When Good Data Goes Bad: The NHS2011
This piece was published today in the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab. Two findings stand out in the National Household Survey (NHS) data released Wednesday, both critical in this post-recession…
income distribution
What UBC and SMU’s rape chant scandals say about women in the Canadian economy
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…
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…
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…
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…
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
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…
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…
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…
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…
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?…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…