Millennials reshaping Canadian economy. Canadian Millennials are twice as likely as the average Canadian to want to start a business within the next year. Photograph by: Colleen De Neve Colleen De Neve , Calgary Herald CALGARY — Millennials are twice as likely as the average Canadian to want to start a business in the next 12 months, says a new survey released Wednesday. The survey, by Intuit Canada which was conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion, found that 16 per cent of Millennials — defined as those born between 1980 and 1995 — say they want to start a business within the next year compared with eight per cent of all Canadians.
“It’s far too common to dismiss Millennials as an entitled me generation, and to dismiss their approach to the workplace,” said Jeff Cates, managing director of Intuit Canada. mtoneguzzi@calgaryherald.com. Beast-what-behavioral-economics-not_final. Canada Manufacturing Jobs: Sales Are Back, But 200,000 Jobs Are Missing. Canadian manufacturing sales may have rebounded to near pre-recession levels, but the same cannot be said of manufacturing employment. New figures released by Statistics Canada on Thursday show that December marked the fifth increase in manufacturing sales in six months, with sales rising to $49.9 billion -- not far off the $50.2 billion logged in October 2008. Manufacturing employment, however, shows little sign of bouncing back: over the same period, says Statscan analyst Vincent Ferrao, the sector posted a net loss of more than 200,000 jobs; in January, total manufacturing employment was 11 per cent lower than it was in the fall of 2008. The relatively weak employment numbers highlight the legacy of a downturn that evaporated hundreds of thousands of jobs, and quickened the pace of a fundamental labour market shift.
“Any uptick in manufacturing sales is really not being seen or felt by the legion of laid off manufacturing workers across the country, that’s for sure,” he said. Canada Manufacturing Jobs: Sales Are Back, But 200,000 Jobs Are Missing. Supply-Side Economics. The term “supply-side economics” is used in two different but related ways. Some use the term to refer to the fact that production (supply) underlies consumption and living standards. In the long run, our income levels reflect our ability to produce goods and services that people value. Higher income levels and living standards cannot be achieved without expansion in output. Virtually all economists accept this proposition and therefore are “supply siders.”
“Supply-side economics” is also used to describe how changes in marginal tax rates influence economic activity. The marginal tax rate is crucial because it affects the incentive to earn. An increase in marginal tax rates adversely affects the output of an economy in two ways. Second, high marginal tax rates encourage tax-shelter investments and other forms of tax avoidance. I find it remarkable that virtually all of the large difference in labor supply between France and the United States is due to differences in tax systems. U.S. TPP: The Most Sinister Corporate Power Grab Yet. Imagine. While some of us are working to curtail fracking, assure GMO labeling, promote various green and buy-local initiatives, protect Internet freedom, bolster labor rights, enforce banking regulations, behind our backs our president, Barack Obama, is working to make all those efforts moot. I am not making this up, even if you haven’t heard of it yet.
It is the Trans Pacific Partnership trade pact, only the TPP isn’t just a trade agreement. It slays safety regulations and labor protections, curtails communication freedoms, and re-writes domestic laws of the participating countries. It’s been called a mass assault on democracy and the biggest, most sinister corporate power grab yet. The reason you haven’t heard of it is two-fold. Why the secrecy? But representatives of 600 major corporations, who are in on the negotiations, love it. Now, according to our U.S. “Fast Track” would have Congress voting up or down on the massive document without any power to discuss or amend any of it.
The decline of the U.S. middle class is a Canadian story too. The suggestion that the middle class is stagnating, the linchpin of Justin Trudeau’s economic platform – to the extent it exists – is an idea shamelessly borrowed from the United States. Shameless it may be, but it is, nonetheless, true. Clearly there are some ways in which we are all better off not withstanding what President Barack Obama tells the American public, and notwithstanding how closely Canadian political leaders listen to him. In 1980, a cell phone was something carried in a brief case; and a Sony Walkman – you surely recall the portable cassette player the size of a thick paperback that strapped “conveniently” to your belt? – was the cutting edge musical accessory. But shops filled with more variety, and more quality, make us and our kids better off only to a degree, and not only because the power to blow your ear drums out has increased exponentially. Not only that, the last thirty years have not been particularly pro-poor.
