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  • Canada’s Fossil-Fuelled Pensions June 22, 2018
    The British Columbia Investment Management Corporation is?the steward of BC’s public pensions, but bankrolls companies?whose current business models exceed the climate change targets agreed to in the Paris Agreement to which Canada is a signatory. The pensions of over 500,000 British Columbians and assets worth $135 billion are managed by the Corporation—-one of Canada's largest […]
    Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  • Imagine a Winnipeg...2018 Alternative Municipal Budget June 18, 2018
    Climate change; stagnant global economic growth; political polarization; growing inequality.? Our city finds itself dealing with all these issues, and more at once. The 2018 Alternative Municipal Budget (AMB) is a community response that shows how the city can deal with all these issues and balance the budget.
    Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  • Why would a boom town need charity? Inequities in Saskatchewan’s oil boom and bust May 23, 2018
    When we think of a “boomtown,” we often imagine a formerly sleepy rural town suddenly awash in wealth and economic expansion. It might surprise some to learn that for many municipalities in oil-producing regions in Saskatchewan, the costs of servicing the oil boom can outweigh the benefits. A Prairie Patchwork: Reliance on Oil Industry Philanthropy […]
    Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  • What are Canada’s energy options in a carbon-constrained world? May 1, 2018
    Canada faces some very difficult choices in maintaining energy security while meeting emissions reduction targets.? A new?study by veteran earth scientist David Hughes—published through the Corporate Mapping Project, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Parkland Institute—is a comprehensive assessment of Canada’s energy systems in light of the need to maintain energy security and […]
    Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  • The 2018 Living Wage for Metro Vancouver April 25, 2018
    The cost of raising a family in British Columbia increased slightly from 2017 to 2018. A $20.91 hourly wage is needed to cover the costs of raising a family in Metro Vancouver, up from $20.61 per hour in 2017?due to soaring housing costs.?This is the hourly wage that two working parents with two young children […]
    Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
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Archive for 'Adam Smith'

Corporate rights masquerading as trade (again)

Anti-democratic investor rights deals are in the news again, thanks partly to a Communications Workers of America & Trade Justice Network event that brought Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to Canada. Professor Stiglitz pronounced the Trans-Pacific Partnership the “worst trade deal ever”, adding that provisions allowing multi-nationals to sue governments are particularly toxic. Professor […]

Posted by Angella MacEwen under Adam Smith, Conservative government, free trade.
April 7th, 2016
Comments: none

Poverty and BC’s high cost of housing

BC Stats put out a release on poverty lines as they relate to BC, with an important finding: BC’s dubious position as having the highest poverty rates in Canada may in fact be worse than the statistics show. This finding is buried in the piece and the title, “Low Income Cut-Offs a Poor Measure of […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, BC, poverty.
December 7th, 2009
Comments: 14

The Future of Capitalism

Some weekend reading: Amartya Sen, that other voice of sanity among recent Nobel laureates in economics, draws lines between the current economic crisis and the history of economic thought (with an emphasis on Smith, Keynes and Pigou), and what that all means for a “new capitalism”. Then, over at the Financial Times, a whole series […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, capitalism, economic crisis, financial markets, history of economic thought.
March 15th, 2009
Comments: 10

Trading on Thin Ice

It is amazing to see the charged responses to the idea of a made-in-Canada policy for procurement related to infrastructure stimulus spending. Perhaps it is just that all economists are supposed to accept free trade as the One True Policy. But what I am seeing are largely moral arguments for free trade in the abstract […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, free trade, international trade, stimulus.
February 11th, 2009
Comments: none

Adam Smith did not wear an Adam Smith tie

A theme I’ve posted on many times before but perhaps worth repeating once again, thanks to this post: How Laissez Faire was Adam Smith?Greg Whiteside writes in The Condo Metropolis Blog (7 December) here: a€?ADAM SMITH MUST BE ROLLING OVER IN HIS GRAVE RIGHT NOWa€? a€?Arguably the father of modern economics, Adam Smith was a […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, history of economic thought.
December 9th, 2007
Comments: 2

Adam Smith and progressive taxation

Some of the knee-jerk commentary in response to my paper has been about what an ideal, or fair, tax system should really look like. These people question progressive taxation. To them, I quote Adam Smith from The Wealth of Nations (from Wikipedia): The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, taxation.
November 8th, 2007
Comments: 3

Adam Smith the anti-corporate activist

Thanks for Harper’s for reminding us what the grandfather of economics thought about groups like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, the Recording Industry Association of America, PhARMA and all of the other thousands that are part of the “business industry”: The proposal of any new law […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, big business, capitalism.
July 26th, 2007
Comments: 3

Poverty in Canada and its Newspapers

As Marc noted, the Toronto Star is waging a journalistic “war on poverty”. The editorial in Mondaya€?s National Post chastised “The Toronto Stara€?s poverty scam”??for using the Low-Income Cut-Off, a relative measure, as an indicator of poverty. Todaya€?s National Post includes the following letter from yours truly: In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, the […]

Posted by Erin Weir under Adam Smith, inequality, poverty, StatCan.
January 17th, 2007
Comments: 3

Shaking the Invisible Hand

Browsing at a used book store in Vancouver, I picked up some classics on the cheap. Someone must have dumped their economics books, thinking them passe. I’m keen to revisit those classics a€“ the more I learn, the more I get out of them. So I got a 1964 edition of Keynes’s General Theory of […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, economic models, history of economic thought.
August 14th, 2006
Comments: 2

Adam Smith the anti-poverty activist

Princeton economist Alan Kreuger provides another take on the “Adam Smith did not wear the Adam Smith necktie” theme, from a 2001 New York Times column, that reviews “Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment” (Harvard University Press) by Emma Rothschild, director of the Center for History and Economics at King’s College, Cambridge: Emma […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, free markets, history of economic thought, poverty, taxation.
July 27th, 2006
Comments: none

The Distorted Priorities of Mainstream Economics

Writing in the Toronto Star (link lost), economists Arthur Donner and Doug Peters reflect on economics, employment and inequality: The Distorted Priorities of Mainstream Economics Arthur Donner and Douglas Peters, May 2006 There has been a monumental shift in mainstream economics over the past forty years. When we studied economics in the 1960s, economists and […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, economic growth, history of economic thought, inequality, poverty, Role of government.
June 14th, 2006
Comments: none

Adam Smith the moralist

A new book on Adam Smith by James Buchan deepens the case that he did not wear an Adam Smith necktie. Commented on by Bloomberg columnist Matthew Lynn: Most people these days regard Smith as the founder of free- market economics. He’s the hero of the get-the-government-off- our-backs crowd. He’s the pin-up boy of the […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, free markets, history of economic thought, Role of government.
June 12th, 2006
Comments: none

Adam Smith did not wear an Adam Smith necktie

OK, so this is not about the Canadian economy. But I woke up this morning with that phrase about Adam Smith ties in my head and had to track it down a€“ the Adam Smith tie being the burkha of free market fundamentalists, and as a result, a fitting gift to guest speakers at Fraser […]

Posted by Marc Lee under Adam Smith, free markets, history of economic thought, livescoreทีเด็ด .
June 9th, 2006
Comments: none