Category: Economy
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Boeing: A New Report, An Old Story
Item 1. A major tobacco company had to deal with regulators in the Czech Republic. The regulators were demanding that rather alarming health hazard signs be put on cigarette packs. The tobacco company argued that, really, tobacco was not that dangerous but, even if it did kill people, it would be wise for the government … Keep reading »
Lessons from the Gig Economy for Transforming Public Services
Even before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, major upheavals were taking place in the UK labour market. Between 2016 and 2019, the number of people working for online platforms such as Deliveroo and TaskRabbit doubled from 4.7% of the adult population to 9.6% – the equivalent of 5.5 million people. Lockdown caused these trends … Keep reading »
Pension Fund Capitalism and the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Revera
Of the many crises provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic across Canada, the dire situation in long-term care facilities and retirement housing may be the most widely and urgently recognized. Even Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose own party engineered the significant shift to more privatized and ‘marketized’ long-term care (LTC) provision in the 1990s, recently declared … Keep reading »
Political Openings: Class Struggle During and After the Pandemic
For some on the left, the economic breakthrough brought on by the pandemic was the general consensus, not least among economists, for an astonishing increase in fiscal spending. Relative to the economy’s size, the stimulus introduced so far in the US is already double (in Canada triple) what it was during the 2008-09 crisis, with … Keep reading »
Crisis and Virus: COVID-19 in Context
“Toward the end of the twentieth century a sickness struck the world. Not everyone died, but all suffered from it” — Samir Amin (2003, 7). It has been over forty years since Thatcher and monetarism, thirty years since the Canada-US Free trade agreement came into effect, and twenty years since the launch of the Euro. … Keep reading »
An Economic Recovery for Whom?
The Ford Omnibus Bill and Post-Pandemic Politics In the first week of July, the Ontario government announced the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act (Bill 197). The sweeping omnibus bill changes twenty pieces of existing legislation and introduces several new acts. There has been little discussion in the mainstream media regarding the content of the bill, outside of … Keep reading »
The Fiscal Deficit, Modern Monetary Theory and Progressive Economic Policy
Modern Monetary Theory or MMT has crept in from the academic margins to become an influential doctrine in progressive policy circles in the United States. Both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders drew on the ideas of MMT to shape their ambitious public spending platforms. MMT has been cited as one way to fund a Green … Keep reading »
Agenda for the Global South After COVID-19
In 1974, the United Nations General Assembly passed a New International Economic Order (NIEO), which was driven by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The resolution laid out a clear plan for the structural transformation of the world system, which was in the throes of a crisis at the time. However, the NIEO was set aside and … Keep reading »
COVID-19: A View from the Great Depression of the 1930s
The Great Depression. It rests in our collective consciousness as a time when unemployment was rampant, when soup kitchen and bread lines were long, when misery was widespread, when dust was everywhere. In our imaginations, the Depression had a light at the end of its dark tunnel, too. In that story, the onset of the … Keep reading »
‘Open the Economy’? The Pandemic, Costs, Benefits, Capitalism
It is mid-June 2020. Everywhere there is a push to ‘open the economy’. What is meant, of course, is to bring back, as soon as possible, the profit-seeking activities of capitalist firms. It is an unchallenged assumption that the return of normal capitalism, that is, the ceaseless drive for the private accumulation of socially produced … Keep reading »
The Bank of Canada: In Crisis and Beyond
Viewing the COVID-19 pandemic as a purely exogenous shock, Canadian economists and policymakers have tended to predict a quick return to economic growth once health restrictions are lifted. As an account of current events, this turns a blind eye to the uneven forms of adjustment produced by years of neoliberal cutbacks and how these both … Keep reading »
COVID Life and the Asset Economy
Following the 2007-08 financial crisis the creation of a less unequal and fairer world appeared to be a major prospect. As is by now all too familiar, after the financial crisis, instead of becoming more progressive, societies turned out to be more unequal, with inequalities and asset-based class divisions becoming more embedded and entrenched, and … Keep reading »