Category Inequality
Taxing the rich is harder than you think
In this post on Ed Broadbent's suggestion for a 6 ppt increase in the income tax rates faced by people earning $250k or more, I mentioned that some serious econometric work had to be done before this could be treated as a meaningful proposal. It soon occurred to me that there very likely had been […]
Revisiting Robin Hood’s agenda: Be less concerned about taking from the rich and focus on giving to the poor
Ed Broadbent had an op-ed in Tuesday's Globe on a plan to reduce child poverty, and he offers this proposal: In the next budget, let's impose a six-point increase in income tax on those earning more than $250,000 a year (whose average taxable income is $600,000). While leaving them with very high incomes, this would […]
More on the ineffectiveness of minimum wages as an anti-poverty measure
The most recent issue of Canadian Public Policy has this short note: Minimum Wage Increases as an Anti-Poverty Policy in Ontario: In this article, we consider the possibility of alleviating poverty in Ontario through minimum wage increases. Using survey data from 2004 to profile low wage earners and poor households, we find two important results. […]
Economic policy advice for the NDP, Part V: Give money to low-income households
Here is what I would like some staffer to ask next time NDP strategists are kicking around ideas for goods to subsidise or services that governments to provide at a discount in order to advance their agenda of reducing poverty and inequality: "Why don't we just give low-income households money and let them spend it […]
Economic policy advice for the NDP, Part I: Inequality
One of the themes being played up in the NDP's convention is its attempt to 're-brand' (up to, but not quite, including dropping the 'New' from its name), and part of this is apparently an attempt to develop a credible economic platform. The NDP has historically been pretty consistent in its refusal to take advice […]
An overlooked anti-poverty strategy: giving money to poor people
Kevin Milligan of the University of British Columbia and Mark Stabile of the University of Toronto asked themselves "Can income transfers to poor families help children?" Here's a summary of the answer they got: Since the 1990s, many countries have reformed their systems of transfers to low income families with an eye toward improving work […]
The progressive politics of pricing publicly-provided products
Whenever I make the points summarised in this post, someone invariably counters with the following median-voter argument: A policy in which only low-income households benefit will not command majority support. Making the program universal will ensure a more stable electoral base. This argument is not without merit, and it's pretty convincing in certain contexts. But […]
A fiscal stimulus proposal that should be implemented, but won’t be
A recession is here, the Bank of Canada is running out of bullets, and it's time for a fiscal stimulus. The problem is that the worst possible signal has been sent out to the usual gang of well-connected, media-savvy interest groups: "We're giving money away, and we really don't care who gets it!". This has […]
The Liberal-NDP childcare policy: The state as malevolent troll
The Liberals and the NDP have recycled their promises of a national daycare program: Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said if elected, his party would scale up spending on child care spaces to reach $1.25 billion in four years time, money that he said would fund 165,000 new spaces… NDP Leader Jack Layton made a similar […]
Canada’s income redistribution strategy: take from the rich, give to the median
There have been any number of MSM stories based on StatsCan’s recent release on earnings and income. Median earnings from market income for individuals in 2005 are pretty much the same as they were back in 1980, and market income inequality has – by any measure – increased over the past 25 years. This isn’t […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments