Weekend tax policy reading

Posted by on | economy, taxation

Yes, the weekend is nearly upon us. Almost time to put your feet up, get a cup of coffee, relax and catch up on your reading — and what greater joy could there be but to dig into some cutting-edge thinking in Canadian tax policy? After all, don’t you care about social justice? And aren’t you tired of listening to Americans fighting about their tax system? Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change to listen to a sensible Canadian, making sensible recommendations for how our own income tax system could be made more efficient and more just? Well I have just the thing for you:

I read the notes to this speech by Kevin Milligan (UBC Economics) when he gave it in November, but only recently noticed that the official published version is much more elaborate: Tax Policy for a New Era: Promoting Economic Growth and Fairness, and really does offer one-stop shopping for all your tax policy needs.… Continue reading

Why people hate economics, in one lesson

Posted by on | economy, education

This is extraordinary. Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen recently released a little promo video, to tout their new “Marginal Revolution University” course on microeconomics (as well as their intro textbook). In it they bend over backwards to make economics seem fun, friendly and non-intimidating. Practically every sentence is accompanied by a cutesy little animation, designed to make the study of economics seem as non-threatening as possible. And yet halfway through the video, they ruin it all, by saying something that is guaranteed to alienate most normal people. See if you can spot the faux pas:

I actually think the whole segment from 1:10 to 2:22 is fairly ill-advised, but there are two points where it’s terrible. (Summary, for those who don’t want to watch: They tell the story of how 19th century British sea captains transporting prisoners to the penal colony in Australia used to mistreat the passengers, resulting in very high mortality rates.… Continue reading

Canada’s worst policy ideas of 2014

Guest post by Daniel Béland, Rachel Laforest and Jennifer Wallner

When the Washington Post’s Wonkblog recently published a list of 11 of the worst U.S. policy ideas of 2014, we asked the question: what would the Canadian equivalent of such a list look like? To simplify the task, we looked at provincial and federal policy proposals officially promoted by a governing party. Here we provide a list of four policies – two provincial and two federal. While some may disagree with our picks – and the list is certainly not comprehensive – this exercise has clear value to stimulate debate about what good and bad policies are.

1. Charter of Values. An obvious contender for worst policy idea of 2014 is the so-called Charter of Values put forward by the PQ government in Quebec. An exercise in policy demagogy, the Charter of Values, and especially the proposed ban on all “ostentatious religious signs” worn by public employees, claimed to protect society against a widely inflated threat (religious accommodations).… Continue reading

On philosophical and economic illiteracy

Posted by on | Uncategorized

As I may have mentioned, I’m in the Netherlands this week, giving a paper at an Ethics and Economics conference in Utrecht. My paper (here) starts out by belabouring some of the issues that were raised by N. Gregory Mankiw’s much-derided attempt to defend the incomes of the top 1% (here). There was a huge amount of criticism piled onto Mankiw in the wake of this, but one of the things I noticed was that few economists challenged the most problematic feature of his argument – namely, that it is based on the zombie idea that paying workers according to their “marginal productivity” is equivalent to paying them the actual product of their labour, and therefore corresponds to some pre-theoretic concept of what they “deserve.” (According to this view, the marginal productivity theory of wages provides the foundations for a moral justification for the distribution of income under capitalism.) This is an argument that was bandied about a lot in the early 20th century (and given its most spirited defence by John Bates Clark in his 1899 book, on The Distribution of Wealth), and is almost universally regarded as having been defeated.… Continue reading

Academic roundup

Posted by on | Uncategorized

No blogging lately, not just because of the holidays, but also because I’ve been working on a number of different academic projects. Here is a quick set of links, for those interested.

First of all, a Habermas paper that I have been fiddling around with for a long time finally came out, in Philosophy and Social Criticism. It’s called Rebooting Discourse Ethics. The official version is gated, but the MS can be found here. Thanks to PSC for letting me go on at length!

I’ve also posted a series of papers that I’m working on over at my academia.edu page. The first, Why Do People Behave Immorally When Drunk? is coming out in Philosophical Explorations soon. I’m happy to see this one in print, as it was a huge amount of work. My co-author, Benoit Hardy-Vallée, wrote the first draft while he was doing a SSHRC post-doc with me at UofT maybe 10 years ago.… Continue reading

The inevitability of road pricing

Posted by on | economy

A friend came over to my house the other day driving a brand new Tesla. It was a sudden reminder that all this automotive innovation that we keep hearing about is actually happening. Just a few days previous, I had been watching this demonstration of Tesla’s new “autopilot” feature:

I have to say that, as someone who hates driving, watching the video below got me pretty excited.

I can’t recall offhand any piece of technology with the prospect of more dramatically improving my quality of life.

On the other hand, driverless cars have the potential to exacerbate a whole lot of other problems. The first is that, unless we make some changes in the way that access to roads is regulated, they will massively increase congestion. The economics of it are pretty simple. You can pay for roads in one of two ways, either with money or with your time. If use of roads is not priced, then there will be overconsumption, which will manifest itself in the form of congestion.… Continue reading

Hobbes’s difficult idea

Posted by on | environment, political philosophy

One of my favorite Paul Krugman papers is called “Ricardo’s difficult idea” — on why people have such a hard time understanding the concept of “comparative advantage.” Although the situation is not quite as bad, I’ve been struck recently by how much difficulty many people have trying to understand the concept of a “collective action problem.” Although that idea has a bit more history to it, I don’t think it’s too much of a distortion of the record to call this “Hobbes’s difficult idea.”

I was prompted to think about this a couple days back, when James wrote in the comments:

I think everyone can understand free rider problems, but almost no one bothers to think of the world in that way.

Sad but true. One of the things I’m constantly amazed by in discussions over climate change is how elusive the basic concept of a collective action problem remains, and how unintuitive it is for many people (whether to grasp, or just to apply, as James suggests).… Continue reading

Last note from Lima UNFCCC

Posted by on | environment

Climate negotiations at the UNFCCCC continued in Lima overnight Saturday, December 13. The atmosphere was very tense over seemingly irreconcilable rifts, largely between developed and developing countries over the terms of the proposed architecture of the post-2020 global climate regime. Most of us were starting to worry about the likelihood of any meaningful outcome.

The Co-Chairs of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) and the COP presidency worked into the late hours of Saturday night, in order to prepare a text that meets the contending views somewhere in the middle. Around midnight on Saturday, a penultimate draft was proposed. Agreement was secured later in the night, giving rise to the final text. This is the text that will be taken to Paris in November-December 2015.

The agreement is called the Lima Call for Climate Action. The text can be viewed here: http://unfccc.int

Most will be inclined to think that the end result is not good enough.… Continue reading