Amid this nationalist fervour is a desire to protect Canadian institutions such as public healthcare – a profoundly distinct and equalizing system that has insulated the Canadian working-class from the affordability experiences of Americans.
While the ongoing cost-of-living crisis facing Canadians has been provoked by recent global events, the consolidation of the Canadian food system has been a long-running and strenuous process.
Market concentration in key sectors, including groceries, transportation, and commodity production renders Canada particularly vulnerable to the threat of sellers’ inflation. As a result, Canada should seize the opportunity before the next major supply shock to implement a Weber-inspired policy playbook.
From gas to groceries, this lecture provides valuable context and a policy toolkit for helping ordinary Canadians through economic crisis.
The 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture was delivered by economist Isabella Weber, demonstrating how economic shocks and corporate profits have affected our affordability crisis. From gas to groceries, this lecture provides valuable context and a policy toolkit for helping ordinary Canadians through economic crisis.
In today’s apparently well-performing capitalist economy, working-class ordinary Canadians aren’t feeling like they live in a “Good Society” and acutely feel these economic pressures.
Without redistributive policies, monetary policy alone can be detrimental to employment and wages. In addition to tackling profits through windfall and wealth taxes to fight price inflation everywhere else, we need to increase the price of labour. Governments must raise minimum wages to keep up with inflation, invest in decommodified housing, empower unions to defend…
High inflation may prove to be temporary, but unless and until it subsides, governments need to act to protect those who are struggling.
We can hardly tackle obscene and rising levels of economic inequality if we are not prepared to see a sustained rise in wages at the expense of the capital share of national income, and a sustained period of wages growing at least in line with growing productivity.
