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Corporate Welfare is Immoral

In its recently released budget the Canadian (Conservative!) government announced $6.4 billion of new corporate welfare spending. The aerospace sector will receive $1.2 billion of it over the next five years, Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario $920 million, forestry companies $92 million, Venture Capital Action Plan $60 million, and $325 million will go [...]

Magical Thinking Won’t Stop the Layoffs

Associated Press and FoxNews.com reports: Medical supply giant Stryker is the latest company to announce job cuts in anticipation of coming costs associated with Obamacare, even though the man who inherited a fortune from the company’s founder is a fan. The company will cut 1,170 jobs, or five percent of its worldwide workforce, despite the [...]

Teamwork and the Virtue of Independence

If we are to believe people like President Obama who famously said: “You didn’t build that”, individual accomplishment is insignificant; only as a group we can build something. While collaboration, trade, and learning are great benefits of living in a society and we can often achieve more by hiring others and working together, such collaboration [...]

Altruism is Not a Guide for Living—or for Business

Most of us pursue self-interest every day: we eat nutritious food,  engage in productive work (to have a purpose and to make a living), look after our health, enjoy recreation and entertainment, spend time with friends and loved ones, and go to the mall to buy things we need and want.  Business firms also pursue [...]

Why Governments Should not Interfere in the Sale of Publicly Traded Companies

This is an issue mostly in countries with abundant natural resources and governments bent on economic nationalism, but it nevertheless poses an interesting ethical dilemma. Canada’s economy is dominated by resource companies: in oil and gas, minerals, the forest sector, hydro power. Often those companies become attractive takeover targets to foreign-owned firms, at which point [...]