1  2  3  4  Next

Poverty: 'The dirty secret nobody talks about'

Wed Jan 17 2007

FRANCES RUSSELL

'WE had to take it beyond poverty. We had to give everybody a stake in the issue. We had to show what's happening to us as a society. We had to get people talking about how disconnected the winners have become from the rest of us. It's the central economic and social issue of our day."
This is economist Armine Yalnizyan describing the reasons behind the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' Growing Gap project.

Poverty gets lots of attention but nothing changes. Inequality "is the big, dirty secret nobody talks about, the greatest untold story of our time," she says. In the U.S., only one newspaper, The New York Times, regularly writes about it.

Yalnizyan and her fellow researchers, Hugh Mackenzie and Trish Hennessy, were determined to shift the focus from poverty to inequality. They hit the Christmas/New Year's news hiatus with this bombshell, compiled from The Globe and Mail's annual survey of Canada's top 100 CEOs for 2005 and Statistics Canada's measure of average weekly earnings for 2005:

* The average Canadian CEO reached the Canadian average earnings of $38,010 by 9:46 a.m. on Jan. 2. He/she attained the average full-time minimum wage earnings of $15,931 at 12:40 p.m. -- just after noon -- on New Year's Day.

* The lowest-paid of the top CEOs had pocketed the Canadian average annual earnings by 12:39 p.m. on Jan. 4 and minimum wage earnings by 12:39 p.m. on Jan. 2.

* Canada's highest-paid CEO in 2005 would barely have had time for morning coffee on New Year's Day before matching Canadians' average earnings for the whole year. His pay passed the Canadian average at 10:04 a.m. on Jan. 1.

* By 6 p.m. on Jan. 2, the average of the top 100 CEOs had earned nearly $70,000. The highest-paid CEO had earned more than $570,000.

* Or, to put it differently, the average of the top 100 CEOs is paid as much in a year as 238 people working full-year at the average of Canadian wages and salaries. The highest-paid CEO makes as much as a small town -- 1,969 people -- working at the average of wages and salaries.

* The average of the highest-paid CEOs pocketed $9,059,113 in 2005. The incomes of the top 100 ranged from $2,870,118 (number 100) to $74,824,355 (number one.)

The bombshell worked. "We could hardly believe the coverage it received," Yalnizyan says.

Graphic as these comparisons are, there is much more to the Growing Gap's findings about one of the richest, and in its self-image, fairest, countries in the world. The CCPA commissioned Environics Research Group to conduct focus groups and a national poll of 2,021 Canadians last summer and fall. Among Environics' findings:

* Sixty-five per cent believe the rewards from Canada's recent economic boom have gone to the richest Canadians.

* Fifty-one per cent say their standard of living has either dropped or stayed the same. * Forty-nine per cent say they are one or two missed paycheques away from being poor.

* Seventy-six per cent think the gap between rich and poor has widened.

* And 76 per cent agree that a growing gap between rich and poor will lead to more crime, some even predicting civil unrest or civil war if it expands significantly.

Yalnizyan says Canadian society is more unequal today than at any time since the end of the Second World War, the era when "modern" Canada was created by the great, collective nation-building projects of universal pensions, unemployment insurance, hospital insurance, medicare, housing and federal support for post-secondary education. Canadians wanted a strong central government to guarantee they were available everywhere.

At the end of the war, Canada's top tax bracket was 90 per cent on its richest citizens, "effectively a wage ceiling" reflecting the belief that there was a collective responsibility, "an acknowledgment that you can't get too far ahead of everybody else. We won't tell you how much you can earn, but you have to share it."

Today's attitudes are categorically different, Yalnizyan continues. Fuelled by the self-actualization decade of the 1960s, the rise of individualism and the impact of globalization, Canada's culture has shifted from national to provincial, from collective to class, from "we" to "me." There has been a dramatic flow of power and money from governments to the private sector and from Ottawa to the provinces. In lock-step, there has been an equally dramatic flattening of Canada's tax structure to just three brackets.

Differences between people and provinces are now more important than what brings them together. And the differences are accelerated by the transformation of the tax system from seeking fairness to rewarding initiative.

"Today, you can't only make more money than you ever did before, but the tax structure rewards you for that," Yalnizyan says. "That's the real big sea-change."

It's a sea-change that eats away at democracy because, she warns, "it prices the people, the business and government leaders who make the really big decisions on behalf of everybody, right out of the daily discourse and reality of most citizens."

   

So we should tax those who worked hard and paid their way and hand it all over to the poor? I'm in no top bracket of wealth but I'm not a bum or wishing to take money from those who earn even 10-20 times of what I earn. Perhaps more individualism should be encouraged and self-charity instead of the government do it way which obviously hasn't done a lot according to this article. Personal income taxes at the highest bracket in B.C. are 43%. So if you even earn a million a year the government provincial and federal takes $430,000 of it.

