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Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

tiffer24 said:
Anyone remember this?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1000872219189366786
Click to expand...
Lets fact check, shall we!

"Our plan will reduce income tax by 20%

2018 Ontario Rates
1633746397597.png


2020 Ontario Rates

1633746501285.png



So, before factoring in credits/deductions, we can see that there is no change in the rate for any Ontarian making under $71,000 per year, which is above the
the median income.............

Hmmmm


reduce gas prices by 10 cents a litre

1633745506571.png

- source CTV news https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/this-was...e-during-his-2018-election-campaign-1.5615551

In addition to the above, absolute gas prices are now higher, adjusted for inflation than when the Ford gov't took office.

reduce your hydro rates by 12%

Price per KiloWatt hour, immediately before the Ford gov't took office;

Off-peak, Mid-peak and Peak

1633745687137.png


Most recent price:

1633745734295.png


Hmmm, looks higher to me...............even adjusted for inflation

Source: https://www.oeb.ca/rates-and-your-bill/electricity-rates/historical-electricity-rates
 
Northern Light said:
Lets fact check, shall we!

"Our plan will reduce income tax by 20%

2018 Ontario Rates
View attachment 354600

2020 Ontario Rates

View attachment 354601


So, before factoring in credits/deductions, we can see that there is no change in the rate for any Ontarian making under $71,000 per year, which is above the
the median income.............

Hmmmm


reduce gas prices by 10 cents a litre

View attachment 354597
- source CTV news https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/this-was...e-during-his-2018-election-campaign-1.5615551

In addition to the above, absolute gas prices are now higher, adjusted for inflation than when the Ford gov't took office.

reduce your hydro rates by 12%

Price per KiloWatt hour, immediately before the Ford gov't took office;

Off-peak, Mid-peak and Peak

View attachment 354598

Most recent price:

View attachment 354599

Hmmm, looks higher to me...............even adjusted for inflation

Source: https://www.oeb.ca/rates-and-your-bill/electricity-rates/historical-electricity-rates
Click to expand...
I think you're all making a mistake in his intentions. Ford meant that he would reduce living costs for his rich buddies, not the poor losers out there. (That was sarcasm).
 
Let's see Doug Ford economics paper on why minimum wages should be kept low?

Canadian-born David Card among 3 winners of Nobel in economics​

Research challenged views on effect of minimum wage, immigration on jobs​

From link.

"A Canadian economist based in the U.S. won the Nobel prize for economics Monday for pioneering research that showed an increase in minimum wage does not lead to less hiring and immigrants do not lower pay for native-born workers, challenging commonly held ideas. Two others shared the award for creating a way to study these types of societal issues."

Guelph, Ont.-born David Card, with the University of California at Berkeley, was awarded one half of the prize for his research on how minimum wage, immigration and education affect the labour market.

Meanwhile, the other half was shared by Joshua Angrist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dutch-born Guido Imbens from Stanford University for their framework for studying issues that can't rely on traditional scientific methods.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three have "completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences."
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/x/status/1447502041467793408

Real-world studies on minimum wage​


In a study published in 1994, Card looked at what happened to jobs at Burger King, KFC, Wendy's and Roy Rogers when New Jersey raised its minimum wage from $4.25 US to $5.05 US, using restaurants in bordering eastern Pennsylvania as the control — or comparison — group.

Contrary to previous studies, he and his research partner Alan Krueger, who died in 2019, found that an increase in the minimum wage had no effect on the number of employees.
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Card's minimum wage research fundamentally altered economists' views of such policies. As noted by the Economist magazine, in 1992, a survey of the American Economic Association's members found that 79 per cent agreed that a minimum wage law increased unemployment among younger and lower-skilled workers. Those views were largely based on traditional economic views of supply and demand: If you raise the price of something, you get less of it.

By 2000, however, just 46 per cent of the AEA's members said minimum wage laws increase unemployment, largely because of Card and Krueger's research. Their findings sparked interest in further research into why a higher minimum wouldn't reduce employment.

One conclusion was that companies are able to pass on the cost of higher wages to customers by raising prices. In other cases, if a company was a major employer in a particular area, it may have been able to keep wages particularly low, so that it could afford to pay a higher minimum without cutting jobs. The higher pay would also attract more applicants, boosting labour supply.
Click to expand...
Card also found that incomes of those who are native-born to a country can benefit from new immigrants, while immigrants who arrived earlier are the ones at risk of being negatively affected.

