Search results for “site/economics of childcare”

  • Outlook Darkens as Budget Debate Begins

    Allow me to indulge myself just this once.  Almost exactly one month ago I wrote a post on the Progressive Economics blog  arguing that the Bank of Canada was being too optimistic about our economic prospects in the July Monetary Policy Report . Last Friday, both the Governor of the Bank of…

  • Canada, stood up

    Would someone please forward me a copy of the memo? You know, the one that banishes the term “tax cuts” in favour of “tax relief”. In the lead-up to the 2006 federal budget, it seems like all of the tax cutters – from the dozens of groups representing business interests…

  • Stimulus vs Public Investment

    A column by Nobel Prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz in the Financial Times makes what I think is an important point. The current debate over fiscal policy for the US, Europe and Canada is often characterized in the media as one between advocates of  higher deficits from Keynesian style stimulus measures,  and…

  • Decarbonizing Homes and the Price of Gas

    Our climate justice framework for BC is to eliminate fossil fuels by 2040. In the household sector, this poses a significant challenge, not so much in terms of technology and knowledge, but because natural gas is much cheaper than electricity per unit of energy. Even though BC has among the…

  • Big “Fracking” Problem

    Natural gas industry’s “fracking” risks causing earthquakes At the end of this month (Feb. 28), Quebec’s public consultations body, the Bureau des audiences publiques sur l’environment (BAPE), is scheduled to release its report on potential environmental impacts of developing the province’s Utica Shale gas field – an area of 5,000…

  • When Business And Progressives Agree

    It was news, not so much because of what was said, as who said it:  The Conference Board of Canada released a report on rising inequality in Canada today, noting that despite the fact that Canadians are better off than a generation ago, the richest 20% in society are taking an ever-growing…

  • Navigating troubling economic waters

    Down south, the Obama administration is in a dangerous game of chicken with Republican congressional leaders, who are cynically holding the US economy hostage in order to impose a radical agenda of spending cuts. Obama has seemingly bought into the rhetoric of cutting debt, rather than focusing on the real…

  • Is BC about to drop a new carbon bomb?

    Any day now the BC government should be releasing the latest greenhouse gas data for the province, and we will see if any progress is being made towards a legislated 33% reduction in emissions by 2020 (relative to 2007 levels; data will be for 2009 and we know that emissions…

  • Government Assaults on Unions: The Economic History and the Consequences

    In the early 1980s, the world was gripped by recession. Following the troubled years of the 1970s, there was considerable worry throughout the developed world that we had entered a period of endemic stagnation. The real problem, it was claimed, was that the western economies had lost their ability to…

  • Now It’s Up To The Provinces

    Premiers don’t require federal help to implement Pharmacare Canadians generally are not as wildly and uncritically patriotic as Americans. We don’t continually wave the Maple Leaf flag and boast about our country’s social and economic pre-eminence. But most of us – quietly and unostentatiously — are proud of Canada and…

  • Fossil fuel expansion as a crime against humanity

    After 2010, which was one of the warmest years on record, 2011 has shown us astonishing patterns of extreme weather worldwide. It would take a long time to make the full list, but you know what I mean: tornadoes, floods, drought, record cold in some parts, record heat in others,…

  • Jack Mintz is Right on “Small” Business Tax

    One of my main undertakings over at Relentlessly Progressive Economics has been to debunk Jack Mintz’s relentless advocacy of tax cuts for large corporations. However, I also give him credit when he proposes good policy, such as raising potash royalties and the small-business corporate tax rate. This past week, he was out with a paper on the latter…