Tag Archives: inequality

Next week, Jason Kenney’s UCP government will table its second budget. With that in mind, I’ve written a blog post titled “Ten things to know about income support for low-income households in Alberta.” Points raised in the blog post include the following: -Low income is associated with lower food expenditures, including fewer purchases of milk, fruits and vegetables. -Lone-parent families in Alberta experience very high rates of poverty. -Child poverty dropped...

From the recent report, written to a great extent by David Fields: Rising housing costs and stagnating real wages are the primary causes of worsening housing affordability in Utah. From 2009 to 2016 real income only grew at 0.31% per year while rent crept upward at a rate of 1.03% per year in 2017 constant dollars. Now, more than 183,000 low-income Utah households pay more than half their income for rent, becoming more likely to be evicted and moving closer to homelessness. Housing has...

After decades of rightwing dominance, a transatlantic movement of leftwing economists is building a practical alternative to neoliberalism.... The new leftwing economics wants to see the redistribution of economic power, so that it is held by everyone – just as political power is held by everyone in a healthy democracy… The new economists’ enormously ambitious project means transforming the relationship between capitalism and the state; between workers and employers; between the local and...

Western dissatisfaction with globalization is wrongly diagnosed as dissatisfaction with capitalism, when in fact it is the product of the uneven distribution of the gains from globalization.... ProMarket — The blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Why There Is No “Crisis of Capitalism” Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-economic...

In an interview with ProMarket ahead of his upcoming Stigler Center visit this week, UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez discussed the impact of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, the disproportionate political power of the super-rich, and whether he agrees with Bernie Sanders that billionaires shouldn’t exist....ProMarket — The blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of BusinessEmmanuel Saez: Saying Inequality Has Not Increased in the US “the Equivalent of Being a Climate...

Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said higher marginal tax rates for the better off were needed as part of a policy rethink to tackle inequality. In a sign of how the IMF has moved away from the tax-cutting approach that once formed a central part of its policy advice, Georgieva said there needed to be a different approach to tackling what had become “one of the most complex and vexing challenges in the global economy”. The IMF chief, writing in a blog, said: “Inequality...

I’ve written an assessment of the 2014-2019 St. John’s Community Plan to End Homelessness. The full assessment can be found here. Points raised in the assessment include the following: -Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest unemployment rate of any Canadian province. This pulls people into homelessness, while also making it more challenging for the provincial government to finance policy asks (such as subsidized housing with social work support). -People...

I’ve written an assessment of the 2014-2019 St. John’s Community Plan to End Homelessness. The full assessment can be found here. Points raised in the assessment include the following: -Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest unemployment rate of any Canadian province. This pulls people into homelessness, while also making it more challenging for the provincial government to finance policy asks (such as subsidized housing with social work support). -People...

By James Kwak Ever since I finished Economism (and the 2016 elections, which happened about the same time), there has only been one thing I have wanted to write. I tried in “The Importance of Fairness: A New Economic Vision for the Democratic Party,” and in “A New Economic Vision, in 27 Words,” and again in “Hey Democrats, the Problem Isn’t Jobs and Growth.” I wanted to write this thing because it has become clear to me not only that our economic world is screwed up in all sorts of...

By James Kwak The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. On a host of issues, it is clear what we stand for and how we differ from the Republicans: minority rights, abortion, immigration, gun control, climate change, the importance of facts, and, of course, whether or not the president is above the law. On economic issues, however, the picture is not so clear. Elizabeth Warren’s speech at St. Anselm’s College on Thursday is an attempt to fix that problem—and also a shot across the bow of...