Canadian Federal Budget 2014: Legacy of a Finance Minister?

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hey’re saying this could be the final budget delivered by Canada’s Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty.  And CBC News is reporting that we should be looking for 6 key items to appear in this years’ budget.

But I’m reflecting on the budgets of years gone by under the Conservative government and where it’s left Canada in the past decade.   My comment on the story makes it clear what Flaherty’s real legacy will be:

mcshane
James in Kanata @mcshane: Bottom line, the average Canadian’s wealth has increased by 25% wince NAFTA.
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Bull and I will speak for the American people as well…Employers that did relocate to Mexico from the U.S. and Canada have now begun moving to even lower-wage areas such as China and Vietnam. NAFTA was supposed to “grow the economy,” all it did was increasingly benefit a smaller and smaller segment of society.

Ross Holder
@mcshane Well that doesn’t mean it didn’t grow the economy. 😉 It just means that the economy grew and served to simply widen the gap between rich and poor (i.e. profit went into the pockets of the top 5% of income earners instead of seeing every Canadian benefit). And maybe that was inevitable too; but I’d like this budget to spend more attention on managing that widening gap I mentioned between rich and poor — because this country is plenty rich enough for everyone to feel the benefit of our good fortune a lot more!

“Austerity Measures” Philosophy Flawed, Says Political Economy Student

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he measures that have forced people into bankruptcy all over the world have turned out to be the product of a pair of academics screwing up a spreadsheet.  No peer review – and the graduate student that brought forward the evidence proving  the premise for the changes in public policy we’ve seen are so flawed hasn’t been taken seriously.

But maybe that part of the story is still to come… Here’s hoping!

Pick-Pocket 2.0?

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redit card fraud is about to reach new heights, according to this report by CBC.ca.  Can you say “holy crap!”?  What we need is for the phone companies to start allowing charges through to your phone bill as if the phone itself was a credit card, instead of apps like this appearing making credit fraud easier.  Card readers on smart phones are definitely not the right way to go….