Tag Archives: inequality

I’ve written a ‘top 10’ blog post about the recently-tabled Saskatchewan budget. Points raised in the blog post include the following: -This year’s budget was quite status quo. -Last year’s budget, by contrast, included a series of cuts to social spending. Last year’s budget also announced cuts to both personal and corporate income taxes that were subsequently reversed. -Saskatchewan has one of the lowest debt-to-GDP ratios in Canada. -This recent budget announced the phase out of a rent...

When it comes to inequality, a growing body of evidence shows that people across countries underestimate the size of the gap between the rich and poor, including their wages. This can undermine support for policies to tackle inequality and even lead to apathy that consolidates the gap. But how exactly are existing perceptions of inequality measured by social scientists?... Irene Bucelli, of the LSE and Franziska Mager, of Oxfam GB, summarize the results from an Oxfam volunteer research...

For decades, an increasingly loud chorus has claimed that economic inequality is primarily driven by class, with other possible reasons for disparities, such as race, playing a lesser role. They say that it is counterproductive to focus on inequality between races—instead, it is better to consider the inequality between all of America’s poor and its increasingly rich elite. A new study (pdf) by economists at Stanford, Harvard, and the US Census Bureau seems to refute that idea. The paper,...

On March 22, the NDP government of Rachel Notley tabled the 2018 Alberta budget. I’ve written a blog post discussing some of the major ‘take aways’ from the standpoint of Calgary’s homeless-serving sector (where I work). Points made in the blog post include the following:  this was very much a status quo budget; Alberta remains the lowest-taxed province in Canada (and still the only province without a sales tax); Alberta still has (by far) the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio of any province;...

Posted by Nick Falvo under aboriginal peoples, Alberta, budgets, Child Care, education, fiscal policy, homeless, housing, HST, income, income support, income tax, Indigenous people, inequality, labour market, macroeconomics, NDP, poverty, progressive economic strategies, public infrastructure, public sector procurement, public services, seniors, small business, social policy, student debt, taxation, user fees, women, workplace benefits. March 21st, 2018Comments: none The...

I have been arguing, since 2016 (e.g., here, here, and here), that one of the likely outcomes of the kind of corporate tax cuts Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have supported—and, as we saw, eventually rammed through—would be an increase in inequality. That’s because corporations would likely use a portion of their higher profits to engage in stock buybacks, leading to an increase in stock prices. And stock ownership in the United States is already grotesquely unequal. Therefore,...

Two years ago I posted my first guest blog focused on income inequality, specifically how changes in Canada’s redistribution over the last three decades have increased after-tax income inequality, and how these changes compared to OECD trends. The figures and analysis in this post update the earlier blog, based on the most recent OECD data to 2015. I also look at the market inequality-redistribution relationship and find that Canada is the only country that combines low market inequality...

I’ve just written a blog post about homelessness and employment, with a focus on Calgary (where I live and work). Points raised in the blog post include the following: -Persons experiencing homelessness usually have poor health outcomes, making it especially challenging to find and sustain employment. -There are several non-profits in Calgary that assist persons experiencing homelessness to find and sustain work. -Persons finding the most success in those programs tend to be relatively...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A recent literature has explored growing personal wealth inequality in countries around the world. This column explores the widening wealth gap between regions and across states in Europe. Using data going back to 1900, it shows that regional convergence ended around 1980 and the gap has been growing since then, with capital regions and declining industrial regions at the two extremes. This rise in regional inequality, combined with rising personal...

Presenting the Lecture Here is the audio file of Jamie Galbraith inaugural Godley-Tobin Lecture. Due to the weather he recorded the lecture before hand. The paper will appear in the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) soon. Jamie presents a macro discussion of income distribution, which he correctly points out has been absent from most discussion of inequality in recent times.Further, he connects his concern with the data (the UNIDO data that his team at UTIP has worked on for years...