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Currently at Bancroft: -16. High today: -5.
Some uninformed armchair bullshit about economics: it occurred to me lately, seeing someone say something, as people do, about how the falling Canadian dollar is good for exports, that it's funny that in Canada (though I'd bet this is true in the US too) arguments for a lower dollar tend to come from the "left". It's funny because they're basically what popularly get called supply-side arguments: what's good for exports is good for exporting manufacturers and ultimately for manufacturing workers. The source of these arguments tends to be corporatist unions like the CAW (whose economists, like Jim Stanford, are very influential on the mainstream Canadian left), who are invested in the idea that what's good for GM Canada is good for GM Canada's workers. Meanwhile a falling dollar makes imports, which is to say consumer goods by and large, more expensive for Canadian consumers (which is what makes the arguments for a low dollar not technically supply-side ones: the extra supply is not made available to domestic consumers), whose income is not necessarily increased by the rising tide among exporting manufacturers. So what you seem to have is people on the "left" arguing for something that is good for exporting corporations and relatively well-off workers, and bad for relatively poor people generally.
In other news, I've figured out how to use my phone as a modem for my laptop, and writing this post has probably cost me $5.
Some uninformed armchair bullshit about economics: it occurred to me lately, seeing someone say something, as people do, about how the falling Canadian dollar is good for exports, that it's funny that in Canada (though I'd bet this is true in the US too) arguments for a lower dollar tend to come from the "left". It's funny because they're basically what popularly get called supply-side arguments: what's good for exports is good for exporting manufacturers and ultimately for manufacturing workers. The source of these arguments tends to be corporatist unions like the CAW (whose economists, like Jim Stanford, are very influential on the mainstream Canadian left), who are invested in the idea that what's good for GM Canada is good for GM Canada's workers. Meanwhile a falling dollar makes imports, which is to say consumer goods by and large, more expensive for Canadian consumers (which is what makes the arguments for a low dollar not technically supply-side ones: the extra supply is not made available to domestic consumers), whose income is not necessarily increased by the rising tide among exporting manufacturers. So what you seem to have is people on the "left" arguing for something that is good for exporting corporations and relatively well-off workers, and bad for relatively poor people generally.
In other news, I've figured out how to use my phone as a modem for my laptop, and writing this post has probably cost me $5.
