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By Erin Weir, on March 15, 2012, at 5:51 pm The following is a ten-point summary of the CCPA Alternative Federal Budget released today:
The federal government is planning an unprecedented fiscal austerity budget, claiming that massive cuts to public sector jobs, services, and social programs are necessary to pave the way for jobs and growth. But in fact the opposite is true. Austerity programs weaken the economy, and their implementation in many European countries has tipped the EU back into recession, fueled unemployment, and increased their debts and deficits.
There is a better way to make the federal budget work for the rest of us. The Alternative Federal
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Alternative Federal Budget 2012
By Andrew Jackson, on March 14, 2012, at 10:12 am I am an economist, not a lawyer or expert on the collective agreements in the federal public service, but I can still detect a hatchet job.
The CBC have given a lot of play to a Greg Weston story that allegedly generous severance payments to public servants amounting to as much as $2 Billion will be triggered by job cuts in the upcoming Budget.
“The Harper government’s plan to slash an estimated 30,000 public service jobs over the next three years includes hefty golden handshakes that could leave some federal workers laughing all the way to the bank.”
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Severance Pay and Public Servants
By Andrew Jackson, on March 14, 2012, at 9:51 am I am an economist, not a lawyer or expert on the collective agreements in the federal public service, but I can still detect a hatchet job.
The CBC have given a lot of play to a Greg Weston story that allegedly generous”severance payments to public servants amounting to as much as $2 Billion will be triggered by job cuts in the upcoming Budget.
“The Harper government’s plan to slash an estimated 30,000 public service jobs over the next three years includes hefty golden handshakes that could leave some federal workers laughing all the way to the bank.”
No
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Severance Pay and Public Servants
By Laurel Whitney, on March 10, 2012, at 5:42 pm 20080810-violin.jpg
The President rolled out his FY2013 budget recently, which includes eliminating $40 billion in tax breaks from Big Oil companies, such as BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell. Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute's response would have you believe that cutting the subsidies would be the equivalent of moving back into their parents' basement.
It's propaganda at its most repetitive, crying that they are "job creators" and that it's so "unfair" to raise taxes because they already contribute millions to the economy every day, and if you do they swear to god prices will rise and the inevitable
. . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: Big Oil Rakes In Billions, Still Complains Taxes Are Too High
By Arun DuBois, on February 26, 2012, at 9:00 am Take a look at the picture below. Take it in. Now scan your eyes to the far right…there, in faded blue you’ll see the initials MMT. Now zoom out. Take it in again. Notice: a few hundred people. Spending their time learning about an economic theory called Modern Monetary Theory or MMT and its application to the European debacle. Now where does that happen? In this case, Italy. Normally, never.
But something is changing out there. Economic necessity is opening people to new ideas, just like it did in the 1930s, just like
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: The Times they Are a Changing: The MMT Wave Begins
By Erin Weir, on February 17, 2012, at 9:19 am Statistics Canada reported today that the number of Canadians receiving Employment Insurance rose by 4,230 in December, a month in which unemployment rose by 6,100. The proportion of unemployed workers receiving benefits remained below 39% (i.e. 544,720 beneficiaries out of 1.4 million unemployed).
Although December saw relatively little change in these totals, it capped off a year in which Canada’s EI system sharply contracted. During 2011 as a whole, the number of EI recipients fell by 109,350 while the number of unemployed workers declined by just 11,700.
The implication is that many newly unemployed workers were unable to
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: EI Shrank by 100,000 in 2011
By Armine Yalnizyan, on February 14, 2012, at 9:29 am A shorter version of this article appears today at Economy Lab, the Globe and Mail’s on-line business feature.
Capitalism has entered an ugly new era, one that may work well for the shareholders of world, but not for the rest of us.
I couldn’t help but notice that, on the very same day Caterpillar shuttered the doors of its London, Ontario locomotive plant and headed to low-wage Indiana, the Wall Street Journal reported federal corporate tax receipts as a share of profits had dropped to their lowest level in at least 40 years in the US. Sadly, that’s
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: In the Wake of the Crisis: Bully Capitalism
By Andrew Jackson, on February 3, 2012, at 7:29 am No. Of course not. Even if the government waves around scary large increases in nominal dollar terms.
As has been widely reported, the most recent OAS actuarial report shows that total program expenditures will rise from $38.8 billion in 2011 to $107.9 billion in 2030. However, the dollar figure reflects, not just an increase in the number of OAS beneficiaries (from 4.9 million to 9.3 million), but also inflation. And the economy will grow over the same period.
As a share of GDP, the program cost is forecast to increase from 2.36% in 2011, to
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Is The OAS/GIS Program Unaffordable?
By David Macdonald, on February 2, 2012, at 10:22 am Now that the government is planning for an $8 billion cut, the potential job losses could drive job losses to between 99,000 and 108,000 full time positions across Canada. At this much higher level, the federal government could be single-handedly responsible for pushing national unemployment from its current 7.5% to 8.0%. About half of those losses would be federal public servants and half would be in the private sector (crown corporations, non-profits and government contractors).
The full post is available here
By Andrew Jackson, on January 19, 2012, at 9:35 am
The Mark have published a pre Budget commentary from yours truly.
By Toby Sanger, on January 9, 2012, at 1:33 pm Finance Canada published its annual Tax Expenditure Report for 2011 and it shows that the cost of some of the most inequitable tax preferences and loopholes continues to rise.
