Economist “Jimbo” Stanford speaking Sunday morning at the Ontario Health Coalition conference.
Somebody suggested that the CBC would be a far more interesting place if the Lang-O’Leary Exchange morphed into the Lang-Jimbo Reality Show.
Now that’s a CBC we might be inclined to fight a little harder to protect.
There are not many economists who would take on the moniker of “Jimbo,” but Jim Stanford doesn’t shy away from it. Speaking at the Ontario Health Coalition weekend conference at the Toronto Sheraton Centre, the Unifor economist and founder of the Progressive Economics Forum was in high spirits.
“An economist is someone who is good with numbers but hasn’t the personality to be an accountant,” he told the crowd with a big wide grin. Don’t be fooled, “Jimbo” has personality to spare.
With a Master’s degree from Cambridge and a Phd from New York’s New School for Social Research, Stanford doesn’t come across as pedantic. Early Sunday morning he finds ways to convey complex economic principles clearly to a mixed community audience of under-caffeinated seniors, labour and young people interested in health care advocacy.
Stanford has been doing this for much of his career, including writing Economics for Everyone: A short guide to the economics of capitalism. That textbook has become a staple for those who wish to know more about how economics work in order to take on the issues of the day.
“Health care (costs) are going up because we are aging and we are willing to pay more,” he said this weekend. Stanford explained that it’s rational that Canadians would want to take advantage of new technologies that would extend their lives or improve the quality of life.
OPSEU Diablogue 