#S17 is today, and reminds us of the price of inequality

~ MilesCorak ~ 10 Comments

The twitter hash tag is #S17, and using it will connect you to all those preparing for the first anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which of course is today, September 17th.

You will find tweets encouraging your participation: “If you feel that the world is on the right track, stay home. If you know things are bad, Join your local #OWS.”

Others will guide you on how to prepare, be it “Escaping from Zip Ties” or “How to pick your way out of handcuffs” (actually just the Smith and Weston model 100s).

But whatever your level of engagement, there is a message that this anniversary has for us all, a reminder of the real price of inequality.

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Children of immigrants make more progress in Australia and Canada than in the UK or the US

~ MilesCorak ~ 9 Comments

Young children whose families immigrate to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States are as prepared and capable of starting school as their native-born counterparts, with one exception: vocabulary and language development.

But the resulting disadvantages in reading skills are overcome to a much greater degree as they progress through school in Australia and Canada than they are in the United Kingdom and the United States.

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Why there are better ways to measure unemployment

~ MilesCorak ~ 11 Comments

The state of the jobs market is best assessed by a number that is not given enough attention by Statistics Canada, and the many media reports based upon its monthly press release.

The headline attention is all soaked up by the unemployment rate and the level of employment, when it really should be something Paul Krugman—the Princeton University economist and New York Times columnist—calls his “favorite gauge” of the employment situation.

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How the invisible hand points students to a job

~ MilesCorak ~ 5 Comments

They are easy to spot. A certain glaze over the pupils; quick, frequent glances this way and that; puzzled pauses before adjusting course and setting out again in another direction: first year university and college students look so terribly lost during the first few days of school because, in fact, they are.

And quite understandably so: finding the right place to be at the right time is no small matter in a sea of thousands.

But surely the really difficult thing to figure out is not where you should be, but rather what you should be? Engineer or electrician? Anthropologist or accountant? Lab technician or teacher? Make a wrong turn in these hallways and you will pay for years.

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Employment Insurance reform doesn’t need consitutional change

~ MilesCorak ~ 4 Comments

In a recent column in the Globe and Mail, Tom Flanagan bemoans the fact that the premium structure of Employment Insurance is not lined up with expected benefits. As a result, provinces to the west of the Ottawa River have long paid a good deal more into the program than they receive in benefits.

The solution: a constitutional amendment allowing Quebec to run its own EI program.

Quebec and Alberta interests certainly line up on this issue: one wrestles more control over federal powers, the other sees smaller government and lower taxes.

But let’s be clear, devolution of EI responsibilities—which constitutionally rests with the Federal Government—is about this sort of politics, not at all about the underlying economics of social insurance.

There are a host of legislative changes that the Federal government can introduce to make EI more efficient without even whispering the C-word.

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My summer reading list was about inequality and opportunity; you might like some of these books

~ MilesCorak ~ 14 Comments

If there is a thread running through the books I read this summer I suppose it is inequality: its causes and consequences; the real life and not so real life—but no less true—experiences of living these causes and experiencing the consequences; and what can—or for that matter can’t—be done about it.

The original ad in the Princeton University newspaper announcing the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. Fitzgerald had been a student at the university. Source: The Daily Princetonian, April 18 1925 .

Inequality in earnings and incomes has been a very hot topic in labour economics for the last two decades, but the relevance of this research and its use in public policy discussion has now become strikingly clear.

My last academic year was dominated by the rise of inequality on the public and public policy radar screen, and I have been so tied up in these discussions that I was carried, as if on a train leaving the station, right along throughout the entire summer.

I re-read a speech President Obama made on the topic. Last December he spoke about a type of inequality that “hurts us all”, and made a link between equality of outcomes and equality of opportunities.

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