For instance the stock option deduction, which allows CEOs and executives to pay tax at half the rate of ordinary working income, is estimated to cost the federal government $725 million last year.
I’d written about this major problems with this tax preference a number of times before. Not only is it highly inequitable, but it also fuels speculative behaviour and short-term behaviour.
Now even Roger Martin, dean of U of
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Cost of Inequitable Tax Loopholes Increases
By Andrew Jackson, on November 8, 2011, at 4:22 pm The best one can say about today’s Economic and Fiscal Update is that it signals some very slight flexibility amid changing circumstances. The Minister said “We will not be bound by ideology when it comes to making decisions to keep our economy strong and protect Canadians, their financial security and their jobs. We have responded [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: A Long Way from Plan B
By Armine Yalnizyan, on October 31, 2011, at 10:44 am Governments around the world are heading down a path to economic suicide. So said Nobel Prize-winning former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, to hundreds of well-heeled financiers and decision-makers who paid a bundle to hear him in Toronto. With a voice as gruff as gravel, and an energy bristling with urgency, he [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Austerity Kills: Conservative cure worst thing for what ails the economy says Stiglitz
By Nick Falvo, on September 3, 2011, at 3:57 pm The Canadian Association of University Teachers represents 66,000 university and college teachers, academic librarians, researchers and staff at more than 120 universities and colleges in Canada. Their 2012 brief to the Federal Finance Committee contains some useful numbers. I was particularly interested to see their data showing decreased funding to Canada’s federal granting councils. Using constant dollars, the brief spells out that, over [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Funding for Federal Granting Councils
By Keith Newman, on August 12, 2011, at 4:47 pm Arun Dubois’ blog post yesterday on Modern Monetary Theory has prompted me to write my own take on the subject. For those interested, an interesting thumbnail sketch of MMT, essentially functional finance augmented by a full understanding of monetary operations, is explained at http://johnsville.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-in-nutshell.html. While MMT deals with the details of monetary and fiscal matters, [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: MMT: What it Means for Canada
By Marc Lee, on August 9, 2011, at 12:24 pm When it comes to the Canada Pension Plan, a major talking point from the right is that the CPP has “unfunded liabilities”, with the implication that is not affordable and financially unsustainable. This is nonsense, a scare tactic based on an accounting fiction that counts only future expenditures but does not count future revenues. For [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: About those “unfunded liabilities”
By Erin Weir, on August 1, 2011, at 6:12 am Jason Clemens, who hangs his hat at several right-wing think-tanks (the Fraser, Pacific Research and Macdonald-Laurier Institutes), lauds Canadian fiscal conservatism in today’s Wall Street Journal: Canada’s government, for example, has grown smaller over the last 15 years. Total government spending as a share of the economy peaked at a little over 53% in 1993. [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Clemens vs. Clemens
By Armine Yalnizyan, on July 21, 2011, at 2:32 pm Once again, in the middle of summer, the anti-government government has unleashed more anti-policy policy via a compliant Statistics Canada. Who needs data when you’ve got family values? The Harper team knows what you need. (Hint: tax cuts. Oops! Not for you sister, if you’re a single mom.) The Globe and Mail’s Tavia Grant has [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Family Values and Budget Cuts
By Marc Lee, on July 12, 2011, at 12:02 pm 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 US problem of unemployment. Yet, [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Navigating challenging economic waters
By Toby Sanger, on June 6, 2011, at 5:45 pm Was it worth the wait? Hardly. Today’s federal budget is about as appetizing as two month-old pizza warmed up in the microwave. I guess they deserve high marks for consistency, though not for economic policy or a long list of other things. The Harper government’s June Budget is almost entirely a reprinted version of the [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Federal Budget Refried
By Erin Weir, on May 8, 2011, at 8:56 am Some progressives worry that the new Conservative majority will dismantle the Canadian state. Hard-nosed economic conservatives like Andrew Coyne and Terry Corcoran worry that the Conservatives will not actually cut government spending. I have suggested that the Harper Conservatives will cut, but not as much as the Chretien Liberals. This debate would benefit from some [...] . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: How Much Will Harper Cut?
By West End Girl, on March 21, 2011, at 1:05 am This is the second video produced by our frenetic little team at the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (Toronto Chapter) about why the Conservatives paying $1.4 billion dollars to the oil, gas and coal companies is just absurd.
Please call the Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty at 866-599-4999 and let him know that this massive oil subsidy could be better used for green jobs and renewable energy. For more information, go to the Climate Action Network web site.
By Wheatsheaf, on February 19, 2011, at 9:57 pm UPDATE: Tax cuts are still a no go for the NDP. In austere times, it is good to see the NDP continue to pursue pragmatic and practical economic policies. See CTV’s Question Period for the word right from the leader’s mouth: http://www.ctv.ca/qp/index.html?vidId=420943.
It has been said, this country was founded upon compromise. The British North America Act was not the perfect document; it was a reflection of the compromises our founding fathers made to create the Dominion. Never a leader, nor a follower, Canada has sought the middle road ever since.
Under Jack Layton’s leadership, the (Read more…)
By Jesse, on February 8, 2011, at 11:13 am In this country, we subsidize dirty energy. There are tax breaks, there are handouts, there are “investments”. Liberals should be out there saying “not one dime” of public money will ever go to this type of energy again. I don’t think this is even i… . . . → Read More: Democratic Progress: "Not One Dime": A Proposal
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