To study the effect of immigration on jobs, Card compared the labour market in Miami in the wake of Cuba's sudden decision to let people emigrate in 1980, leading 125,000 people to leave in what became known as the Mariel Boatlift. It resulted in a seven per cent increase in the city's workforce.

By comparing the evolution of wages and employment in four other cities, Card discovered no negative effects for Miami residents with low levels of education. Followup work showed that increased immigration can have a positive impact on income for people born in the country.

Card said he thought the voice message that came in at 2 a.m. from someone from Sweden was a prank by a school friend, until he saw the number on his phone really was from Sweden.

Findings were 'somewhat controversial'​


He said he and his co-author Kreuger had faced disbelief from other economists about their findings.

"At the time, the conclusions were somewhat controversial. Quite a few economists were skeptical of our results," he said.

As for the significance of the research, Card said "the thing that has really influenced the field is the idea of looking for these pivotal events or things that have happened that could potentially inform our theorizing and understanding of the world."

He paid tribute to Krueger, saying that "I am sure that if Alan were still with us he would be sharing this prize with me."
Click to expand...

Cause and effect​


Angrist and Imbens won their half of the award for working out the methodological issues that allow economists to draw solid conclusions about cause and effect even where they cannot carry out studies according to strict scientific methods.

Card's work on minimum wage was an example of a "natural experiment." The problem with such experiments is that it can sometimes be difficult to isolate cause and effect. For example, if you want to figure out whether an extra year of education will increase a person's income, you can simply compare the incomes of adults with one more year of schooling to those without.
Click to expand...
Yet there are many other factors that may determine whether those who got an extra year of schooling are able to make more money. Perhaps they are harder workers or more diligent and would have made more money than those without the extra year even if they did not stay in school. These kinds of issues cause economists and other social science researchers to say "correlation doesn't prove causation."

Imbens and Angrist, however, developed statistical methods to get around these challenges and determine more precisely what can actually be said about the causes and effects of natural experiments.

"I was just absolutely stunned then to get a telephone call," Imbens said from his home in Massachusetts. "And then I was just absolutely thrilled to hear the news ... that I got to share this with Josh Angrist and and David Card," whom he called "both very good friends of mine." Imbens said Angrist was best man at his wedding.
Click to expand...
Krueger, who worked with Card on some of the research that won the Nobel, died in 2019 at age 58. He taught at Princeton for three decades and was chief U.S. Labour Department economist under then-President Bill Clinton. He served in the U.S. Treasury Department under then-President Barack Obama, then as Obama's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously.
Click to expand...
 
Those sources also speak to an increase in capacity limits, which only seems reasonable give recent increases elsewhere.
 

Here’s why Doug Ford won’t congratulate the Ontario-born winner of the Nobel Prize for economics​

From link.

This just in — just not noted by Doug Ford:

The Nobel Prize for economics has been awarded to Ontario-born academic David Card.

Congratulations came first from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, followed quickly by a public salute from the leader of Ontario’s loyal Opposition, Andrea Horwath.

Yet not a peep, as yet, from the premier. When I asked his office why not, no answer.

Why has Ford lost his tongue over a global triumph? What’s not to like about the latest, greatest contribution to economics?

After all, Ford is quick to boast about the province’s wealth of world-beating human talent. Is not a Nobel Prize a valid proof point, or personal vindication, for a premier who tells the world that our classrooms produce world-class graduates?

Educated at Queen’s University, born and raised near Guelph (not unlike another renowned economist, the late John Kenneth Galbraith), Card has been praised in every quarter this week. Yet he remains unheralded at Queen’s Park.

Ford’s silence amid the province’s hour of triumph is a teachable moment, and a cautionary tale of competing storylines.

The plain-spoken premier is not fond of “elite economists” cloistered in the “ivory tower,” as he disparaged them in a remarkable 2019 speech. Yet that hardly describes Card, who was raised on a farm and now does cutting edge field work.

He broke new ground on the minimum wage, shattering the conventional wisdom that raising the hourly rate would prompt employers to reduce the number of workers.

