With all the attention that the Occupy Movement has drawn to income and wealth inequality (among other things), some may be surprised to find that an annual income of approximately $47,500 U.S. will put you in the top one per cent globally (check your standing here).
But with 1,210 billionaires in the world, the fact is, most people are poor and a relative few are very, very rich. This letter is to all of us in the top one per cent.
I still intend to get a series of posts out clarifying issues like First Nations housing, health care, education and so on, but I have a confession. I haven't been staying away from the comments sections of articles about Attawapiskat.
I know. It's not healthy. There are so many racist rants and outright ignorant responses that it can bog you down. Where do you even begin, when the people making these comments do not seem to understand even the bare minimum about the subject?
Well, I try to answer questions with facts. Here are some of those facts, if you're interested.
The National Post ran a little pro-and-con debate on minimum wages in Feb. 22's paper. I was the "pro" side; my argument was excerpted from a longer paper on "What determines wages and income distribution" that is available on the CAW's web site. The "con" side was written by two economists at the Fraser Institute.
The Hennessy Index is a monthly listing of numbers, written by the CCPA's Trish Hennessy, about Canada and its place in the world.
March 2011: Security/Insecurity
• 1.4 million
Number of Canadians officially unemployed in January 2011. (Source)
There was always skepticism about claims that, as the rich became richer, income would "trickle down" to others. What wasn't perhaps foreseen was that the trickling would actually be in the other direction, and that it would be more of a torrent than a trickle.
But the evidence is now clear. Over the last three decades, the tables of the rich have overflowed, with barely any scraps falling off. On the contrary, there's been a massive transfer of income and wealth from Canada's middle and lower class to the rich.
The result is that Canada has become a highly unequal society.
Canada is quickly slipping from its status as an equal and fair society, according to Richard Wilkinson, a British social epidemiologist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham in England.
OTTAWA, ONTARIO, December 13, 2010 - A new report from the National Council of Welfare (NCW) shows that welfare can be harder to get today than 20 years ago. This means more people were forced into destitution to qualify for welfare in 2009, when the recession's casualties were mounting.
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