An American friend asked me about the consequences of the occupation of Ottawa.

What did the protestors accomplish? Some might suggest, not much.

But I don't think so. There have been at least three major consequences. First, the protests made a mockery of governing elites.

They occupied a capital city of a G7 country, exploiting a weakness with the innovative weaponizing of heavy vechiles, and capturing words and symbols like freedom, peace and patriotism.

What have we learned, what have done in the ten years since #OccupyWallStreet first raised attention to growing inequalities in incomes and wealth?

This thread reflects on a series of decade-old posts I wrote to communicate important facts and policy lessons from good economics. 10 years ago a @globeandmail columnist wrote
"our system redistributes the wealth ... from middle-class workers in the private sector to inefficient and expensive unions in the public sector. Among the biggest beneficiaries of this redistribution is the higher-education industry"

I was gifted the first volume of @BarackObama memoir , and read it in four days.

Well, #APromisedLand solved a mystery for me, and raised the importance of a couple of things that I didn't fully appreciate about how we choose our leaders, and how they govern. I have often wondered about this short 2014 newspaper clipping in which the reporter writing of @BarackObama taking a walk confesses:

"We have no idea why Obama referred to himself as 'the bear'."

Why indeed? The mystery is solved in the first pages of #APromisedLand .

I set up my website in November 2011, and have been posting articles regularly ever since, though with less frequency lately.

Thank you for being one of my readers, for using the information, and for giving me comments and feedback.

Here is a thread on the top ten posts of 2020 The 10th most popular post on my site in 2020 was one of a series that summarized the major messages of my co-authored publication on social mobility in Canada and the United States

milescorak.com/2019/04/15/if-…

Ahh, one of those teachable moments.

Let's talk unemployment rates!

Here's what appears to be @OECD source for these @PierrePoilievre statements, which refer to September 2020 unemployment rates
(9 % for Canada and 7.9 % for US)

data.oecd.org/chart/6a2P

#cdnecon #EconTwitter

https://twitter.com/PierrePoilievre/status/1326860488374951939

The October @OECD numbers for Canada and the US are 8.9% ad 6.9%, but interestingly note that @StatCan_eng reports 8.7% and @BLS_gov reports 6.9%

#cdnecon #EconTwitter

A "Basic Income" means different things to different people.

At one end there is the @believeinsomeon unconditional cash transfer to selected homeless individuals: should benefits be delivered in-kind with conditions, or as cash with no strings attached?

forsocialchange.org/new-leaf-proje… This is clearly targeted, not universal. And is a one-time benefit, not a permanent ongoing cash transfer.

It speaks to the importance of administrative simplicity in the delivery of social programs and of giving clients agency and dignity.

.@StatCan_eng senior researcher René Morissette has written two very interesting papers on jobs, wages, and work-related benefits, offering insights and a backdrop that will inform our understanding of post #COVID19 jobs.

Get the summary here:
www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quoti…

#cdnecon Whether #COVID19 job losses are temporary or permanent will be very important for the economic fallout of the pandemic.

In one hour @StatCan_eng will release the jobs numbers.

They will refer to one particular week in March, from Sunday the 15th to Saturday the 21st, and are a one-week picture, just a single frame in a movie that has now been running for more than a month.

#cdnecon #cdnmedia The employment numbers will be an obvious headline, and there will also be a big jump in unemployment, but both of these statistics needed to be rounded out to capture the full extent of the #COVID19 fallout

#cdnecon #cdnmedia

In a few minutes @StatCan_eng will release 2018 information on incomes and the poverty rate, allowing us to update this picture and inform Canadians about progress toward the poverty reduction targets set by @SocDevSoc @HonAhmedHussen

#cdnpoli #cdnecon @StatCan_eng @SocDevSoc @HonAhmedHussen .@StatCan_eng may confirm plans on how the poverty line will be updated, something that hasn't happened in more than a decade and probably leading the official poverty line to under-estimate the extent of poverty in Canada.

Read this provocative @DavidFrum @TheAtlantic essay making the case for lowering immigration to the United States

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

Then marvel at the case for significantly increasing immigration to Canada by @DougSaunders dougsaunders.net/about/maximum-… .@DavidFrum has probably not characterized some economic research correctly, many models are in fact based upon employment rates and shares, not simply labor force participation rates.