Monthly Archives: February 2008
On the political economy of a basic income
The idea of a basic income – it’s generally referred to as a Guaranteed Annual Income in Canada – has been floated again. My initial reaction was that this is such a good idea that it’s hard to figure out why we don’t have it already. For some reason, there doesn’t seem to much in […]
More signs that Canada may yet be spared from the worst of a US recession
January’s Labour Force Survey release is (to me, anyway) an unexpected array of good news: December’s employment data were revised upwards from a loss of 18,700 jobs to one of 2,900 Employment increased by 46,400 in January The employment rate increased to 63.8%, yet another new record. Full-time employment went up; part-time employment went down […]
Should we be worrying about a ‘Carney put’?
Stackelberg Follower makes a point about the appointment of Mark Carney as Governor of the Bank of Canada that has been studiously avoided by commentators until now: I remain unconvinced that investment bankers should be running the central bank. Now, I don’t have a pathological hatred that most of them will likely earn more than […]
Canada’s housing sector is still holding up
One of the (many!) problems associated with living next to the US is the potential for confusing their problems with ours. The state of the housing market is a case in point. Here is a graph of US and Canadian housing starts: (I particularly like this graph because I was able to preserve the ‘rule […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments