Here’s an excellent piece by Sam Boshra, about the recent proposal by Michael Smart and Jack Mintz to apply the GST to food, from Sam’s blog at Economic Justice: Low-income households can’t buy food today with a larger HST rebate they hope to get sometime in the future. A key objective
Continue readingAuthor: Toby Sanger
The Progressive Economics Forum: Could McGuinty’s cuts be worse than Harris?
The Ontario government’s long awaited and much discussed report of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services (aka, the Drummond report) was finally publicly released this afternoon. As was rumoured, the report says Ontario would need to increase program spending by no more than 0.8% per year for
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Recalculating inflation: billions in savings for governments and employers paid for by workers and pensioners
The top story in the Globe and Mail today reports on something I warned about a year ago: Statistics Canada is making changes to the way it calculates the Consumer Price Index. At that time I suspected changes to calculations of the CPI would be introduced as part of the renewal
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Tax Shifting
Earlier this week, the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab published a piece by Stephen Gordon arguing that high income and corporate taxes won’t generate much revenue. Gordon used used the metaphor of Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s (finance minister to the Louis XIV, the “Sun King”) that the art of taxation was like plucking feathers
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Rising Inequality Spooking the 0.0001%
Contributors to this blog–and CCPA experts–have been warning about the negative economic and social consequences of rising inequality for decades. Now the even the 0.0001% are getting concerned. Experts polled for the Global Risks Report for this month’s meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos –one of the most eleite
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Cost of Inequitable Tax Loopholes Increases
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
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Flaherty’s Christmas List – all Mixed Up
Following recent dismal reports on rising unemployment, stagnant GDP growth, and a deteriorating economic outlook, we can only hope federal Finance minister Jim Flaherty will provide some Christmas cheer with changes “to better promote job creation and economic growth” (as he’s asked for advice on through his pre-budget consultations). Unfortunately,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Economic Climate and Inequality
The December issue of the quarterly Economic Climate for Bargaining publication I produce is now on-line. This issue has a number of pieces on issues of inequality, including: Rising inequality is hurting our economy Labour rights, unions and the 99% Canadian economy bleeding jobs; public sector cuts to intensify Recession
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Battle of the Wages study dispels myths about public sector wages
A comprehensive study released today by CUPE shows there’s no evidence public sector workers are paid consistently more than those in similar jobs in the private sector. Instead, overall average pay in the public sector is remarkably similar when compared against similar jobs in the private sector: only 0.5 per
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: OECD on Inequality
Following concern expressed by the IMF, the Conference Board and of course thousands of protesters around the world, the OECD has just released an extensive 400 page report on the problem of growing inequality: Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps on Rising. I haven’t read through it yet, and it
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Federal R&D Panel Report
In a week when business lobby groups are appearing before the House of Commons Committee on Finance and calling for more tax breaks, the federal R&D Panel appointed a year ago released a very good report saying Canada’s very generous system of R&D tax incentives haven’t been effective and what we need instead are more direct grants […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Europe, G20 and financial transactions taxes
Thanks mostly to the superb campaigning by international development, poverty and environmental activists, there’s been remarkable progress in getting Europe to introduce financial transactions taxes, aka the Robin Hood Tax. Last month, the European Commission presented a proposal for a broad-based financial transactions tax in all 27 members states of the European Union. At […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Who’s over or under-paid?
We all know that the wages and compensation individuals receive in private competitive markets reflects their productivity, unless pesky unions and government regulations get in the way–because Economics 101 (and Michael Hlinka) have told us so. Corporate CEOs are worth every penny their “independent compensation committees” award in compensation and stock options them because they are “creating value” […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Federal Budget Refried
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 […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Fiscal Record of Canadian Political Parties
With all the recent news stories — as well as alarm raised by other leaders — about the fiscal and economic impact and record of NDP governments, I decided to take a look at and review the fiscal record of all federal and provincial governments in Canada for the past three decades. These results may […]
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