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Wife selling was a traditional English practice for ending an unsatisfactory marriage. Instead of dealing with an expensive and dragged-out divorce, a husband would take his wife to market and parade her with a halter around her neck, arm, or waist, before publicly auctioning her to the highest bidder. Any children from the marriage might also be sold along with their mother. Prices paid for wives varied considerably, from a high of £100 (plus £25 each for her two children), to a low of a glass of ale, or even free. The Duke of Chandos bought his second wife at one such sale in Newbury in about 1744. Along with other English customs, wife selling was exported to England's American colonies, where one man sold his wife for "two dollars and half [a] dozen bowls of grogg". Husbands were sometimes sold by their wives in a similar manner, but much less frequently. Wife selling persisted in some form into the early 20th century, as general attitudes began to shift.

Toronto, the financial centre of Canada, and one of the largest in the world

The economy of Canada is a highly developed mixed economy, the world's ninth-largest as of 2024^[update], and a nominal GDP of approximately US$2.117 trillion. Canada is one of the world's largest trading nations, with a highly globalized economy. In 2021, Canadian trade in goods and services reached $2.016 trillion. Canada's exports totalled over $637 billion, while its imported goods were worth over $631 billion, of which approximately $391 billion originated from the United States. In 2018, Canada had a trade deficit in goods of $22 billion and a trade deficit in services of $25 billion. The Toronto Stock Exchange is the tenth-largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization, listing over 1,500 companies with a combined market capitalization of over US$3 trillion.

Canada has a strong cooperative banking sector, with the world's highest per-capita membership in credit unions. It ranks low in the Corruption Perceptions Index (12th in 2023) and "is widely regarded as among the least corrupt countries of the world". It ranks high in the Global Competitiveness Report (14th in 2019) and Global Innovation Indexes (15th in 2022). Canada's economy ranks above most Western nations on The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom and experiences a relatively low level of income disparity. The country's average household disposable income per capita is "well above" the OECD average. Canada ranks among the lowest of the most developed countries for housing affordability^{[dubious – discuss]} and foreign direct investment. Among OECD members, Canada has a highly efficient and strong social security system; social expenditure stood at roughly 23.1% of GDP. (Full article...)

"We have no intention, however, of making a fetish of democracy. It may well be true that our generation talks and thinks too much of democracy and too little of the values which it serves. It cannot be said of democracy, as Lord Acton truly said of liberty, that it "is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life." Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies-and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship. Our point, however, is not that dictatorship must inevitably extirpate freedom but rather that planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and the enforcement of ideals and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible. The clash between planning and democracy arises simply from the fact that the latter is an obstacle to the suppression of freedom which the direction of economic activity requires. But in so far as democracy ceases to be a guaranty of individual freedom, it may well persist in some form under a totalitarian regime. A true "dictatorship of the proletariat," even if democratic in form, if it undertook centrally to direct the economic system, would probably destroy personal freedom as completely as any autocracy has ever done.

The fashionable concentration on democracy as the main value threatened is not without danger. It is largely responsible for the misleading and unfounded belief that, so long as the ultimate source of power is the will of the majority, the power cannot be arbitrary. The false assurance which many people derive from this belief is an important cause of the general unawareness of the dangers which we face. There is no justification for the belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; the contrast suggested by this statement is altogether false: it is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary. Democratic control may prevent power from becoming arbitrary, but it does not do so by its mere existence. If democracy resolves on a task which necessarily involves the use of power which cannot be guided by fixed rules, it must become arbitrary power."

—Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944

• ... that food was left to rot outside after the supermarket Supie went out of business?
• ... that Francois Massaquoi, who studied economics at New York University, later led the Lofa Defense Force during the First Liberian Civil War?
• ... that one of Beverly Robertson's biggest accomplishments as CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber was attracting the Ford Motor Company's US$5.6 billion Blue Oval City complex to Memphis, Tennessee?
• ... that New Zealand politician Hamish Campbell is a cancer researcher and runs a flower-delivery business?
• ... that the 2013 book Brick by Brick, about how The Lego Group reinvented itself, became a popular business text?
• ... that Mary Mellor argued that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the impact of the patriarchy on women, both at home and in the wider economy?

May 10:

• 1904 - David Brown, an English entrepreneur, managing director of his family firm David Brown Ltd. and one time owner of shipbuilders Vosper Thorneycroft and automobile manufacturer Aston Martin, died on this day.

• ... that Italy is the third largest producer of wine in the world?

• ...that Calouste Gulbenkian was known as Mr. Five Percent because he retained 5% of the shares of Royal Dutch/Shell, the second-largest corporation in the world by revenue, which he participated in the formation of in 1907?

• ...that prospect theory was developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979 as a psychologically realistic alternative to expected utility theory?

• ...that Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's publications in the 1960s and 1970s helped develop social choice theory, which first came to prominence in the work by the American economist Kenneth Arrow?

• ...that Harvard economist Susan Athey was the first female recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal?

• ...that N. Gregory Mankiw left law school after earning his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984?

• ...that "Stagflation" is a term generally attributed to British politician Iain Macleod, who coined the term in a speech to Parliament in 1965?

• July 21: Technological University Dublin senior lecturer Dr Lorcan Sirr speaks to Wikinews on housing market in Ireland
• July 15: California governor signs new state budget, eligible Californians to get stimulus payments
• July 4: 130 OECD countries agree to back global corporate tax rate
• June 30: 'Each makes the other more difficult to recover from': University of Sussex professor L. Alan Winters speaks to Wikinews on trade, COVID-19, Brexit
• June 16: Wikinews interviews Victor Kline, leader of newly registered The New Liberals party in Australia
• April 23: Irish Finance Minister Donohoe criticises OECD's global minimum corporate tax rate
• April 17: People protest in Berlin against German Court overturning five-year rent cap
• March 5: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces UK budget 2021
• February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
• January 24: World Trade Organization declares US tariff hike illegal, rules in South Korea's favour