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 |
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 |
"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 |
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 |
"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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 | ||
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 | ||
|
||
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 | ||
|
||
The assembly line economics is obsolete, by Mario deSantis, December 26, 2000 | ||
|
||
THE EQUITY/EFFICIENCY TRADE-OFF IN RETROSPECT, by Lars Osberg, Revised April 26, 1995 http://is.dal.ca/~osberg/publications.html | ||
|
||
Business must not be as usual, and the "Dalhousie School" of Economics, by Mario deSantis, February 26, 2001 | ||
|
||
Economics of Ideas, Author Kevin Kelly on Paul Romer, http://hotwired.lycos.com/wired_online/4.06/romer/ | ||
|
||
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 |