While both Toronto Mayor David Miller and Ontario's Premier Dalton McGuinty registered their vexations with the new Canadian Federal Budget (which apparently will be passed into law due to the support of its sponsoring party the minority-govt Conservatives plus one of the opposition parties--namely, the separatist Bloc Quebecois (because the Budget is good for Quebec)--nevertheless, McGuinty's Finance Minister Frank Sobara welcomed what Ontario could get and this week introduced a new provincial budget. Kate Howlett reports, "Property tax reform underlined in Ontario budget--Sorbara lays out $91.2-billion fiscal plan with heavy focus on child poverty" (Mar22,2k7).
TORONTO — Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's government released a campaign-style budget yesterday that targets homeowner anger over skyrocketing property taxes and child poverty, while reining in spending on most other programs in an effort to inject a dose of prudence into the province's books. The centrepiece of the Liberal government's fourth and final budget before the Oct. 10 provincial election is new social program spending aimed at giving the 1.3 million children growing up in low-income families a better start in life. The new child benefit program will see $2.1-billion flow to disadvantaged families over the first five years, with the lion's share of the funding earmarked for 2009 and beyond. The program would allow parents to move off welfare rolls without losing financial support for their children.
It's very much worth reading the Howlett article in full. A more critical view is offered by Toronto's Miller.
Mayor Miller "... slams Ontario budget--Province refusing to pay its bills and 'upload' social services, mayor says" by Jeff Gray (Mar23,2k7)
Globe&Mail.
But, in contrast to the Mayor, I'm isolating the new child benefit program, while noting that the "New Ontario Child Benefit for low-income families [is] worth up to $250 a child this year...." Together with the Fed Budget's provision for each child income-tax-paying parents (middle-class), we see that aggregately families with kids are being helped, small increment by small increment. The Ontario Libs have presented a plan they want written into law with approval of the budget (they have grand majority in the provinicail Legislative Assembly) that would keep adding increatements over 5 years--all so that parents will receive "$1,100 by 2011."
Taken together, the Conservs Fed child-benefits added to Ontario's (and, of course, to child-benefits further enacted by the 10 other provinces) indicates a new demographic awareness: Canada's mainly white population will be having more babies and less abortions due to this promised added support for more kids, which means that future care-givers of the burgeoning, mainly-white, aging population will not experience as extreme a differential in the racial composition of the care-giving workforce. This is important to avoid the extremities of a generalized societal picture where the hugest number of the aged belong to one racial-colour configuration, while the care-givers belong quite visibly to another. I do think that people of other racial/ethnic/colour configurations will also be having more babies and fewer abortions than otherwise would be the case were there no increment at all in the Federal/Ontario model. Of course, I am extending hypothetically that model to the entire country. As the Ontario figure w0uld climb over the next five years to $1,100 a child, so by extension would the Canada-born birthrate climb both in the middleclass and among the poor.
Now, it must be quite aside from the overall demographic implications of the Ontario Lib plan, and also aside from the earlier child-benefit announced by the Conserv govt and targetted to the middleclass in order to compensate for their heavier taxation to pay down the Fed debt, that contrastingly the Ontario Libs have no plan to pay down the provincial debt. A year-old
Ontario webpage on fiscal management says. "The province’s total debt is projected to be $154.7 billion as of March 31, 2006. " That debt feature of the Ontario budget 2k7-2k8 does neither Ontario's present kid population nor those to be born under the increased 5-year plan of Child Benefits, any good.
Finally today, there's the quintessential complexity of Canadian political economy centered around tax-revenue-sharing by the Fed govt with the provinces, a mechanism often used by the Feds (Libs especially when in office) to control the terms of various programs actually conducted (in accord with the Fed Constitution) by the various prov govts. These days, the whole question of tax-revenues re-distributed by the Fed treasury to the provinces but unequally (what criterion for provincial "equality"? a province's raw population number?), has come to travel under the term "Fiscal Imbalance." The Conserve budget made an effort to start rectifying the imbalance, but leaders in every province I've heard about this past week, have screamed "not enuff."
