By The Globe and Mail; November 19, 2018
Ron Meng, Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Windsor; Imran Abdool, President of Blue Krystal Technologies and Business Insights; Lecturer in Economics and Finance at the University of Windsor; and Richard Douglass-Chin, Associate Professor of English Language, Literature and Creative Writing.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” When Charles Dickens wrote this phrase in 1859 about the period of the French Revolution, imagining such inventions as high-speed trains was unfathomable. Nonetheless, Dickens’s words have relevance in 2018: Interest rates are normalizing, rebalancing the incentives of lenders and borrowers; unemployment is falling and currently at an 18-year low in Ontario; educational attainment is at an all-time high; and major stock markets recently witnessed a historically long bull run (the S&P 500 index saw 3,453 days without a major correction). However, these developments do not mitigate the serious challenges facing us: Climate change is making once-in-a-hundred-year weather events all too common, the mismatch between skills and jobs leaves both young and old workers frustrated, and an overconcentrated Canadian trade portfolio put the economy on a cliffhanger during USMCA discussions.
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