American Feature Posts

The political triumph of full employment economics in Ottawa and Washington

Reducing unemployment and increasing the wages of low and moderate income earners have become the overriding economic goals of top Canadian and U.S. policy makers, guiding objectives that will shape many of the big decisions being made in Ottawa and Washington in the months ahead. The U.S. and Canada's recent willingness to run historically large deficits in order to create good-paying jobs, marks a sea change in policy circles and more broadly in economic thinking....

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Protecting the most vulnerable from the coronavirus pandemic must be government’s highest priority

In neither the US nor Canada is there any evidence that we are "flattening the curve" in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. This is a very dangerous situation that risks overhwelming health facilities in the hardest hit regions in both countries. In the US, there were more than 31,000 new cases reported Friday. In Canada, roughly 1,140 new cases were reported. The US numbers are the highest one-day totals since the pandemic started and...

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How much do we really have to shut down to keep Canada safe? When will life be able to return to normal?

As public demands escalate for governments to do more to combat the ever-worsening novel coronavirus pandemic, two distinct camps seem to be forming: one essentially calling for a lockdown of the country, the other demanding a massive expansion of testing, isolation and monitoring. In other words, some are urging a "close everything down - everyone stay at home" approach with all the economic and social fallout that portends, while others are urging an aggressive effort...

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Mass testing could have stopped the coronavirus and governments knew it: Why didn’t the politicians act?

It is now becoming apparent that governments around the world have long had considerable knowledge about the risks of a coronavirus type pandemic and have had studies that accurately predicted the shortcomings in their health care systems that would hamper their ability to fight such a pandemic. The tragedy is that many countries failed to act on this knowledge and make the changes needed in their pandemic preparedness to keep their poupulations healthy. Earlier in...

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The World Health Organization had a plan for the coronavirus but much of the world ignored it.

It is increasingly obvious that if there was a set of globally enforceable rules regarding public health practices that all nations had to implement at the first signs of a possible pandemic, we would not be facing the catastrophic health and economic crisis we are facing today with the coronavirus. What most people don't know is that in 2005, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) put in place a set of practices to prevent a coronavirus...

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European leaders react with outrage and stock markets plunge after Trump travel ban

US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday evening that he would ban foreign travelers from Europe for the next 30 days amid the growing coronavirus outbreak. The restrictions apply only to foreign nationals, and not U.S. citizens, green card holders or the families of U.S. citizens. The White House further specified that the ban applied to foreign nationals who have visited 26 countries in Europe. Ireland and the U.K. are exempt, although it is not clear why...

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Anti-science governments helped spread the coronavirus

Politicians heading all governments - from the most authoritarian to the most democratic - like to paint a rosy picture of life under their governance. Whether the rosy picture is true or not, in their eyes, pretending all is good is how they stay in power. What the public often forgets, however, is that very few people who draw a government pay check are politicians. The vast majority of public sector workers are non-partisan, career...

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Why Donald Trump chose the most extreme option presented to him in dealing with Iran

On Wednesday, a Ukrainian jetliner crashed in Iran, killing everyone aboard. After maintaining for days that there was no evidence that one of its missiles had struck a Boeing 737-800 minutes after it took off from Tehran on Wednesday with 176 people on board, Iran admitted early on Saturday that its military had shot down the passenger jet by mistake. Here is the sequence of events leading up to the missile attack that killed 56...

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Revised NAFTA agreement imposes U.S. internet rules on Canada

On December 5, the Wall St. Journal reported that U.S. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was pushing to strip out sweeping legal protections for online platform giants such as Facebook and Google in the USMCA. USMCA is the name of the trade agreement replacing NAFTA. The Democrats control the House and the USMCA could not be ratified unless Democrats in the House passed it. The legal protections, codified in the U.S. in Section 230 of...

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Huge legislative setback for Uber in California

California legislators approved a landmark bill on Wednesday that requires companies like Uber and Lyft to treat contract workers as full employees, a move that could reshape the gig economy and that adds fuel to a years long debate over whether tens of millions of workers globally are being mis-classified as independent contractors, as opposed to employees. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, endorsed the bill this month and is expected to sign it by mid October....

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