AIMS On-Line for early February 2003
New thinking key to Newfoundland prosperity, an excerpt from Mark Milke’s new book, Tax Me I’m Canadian – Your Money and How Politicians Spend It and Australia looks to AIMS for analysis of Equalization.
Ideas Matter #2
Following the release of its award winning Definitely NOT the Romanow Report, AIMS collected highlights of the research completeted and assembled the second edition of Ideas matter. Featured on the cover is Swedish health care reformer Johan Hjertdvist.
AIMS On-Line for late January 2003
AIMS launches ACOA WATCH, AIMS in La Presse on sustainable growth and more.
No Boom Yet – Like Alaska, Canadian province hopes for a natural gas fortune
In its ongoing exploration of the similarities between the challenges Alaska faces and those here in Nova Scotia, the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) has again turned to AIMS for a clear perspective on the hurdles facing both economies. In this article, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley, tells the ADN in an interview that the key challenge for Nova Scotia is creating something lasting from whatever natural gas is found. That means parlaying it perhaps into an oil-field services industry that can compete for work around the globe. As in Alaska, however, parochial demands threaten to gum up the works. For instance, some Nova Scotians demand that cheap gas be reserved for local homeowners and industries before any is exported, preferably at high prices. If government makes rules to appease those voices, it could repel an industry taking enormous risks.
Australia looks to AIMS for analysis of Equalization
Late last year the final report of the Independent Review of Commonwealth–State Funding was released in Australia. This review, sponsored by three state governments in Australia, was designed to review the current system of federal-state transfers in terms of economic efficiency, equity, and simplicity and transparency. In searching for analysis of comparative models of fiscal equalization between federal and state governments in a federation, the review commissioners looked to AIMS and our award winning equalization initiative. Specifically, they cited “Equalization Revisited” by Nobel Laureate James Buchanan, as it was presented during an event in Montreal that AIMS co-sponsored with the Montreal Economic Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg.
Governments, Enterprise, Forests and the State of the Planet – AIMS talks to the Nova Scotia Forest Products Association
To continue to progress, humanity needs more economic growth, not less, and needs it to occur in ways that allow us to husband our resources, preserving their value for not only ourselves but future generations. Where hunger continues to be a problem, for example, it is due almost exclusively to two factors. One is politics and poor quality institutions that prevent investment in land, and the second is standards of living too low to allow access to the very latest in modern technology. However, as AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley told the annual meeting of the Nova Scotia Forest Products Association recently, there are very specific circumstances and institutions that are necessary for this creative mixing of human intelligence and natural capital to take place as quickly and on as broad a scale as is needed.
Regulating Petroleum Prices in Newfoundland Doomed To Failure
Last Friday could have been the start of the end for regulated oil prices in Newfoundland and Labrador says Peter Fenwick, AIMS’ voice on Newfoundland and Labrador. Last Friday Western Petroleum forced the politically appointed Newfoundland oil pricing commissioner to increase the price of a litre of gasoline by 5.8 cents, a full two weeks early. It was only a brief reprieve for the largest independent gasoline chain in the province, but it may signal the end of the Petroleum Pricing Commission. Western Petroleum is a local home grown company that is trying to compete with some of the largest companies in the world. That in itself is difficult. But when you have to take on your own government in the guise of a politically appointed commissioner who wants you to sell for less than your costs, your job is that much harder. Read Fenwick’s commentary to see why, ultimately, the best solution is to eliminate the Petroleum Pricing Commissioner entirely.
Pay now or later to resolve the question of Saddam Hussein?
Open and democratic societies find it difficult to rise to the moral and physical challenge of defending themselves against those who do not share their values. This is especially true when the threat is relatively abstract. Democratic Britain was unwilling to contemplate the horror of another war, while the Nazis re-armed. On the other hand, the West saw off the Soviet threat through decades of resolute determination to be strong enough to be militarily unassailable. By preparing for war we maintained the peace.
AIMS expands national and international reputation in 2002
Already sterling international reputation "cemented"
Les OGM au secours de l’Afrique
In this article from La Presse, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley argues Instead of being the source of environmental degradation, this competitive system has unleashed human ingenuity and generated the wealth that has allowed our planet to support far more human life than would have been thought possible even a century ago.