Occupy Movement: Inequality in Newfoundland and Labrador
Apparently the policy brief I wrote for the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour has been picked up by the Occupy Wall Street movement. The brief can be found here.…
Travis Fast
Wall Street Occupation
Back in 2008 when I wrote this post I had this prediction to make: This is very much where we are today. Everyone from the EU to GWB Jr., has…
How to read economic language for bias: “wage inflation” in Newfoundland and Labrador
Sometimes we read things and we get that gut feeling that we are being subtly manipulated. Economics is of course full of this subtle manipulation. Words like “choice”, and “efficiency”…
The poverty trap for real
Poverty is of course about a lack of money, but it is also about a lack of resources both in the cultural and social sense. I live in a small…
Delicious and dangerous irony: China to buy Italisn bonds
How much of a disaster is the EMU? Look no further than the spectacle of the Italians going cap in hand to the Chinese for a bail out. The fact…
Promises and the Liberal Long Game: Tuition in Ontario
Guest post by Eric Newstadt There has been a lot of interest in the Liberal plan to offer full-time students an up-front grant so as to reduce their tuition-fees, not…
The irony of greed: The end game for Neoliberalism?
The global economy is in the toilet and the Boomers’ representatives are chanting: “flush, flush, flush.” Me? I am eating cigarettes and wine while admiring the remarkable consistency in the…
Jack Layton dies
My condolences to his family and friends. Filed under: Canadian Politics
Debt Refinancing, the Federal Government and the Provinces
Ok this post is in the form of a naive question. And it goes like this: If the Federal Government can borrow (OK MMTers don’t vide your back-end here, I…
Reswitching, relative prices and linearity
Ok so only 1000 people in the world understand this and only 10 care about it: economics for the most part has long since given up its empirical pretensions when…
The Circus of Greed: the Political Economy of Ratings Agencies
Would be hard not know that the S&P downgraded the US today. What is less well known is why it is further evidence of the circus of greed that is…
Relentlessly Progressive Political Economy 2011-08-04 21:19:02
The left would do well to dwell on the fact we have seen this film before. At some point we need an adult conversation about capitalism and not just when…
The Right Wing Commentariat is getting Desperate
JuysTerence Corcoran Just go read Terence Corcoran’s latest in the National Post. Never mind that the world was plunged into economic crisis by unregulated financial institutions; and near fully captured…
The Sensitivity Problem and the Social Sciences: Warn your students
This is a problem I am sure almost anyone who works with data runs into form time to time. It is also something we need to teach our students. Which…
A rotting fruit that does not give vent to its own demand?
Given we seem to be stuck in fairly heady economic times it seems worthwhile to me to put out another post on the subject of employment, labour force growth and…
Towards an adult conversation about Canadian labour markets
Have you ever heard the urban legend about how such and such generation of Canadians are lazier than the past generation? Or the One about how this generation just does…
The Jackass de-Generation
What a disgusting generation. It would be one thing if they could get out of bed and hit the barricades to defend their fellows but sadly no. What brings this…
Canada: persistently 2nd worst in class
During the last election much was made about Canada’s relatively good performance during the last recession. What was conveniently left out of the discussion by all political parties is just…
A little perspective on GDP growth or does policy matter?
These are odd times. Not one policy seems to get floated these days which does not include in the tag line that it will be good for economic growth. And…
UBC economist Milligan throws cake at educated, unemployed youth
I tuned into a rebroadcast of this morning’s the CBC’s the Current while cleaning the kitchen this evening which had an unusually good documentary on the problem of youth unemployment;…