   

Armine Yalnizyan 613-266-7980 i just called her, she's not willing to give up 80% of her fee's to feed the poor.

   

Or we just elect him to a majority and give Sid the finger. Yeah I like that one better.

   

Lemme get this straight:

Hard work is all that stands between any random person and a $2Million/year job.

There are just 100 Canadians in such $2Million/year jobs.

There are, according to this site, 32 808 694 Canadians today.

Guess that means that there are 32 808 594 shiftless layabouts in this country.

I gess that also means that, given that some people here claim to be hard workers, some people here are among those 100 CEOs! Who are you? Clogeroo? Hwacker?

Either that or one of the above assumptions is faulty...

   

How about a higher minimum wage and executive salaries that are actually geared to a companies performance? Some of these "executives" wouldn't be walking away with much if their salaries were actually tied to their actual performance.

   

Equal opportunity is the only thing that should ever be guaranteed in life.

Guaranteeing equal outcomes is patently absurd.

I remember a story once where people with exceptional eyesight had to wear glasses to blur their eyesight to make them equal with most everyone else, intelligent people were prohibited from learning to make them equal with the ignorant, and etc.

This idiocy manifests itself in socialism as productive people are prohibited from enjoying the fruits of their labours to make them equal with the unproductive members of society.

How about instead of taxing the rich we demand that the poor and unproductive do something to better contribute to society? Being jealous of the rich is utterly unproductive and there is also an inherent hypocrisy in most socialism policies because they are almost always targeted at white collar types while athletes and performing artists typically get a pass from socialists when it comes to their class warfare.

Why is it that an entrepreneur who makes $5 million per year is a bad guy in their world while a basketball player who makes $30 million per year is okay? I've never figured that one out.

Instead of hamstringing our best and brightest and discouraging them from working hard - since of whatever they produce most of it will be taken away from them - why don't we let them do what they do best for the eventual betterment of all?

   

So the socialists what to control the public companies. When did you guys get on the board of directors?

   

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is quite far left, so it's not beyond them for dumping on business.
Yeah, those guys make too much money but it's the stockholders of the company who need to address it, not the government.

   

Or we can continue down the path with the growing gap between the rich and the poor with a shrinking middle class and have a Chavez elected as PM in the future. Or worse, civil unrest. Getting pissed at Ontario farmers blockading roads? Get used it, it's only going to become more common when more hardworking people find themselves on the short end of the stick.

   

Doubt it.

   

No, progressive government social and economic policies have NOT improved life in Ireland. Only when the top personal and corporate tax rates were reduced from 98% to 10% did the Irish economy take off. Prior to that Ireland was deeply socialist and with no means to pay for what they wanted.

In 1988 Ireland was the poorest country in Europe in real terms and in per capita terms. Even Portugal was better off than Ireland.

Today Ireland is the second richest per capita GDP country in Europe (behind Luxembourg), and the richest country in Europe in Personal Net Domestic Income.

The Irish enjoy a GDP of $43,600 (2006 est.) per person compared to Canada's $35,200 (2006 est.).

I remember visiting my family in Sligo in 1983 and being appalled at the standard of living there at the time. My cousins were literally living in a thatched-roof stone hut that dated from the 1800's or maybe earlier. Now they have a modern, four bedroom house and the stone hut is used for a garage for the two cars while the thatched roof has been replaced with a modern roof.

Capitalism has been GREAT for Ireland.

   

All you conservatives are greedy fucks nd completely out to lunch. you NEED people who stand on a high-school education to fill the menial jobs which guarantee the proper functioning of our society. Garbage collectors. Janitors. Manufacturing workers. Secretarial staff. You NEED people who opt for technical schools over university to fill the, for lack of a better description, next tier up - EMTs, tradespeople, etc.

What good is a million-dollar-a-year job if you can't buy a fancy car built by someone with a high school education? What good is that car if you can't drive it anywhere because there are no roads built by tecnical school grads and tradespeople? What if you crash it and need an ambulance?

You all make me sick. You all talk like all the thousands of employees below a CEO who actually do the productive work that makes him rich could sit in his chair if only they worked a little harder. BULL! SHIT! You stratify the company, you invent MBAs and ensure that only those who are rich and smart enough to go to university can get the degree you require to get your high paying jobs.

And then you have the gall to say that in this sytem which requires people to be poor so that you may be rich that those poor people should pay the same taxes as you? Where the hell do you get off?

Fuck you. Why shouldn't we take all your money and redistriute it?

   

1  2  3  4  Next