So the question is not if the pension age will be increased, but when. 1959 was the year with the highest number of births ever recorded in Canada 461,703 babies. After that, the number of births fell slightly, and then dropped precipitously with the advent of the birth control pill. (Immigration reduces the relative impact of, but does not eliminate, the baby boom bulge.)

For an increase in the entitlement age to achieve substantial cost savings, it will have to be in place when those 1959 babies hit 65 in 2024. So I’m predicting that the entitlement age will gradually be increased, in 6 month increments, with a new entitlement age of 67 in place by 2023.

The federal GST or goods and services tax is a case in point. The GST is a value added tax. It replaced a particularly dysfunctional (small base, high rate) manufacturer’s sales tax. Almost all economists considered the GST superior to the old sales tax. However it was extremely unpopular among the general public. The reason is simple: the old manufacturer’s sales tax was invisible, so people couldn’t tell how much they were gaining when it was eliminated. The GST was visible, so people could see the increase in their tax liabilities. As a result, they over-estimated the net impact of the GST on their tax liabilities. (To be fair, people weren’t entirely stupid: manufacturers were slow to pass on the tax savings created by the elimination of the manufacturer’s sales tax.)

Rosen et al argue that “Most economists view the visibility of the GST [goods and services tax] as one of its beneficial characteristics.”  The political opposition to the GST and now the HST (harmonized sales tax) should make “most economists” reconsider this view.

A study by Michael Ward published this month in Contemporary Economic Policy (earlier version ungated here) suggests that there is. He finds that an increase in video game availability, as measured by the number of video game stores, leads to a significant reduction in rates of robbery, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and mortality. 

Video game availability makes more difference than police officers, Ward argues. He found that the relationship between crime rates and the number of police officers was statistically insignificant, except in the case of robbery.

The question is the wrong one to ask. If Party A wins three seats, then it can pursue policies that benefit people who do (or potentially might) vote for party A. If parties A, B and C win one seat each, they will pursue policies that benefit a different set of electors, not just those who vote for party A. But will a coalition government pursue policies that benefit a broader section of the electorate?

It’s not obvious. It all depends what happens at the coalition stage, when different parties are attempting to form governments. An interesting working paper by Amedeo Piolatto argues that, in certain circumstances, the power wielded by small parties in the coalition formation process can cause proportional representation systems to lead to political outcomes that are less representative of the interests of the broader population than first past the post type systems.

I’ve reproduced one of my favourite records here – my great-great-grandmother on my mother’s side, Marian Vandermin. She lived at 5 Peckham Grove – oddly enough very near to where my cousin Jan lives now, and to where I lived as a grad student. The record paints, for me, a vivid picture of her life – she was widowed when she was younger than I am now, and here she is in 1901, a single mom with four children, running a business as a yeast merchant. Her sister-in-law lived just two houses away, and ran the business with her. Thank goodness they had servants – they would never have coped otherwise.