Links and things
Taxes, money and banking, climate hope amid catastrophe, and labour market dynamics.
Windfall taxes & climate action
The federal government has shot down the NDP’s suggestion of windfall taxes as ‘simplistic’. In a time of rising corporate profits, real wage cuts, and climate catastrophe, one might think a simple tool to address these issues might be welcome. A well designed one could even be a critical component of a just transition strategy.
Earlier in December, Canadians for Tax Fairness executive director, Katrina Miller wrote a compelling case for Canada, pointing out that UN Secretary-General António Guterres had called on countries to impose windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies that are making record profits in the midst of a climate crisis. U.K., Germany, Italy, and now Slovenia have already implemented windfall profits taxes on oil and gas companies.
Money and Banking
One of the most surprising things for me about economics was the extent to which economists disagree about the basics of money and banking. Ben Bernanke’s Nobel prize and lecture this year generated a fair amount of outrage from economists who disagree with his mainstream (and arguably quite naïve) views. Professor James K. Galbraith writes a clear and fair summary of what he sees missing in Bernanke’s analysis. I particularly recommend the links to various scholars who have worked on the issues of financial instability - from Bagehot and Minsky to the links shared in the paragraph I have quoted below:
Today there are many excellent academics who work on these questions. Post Keynesians, Modern Monetary Theorists and New Development economists have studied panics, frauds, and crises for decades. They are never cited by the mainstream. Nor are they ever hired by economics departments that rank themselves highly in the mainstream. Bernanke, in a lecture on financial instability, seems to have missed them all. His bankers are all Jimmy Stewart nice guys; Leonardo DiCaprio seems to have passed him by.
Hope in the face of climate catastrophe
The United Nations had it’s 27th annual climate change conference this year, and it’s getting a little hard to remain optimistic that change is possible. David Camfield argues that the only effective strategy to take on the status quo is disruptive mass social movements. He argues that the capitalist incentives to continue burning fossil fuels and to delay climate action are so strong that the only effective climate solution is a rejection of capitalism. As dismal as this outlook is, David argues hope is essential to the fight. If you’re intrigued, he talks about his book on the Harbinger Society Presents podcast with Andre Goulet. (Green Majority Radio also appears in that episode, talking about COP 27 in Egypt and COP 15 in Montreal.)
Understanding US labour market dynamics
Earlier in the pandemic we heard a lot about higher job turnover rates, and then more about quiet quitting. It turns out that this phenomenon has been particularly good for the lowest wage workers, especially younger workers whose highest level of education is high school. These slides from David Autor, Arindrajit Dube and Annie McGrew might be interesting to labour market nerds (like me).
Arin Dube elaborates more in a Post post.
Automakers pushing back on new Zero Emission Vehicle guidelines
The federal government made an announcement about plans to increase the supply of Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs). Proposed regulations include a plan to ensure ZEVs make up 20 percent of new vehicle sales by 2026. Predictably, the Canadian auto industry is pushing bank.
Nate Wallace from Environmental Defense has a great op-ed about the need for automakers to clean up their act in the National Observer (Subscription required), and Environmental Defense has longer report explaining the proposed regulations and the ways that the auto industry is fighting them.