A progressive perspective on the 2017 German federal election
The 2017 federal elections in Germany confirm and continue some key trends in contemporary politics.
Opinion
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Reflections on the labour movement and social democracy
For workers, trade unions and social democrats, the answer to achieving greater social justice is in imagining a closer relationship between social democracy, trade unions and the state.
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Challenging the economic dogma of a “natural” unemployment rate
While most economists accept that there is some trade-off between unemployment and inflation, no one really knows how low unemployment can fall before wages begin to rise at a faster pace.
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Ordinary Canadians should support closing private corporation tax loophole
The top 1% of individual taxpayers receive almost all of the benefit of the stock options deduction and 87.4% of the benefit of the capital gains deduction.
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The case for raising the minimum wage
What we need is higher productivity in low wage industries, and a higher minimum wage floor will help to do the job.
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Questioning the so-called “Canadian Dream”
This well-known story of declining real earnings of younger workers is seemingly inconsistent with a story of increasing family incomes of children relative to their parents.
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Canada-China trade agreement no deal for Canadian workers
Given the huge imbalance, this would likely require more managed trade plus more proactive Canadian industrial policies. As a planned economy, China might be open to sectoral managed trade arrangements.
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Fighting the ills of corporate concentration
In this new age of corporate concentration, we certainly need a much broader response than competition policy alone.
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Public investment and the innovation agenda
The innovation agenda marks another incremental turn away from “framework” economic development policies. But the shift is unlikely to be transformational unless it is scaled up and accompanied by a greater role for long-term public investment.
