Category Frances Woolley
Worthwhile Survey Initiative
This will change everything. Please participate in our WCI political poll. Click here to take survey Only one response is allowed per IP address; your IP address is not stored in the poll results (we can't see it). Update: I've fixed the "skipped question" problem. Here is a summary of the results so far: Survey Summary
A cost effective crime fighting agenda
The Conservative Party of Canada is committed to a law-and-order agenda. Strengthened and toughened sentencing is a key part of that agenda. Sentencing reduces crime through "incapacitation". It is hard to rob a bank when you're in prison, so an incarcerated offender is an incapacitated offender. Yet incapacitating potential offenders through incarceration has two key […]
The rise of the public economist
Canadian Business blogger Andrew Potter calls it the economists' election. "This is the first election," he writes, "in which a large number of Canadian economists are making direct, unmediated, real-time interventions into the debates over policy and the various party platforms." The obvious story is that technological change has made it possible for economists to […]
Conspicuous Politics
Today, I walked past a garden with a beautiful display of snowdrops and crocuses – and a Green Party lawn sign. A house with a bicycle locked to the railings at the front of the house – and an NDP lawn sign. A house with a neatly laid out garden – and a Liberal lawn […]
Blogging and the iron law of oligarchy
Earlier this year, the New York Times announced (once again) the death of blogging. Immediately, signs of blogging's demise appeared all around me. The Palgrave Econolog, which ranks blogs, went off-line (it's now back). Posts on Worthwhile Canadian Initiative have become less frequent. The latest confirming instance: Scott Sumner is taking a break from blogging.
Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today
My sister has a theory: every policy initiative is always introduced either too late or too early for her to benefit from it. It is not so much a theory as an empirical observation. As such, it may reflect bias on the part of the observer. My sister and I are 1/4 Yorkshirewomen, and like […]
Twittometer
The number of twitter followers for possible future Prime Ministers of Canada: As of 12 March 2011: @M_Ignatieff 61,415; @pmharper 98,164; @jacklayton 57,824; @gillesduceppe 44,550; @elizabethmay 11,447. As of 30 March 2011: @M_Ignatieff 74,988; @pmharper 113,192; @jacklayton 68,622; @gillesduceppe 49,637; @elizabethmay 15,390. Elizabeth May has experienced the largest percentage increase in the number of followers, 34 percent, followed by Michael Ignatieff at 22 percent. […]
Tax unfairness or income unfairness?
The Conservative Party of Canada has announced that, if elected, they would allow families to "share up to $50,000 of their household income for federal tax purposes." (This tax change would be implemented in about four years time.) In tax lingo, this means income splitting. A family where one person has an income of $110,000 […]
Don’t eat the marshmallow
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery" – Mr. Micawber in Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield" Canadians are increasingly indebted. 31% of us struggle to make our bills and payments. We're pretty clueless when it comes to retirement – just 40% […]
Dumb men commercials
Dumb men commercials. Ads featuring men who can't cook. Men who are too stupid to understand how casinos work. And, especially, dumb white men, like the oldsters in the TD ad or the man with "tax pain" in the H&R Block commercial. There's enough stupid men commercials to inspire a blog dedicated entirely to the subject. Why are these ads so pervasive?
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