Until then, old-school economists relied on outdated econometric models based on arbitrary assumptions that are about as reliable as tomorrow’s weather forecast or last month’s epidemiological predictions. Card’s master stroke was to leave the confines of his UCLA Berkeley campus to perform a more natural field experiment, without recourse to esoteric models.

He co-authored a study on the impact of a minimum-wage increase on New Jersey fast food joints by comparing them to neighbouring Pennsylvania, where the hourly rate remained static. When he measured the fallout, employment didn’t fall when wages rose, as people like Ford keep insisting.

Card’s findings were greeted with skepticism in the 1990s, but are now widely accepted by economists who have replicated that experiment in other jurisdictions. In 2003, more than 650 Americans economists highlighted his work, echoed in 2017 by 40 Canadian economists who signed an open letter cautioning against “fear-mongering that is out of line with the latest economic research.”

Truth be told, Card’s empirical research is an inconvenient truth for Ford.

Upon taking power in mid-2018, the premier promptly cancelled a scheduled increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour and imposed a freeze for the next two-and-a-half years (he also cut two paid sick days). When the freeze expired, the rate increased by a paltry 25 cents to catch up with inflation last year, and another 10 cents this year.

In fact, employment increased steadily and the unemployment rate declined to record low levels after the last Liberal government jacked up the minimum wage from $11.40 to $14 an hour. That’s because higher wages can reduce turnover and increase productivity, as employers are discovering amid today’s mid-pandemic labour shortages.

Still, Ford clings to his own idiosyncratic economic compass. Detailing his vision in 2019, he resolved to “ring the warning bell that the risk of a carbon-tax recession is very real.”

Never happened — Ontario’s recession came from COVID-19, not carbon. But on Friday, Ford was back to his imaginary economy.

“The carbon tax is the single worst tax on the backs of Canadians that’s ever existed,” he told reporters. “I’m a strong believer in a different theory — put money back into people’s pockets. They’re going to be able to go out there and, you know, buy a refrigerator, do a renovation, go for dinner, so on, so forth. That’s what stimulates the economy.”

Forgetting for a moment his wilful distortion of the federal carbon levy — fully rebated to motorists, not retained by government — Ford’s musings on “what stimulates the economy” could be unintentionally instructive. Putting higher wages “back into people’s pockets” is precisely what underlies the minimum wage increases that lift all boats.

Ford has long since lost the battle over the carbon levy, but it’s not too late for him to wake up to wage rates. With a provincial election looming next year, the premier could reinstate the minimum wage trajectory he so rashly overturned (and restore the permanent paid sick days he removed).

Better belatedly than never, the premier could ring up the professor for congratulations — and conversations. There’s still time for him to learn a lesson from this “elite economist.”

Card could point him to Americans — not just on the coasts, but in conservative states and federally — who have embraced a minimum wage of U.S. $15 and higher. That works out to more than $18.55 in Canadian currency, and exceeds $20 in some jurisdictions.

Ford’s favourite boast is that Ontario is “open for business.” It’s time to open his mind to what works for both business and workers — based on prizewinning research, not political rhetoric.
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Doug Ford first needs to write his economic paper rebuttal first, (ghost written by someone else, but wants to get credit for it).
 
W. K. Lis said:

Here’s why Doug Ford won’t congratulate the Ontario-born winner of the Nobel Prize for economics​

From link.



Doug Ford first needs to write his economic paper rebuttal first, (ghost written by someone else, but wants to get credit for it).
Click to expand...
Glad you are not assuming Ford is capable of writing a rebuttal. By now we know from previous communications, mostly from his tenure(?) as city councilor that he is totally inept in communicating anything. -Yous guys are asking a little too much.
 
Thinker said:
Glad you are not assuming Ford is capable of writing a rebuttal. By now we know from previous communications, mostly from his tenure(?) as city councilor that he is totally inept in communicating anything. -Yous guys are asking a little too much.
Click to expand...
Doug: Yeah, you got my economics report rebuttal finished, McFly?

George: Uh, well, actually, I figured since it wasn't due till Monday-​

Doug: Hello, hello, anybody home? Think, McFly, think. I gotta have time to recopy it. Do you realize what would happen if I hand in my economics report rebuttal in your handwriting? I'd get kicked out of Queens Park. You wouldn't want that to happen would you, would you?

George: Now, of course not, Doug, now, I wouldn't want that to happen.​
 
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