Last Friday, a new fuel tax break came into effect in Alberta. The policy, championed by Premier Jason Kenney, would dispense with the existing 13 cent per litre provincial tax on gasoline and diesel. It seems like a straightforward strategy: help reduce the burden of soaring fuel prices from consumers. It’s also immediately visible. Perhaps…
Just this month, Bitcoin and Ethereum—two of the most valuable cryptocurrencies—reached all-time highs in prices. The upsurge of cryptocurrencies in recent years has spurred on a new financial ecosystem—one built around blockchain, the same technology used by cryptocurrencies. Its users call it decentralized finance—DeFi for short—and it promises a financial system without traditional financial institutions,…
We’ve all heard some variation of the minimum wage debate before. People often talk about what workers deserve; a living wage that provides an acceptable standard of living—that it’s something everyone has an inherent right to. Economic conservatives, however, have long defended a low minimum wage, claiming that government action in the economy will lead…
The environmental consequences of carbon dioxide emissions are clear; it contributes to over three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions,1 exacerbating climate change and its innumerable consequences. Action needs to take place now, but truly taking action in an ever-expanding economy has proven and will continue to be a substantial hurdle. For this reason, moving forward,…
The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and life goes on. But why does it have to be this way?
A new Oxfam report shows that 62 billionaires have more money than the poorest half of the global population (3.5 billion). The Oxfam report calls for urgent action on the growing trend of a supermassive wealth gap. This global wealth distribution gap is growing very quickly, having seen that in 2010; 388 billionaires owned as much as…
If you understand the significance that the Greek debt crisis poses for the world economy, you are probably pondering about the next steps for the country after it and other EU leaders came to a consensus yesterday. If you were like me and didn’t know what a”Grexit” from the world’s largest joint economy would entail, you…
In the past few decades, humans have taken to a more sedentary lifestyle. This has not only lead to the over consumption of disposable items around the household, but has also had an impact on the amount of waste we produce. We have substituted products such as cloth diapers, plates, utensils, and more for their…
A new idea has come up and it needs the world’s help to become a reality. Phonebloks is a new project in which the idea is to create a phone which can be separated into replaceable parts. For example, a lot of people break their phone’s screen. With phonebloks, this is no longer a problem…
Driving home from school one day listening to AM radio, an advertisement caught my attention. Apparently, a large US cell phone company is bringing their business to Canadian soil. Verizon, a giant US wireless company four times the size of Rogers, Bell, and TELUS combined, has officially intimidated the top cell phone companies in Canada.…
As we come out of a recession, increased attention has been put upon decreasing the unemployment rate and making companies more profitable – but what about people who already have jobs, but are underpaid? With talk in the United States of raising the minimum wage, salaries have become a prevalent topic in today’s political and…
We are exposed to so much advertising everyday. Our society is continuously being consumed in a vast environment of the constant pursue to spend. Everywhere we go, we see ads for the latest phone, the latest shoe, the latest food. As a society, the push for us to spend our money on things we don’t…
Since the 1700s, jobs were sent to whoever could do a task and charge the least amount of money. In the 1980s, jobs that North Americans had previously held were moving rapidly away to cheaper havens in developing countries. These countries charged less tax and wages were significantly lower. In the 2004 election, the Democrats criticized corporations…
First off, national debt (debt owed by a central government) is in no way a new problem. In fact, every developed country in the world has at some point amassed some form of debt (owing another party).
In Canada, consumers spend over $1.6 trillion each year on their purchases. In all of North America, we spend $26.4 trillion per year. That’s a pretty big economy! And to help you(th) navigate it, I’ve put together a short guide and set of resources. This will be a three-part series featuring 7 areas of consumerism.…