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Dan Herman is the Executive Director of the Centre for Digital Entrepreneurship and Economic Performance and a PhD Candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.
For random(ish) thoughts on economic, political and technological issues affecting Canada and the world check out my blog.
For information on my academic research, and my previous professional research, check out my research cv.
And for a list of newspaper articles and other public writings, check out “in the news”.
Dan Herman 
Hi Dan,
Thanks for posting your piece on Basic Income and entrepreneurship, which I just found through Google. I think there’s been a dearth of information on that particular correlation but it’s one that I think is essential to understand thoroughly as we move into an increasingly automated and de-industrialized future.
You may wish to check in with the BIG Push Campaign for basic income ( http://www.thebigpush.net/ ) and perhaps get involved. There is a growing call for basic income across every ideology and we could always use more input from voices like yours.
Cheers!
Good recent post Dan on tax free savings, a great example of where the political rhetoric does not match the the real driver behind a policy – to win votes from the wealthy and perhaps also the retired.
Tax rate is hugely unlikely to be a reason why less well off people don’t save, fundamentally they don’t have any disposable income to save. In the UK we will have a huge pensions crisis in the next 20 yrs and onwards as corporations no longer provide the employer pension schemes and contributions that they once did – individuals are responsible for personal pension plans and obviously people on low incomes don’t put much money into these, despite what one might consider to the tax incentives.
I’d suggest the large % of people on low incomes that are putting money into these TFSs will be retired people and maybe even more likely the partners of wealthy people who don’t work full time and who in effect sharing their tax allowance with their high earning partner. Be interesting to see whether you can get to any data to support this.
The UK actually went one step further than Canada in the New Labour cash flushed era and put £250 into a trust for every child that was born after a certain date. It didn’t last long and of course this was the govt that introduced Uni tuition fees, after 18 yrs the £250 will maybe pay for 1/2 a semester of an undergraduate course.