Political instability is a major impediment to business and investment on First Nations reserves in Canada. It is a problem right up there with land ownership restrictions and lack of access to capital. This is also a problem identified on Native American reservations...
Poverty
A Rejoinder to a Recent CCPA Article on Minimum Wages
President Obama’s pledge to increase the national minimum wage has spurred a vigorous debate over how to improve the living standards of low skilled workers. Economists are skeptical of minimum wage increases, pointing out that they increase unemployment. They tend to advocate an earned income tax credit (EITC) as an alternative.
The Minority Youth Unemployment Act: A higher minimum wage will hurt Obama’s most loyal supporters.
One paradox of the Obama Presidency is how it has retained the support of young people and minorities despite the damage its policies have done to their economic prospects. In his latest attempt to increase the minority youth jobless rate, President Obama is proposing to raise the minimum wage.
The “bubble” is not in bitumen
I once heard a wise man say that governments are always wrong when making economic predictions. The questions to consider are by how much, and in what direction?
That the Government of Alberta was wrong in its economic predictions should therefore not be big news. But they were wrong by lots and widely in the wrong direction. Alberta was predicting averages around $99 a barrel for the past year. But it was not that prediction that got them in trouble, now facing a likely deficit near the $6 billion mark.
It appears to be the failure to account for the rising price differential –the difference between market prices and the bargain basement price Alberta needs to sell its oil to the United States because of our lack of pipeline capacity to deliver to markets. It’s what the premier called a “bitumen bubble.” The price differential is not new, and for more than a year, economists were predicting a larger gap unless greater capacity to carry oil to market were developed.
The core of the problem lies elsewhere, whatever the premier says: Two successive Alberta governments for close to a decade have now been unable to balance their budgets at times when oil revenue was riding high. When money abounds and one still runs out of it, it is a clear indication that the problem is not revenue. The problem is spending.
Jack Mintz from the School of Public Policy and other keen observers had predicted that we would be at this precise junction around this time. Keep spending more than you have while you bridge gap with a supply of money the flow of which you cannot control, and it is not difficult to see that when the gap-closing supply goes down so does your ability to keep spending in the same undisciplined way.
And down that hole we now go, raising the spectre of budget cuts and higher taxes. Not quite a cliff, as a friend of mine joked, but surely a Buffalo jump. Yet, the government is still not facing reality for all the reality facing it.
In her televised address last week, the premier keeps promising not to raise taxes, and not to reduce the budget lines of the two largest spending departments, healthcare and education, to deal with the $6 billion gap. Fair enough, but the promise to start putting savings into the Heritage Fund quickly gave her talk a hue of unreality.
Featured News
How to Turn Free Citizens Into Compliant Serfs
Free citizens have minds of their own and want to pursue their lives as they see fit. This is inconvenient for the elites, who wish to be in charge of everyone’s lives so that they can show their superiority and gain benefit for themselves and their friends. So the...
Demographia International Housing Affordability – 2023 Edition Released
Demographia International Housing Affordability rates middle-income housing affordability in 94 major housing markets in eight nations: Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. This edition covers the third...
Smart Growth Hurts the Urban Poor: Urban planners hurting the home owning dream
The idea of containing urban populations through Smart Growth strategies has typically sent housing prices soaring and has hurt those least able to afford buying a house of their own, the urban poor.
A sobering message to control debt
UK and Canadian PMs call for debt control on the same day that coincidentally the markets had the worst day this year.
Peak Water – Maybe…
Gwynne Dyer has penned an op ed that claims the world is running out of water required to produce food.
Vancouver housing strategy misses the mark
A new housing and homelessness strategy came before Vancouver City Council July 26th. Its stated goal is no less than to eradicate homelessness by 2015. Aside from the impossibility of the goal, lumping general housing affordability and homelessness together into one...
Not-so-Quiet Revolution in Cuba?
Cuba is experiencing change that may eventually revolutionize Cuban society and the economy. The regime of Raul Castro is set to implement a micro-credit system to bolster self-employment. This change comes on the heels of other important policy decisions oriented...
Study says resource boom helping Aboriginals, but leaves unanswered questions
A major study by TD Economics reveals how the resource boom is working greatly to the advantage of Aboriginal peoples. The important points being raised in the media is the explosion in Aboriginal business activity and income growth. In particular, much is being made...
Implications of the NDP dropping the ‘socialist’ label
Make no mistake about it, the NDP has contributed to the policy discourse in Canada. Both in its earlier form as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and when it morphed into the NDP to broaden its appeal, the party has raised consciousness about problems...
Case for Aboriginal property rights proven from space
On a past segment of the John Stossell Show, some invited guests were asked to discuss the issue of Native American poverty (or First Nations for Canadians). Manny Jules, former chief of Kamloops Indian Band in B.C. and Terry Anderson, executive director of the...
Debate over Aboriginal property rights continues
The Globe and Mail featured an online discussion between First Nation entrepreneur and lawyer Calvin Helin and Meko Nicholas for the First Nations Land Advisory Board Resource Centre over the contentious issue of Aboriginal property rights....