Crowly in the Globe: Don't try to fix CPP. It's not broken
Writing in the Globe's Report on Business, MLI managing director Brian Lee Crowley urges readers to consider whether there is really a problem that needs fixing with a major expansion of the Canada Pension Plan. He says that Canada's pension system is one of the strongest in the world and Canadians are retiring with a high portion of their working incomes. "Awkwardly for the big CPP advocates, countries with much more generous state retirement schemes, such as Sweden, the Netherlands and the United States, end up giving retirees less income, on this measure, than Canada's 91 per cent", he writes.
Nazareth in the Globe: How to stop worrying and love migration
Writing in the Globe's Economy Lab blog, MLI senior fellow Linda Nazareth looks at the economic benefits of migration. "If there are better prospects in North America than there are in Europe or Asia, they figure out how to get there. It has always happened, and in an economic sense, it has worked pretty well. So why is there so much debate and resistance to the migration phenomenon?" she writes.
Cross in the Post: The big question is not how to fix CPP but whether we need to
In the Financial Post, MLI senior fellow Philip Cross writes that while calls for Canada Pension Plan expansion are based on vague feelings of unease about the future, the evidence suggests that doing so could ironically threaten the long-term economic growth needed to secure incomes. Cross writes: "Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne bases the need to expand CPP on 'my understanding that there is a high degree of anxiety among people who are worried about their security in retirement.' This ignores that people are genetically programmed to be perpetually anxious about their future standard of living".
Watson in the Citizen: Millennials don't have it so bad
In his Ottawa Citizen column, William Watson writes that the current cohort of young workers, or "Generation Supposedly Screwed", actually has things better than the group that entered the work force in the early 1980s. He cites figures used by MLI senior fellow Philip Cross to reveal that while many are concerned about the job prospects of young people, they are far better off today than following previous recessions.
Watson writes: "If you're aged 15 to 24, the group we categorize as youth in the unemployment data (even though 15-year-olds have quite different labour market needs and expectations than 24-year-olds) you may have an excuse for lacking perspective: You were either not born or still in diapers in the early 1990s, while the 1980s are ancient history - and these days no one is required to know anything about any kind of history, ancient or otherwise. But if you're in your 40s or 50s or 60s, what's your excuse for not understanding that youth unemployment was worse in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s?"
Manne and Morris in the Post: Why Canada's debit card system doesn't need any more controls
Writing in the Financial Post, Geoffrey Manne and Julian Morris, who co-authored the MLI report "Credit where it's due: How payment cards benefit Canadian merchants and consumers, and how regulation can harm them" explain that consumers and small merchants would suffer if the NDP's schemes for regulating payment cards were adopted. "If the NDP policy options we assess were implemented, Canada's larger merchants would pay lower fees and some would charge more for goods bought using payment cards. But consumers and smaller merchants would suffer", they write.
Crowley in the Globe: Trade deals produce lots of winners but some very loud losers
Writing in the Globe and Mail, MLI managing director Brian Lee Crowley points out that most people now regard free-trade as beneficial, but there are no doubt some people who lose when a new deal is signed and they "tend to feel the pain immediately". These losers also tend to be more vocal, skewing the debate.
Crowley in the Citizen: Apartheid's sick social code
Writing in the Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia papers, Brian Lee Crowley remarks on how much South Africa has changed in our lifetime, and describes his experiences there in 1982, "while the battle to preserve white rule still raged". He relates three experiences that demonstrated that "everyone knew what was going on but no one was willing to call it by its name. People were clearly ashamed about what was happening to them and their institutions, but they could make it bearable by never acknowledging directly what was happening". The National Post's Chris Selley called the column "an affecting vignette from a sick society".
Cross in the Post: Canada's government debt problem
In the Financial Post, MLI senior fellow Philip Cross writes that municipal and provincial borrowing have pushed government debt to dangerous levels in Canada. "Canada's gross government debt is higher than in either the United States or the EU", Cross writes. "Much of the favourable perception of the state of government finances in Canada comes from considering only federal government debt". A longer version of this article first appeared in C2C Journal. Cross was also interviewed on the subject on BNN. Click here to watch.
