2014 research, FDK “is especially beneficial for children of low socioeconomic status or educationally disadvantaged backgrounds.” For a government that purports to put Ontarians back to work to even consider changes to full-day kindergarten invites pause…
Tags: budget, child care, economy, ideology, participation, women
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Charting the Path to National Pharmacare in Canada
Tuesday, February 5th, 2019
… a federally financed, regulated and administered pharmacare program… is constitutionally feasible because of the federal government’s current jurisdiction over drug safety, price regulation and patent protection. While it is generally assumed that federalism and provincial jurisdiction over health stand in the way of a federal government public single payer program, the provinces have supported this option in the past, with the caveat that special arrangements may have to be made for Quebec.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, participation, pharmaceutical, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
America’s rich are facing a reckoning. It’s about time
Tuesday, February 5th, 2019
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll released this week, as well as a recent Fox News poll, showed overwhelming support for more taxes on the wealthy. Even among Republicans, a majority are in favour of making the rich pay a greater share… They want to replace the neo-liberalism of the post-1980s with an economic paradigm which redistributes downward instead of up. It’s a tall order. Making the coddled class pay a larger share is necessary start.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Tilting at windmills won’t solve our health-care woes
Monday, February 4th, 2019
Almost all health services are contracted out to private providers – doctors (most of whom are corporations), hospitals (which are not-for-profit corporations), pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers (for-profit corporations), home care and long-term care facilities (a mix of non-profit and for-profit corporations) and so on…. we have the least-universal universal health-insurance system in the world. More than 30 per cent of care is paid for privately.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, pharmaceutical, privatization
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Using boomers short-term could help gap in Nova Scotia labour shortage
Monday, January 28th, 2019
Retired or semi-retired boomers who want to continue to work — albeit in a more flexible, short-term way… can be dropped into situations to handle specific projects or to mentor or train transitioning staff. They also represent a fixed-cost hiring, with no lag time, and no legacy or professional development costs… So while automation, youth attraction/retention and immigration are essential considerations to sustain and grow the economy, so is figuring out how to best accommodate the fastest growing segment of the labour market: boomers choosing to return to the labour force.
Tags: economy, participation, pensions
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Top 10 Basic Income Articles of 2018
Saturday, January 26th, 2019
As a moderator of the /r/BasicIncome subreddit, I read a lot of links every year about UBI, probably around 100 per month. Once again, as I did last year, I’ve compiled a list of the ten articles/papers/reports I consider the most important to read out of everything published this year. Please bookmark, read,and share away!
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Pharmacare and Politics
Friday, January 25th, 2019
Rather than going for an expensive single-payer model, we think Ottawa would be far better off with a “gap-filling” model. Under that approach, each province and territory would create a public pharmacare plan that would automatically cover anyone who wasn’t already covered by an existing public plan, or by a government-approved private plan. As an inducement, the federal government could offer a modest enhancement of the Canada Health Transfer, or offer to pay part of the incremental cost that each province would incur by offering such a plan.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
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