It isn’t just Germany that is being forced to re-examine the way it redistributes income between rich and poor regions. In Italy, Spain and, most dramatically, in Belgium, the trend is unmistakable: the unbearable pressures put on state budgets by the financial crisis and the ensuing recession are flushing out all the hidden subsidies and transfers that governments have built into their economies in the name of national cohesion and social peace over the past six decades.
Equalization
The Chattering Classes Need to Focus on Real Issues
Yes, the chattering classes are in a frenzy but the average Joe doesn’t give a hoot about the insertion of the word “not” into a document.
A Transfer System That’s Far From Equal
On Tuesday, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce attacked fiscal federalism, claiming that Canada’s complex system of transfers and equalization payments robs Ontario taxpayers and diminishes national productivity.
When $8 Billion Just Isn’t Enough
The Prime Minister has an obligation to pursue policies that benefit the entire country, and writing Quebec another big fat cheque just doesn’t qualify. The response should come swiftly and be unequivocal: “No deal. The rest of Canada won’t be shaken down.”
Featured News
Free to Fly Wants Friendly Skies for Unvaccinated Canadians
Should Canadians be free to fly without a COVID-19 vaccination? Four Canadian pilots thought so and founded Free to Fly at the end of August. By now, the organization has attracted 14,300 members, including 1,900 airline staff. In an interview, Free to Fly co-founder...
More Repression Does Not Save More COVID-19 Sick
The most mentioned reason for lockdowns has been the protection of health systems. The claim is that such protection saves lives. So, it is fair to ask how health systems are performing in their lockdown life-saving duty? There are several points from which one can...
Federal Finance Minister Paul Martin endorses Frontier Centre policy proposal
In a speech yesterday, Federal Finance Minister Hon. Paul Martin said that he was supportive of a major policy initiative.
Pay the people, not governments
What does one of the world’s most prominent economists, a man whose pioneering work in the 1950s made him the father of equalization programs, think about them today?
The Great Canadian Bribe
Economists are a blunt-spoken lot, in their own jargon-ridden way.
‘Father of Equalization’ says programme can be destroyed by politics and design flaws
Professor James Buchanan, 1986 Nobel Laureate in Economics, says that equalization programmes can be captured and destroyed by politics and bad design. Known as one of the “fathers of equalization” because his early writings were highly influential in the design of equalization programmes such as Canada’s, Buchanan revisited his arguments of 50 years ago in Montreal today.
Fiscal Equalization Revisited
A luncheon talk at “Equalization: Helping Hand or Welfare Trap?”, a conference co-sponsored by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the Montreal Economic Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Montreal, 25 October 2001
A Conversation with James Buchanan
Frontier interviews 1986 Nobel Prize winner for economics James Buchanan.
*The cruel hand of equalization
After 44 years and $180-billion dollars in equalization spending (not adjusted for inflation) the Atlantic provinces are only barely more able to meet the needs of their citizens with their own revenue sources than they were when equalization was introduced in 1957.
Government as a Percent of the Economy (FC001)
OECD statistics between 1983 and 2001 comparing size of government in 24 countries.
A Conversation with Brian Lee Crowley
DR. BRIAN LEE CROWLEY is the founding president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax, an economic and social policy think tank that encourages broad debate on strategies for economic development in Atlantic Canada and nationally. Frontier...