Tag Archives: austerity

I’ve just written a blog post about social assistance in Canada. Points raised in the blog post include the following: -Social assistance has two contradictory objectives: 1) to give people enough money to live on; and 2) to not give people enough money to live on. -Very few immigrants receive social assistance (relative to the general population). -Several Canadian provinces have seen a rise in persons with disabilities receiving social assistance. -The inadequacy in social assistance...

Allan Moscovitch and I have co-authored a blog post that looks at the history of child benefits in Canada. Points made in the blog post include the following: -Child benefits can reduce both poverty and homelessness. -When child benefits began in Canada after World War II, one major motivating factor for the federal government was to avoid recession. Another was to fend off social unrest (i.e. Canada’s growing labour movement and the growing popularity of the CCF). The full blog post can be...

I have an opinion piece on Saskatchewan’s recent budget in the Regina Leader-Post. Points raised in the opinion piece include the following: -Reductions in personal and corporate income taxes help the rich more than the poor (and this budget cut both personal and corporate income taxes). -Increases in sales tax hurt the poor more than the rich (and this budget increased both the breadth and the rate of the provincial sales tax). -A one-dollar increase in government spending on public...

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I can already see some of the cuts ;) The Hill suggests that we should expect a huge decrease in government spending. According to them: Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years. The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition. In all fairness, I am not, or at least was not until now, expecting big...

You've probably all noticed that I haven't been writing much lately. Well, not on this site, anyway, though I have been doing rather a lot elsewhere.In the last couple of months, my life has been upended. I suppose I should have seen this coming - the signs have been there for a long time - but the speed at which this has happened has shocked me.At the end of October, my father suffered a fall at his home on Sheppey, where he has lived alone since my mother went into a nursing home in...

Editorial Introduction - Fiscal Austerity and Economic Growth Laura Barbosa de Carvalho PDF (English) Neoliberalism, trade imbalances, and economic policy in the Eurozone crisis Engelbert Stockhammer, Collin Constantine, Severin Reissl PDF (English) The Greek public debt problem Michalis Nikiforos, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Gennaro Zezza PDF (English) Aggregate demand and the slowdown of Brazilian economic growth in 2011-2014 Franklin Serrano, Ricardo Summa PDF (English) Fiscal...

William K. BlackDecember 5, 2016     Bloomington, MN Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan convinced the New Democrats, over a quarter-century ago, that the key to economic growth was to out-Republican the Republican Party in the fervency of their embrace of austerity.  This began the long war of the New Democrats against the working class that culminated in the loss of their candidate, Hillary Clinton, to Donald Trump.  Rubin’s and Greenspan’s support for austerity constitutes economic and...

By William K. BlackBloomington, MN     November 28, 2016 Howard Dean was attacked by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) for the high crime of opposing the second President Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq.  While I strongly support the candidacy of Representative Keith Ellison to chair the Democratic National Committee (DNC), I am not arguing that Dean is not a progressive voice that needs to be part of the leadership team transforming the Democratic Party. I write to urge him to...

John Cassidy is one of the best economic journalists around (together with Jeff Madrick probably). And not only because he has written about one of my mentors, Wynne Godley. In his last column he tackles the issue of productivity. And again I should say he is on the right track. He first gives a simple example of technological change from the donkey to the truck delivery system. Almost imperceptibly he tells you that you would change from one to another technology if: "you can find enough...