Archive
Top 10 Reasons for Upper-Income Tax Increases
Jan 17, 2012
Some feel we shouldn’t increase taxes on upper-income folks. After all, people know best how to spend their money, whereas the government will only waste it on needless activities. Well then, I humbly submit the following Top 10 list of reasons for upper-income tax increases (in descending order). #10: Ridiculous real estate. Check out Vancouver’s… View Article
A prescription for health care reform: think integration & collaboration
Jan 16, 2012
This morning the CCPA released a new report (co-authored by yours truly) that looks at the thorny issue of health care reform in BC and identifies some practical, evidence-based strategies that have been successful in improving quality of care and controlling costs in other jurisdictions. The paper comes out at a time when all Canadian… View Article
New Brunswick Auditor General latest to blast public private partnerships
Jan 15, 2012
One more provincial Auditor General has come out swinging at public private partnerships (P3s). Last week New Brunswick’s AG released a report on two P3 schools that had been announced by the NB government in 2008. New Brunswick Auditor General Kim MacPherson joins public auditors in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia who have… View Article
Making health care funding sustainable
Jan 13, 2012
The BC Legislature’s Select Standing Committee on Health is currently investigating the sustainability of BC’s health care system (with a focus on demographic / aging trends), and asked for written submissions of peer-reviewed studies on the subject. Here’s what I just submitted: Submission to the BC Legislature’s Select Standing Committee on Health From: Seth Klein,… View Article
Who’s really “skewing” the pipeline debate?
Jan 11, 2012
Apparently the Harper government and its echo chamber in the blogosphere (e.g. Vivian Krause) think that philanthropic funding of environmental groups is “skewing” the debate on the northern pipeline project. Presumably they would like to return to a more “normal” debate. You know, one disproportionately influenced by well-heeled corporate-funded market fundamentalist think tanks and pseudo-grassroots… View Article
The BC government could start with local purchasing to build jobs in our communities
Jan 3, 2012
The BC government has been heavily promoting its “jobs plan” over the last week on television, radio and on the internet. On twitter they invited people to come on line to give their ideas about what could be done to promote more jobs in communities. But there is one idea to promote jobs in communities… View Article
Tackling inequality means rethinking upper-income tax rates
Dec 23, 2011
2011 was the year rising inequality finally exploded into the mainstream discourse. A few year-end reading recommendations: Victoria Times-Colonist editorial writer Paul Willcocks wrote a terrific piece on the subject (you can find it here); and similarly, a group of UBC economists (including CCPA research associate David Green) authored a series on inequality for the… View Article
Reflections on the year past and the year to come: Inequality explodes into the public discourse
Dec 22, 2011
If this past year — marked by the Arab Spring and the fall arrival of the Occupy movement — has taught us anything, it is that we never know when historic moments come. And when they do, that which seemed political impossible is suddenly in play. Many of us found the explosion of the Occupy… View Article
Business dominated think tank winds up with report showing little progress in BC
Dec 19, 2011
The British Columbia Progress Board came out with its last report today. Gordon Campbell started the think tank in 2001 and now Christy Clark has ended it. The report shows progress, but often in the wrong direction. You can find the whole report here but it will take patience. It weighs in at a hefty… View Article
Just who should be putting who under trusteeship?
Dec 15, 2011
I am the first to admit that, lamentably, I know very little about the problems that face First Nations people. That did not stop me from having an opinion about the federal takeover at Attawapiskat. My first reaction was that the Chief and Council should have thrown the keys to the federal government and said,… View Article
Inequality and Climate Injustice: A Durban Post-Mortem
Dec 13, 2011
The United Nations climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, ended 2011 with a whimper. After a year in which climate disasters rolled across the globe, major polluting nations like Canada chose to ignore them, seeking instead to disrupt the Durban negotiations, then blew the world a raspberry, by officially pulling out of the Kyoto… View Article
Is it P3s or the 3 Stooges? A tale of two cities
Nov 30, 2011
For those of us not fond of the expensive and secretive public private partnerships (P3s) promoted by the BC and Canadian governments, the last few weeks have been entertaining. In one community voters rejected the use of a P3 water system. In another community the federal government refused a P3 after the city had spent… View Article
Growing support for cities to adopt living wage
Nov 16, 2011
New developments since my recent post calling on municipalities to lead the way on adopting living wage policies: First, over just over 100 candidates have responded to the Open Letter issued by the Living Wage for Families campaign, covering almost every Lower Mainland municipality. Almost all have expressed support for this proposal or at least… View Article
Time to give shale gas industry a closer look before we’re totally fracked
Nov 9, 2011
Despite the recent release by Canada’s natural gas industry of a set of guiding principles governing the controversial gas well “stimulation” method known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, and despite the almost immediate endorsement of those principles by BC Premier and industry cheerleader Christy Clark, more and more British Columbians are justifiably worried about what… View Article
BC government claims new power over personal information. Public comment sidelined.
Nov 9, 2011
The BC government has a lot of personal information about you. Legislation passed last month means the government can do a lot more with it. The legislation passed without the public consultation demanded last year by the Information and Privacy Commissioner. In 2010 a legislative committee undertook a review of Freedom of Information and Protection… View Article
Living Wage Policy: Why Municipal Governments should lead the way
Oct 25, 2011
By Michael McCarthy Flynn and Seth Klein The Living Wage for Families Campaign, along with 54 organizations representing over 300,000 British Columbians, recently issued an Open Letter calling on all municipal election candidates to help low-income families in their cities by passing a Living Wage policy if they are elected (available here). Many families are… View Article
Occupy Canada: media pundits vs. reality
Oct 24, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Canada protests seem to be occupying – and perhaps unhinging – the minds of media pundits – at least, those who are mired in the dogma of “free market” fundamentalism. One recent example from CBC Television came in the form of a personal attack on author Chris Hedges. A well-known American… View Article
Occupation, democracy and coops
Oct 18, 2011
I hung out a while yesterday at the Vancouver Occupation, and was impressed with their efforts at radical democracy. Many in the mainstream press have been quick to pile on for how time-consuming decision-making can be under this model, but perhaps they have not spent enough time in legislatures and committee meetings and public consultations…. View Article
O’Leary breached CBC standards, Ombudsman rules
Oct 14, 2011
It took just a week following the airing of an “interview” on CBC television’s The Lang & O’Leary Exchange for the public broadcaster’s Ombudsman, Kirk LaPointe, to rule that the public broadcaster’s journalistic standards had been breached. For all those who saw the segment on the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations – either when it aired… View Article
Are Smart Meters Worth the Cost?
Oct 12, 2011
A notice in my mailbox last week told me that smart meters are going to be installed in my neighbourhood. I’ll admit that the geek in me would like to see real-time information about my energy usage, but as an economist I’m interested in costs and benefits of the program. So far we have seen… View Article