Canada has a federal election coming up on October 19, 2015. The election could not have come at a worse time for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party. Canada’s economy has ground to a halt, and the voters are furious with Harper. His net approval rating has dropped to a disastrous -32:
What has he done wrong? Let’s take a closer look.
Continue reading “Stephen Harper’s Austerity and Weak Oil Prices are Sinking Canada’s Economy”
Stock markets have been stumbling this week. To some degree, this is happening because corrections are needed, but one of the key reasons these corrections are happening right now is China. China’s stock market has been in a tailspin lately, and the Chinese government has taken a series of measures to prop up its stock market, all of which are only succeeding in making the situation much worse. Right wing commentators in the west are pointing at China and claiming that government intervention in the economy doesn’t work. This is a simplistic and reductive response–the problem is not that China is taking action, but that the specific actions that China is taking are the wrong actions.
Continue reading “The Stock Market Crash: What China and the US are Doing Wrong”
Ted Cruz has had a busy week. First the Texan senator and republican presidential candidate got in an argument about LGBT rights and religious freedom with actress Ellen Page. Then he launched an awkwardly timed attack on the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who was recently diagnosed with cancer. I’m not here to scold Cruz for being impolite. What I would like to do is talk about the substantive arguments Cruz makes and the way he makes them. So consider this post something of a doubleheader. Continue reading “Ted Cruz vs. Ellen Page and Jimmy Carter”
Over the past week, I’ve been hearing the rumors. They’re saying that Jeremy Corbyn is crazy–that he’s released an economic plan so radical, so incendiary, so madcap that no reasonable person could possibly support him for Labour leader. I thought to myself “Oh no Jeremy, what could you possibly have done to get these folks so riled up?” So I read the plan. It’s not crazy–indeed, there is significant support in the literature and in recent experience for what Corbyn is proposing.
Continue reading “Jeremy Corbyn’s Economic Plan is Not Crazy”
In recent weeks, I have had the very same conversation with a number of my friends. Each time I’m told that they were participating in a discussion about the minimum wage when someone claimed that there was no point in raising wages because firms would just raise their prices to cover the increase. This is a very intuitive, appealing argument, but it’s deeply misleading and fallacious. Let me explain why.
Continue reading “Misconceptions: Raising the Minimum Wage Does Not Automatically Lead to Inflation”
Benjamin Studebaker 