I stumbled upon a presentation released by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) yesterday. The presentation outlined strategies for companies to integrate ethical and environmental concerns raised by consumers. In many ways, this is nothing new. The distance between this rather tepid advice and the actual needs of facing
Continue readingAuthor: Michal Rozworski
Political Eh-conomy: Political Eh-conomy Radio: In and out of crisis with Sam Gindin
Today’s podcast is a feature interview with fellow political economist Sam Gindin. I interrogate Sam about the political economy of the present: the exit from the 2007 crisis, the role of states, austerity, the place of finance and the possibilities of resistance. Download: podcast-140314-sam-gindin.mp3 Sam Gindin is a left political
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Privilege and pseudo-science
When people ask me why I did graduate school in economics, I sometimes half-jokingly tell them that it was a case of going into the lion’s den to see what the lion is up to in there. This is an exaggeration to be sure, but it is in keeping with
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Published elsewhere: Five myths to bust about minimum wage hikes
I wrote a piece on the very recent proposal to increase the minimum wage in British Columbia that was published over the weekend in The Tyee: The B.C. Federation of Labour has just proposed to increase the minimum wage in British Columbia to $13 per hour. In short, it’s about time. With this
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The mouse in the room: Small business fetish and the minimum wage debate
The scrappy mom-and-pop shop may be a nice image, but how well does it reflect the reality of employment? Small business may be neither as ubiquitous nor economically heroic as many people think. If this is the case, then perhaps the needs of small business should not figure as prominently
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Re-making markets with unpaid internships
From political proposals to street protests, unpaid internships have been making news in Canada. Rightfully so, as there is a litany of problems with unpaid internships. For individuals, unpaid internships can not only be a form of outright wage theft, they also help entrench class-based privilege that allows some the
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Political Eh-conomy Radio: Postal banking
Introducing the Political Eh-conomy Radio podcast, a new podcast on economic issues in Canada and beyond. The inaugural episode tackles postal banking: why cut valuable services and jobs at Canada Post when it is instead possible to create financial services run by the post office, at the same ensuring the
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: We can’t all be workers: Putting inequality in the inequality debate
It’s easy to get confused about who is a worker and who isn’t these days. Your CEO may worker longer hours than you, not the top-hatted capitalist of the Monopoly board he. Indeed, it may seem that the leisure class of the turn of the last century has been replaced
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The labour share and income inequality
All the recent talk about the Canada’s shrinking middle class and rising income inequality got me thinking that it might be a good time to take a fresh look at a somewhat neglected economic concept: the labour share of income. The labour share of income hopes to measure the portion
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Selling prosperity in a time of austerity: Budget days in BC and Quebec
Two very different provincial governments tabled their budgets this week. The freshly-elected BC Liberals and the seemingly election-ready Parti Quebecois both delivered what they termed “responsible” budgets. While the two governments identify with opposing ends of the political spectrum and face distinct political climates, these differences did not prevent their
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Selling prosperity in a time of austerity: Budget days in BC and Quebec
Two very different provincial governments tabled their budgets this week. The freshly-elected BC Liberals and the seemingly election-ready Parti Quebecois both delivered what they termed “responsible” budgets. While the two governments identify with opposing ends of the political spectrum and face distinct political climates, these differences did not prevent their
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Aristotle contra the math stick: Magic numbers redux
In the last post I explored how magic numbers, such as a 90% debt-to-GDP ratio or a 2% inflation target, at once over-simplify and stifle economic policy debate. The role of magic numbers raises more general questions about “the rule of number” in economics. The math stick used to browbeat those
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Magic numbers and the math stick
Economics is often associated with numbers. We are bombarded with economic data: GDP, unemployment, inflation, debt, exchange rates, market indices…the list is seemingly endless. While many of these numbers change – we are encouraged to cheer when they rise, jeer when they fall – there are others that are presented
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Another (budget) day, another dollar (cut): Canada’s slow-motion austerity
Yesterday’s federal budget was a non-event. Indeed, the no-surprises budget was itself no surprise: the Conservatives have long done their fiscal policy dirty work in omnibus bills and other dark corners scattered throughout the legislature, Crown corporations and federal agencies. This leaves the media circus of budget day a very
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Economic history in the present: The wage fund and the minimum wage
How many bushels of wheat do you make a year? While this is not the most relevant question to be asking about wages today, some of the discussion around the minimum wage is taking inspiration from a very old economic idea according to which questions like this would be right
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The facts are capitalist
There has been a curious debate in the past week within the world of economics blogging. It started with a post by Chris House on the contrast between a “well-known liberal bias” within the academy generally and the decidedly more conservative bent of most members of economics departments. House attributes
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s Luxury Index is through the roof
Numbers season is over but good inequality data is still missing. January sees us regularly bombarded with a whole range of economic statistics about the previous year. GDP growth: likely 1.7%, low but looking brighter for next year. Unemployment: 7.2%, low but lots of workers leaving the job market altogether
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Questions for robots
Eighty years ago, Keynes famously predicted that within a century people would need to work no more than three hours per day. High living standards aided by technological breakthroughs would give human beings satisfying, minimal work and plentiful leisure, while robots and machines took over menial and repetitive labour. Less
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Strategy, or escape from the privatization matrix (Canada Post, Part 2)
The endgame of the current rounds of cuts at Canada Post is some form of privatization. In the previous post, I argued that privatization proceeds differently depending on context. Many factors – I focused on whether a public service provider is exposed to competition and is profitable – can have
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Diagnosis, or into the privatization matrix (Canada Post, Part 1)
There is little doubt that Canada Post’s recently-announced plan to eliminate home delivery, raise prices and lay off thousands of workers is not aimed solely at streamlining operations, but is likely a prelude to future privatization of postal delivery in Canada. Canada Post is ripe for the picking: it is
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