Introducing Post-Keynesian Economics. A common charge directed at heterodox economics is that it is defined as a negative and has little to offer in the way of an alternative to mainstream economics (at least, if we ignore the 'extremes' of Austrianism and Marxism). It's true that heterodox economists, including myself, often spend more time criticising mainstream economics than we do offering alternative theories.
Yet there is in fact a large amount of work on alternative theories of pricing, distribution, finance and trade. Below I will sketch out what is known as the 'Post-Keynesian' (PK) approach to economic theory. Note that this post is largely uncritical as it only hopes to introduce the theories, rather than defend them.Consumer Theory Although there is not a great deal of work on PK consumer theory - it is generally more focused on macroeconomic issues - there still exists a consensus around a particular theoretical framework. Producer Theory Endogenous Money International Trade In summary. Women and the World Economy by Christine Lagarde. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space WASHINGTON, DC – In many countries, public debate about gender equality focuses mainly on women’s access to top positions and high-powered career opportunities.
But the “glass ceiling” is only a small part of the issue. The broader question is whether women have the same opportunities as men to participate in labor markets in the first place. In other words, are women empowered to contribute fully to global economic growth and prosperity? Unfortunately, the International Monetary Fund’s latest study by its staff, “Women, Work, and the Economy,” shows that, despite some improvements, progress toward leveling the playing field for women has stalled. Around the world, the number of women in the workforce remains far below that of men; only about half of working-age women are employed.
The potential gains from a larger female workforce are striking. So what underlies the persistence of gaping inequality and stalled progress? Ontario's Ring Of Fire Brings Opportunity And Fears To First Nations. Staking Claim is a multi-part series exploring the proposed Ring of Fire mining development in Ontario and how the First Nations communities are preparing for economic activity and the environmental and societal consequences of Canada's next resource rush. BETWEEN LONG LAKE No. 58 AND LONGLAC, Ont. — Along this desolate stretch of Northern Ontario highway, an idyllic white chapel is perched on the point of a peninsula next to to a “No Swimming” sign wedged into the poisoned shoreline that juts into glistening Long Lake. On the opposite side of the Trans-Canada Highway, a downtrodden young man, a filled plastic garbage bag slung over each shoulder, saunters past a long-idle train toward the swampy lowland of the Long Lake No. 58 First Nations reserve.
There are no job opportunities where he is headed and no businesses, save for a single band-owned gas bar. Dilapidated box houses, many boarded and abandoned, line the three roads that form the reserve. Story continues below slideshow. Between boast and reality lie Canada’s deficits. Mark Carney, as governor of the Bank of Canada, used to urge Canadians to export their way to greater prosperity, especially by selling more to emerging markets, particularly China and India. Prime Minister Stephen Harper seemed to agree. His government launched trade negotiations, or floated the idea of trade negotiations, in various parts of the world. None of these talks has yet succeeded, and in most cases, it’s doubtful they ever will. Negotiations with the European Union are stalemated.
Despite all this trade talk, the sad fact is that Canada now has a billion-dollar trade deficit. Canadians in general, and the Harper government in particular, have given themselves repeated pats on the back for weathering the 2008 recession and its aftermath better than any country. Canada’s strong fiscal situation, created by the governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, certainly helped when the financial meltdown arrived. All the provinces, save Saskatchewan, remain in deficit. Is Canada’s great skill shortage a mirage? Goar. KINGSTON—Does the skill shortage that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared an urgent national priority actually exist? Don Drummond, one of the smartest economists in the country, is dubious.
He hasn’t found a shred of credible evidence that Canada has a serious mismatch between skills and jobs. In fact, most economic indicators point in the opposite direction. Statistics Canada’s latest survey of job vacancies showed there were 6.3 unemployed people for every job vacancy. That doesn’t suggest a shortage of skills. It suggests an oversupply of workers.
There are no wage spikes in the skilled trades, information technology or scientific, professional and technical services. Ottawa does not have the ability to forecast labour needs accurately. The only proof he could find of a misalignment between the skills of Canadians and the needs of employers was a chart on page 62 of the 2013 federal budget. No mainstream economist has gone this far. Public Transit Is Worth Way More to a City Than You Might Think - Eric Jaffe. Planning scholar Daniel Chatman of the University of California at Berkeley has been thinking a lot lately about "agglomeration. " Don't let the technical word throw you. All it really means is more people in the same place. As more people collect in a city center, more jobs cluster there too, boosting both wages and economic productivity over time. And the key to it all, he believes, may be public transportation.
