After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a widespread sense that liberal capitalism had triumphed in the battle of ideas, and that socialism as a plausible alternative was pretty much dead. But the many crises of contemporary capitalism – obscene levels of economic inequality, looming ecological disaster, the
Continue readingAuthor: Andrew Jackson
Canadian Dimension: Between Dystopia and Democratic Socialism
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a widespread sense that liberal capitalism had triumphed in the battle of ideas, and that socialism as a plausible alternative was pretty much dead. But the many crises of contemporary capitalism – obscene levels of economic inequality, looming ecological disaster, the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Socialism For Realists
I recommend reading Sam Gindin’s paper “Socialism for Realists” to be found in the current issue of the relatively new socialist journal, Catalyst. Sam spent most of his working life as a union economist and assistant to the President of the CAW, and writes often with Leo Panitch, most notably
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
Book Review Adam Tooze. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Viking. New York. 2018 The global economic crisis is now more than a decade old, and is far from definitively behind us. Indeed, many fear, with good reason, that the recent, uneven and lethargic global recovery
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Value Creation vs Value Extraction in Today’s Economy
Book Review Mariana Mazzucato. The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. Allen Lane. 2018. The playwright Oscar Wilde quipped that a cynic is a person who “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” As Mariana Mazzucato argues in her important and stimulating new
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: How to Measure and Monitor Poverty? LIM vs LICO vs MBM.
The federal government has promised to launch a Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy in the coming weeks or months on the basis of now completed consultations with Canadians and the still ongoing deliberations of an advisory committee. As part of this process, there has been discussion about which poverty or low
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Budget Fails to Crack Down on Private Corp Tax Shelter
The federal Budget changed the rules a bit re the taxation of passive investment income in private corporations, but falls well short of what was promised in terms of extra revenues and more tax fairness. The “small business” lobby helped the wealthy big time. http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/andrew_ajackson/wealthy_get_off_lightly_from_budget_2018_changes_to_the_private_corporation_rules
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Stock Market Jitters
The real problem is the absence of a sustainable growth model. My latest Globe ROB column.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Working Poor and the Working Income Tax Benefit
Here is a short research paper I wrote for the Broadbent Institute. https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/broadbent/pages/7073/attachments/original/1519312305/Canada’s_Working_poor_and_the_Working_Tax_Benefit_-_Report.pdf?1519312305 And here is a short summary: The Liberal government have promised to make progressive changes to the Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB) in next week’s budget. Let’s hope that they deliver. The increased insecurity of work and
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Smooth Sailing Ahead For the Global and Canadian Economy?
The consensus forecast of just about everybody – the IMF, the OECD, the Bank of Canada, the Canadian banks – is that Canada will share in a global recovery from the stagnation which followed the financial crisis of a decade ago. All of the major economies – the US, the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Extreme Wealth Inequality Persists
There was little or no media coverage of the release of data on the distribution of the wealth of Canadians in 2016 last week, perhaps because there has been little or no change since the last Survey of Financial Security in 2012. The top 20% of Canadians own 67.3% of
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Private Corporation Tax Loophole and the Ultra Rich
The 2017 Economic and Fiscal Update provides some detailed data (see pp. 51-53) on who will be impacted by the government’s plan to limit how much passive investment income can be earned in a private corporation. Income from investments held in a private corporation is taxed at a lower rate
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Unwarranted Gloom and Doom: The IMF on Canada and NAFTA
To read the media today, one would think that NAFTA is a keystone of Canadian prosperity and that renegotiation could lead to a national economic disaster. That view has already been rebutted in a report by Scott Sinclair for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He finds that a reversion
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The NDP and Old Age Security
NDP leadership candidate Jagmeet Singh has proposed (with few details) to reform the current Old Age Security system by integrating Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS.) “A Jagmeet Singh-led government will implement the Canada Seniors Guarantee to ensure that no Canadian senior has to live in
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada Lags in Job Quality
The 2017 OECD Employment Outlook provides an assessment of member country performance in terms of the quantity and quality of employment as judged by a new set of key indicators. Overall, we do well in terms of job quantity. The employment rate (the proportion of the working age population with
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Wage Structure, Rents and Urban Inequality in Canada
Richard Florida’s new book, The New Urban Crisis (Basic Books, 2017) takes a careful look at rising inequality in big cities in the United States. He details the fact that many of the winners of today’s economy, the top 1% and top 10%, are located in a small number of
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Income Inequality Surged Under Harper
Just as Conservatives gathered to elect a new leader, Statistics Canada released income data for 2015. These allow us to look at trends under the full term of the Harper Government from 2006 to 2015. Average after tax income of economic families rose over this period – from $68,200 to
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Basic Income and the left: The political and economic problems
Should the Left and labour support a demand for a Basic Income (BI)? This simple question has provoked a fervent and confusing debate. The discussion over BI touches on real political and economic anxieties. The attack on the social welfare state, the depreciating power of organized labour and an economy
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The 2017 Federal Budget
Here is the link to my analysis and comments re the Limits of Liberalism. http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/andrew_ajackson/2017_federal_budget_end_of_progress
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Reflections on the Social Democratic Tradition
The Broadbent Institute and Douglas-Coldwell Foundation have just published a paper of mine as part of a larger project on social democratic renewal, The paper is mainly retrospective, and touches on social democracy as an approach to economic policy. Comments are most welcome. The link is here: http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/reflections_on_the_social_democratic_tradition 1.0 Executive
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