Productivity is dependent on not just the investment in research, but the implementation of new technologies that increased profitability. A new report from the Dallas Fed points out that there is a way a state can foster increases in productivity from new technological investment, which is funding federal industrial research programs. In Canada, we have not done this in a way to foster actual productivity gains.
In the war against climate change, the main issue continue to be resource allocation. It is not so much that we do not know how to solve the problems we have created for ourselves, it is that we cannot agree on how to spend the money or even if we have the money to spend. These questions are political, but the facts are rooted in our understanding of the economy and the processes that drive value creation. The politics tend to come out of how you answer the economic question of resource allocation and how you think those resources are created in the first place.
Believing Canadian pension plans can lead us out of this housing affordability crisis would be a fool’s errand. The irony is that a main cause of the housing affordability crisis is that Canada’s inadequate public pension system forces people to rely on private real estate markets to fund their retirement income.
Regulations cannot be just words on paper and hopes that Risk Offices in corporations implement them. Regulating capital takes resources and those resources should be paid by capital and imposed by the state.
Just Transition is a concept of the state intervening when the private market fails at a scale that it cannot possibly respond in a reasonable time frame. That kind of thing happens all the time and it isn't just when climate policies are implemented.
The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) group of risk evaluations for companies is under constant attack from all sides. The framework for investing was an attempt just before the pandemic to push a more sustainable investment program while continuing to make higher returns. A cottage industry started-up supporting ESG and then everything changed.
The state should pick some winners. Canada is just picking the wrong ones when it comes to climate change.
Bank operations set real interest rates.
Universities are not widget factories. They are more like municipalities. Strike actions should match that reality.