Nevertheless, Ontario's Libs had become
hugely well-positioned (just days after the Conserv Fed Budget) to use the recent Fed allocations to Ontario as a factor enabling the Lib prov budget with its initial $250 per child plus a 5-yr plan, again, to bring the numbers up to "$1,100 by 2011." The Fed Conservs get some credit for this prov Lib move, as do the Libs of course.
More on the two budgets, later.
Growth "probably will stay moderate until the housing situation turns around," Bernanke said.It's perhaps needless to intersperse here the notation that the US economy, and contemporary mega-capitlaism generally, is based on the norm of economic growth, the maximization of growth in the economy is the norm of economic activity and hence of corporations (with possible exceptions for non-profits of various sizes, and entrepreneur-run small businesses). In contrast to the prevailing norm, the leading reformational Christian economist, Bob Goudzwaard and colleagues have critiqued this very idea of normativity for economic life and theory, claiming we have enuff, bring growth as such way down on the basis of sustainability (thus, a competing norm), and re-order our economic institutions and system to feed, clothe, shelter all the people. and provide clean air and good water in a healthy environment.
Goudzwaard nowadays frames this in terms of the international economic order, which does exist (being required by globalization and free trade) and needs drastic change. I have some problems with this conception of what's normative for the economy and its institutions, but am trying to take Goudzwaard's distinction between norms and goals, especially in regard to the economy--beginning with the national economies of the USA and Canada--seriously, especially in regard to the absolutization of growth.
In short, at present, I'm somewhat at home in worrying about growth slowdown, in feeling better with moderate growth, and quite concerned about rapid growth such as we see today at the extreme in Communist China where a kind of robber-baron and cowboy capitalism has been let loose on its population and the world. It was the combination of the overheated Shanghai Stockmarket and the American false-loans for first-time mortagages that were the chief factors in triggering the recent New York Stockmarket downfall. Bernanke and FOMC surely have their work cut out for them.This is the key detail of a danger-point in a stockmarket-driven economy, where buyers and sellers await breathlessly for a "hint" from the Fed Chairman in order to determine their next course of action, which when compiled into trend statistics affects all of us in the American economy and elsewhere.
Bernanke continued his itemizations of industrial sectors, including the financial sector and futures markets on various commodities like next season's crops in agriculture and drill yields in petroleum that won't reach markets until after the refining and processing into oil and gas. Futures trading is inherently risking in all industrial sectors where it is needed.Getting the stockmarket analysts and economics reporters in the media to a consensus around that "more balanced view" was the obstacle to a more proper pricing across the American economy. This is a thorny reality: how instant-trigger economic actionism, especially buying and selling on the stockmarkets, is itself driven by over-reaction of said analysts and media to a careful and truthful statement by the Fed's FOMC led now by Bernanke, to the best of their responsible ability. There is no built in pause for contemplation.Here I would tend to think a Fed law against predatory lending is in order, but there's huge note of auxiliary issues that flow from making it more difficult for first-time home-owners to get the mortagages they need and, at the same time, have real good prospects of being able to pay-off on a monthly basis. Predatory lending cannot be solved without a national home-owners policy, and that relates to the persistent problems of unemployment.In a week's time, while Nutting maintained his slant judiciously, the headline writer for MR moved from "Clear as mud" last week, repeating it "Clear as mud again" this week in the teaser, to the subhead "Clears the air." But the fact is that Bernanke has remained unchanged, while his explication of the nuances on the situation, sector by sector, has been elaborated. That's good and proper. The only trouble3 is that economists for the stock-brokers' analysts and corporations are yammering for hardedge "clarity" where "softedge" is truer given the limits of human knowledge to predict economic trends and unanticible shifts in specific factors.
Of course, I'm not putting down Rex Nutting, whom I regard as just about the best reporter on overall trends in the US economy, with contacts both in the government economic agencies like the Fed and in Congressional finance committees, as well as in the corporate interests, not least among the economists who work for them and often are them. Nutting is immersed in this guild, as are most reports in his specialty and all others.
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Cross-posted from BizMix -- reformational Christian business reportage, comments, critiques, and advocacy