Capitalism’s continued crisis
The global economy has to be seen, not so much as a set of discrete national economies trading with each other, but as a vast “macro financial” web of corporate balance sheets and financial flows.
The global economy has to be seen, not so much as a set of discrete national economies trading with each other, but as a vast “macro financial” web of corporate balance sheets and financial flows.
The next financial crisis is coming, sooner more likely than later. And Canada has no reason to be complacent, given its own vulnerabilities.
The problem with the “end of jobs” narrative is that it disarms us by suggesting that massive technological forces out of our control are most to blame for our problems. That is not the case.
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.
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.
What we need is higher productivity in low wage industries, and a higher minimum wage floor will help to do the job.
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.
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.
In this new age of corporate concentration, we certainly need a much broader response than competition policy alone.