Professor Jack M. Mintz
(1) and Globalization: another sanctimonious leader joins the ranks of Jean Chrétien and Roy Romanow
Nipawin - April 5, 2001 - by: Mario deSantis
   

Canadian
Club

Professor Jack Mintz has a problem in understanding the social relationships between
economics and sovereignty and in his recent speech to a meeting of the Canadian Club(2)
has stated that

global
economy

"Canada's strength as a nation, the prosperity of all its people
and the influence it has in the world, lies in the wholehearted
embrace of the global economy."

isolationist

The problem with Professor Mintz is that he uses the wording "global economy"
inappropriately, for the specific purpose to mislead his audience, and in fact, in his speech,
he plays with the dichotomy of being global versus being isolationist.

 

 

legal
framework

But Globalization is not a matter of either being global or isolationist. Globalization, for
our contingent economic concerns, rests with the international legal framework which
includes the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Institute Monetary Fund (IMF), and
the World Bank.

 

 

more

I am really not impressed by this sanctimonious professor, and I fear for the brainwashing
damage this man is creating to our university students and to our policy makers(3). I realize
that our world is the reflection of our individual and collective mental models we have in our
heads, but we must distinguish between intelligent mental models and more intelligent mental
models.

 

 

mismanagement

I am concerned, Professor Mintz' brain has remained frozen for sometime, maybe ten or
eleven years, and this finding transpires when he says that the poor performance of the 90s
was due to the political mismanagement of our economic policies in the 70s and 80s. Mintz
says

ruin or
retrenchment

"what occurred [in the 70s and 80s] was that fiscal
mismanagement [was] so broad and continuous that it left us
with high unemployment, low productivity, high taxes, a
depreciated currency and a staggering debt load. By the early
1990s Canadian governments regardless of ideological proclivity
faced precisely two policy options: ruin or retrenchment."

 

 

not
directly
related

I agree with Canada's mismanagement of the 70s and 80s and I don't agree that in the 90s
Canada was faced with two policy options "ruin or retrenchment(4)." Economic growth is
not directly related to the degree of taxation of a country, and economic growth is not
dependent on the national debt(5).

 

 

Paul
Romer

Fundamentally, current economic growth (distinct
from social growth) is directly related to our
entrepreneurial abilities to what economist Paul
Romer (right) calls the Economics of Ideas(6).
Canada performed worse than most other developed
countries in the 90s, and this was mostly due to the
continuation of the corrupt behaviour of our political
  and economic leadership. The dichotomy that
  Canada was faced with either "ruin or
  retrenchment" is a concocted propaganda of our
  elitist leadership, who void of ideas but full of

 

greedy consensus, downsized Canada into the
  economics for the few and privileged(7).
   

greedy
leadership

What bothers me most is that this same professor
Mintz was part of the greedy leadership which downsized Canada, and now he is telling us how to
protect Canada's sovereignty by joining the Globalization directed by the WTO, the IMF, and the
World Bank.  

 

   

downsized

What happened to Canada is reflected to what
happened to its health care system; Canada and its
health care were both downsized by our sanctimonious
leadership. This same leadership continues to solve
our problems today, as Jean Chrétien heads our
government and as his constitutional friend Roy
Romanow heads yet another expensive study in
health care.
   

same
level

This state of affairs reminds me of how valuable is
the understanding of Romer's Economics of Ideas,
and how perspective Albert Einstein was when he said that "Problems cannot be solved at the same
level of understanding that created them." Again, and again, and again, business must not be as
usual.  
     
------------References/endnotes:  
     
  List of relevant political and economics articles http://ensign.ftlcomm.com
   

1.
-

Jack M. Mintz is Professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. He is also President and CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute

 

   

2.
-
-
-

SMART SOVEREIGNTY: CANADIAN PROSPERITY IN AN INTEGRATING WORLD ECONOMY, by Jack M. Mintz, President and CEO C. D. Howe Institute & Arthur Andersen, Professor of Taxation J. L. Rotman School of Management University of Toronto. Prepared for the Canadian Club, April 2, 2001, Royal York Hotel http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/mintz-6.pdf

 

   

3.

The assembly line economics is obsolete, by Mario deSantis, December 26, 2000

 

   

4.
-

THE EQUITY/EFFICIENCY TRADE-OFF IN RETROSPECT, by Lars Osberg, Revised April 26, 1995 http://is.dal.ca/~osberg/publications.html

 

   

5.
-

Business must not be as usual, and the "Dalhousie School" of Economics, by Mario deSantis, February 26, 2001

 

   

6.
-

Economics of Ideas, Author Kevin Kelly on Paul Romer, http://hotwired.lycos.com/wired_online/4.06/romer/

 

   

7.
-
-

Why We Don't Have to Choose between Social Justice and Economic Growth: The myth of the equity/efficiency trade-off, Andrew Jackson, Director of Research, Canadian Council on Social Development, Fall 2000 http://www.ccsd.ca/pubs/2000/equity/index.htm