Greg Mason

Winnipeg Free Press, September 2, 2022 Earlier this year while cleaning out some old files I found my property tax assessment from 1993. I  had just received my 2022 assessment, and my economist’s “spidy” sense tingled. This mental itch kicks in when we economists compare costs and prices over time – we automatically adjust for inflation. My 2022 property tax bill … [Read more...] about Time for an adult conversation about taxes

Winnipeg Free Press, May 30, 2022 Tributes to David Milgaard all highlight the strength of an individual who persevered through more that two decades of imprisonment for a murder he never committed. His mother Joyce Milgaard, Lloyd Axworthy, and the lawyer who believed his story, Hersch Wolch, deserve recognition for their efforts in righting a wrong. (Read More) … [Read more...] about The search for the truth never ends

Winnipeg Free Press, April 8, 2022 It is curious that the only recent indicator I have seen that COVID-19 still stalks us is that Kyle Connor and Nate Schmidt of the Winnipeg Jets were placed in virus protocol last week. I do not know what Canada’s self-styled virologists in chief (Stefanson, Kenney, Ford et al) were thinking when they declared the pandemic over. Even … [Read more...] about We need COVID measures we can trust

December 13, 2021 Omicron is on the prowl. While early indications are that it does not cause serious illness, it is very infectious. The current approach to enforcing vaccination mandates will not probably get us to 90-per-cent-plus of everyone over six being fully vaccinated, which is probably the level needed manage this disease. (Read more...) … [Read more...] about Time to rethink vaccine strategy

Sheilla Jones, Wayne Helgason, and Gregory Mason Winnipeg Free Press, December 29, 2021 The November Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that the Crown violated Robinson Treaty terms by failing to increase annuity payments highlights the necessity of understanding the link between annuities and the land as a step toward reconciliation. Because without reconciliation, Canada … [Read more...] about Time to examine treaty annuities and the land

Winnipeg Free Press, August 9, 2021 Fill in the blank. Virtual learning is to live learning as phone sex is to ______ sex. There you have it … a question from the 2021 Mensa test.(Read full Article) … [Read more...] about Online learning is here to stay

Financial Post, February 9, 2022 I was fooling around with some GDP data the other day, as we economists are wont to do, and when I put it on a chart and drew a couple of trend lines, I was shocked by how setbacks we’ve suffered since 2000 seem to have become permanent scars on our well-being. In the 1960s and ’70s, economists the world round talked about “the British … [Read more...] about This is one curve we shouldn’t have flattened

When I was 12, a friend offered to teach me a new card game. After explaining the basics, we started to play and I lost, as he mentioned another rule he had forgotten. I continued to lose as new and increasingly obscure rules surfaced. This is how I feel about COVID-19. New rules keep extending this grey fog that has become our lives. … [Read more...] about Exaggerations of vaccine risk dangerous

This year’s Nobel laureates in economics received the award for coming up with creative methods for extracting causal insight from observational data. That may sound underwhelming but the three economists who were recognized have helped free us from the tyranny of randomized control trials (RCTs) as being the only route to understanding cause and effect. … [Read more...] about A Nobel Price for methods, not results