March 3, 2023

This weekend will mark a year of the CPress Brief.

It does not seem that long ago that I started this "service". It started as a way to reduce my incessant message torrents in the morning to the CPress group. I hope folks have noticed a somewhat reduction in notification pings.

In case you did not realize, the CPress Brief can be installed as an app on your device.

• Android: Open https://x.cpress.org/brief in Chrome, click the menu (the three dots menu) and click "Install app"
• Apple: Open in Safari, click the share menu and click add to home screen. I don't use Apple, but I have been assured this works.

Don't worry, there are no trackers or notifications and I cannot tell who has installed it.

For those interested, the CPress Brief is written using Emacs and Orgmode. It is a Hugo website built and served with some custom scripts on a $25 small Pine64 black box in my apartment. It is not available to the wider internet.

Some standard caveats:

• Please excuse the grammar, spelling, and obvious logic mistakes as I write these before my first coffee. These are draft notes, basically.
• Do not share these links with social media or others whom you do not trust to keep the information for personal use.
• Do not share with people who are unable to appreciate Marxism With Their Morning Coffee.
• The information on here is for personal reference purposes only as I make no claims to the validity of the opinions presented.
• All opinions are my own and adhere to a personal flavour of Marxism. Your mileage may vary.

The global economy is losing out on at least $7 trillion of economic gains each year due to a failure to reach gender parity in the workforce, according to a new analysis that comes as progress on equal pay stalls.

A recent report by Pew Research Center found that pay parity has stagnated in the US for the last two decades, with women in 2022 earning an average of 82% of what men earn. The comparative pay was 80% in 2002. Meanwhile in the European Union, women may be waiting until 2086 for equal pay. (Moody's Analytics, BN)

In the USA, women do not just start with lower wages, as they work the wage gap grows. The drop-off is, unsurprisingly, at ages 35-44.

It is a constant reminder that capitalism cannot deal with supporting social reproduction, equality, or sustaining social progress.

Even in countries that have taken the lead in implementing family-friendly policies, such as Denmark, parenthood continues to drive a significant wedge in the earnings of men and women. New research suggests that family-friendly policies in the U.S. may be keeping the pay gap from closing. Gender stereotypes and discrimination, though difficult to quantify, also appear to be among the “last-mile” hurdles impeding further progress. (Pew)

What is not shown in these stats is that part of the reason that some of the gender wage gap has closed recently is that there has been a suppression of all working class wages. When you squeeze a deviation around a distribution that is bounded at the bottom (minimum wage or wages so low it is better to not work), you end up with generalized growing equality in poverty. Not exactly something to celebrate.

Adding to this is the wealth gap. Younger people are also more in debt than their older age groups and their debt is rising faster.

It is a cumulative effect of a persistent gender wage gap and growing debt that will be a drag on future standards of living, productivity, and endemic population growth.

All bets are that the Bank of Canada will maintain rates.

Of course, many see them as already too high.

The Bank of Canada has recently shifted the way that it forecasts what it is going to do to the market, so there is little doubt that it will hold rates steady. However, there continues to be a split in opinion what it will do next if prices it cares about do not come down.

Prices for housing went up in February as buying resumed and fewer houses entered the market.

The reality defying prices of Toronto property continues to boggle the mind. However, prices are still down 19% from last year.

The price of a home in Canada’s largest city rose 1.1% to C$1.09 million ($803,000), in February on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, according to data released Friday by the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. February’s gain is the first month-over-month price increase since the central bank started raising borrowing costs in March 2022.

Owch.