This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Andrew Jackson examines the effect of a federal minimum wage – and how it would benefit both workers and employers. – Dylan Matthews offers a primer on a basic income, featuring this on how a secure income has little impact on individuals’
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Accidental Deliberations: On advance notice
Between Joan Bryden’s report, Paul Wells’ interview and Murray Dobbin’s column among other coverage, there isn’t much room for doubt that the federal NDP’s economic focus – including a national minimum wage alongside a restored retirement age of 65 and reversal of corporate tax cuts – is earning some media
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The Minimum Wage from first principles
The minimum wage, like most government policies, is first and foremost a form of wealth distribution. There are winners and losers from the distribution. The biggest group of winners is the obvious one: low wage workers who now get paid more. Raising the wage floor also raises wages somewhat for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich discusses the rise of the non-working rich as an indicator that extreme wealth has less and less to do with merit – as well as the simple policy steps which can reverse the trend: In reality, most of America’s poor work
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Giving Credit Where It Is Due
Over the years on this blog, I have been deeply and justifiably critical of the excesses of unfettered capitalism. Degradation of the environment, activities contributing to widescale climate change, and exploitation of labour have been some common targets. Yet every so often, something comes along to show that not all
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich discusses how a reasonable balance of economic and political power is necessary to any protection of meaningful personal freedom: In reality, corporate free speech drowns out the free speech of ordinary people who can’t flood the halls of Congress with campaign
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Political Eh-conomy Radio: 1,000,000 and $14, two numbers, two politics
This week’s podcast focuses on two numbers, one million and fourteen, that draw out some interesting links between economics and politics in Ontario and beyond. https://politicalehconomy.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/podcast-140606-ontario.mp3 One million is the number of jobs that Tim Hudak has promised to create in Ontario if elected next week. This one million claim has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Joseph Stiglitz offers his suggestions (PDF) for a tax system which would encourage both growth and equality: Tax reform…offers a path toward both resolving budgetary impasses and making the kinds of public investments that will strengthen the fundamentals of the economy. The most
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Brent Rathgeber may not a be a Tory any more, but he still supports the Harper Government’s worst ideas
Edmonton-St. Albert MP Brent Rathgeber getting scrummed by the media in his St. Albert office the day after he resigned from the Conservative Parliamentary Caucus. (Photo grabbed from Mr. Rathgeber’s website.) Below: Mr. Rathgeber looking at the camera. ST. ALBERT, Alberta Notwithstanding his much-publicized break with the Harper Conservatives, Independent
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Frank Vibert writes that our democratic system includes more than just electoral politics, while recognizing that we all too often neglect the distinct role of regulatory bodies: When one looks more closely at regulation and the interdependencies between systems the more apparent
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Ronald McDonald’s Secret Agenda
As Johnny Carson used to say, “Folks, I merely report these things”. Recommend this Post
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jim Stanford writes that Tim Hudak’s combination of austerity and indiscriminate tax slashing represents a recipe for less jobs rather than more: Mr. Hudak’s initial policy agenda is mostly a recycled business wish list: cut taxes, cut regulations, pay for training, cut energy
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Don’t Tolerate Ignorance About the Minimum Wage
Now, stop tolerating ignorance! And smile, TGIF. Hello. It’s Friday. For many people it’s TGIF. But for many people who aren’t even teenagers, the work week isn’t ending today. We often THINK minimum wage is for the new entries to the job market. Maybe it was one day. Maybe just
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Matthew O’Brien is the latest to pick up on the connection between pre-transfer income equality, redistribution and sustainable economic growth: Redistribution overall helps, and at least doesn’t harm, growth spells. That’s because the positive effects of less inequality add to or offset the
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 readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Michael Hiltzik writes about the efforts of the corporate sector – including the tobacco and food industries – to produce mass ignorance in order to preserve profits: Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, is one of the world’s leading
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 readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The New York Times editorial board points out that a higher minimum wage can produce clear economic benefits for businesses as well as for workers: One 2013 study by three economists — Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester and Michael Reich — compared the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Why the Minimum Wage Debate Isn’t Going to Go Away
Yesterday I tweeted this: <blink> Gap will raise minimum hourly pay Walmart “looking” at support of min wage raise In honour of the momentum, I am posting the piece I wrote for Economy Lab a while back, and including the numbers that drive the chart that attracted quite a lot
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
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