But immigration is a subset of a larger global problem. The dominant economic event of our era is the Great Recession, which began in 2007 and ended for the U.S. in 2009. Its status as a “great” economic downturn is attributed to its long aftermath of unemployment and, more important, underemployment.
As the U.S. and European economies failed to achieve pre-recession growth levels, which exacerbated social anxieties, the elites produced an explanation. They called it “the new normal.”
.. The new normal” theory, which in a wink became conventional wisdom among conventional economists and pundits, exists mainly to absolve them—and Barack Obama —of responsibility for weaker growth’s dire effects on national standards of living. What the theory failed to capture is that the new normal creates angry have-nots.
.. Voters everywhere are rebelling against the new normal. They won’t concede its implicit acceptance of flattened opportunities for younger Americans or Europeans still in their prime working years, who don’t have sinecures explaining to everyone else why this is as good as it will ever get. Increasingly, they are voting into office political outliers—from Trump to Macron to Kurz.
.. Mr. Trudeau’s economic plan should be seen as a proxy for what the next Democratic presidential nominee is likely to run on. Influenced by former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers’s theories on “secular stagnation,” Mr. Trudeau is making massive outlays on infrastructure repair and modernization to revive demand inside Canada.
.. Donald Trump is an infrastructure guy, too, but his path out of the new normal’s long-term trap runs mainly through regulatory relief and reforming the U.S. tax system.
.. U.S. firms kept 71% of their foreign-earned profits abroad, “benefiting other nations’ workers.” What would be the effect, Mr. Hassett asked, if for the next eight years, those profits were repatriated and reinvested here through a tax regime designed to promote more capital investment in the domestic economy? Incomes would rise.
Weeds Live: Canadian immigration and a health insurance experiment
Dara Lind joins Matt and Sarah at the Now Hear This Festival to discuss the Canadian immigration system, and the audience chooses a white paper (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9174.html) for them to talk about.
Making Canada Great Again
Ottawa out-Trumps Trump on Nafta and trade.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump liked to bang on about how Mexicans are stealing American jobs, and he called the North American Free Trade Agreement “maybe the worst trade deal ever signed anywhere but certainly ever signed in this country.” Now someone on the other side of the U.S. border is finally agreeing with him.
But it isn’t Mexico. It’s Canada. And this is probably not what Mr. Trump expected when he forced Nafta’s trading partners back to the negotiating table. As part of this renegotiation, the Canadians are now complaining that U.S. labor laws are unfair to Canada. Specifically, the Globe and Mail reports that Canadian negotiators spent Sunday’s talks in Mexico City trying to persuade their U.S. counterparts to pass a federal law negating the right-to-work laws that now prevail in 28 U.S. states.
Canada Makes a Mockery of a Trade Deal
The Liberals want to expand Nafta to cover ‘gender rights’ and ‘indigenous rights.’
But Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland wants to make Nafta “progressive.” So Canada’s Liberal government proposes including new chapters related to “gender rights” and “indigenous rights.” Seriously. Ms. Freeland wants Nafta to reflect the government’s “commitment to gender equality” and “our commitment to improving our relationship with Indigenous peoples.”
..This is another frustrating example of Canada’s political culture. The Liberals are perennial fence-sitters, content to shift with the prevailing political winds. The current government is one of the most left-leaning in years.. The Liberals also seem intent on blurring the lines between political and economic reality and becoming a political and economic alternative to the U.S. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent profile in Rolling Stone—cover line: “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”—is part of a long-term marketing strategy to make the young, hip, photogenic leader a progressive hero in the face of Donald Trump’s America... only 43% of Canadians hold a favorable view of the U.S. That’s down from 65% during President Obama’s last year in office.. Canada’s political culture approves of preposterous proposals like gender and indigenous rights in Nafta. It’s the type of modern progressive agenda many Canadians want... If Canada and the U.S. can’t find common ground on Nafta, Mexico may end up becoming North America’s voice of economic sanity.