Tag Archives: economic thought

I’ve written an opinion piece that appears in today’s Regina Leader-Post. The piece argues that the Saskatchewan government shouldn’t brag about the province’s low-tax climate (which it recently did). Rather, I argue that taxes serve important functions. The link to the opinion piece is here. Nick Falvo is a Calgary-based research consultant with a PhD in Public Policy. He has academic affiliation at both Carleton University and Case Western Reserve University, and is...

I’ve written an opinion piece that appears in today’s Regina Leader-Post. The piece argues that the Saskatchewan government shouldn’t brag about the province’s low-tax climate (which it recently did). Rather, I argue that taxes serve important functions. The link to the opinion piece is here. Enjoy and share:

Book Review Mariana Mazzucato. The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. Allen Lane. 2018. The playwright Oscar Wilde quipped that a cynic is a person who “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” As Mariana Mazzucato argues in her important and stimulating new book, “The Value of Everything,” that adage could be applied to the vast majority of mainstream, neo-classical economists. Mazzucato is the author of the previous bestseller, The Entrepreneurial...

The political economist Karl Polanyi, author of the 1944 volume The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, is arguably better known today than during his lifetime. The time has come for a major biography of Polanyi, Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left by Gareth Dale. It is thoroughly excellent and provides the occasion to ponder the relevance of Polanyi today. His book was a response to more than a century of globalization that fell apart in the 1920’s and 30’s,...

Just published is Volume I of an exhaustive – occasionally exhausting – biography of Paul Samuelson. It’s titled Founder of Modern Economics: Paul A Samuelson Vol I: Becoming Samuelson, 1915-1948 and authored by Roger E Backhouse. The two books of my blog title are Foundations of Economic Analysis, published in 1947, a revision of Samuelson’s Harvard doctoral dissertation, in which he unearthed the mathematical scaffolding of economic theory, and Economics: An Introductory Analysis, the...

I’ve written a blog post about this year’s Alternative Federal Budget (AFB). Points raised in the blog post include the following: -This year’s AFB would create 470,000 (full-time equivalent) jobs in its first year alone. By year 2 of the plan, 600,000 new (full-time equivalent) jobs will exist. -This year’s AFB will also bring in universal pharmacare, address involuntary part-time employment among women, eliminate tuition fees for all post-secondary students in Canada, speed up...

Yesterday I spoke on a panel discussion on economic inequality, along with Andrew Jackson and Armine Yalnizyan. We were guests at the federal NDP’s policy convention in Ottawa. The panel was moderated by Guy Caron. Topics covered included the minimum wage, basic income, affordable housing, the future of jobs, gender budgeting, poverty among seniors, Canadian fiscal policy in historical perspective, and Canadian fiscal policy in comparison with other OECD countries. The discussion was 30...

Stephen Clarkson: Political Economist with a Global Vision (1937 – 2016) Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Daniel Drache Stephen Clarkson died early in 2016 in Freiburg, Germany and Canada lost someone very special. Stephen was a Professor in Political Science at the University of Toronto and engaged in teaching, research and writing until his death. He has contributed, in an extraordinary way, to the public understanding of Canada and North America in the 20th and 21st centuries, Europe in the...

I’ve just written a blog post about social assistance in Alberta. Points raised in the post include the following: -It’s very difficult to quality for social assistance in Alberta (this is also the case in all other provinces and territories). Reasons why are discussed in this previous blog post of mine. -In the 1990s, there were changes to the rules governing social assistance in Alberta. From that point on, it became even harder to qualify for social assistance in Alberta. -In Alberta,...

I’ve just written a blog post about the fiscal situation of Canada’s ‘oil rich’ provinces (i.e., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador). It consists of a summary of key points raised at a PEF-sponsored panel at this year’s Annual Conference of the Canadian Economics Association. Points raised in the blog post include the following: -The price of oil is impossible to accurately predict, and there’s no guarantee it will rise to past levels. -Each of Canada’s ‘oil rich’ provinces...