"To me it's fascinating," says Chatman. "It's all about how people interact with each other. In a new paper set for publication in Urban Studies, Chatman and fellow planner Robert Noland of Rutgers University use concrete numbers to make the case that transit produces agglomeration. Simply put, city officials now have a much stronger argument for using taxpayer money to improve their public transportation service. "These results could be dropped directly into a cost-benefit analysis," says Chatman. Let's step back a moment and look at agglomeration more closely.
Industrial Policy, Manufacturing Employment, and the Loonie. The Institute for Research on Public Policy has published a very interesting overview study on the resuscitation of “industrial policy” in economic policy circles. It points out that industrial policy levers are used widely by countries around the world–despite hypothetical efforts (through trade deals and other institutions) to limit their application. The traditional Walrasian critique that government efforts to “pick winners” are wrong-headed and promote inefficient outcomes is holding less sway — all the more so in light of the deindustrialization, private sector underinvestment, and persistent trade imbalances that seem to be the legacy of Canada’s relatively laissez faire approach to industrial policy since the 1988 Canada-U.S. free trade deal.
While I don’t agree with all of the IRPP report’s findings, it is a useful contribution to a debate that needs to happen. Minimum wage needs to be re-engineered: Olive. Properly understood, the minimum wage is a stimulus benefiting the entire economy. The minimum wage puts a floor under poverty among the working poor. (It would surprise many people to learn that most poor people work.) It enables entry-level employees, notably youth working their way through college and university and immigrants intent on self-sufficiency, to get a solid start as dynamic contributors to a more prosperous Canada. And in times of anaemic GDP growth like these, increases in the minimum wage boost economic activity to the advantage of all. Anti-poverty activists chastise Queen’s Park over the province’s three-year freeze of the minimum wage, at $10.25 an hour.
These activists also despair that it has taken two years for the Liberals to honour their promise to set up an advisory panel on how best to calculate the minimum wage. To this point in the history of the minimum wage, increases have been an ad hoc affair. Forget Everything You Learned In Economics. You Were Totally Lied To. The Crisis of Extreme Capitalism. Our current incarnation of capitalism -- variously referred to as savage capitalism, extreme capitalism or euphemistically as the "free market" (free of any constraints) -- is in one of its periodic crises.
For years many assumed that the smart people who ran the system and benefitted from it would find a practical way to fix it. The problem is that the solutions are all framed within an ideology that makes that extremely unlikely. That ideology, neo-liberalism, is like a religion. Once you are a true believer you see other solutions as heresy. Milton Friedman, the Chicago School economist whose extreme economic theories helped transform the English speaking world, was not fond of democracy.
While most academics would shy away from suggesting that democracy was a problem, not Friedman. At a conference on Freedom, Democracy and Economic Welfare in 1986, he challenged an audience member who had placed democracy at the pinnacle of human achievement -- not so, said Friedman. There Is No “True” Unemployment Rate - NYTimes.com. Austerity and the Mistaken Lessons of History. I’m going on vacation for a couple of weeks, but, before I leave, a word or three about the latest news from Blighty, where George Osborne, arguably the worst Chancellor in modern U.K. history (it’s a tough contest) has just reaffirmed his commitment to austerity policies.
Delivering an annual financial review to Parliament on Wednesday, Osborne promised yet another round of spending cuts, this one beginning in April, 2015, which is roughly when the next general election is set to take place. To be sure, the Chancellor leavened his message by promising to divert some money from welfare programs and local government to infrastructure projects, such as new roads and railways, but his over-all message was the same one he’s delivered since taking office, in May, 2010: Cut! Cut! Cut! Taking all the government departments together, there is no rise in public spending on investment planned for 2015-2016 but, instead, a reduction of close to two per cent. How did things get to this sad state? The Capitalist’s Case for a $15 Minimum Wage. Nice Oil Imports You've Got There. Shame if You Lost Them. - By Vaclav Smil. Is. Harper government’s $60B business tax breaks spark questions and criticism.
Roger Martin: Infrastructure and Hernando De Soto. Richard Florida: Saving capitalism from itself. Don Tapscott: Transforming capitalism won’t happen without leadership. PRIVATIZATION:407 Sold for $2.1 billion - Province Doubles its $s | TOLLROADSnews. Sen. Bernie Sanders: What Can We Learn From Denmark?