The news of UBC Sauder Business School students chanting about rape of underage girls during a FROSH week event has generated much outrage. As it should. While the chant might seem like an isolated incident, it is not. The recent rape chant scandals in UBC and in St Mary’s University
Continue readingTag: income distribution
The Progressive Economics Forum: Funding Cuts to Alberta’s PSE Sector: There Are Alternatives
It has recently been reported that the University of Alberta wants to “reopen two-year collective agreements” with faculty and staff “to help the university balance its budget…” This appears to be in direct response to Alberta’s provincial government announcing in its March budget that there would be a “7% cut
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Fraser Institute Sunshine List
On Monday, Andrew wrote that we need a Bay Street sunshine list. Today, we got something almost as good: a Fraser Institute sunshine list, courtesy of US tax filings and The Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor. This piece is a great counterpoint to the Fraser Institute’s recent attack on public-sector salaries.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Who Is Earning Too Much?
Last week’s publication of the so-called “sunshine” list of 88,412 Ontario public sector workers earning more than $100,000 per year elicited lots of howls of outrage in terms of on line commentary. It should not be forgotten that the whole point of the annual list – which dates back
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Wealth Inequality and Neo Liberalism
I have a commentary posted on the Broadbent Institute web site, arguing that inequality of wealth fundamentally undermines the argument that market rewards are “fair.” http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/en/blog/andrew-jackson-distribution-wealth-implications-neo-liberal-justification-economic-inequality
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Sniffs from a Schiff…
(Originally written March 7, 2012. Part of Great Upload of 2013.) A colleague once showed me a book by Peter Schiff, in which the author and investment-house CEO purported to explain how the US got into the muddle they’re in. Like so many textbooks I left it unread, but according
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Why The Income Inequality Deniers Are Wrong
This article was published in an abridged form today in the National Post. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/21/armine-yalnizyan-sorry-andrew-coyne-but-income-inequality-is-a-real-problem/ I like this opening better so I posted it here. You couldn’t have made it through 2012 without running into a story about income inequality. Chances are, it made you think about how you fit into
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Time to Rethink The Way We Fund Higher Education
This September, like every year, a new group of high school graduates headed to college or university to pursue higher education. But today’s generation of students is in for a very different experience from the ones their parents had. On campuses across the country shiny new buildings are popping up,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Income Inequality & twitter
Armine Yalnizyan had a great twitter debate with Andrew Coyne on poverty and inequality, that Trish Hennessey storified here: http://bit.ly/QwHGJB I think it bears repeating that GDP growth has far outpaced any growth in median and average incomes for Canadians, as you can see in the graph below. (2010 dollars, average
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Happy Crashiversary! Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Four years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, it’s time to take stock of things by asking a stock political question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Where you stand on the answer depends on where you sit. Many people, businesses and communities are still struggling to
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Dead Money
Kudos to Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney for raising the profile of the over $500 billion Canadian corporations are holding in excess cash surpluses and not investing in the economy, which garnered front page coverage (and kudos to the CAW for inviting him to speak.) It’s not the first
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Labour Losing to Capital
The just-released OECD Employment Outlook – full text not available on line – has an interesting chapter on the sharp decline of labour’s share of national income in virtually all OECD countries over the past 30 years, and especially the last twenty years. The median labour share in the OECD
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: In Memoriam: Perspectives on Labour and Income
Another sad tombstone to the shrinkage of information for informed social and economic policy – Statscan has decided to discontinue “Perspectives on Labour and Income” in both print and online format. For as long as I can remember, Perspectives reliably provided a firm empirical base for policy debate on key
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Incomes Flat in “Recovery Year” of 2010
Today’s Statscan release of income data for 2010 allow for a backward glance at the state of the recovery. What is most striking is that – following two years of flat income growth in 2008 and 2009 – there was no meaningful economic recovery for most Canadians in 2010. Median
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: US family net worth crushed by financial crisis
The US Federal Reserve today released its triennial examination of incomes and net worth of American households in the Survey of Consumer Finances. It shows the crushing effects on net worth of a housing and financial bust unparalleled since the great depression. The shocking results of this study overviewed in
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s Self-Imposed Crisis in Post-Secondary Education
On June 7, I gave a keynote address to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Education Sector Conference. My PowerPoint presentation (with full references) can be found at this link. Points I raised in the address include the following: -Canada’s economy has been growing quite steadily over the past three
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Seven reasons why you should support the Quebec students’ call for low tuition fees
Despite the remarkably poor media coverage of the early days of the protests (especially in English Canada), it seems that the Quebec student protestors have finally succeeded in sparking a broader public discussion about civil liberties and the right to protest (even in the Globe here, here and in the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Implications of Inequality
I, Jason Clemens from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and David Macdonald from the CCPA discussed the social and economic implications of growing income inequality on an ipolitics panel yesterday. Jason was a bit outgunned so I won’t go after him here, except to say that he took the usual neo liberal
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Big Banks’ Big Secret
The CCPA today released my report: “The Big Banks Big Secret” which provides the first public estimates of the emergency funds taken by Canadian banks. The report bases its estimates on publicly available data from CMHC, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, US Federal Reserve, the Bank of
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: BC isn’t broke: putting teacher bargaining in perspective
Last Monday, BC teachers held a Day of Action in communities across the province to protest the BC government’s decision to legislate a contract and put an end to their collective bargaining process. I was invited to speak to teachers at the Surrey rally, where I had the opportunity to
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