Income inequality and poverty rising in most OECD countries
Wed, 2008-10-22 06:01
#1
Income inequality and poverty rising in most OECD countries
Wed, 2008-10-22 06:01
#2
This OECD report came out Oct. 21 and I can't seem to find it reported in any newspaper (can't imagine why that is the case after reviewing it:
quote:
Income gaps have widened over the past two decades in three-fourths of OECD countries. In today’s changing world economy, that means ever more people at risk of being left behind. According to Secretary-General Angel Gurria, “Ensuring growth for all, not just the rich, is the task we must set for ourselves.” Governments need not sit on the sidelines: they should respond to income inequality with policies that help lift people up.
Has this appeared in another thread somewhere?
Wed, 2008-10-22 06:01
#3
This OECD report came out Oct. 21 and I can't seem to find it reported in any newspaper (can't imagine why that is the case after reviewing it:
quote:
Income gaps have widened over the past two decades in three-fourths of OECD countries. In today’s changing world economy, that means ever more people at risk of being left behind. According to Secretary-General Angel Gurria, “Ensuring growth for all, not just the rich, is the task we must set for ourselves.” Governments need not sit on the sidelines: they should respond to income inequality with policies that help lift people up.
Has this appeared in another thread somewhere?
Wed, 2008-10-22 06:43
#4
RevolutionPlease
There was a story in TheStar yesterday.
[url=http://www.thestar.com/article/520890]Canada lags behind 17 developed countries; has no detailed plan to fight poverty, study finds[/url]
quote:
The income gap is growing throughout the developed world, but the gap between rich and poor in Canada widened more dramatically than in most countries between 1995 and 2005, according to the report released in Paris today.
Wed, 2008-10-22 06:43
#5
RevolutionPlease
There was a story in TheStar yesterday.
[url=http://www.thestar.com/article/520890]Canada lags behind 17 developed countries; has no detailed plan to fight poverty, study finds[/url]
quote:
The income gap is growing throughout the developed world, but the gap between rich and poor in Canada widened more dramatically than in most countries between 1995 and 2005, according to the report released in Paris today.
Wed, 2008-10-22 09:02
#6
The period studied was from 1995-2005:
quote:
The report said both Canada's poverty and income inequality rates spiked between 1995 and 2005 until they both exceeded the 30-member organization's average.The organization said Canada experienced an especially rapid increase in both numbers; only Germany's gap widened at a comparable rate.
The study, released Tuesday, found Canada's well-to-do enjoyed a more substantial income than their counterparts in other developed countries. The report said Canadians in the top 10 per cent income bracket were earning an average of $71,000, more than 30 per cent higher than the OECD average of $54,000.
While the average incomes for Canada's middle and lower classes also exceeded the OECD average, the margin was less pronounced at 18 per cent.
The OECD attributed the widening gap in part to the Canadian government's spending policies.
That government would have been a Liberal government from 1995-2005.
[url=http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpTxH6LhUx_paxYTA1q9R7ipHc... Press[/url].
Wed, 2008-10-22 09:02
#7
The period studied was from 1995-2005:
quote:
The report said both Canada's poverty and income inequality rates spiked between 1995 and 2005 until they both exceeded the 30-member organization's average.The organization said Canada experienced an especially rapid increase in both numbers; only Germany's gap widened at a comparable rate.
The study, released Tuesday, found Canada's well-to-do enjoyed a more substantial income than their counterparts in other developed countries. The report said Canadians in the top 10 per cent income bracket were earning an average of $71,000, more than 30 per cent higher than the OECD average of $54,000.
While the average incomes for Canada's middle and lower classes also exceeded the OECD average, the margin was less pronounced at 18 per cent.
The OECD attributed the widening gap in part to the Canadian government's spending policies.
That government would have been a Liberal government from 1995-2005.
[url=http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpTxH6LhUx_paxYTA1q9R7ipHc... Press[/url].
Wed, 2008-10-22 09:50
#8
quote:
That government would have been a Liberal government from 1995-2005.
Federally. But it dovetails, nicely, with the Harris attack on welfare recipients (1995)and later downloadings. Don't know about events in other provinces.
Wed, 2008-10-22 09:50
#9
quote:
That government would have been a Liberal government from 1995-2005.
Federally. But it dovetails, nicely, with the Harris attack on welfare recipients (1995)and later downloadings. Don't know about events in other provinces.
Wed, 2008-10-29 12:11
#10
[url=http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=76925]Free Markets Fail[/url]
>by Duncan Cameron
quote:
The main operating assumption of the neoliberal era is now everywhere in question. Proponents of markets have been arguing for nearly 30 years that the reason people reject the price mechanism as the best — indeed the only way — to allocate resources is because they did not understand properly how competitive market pricing actually work. Market critics were assumed to reject economic reality, while embracing delusions about democratic planning and public spending.With chaos and panic pervading financial markets, and yesterdays heros such as central bank heads Allan Greenspan and David Dodge now struggling to keep their names from being associated with the scandals of collapsing securities markets, blocked credit mechanisms and economic distress, one thing should be clear: [b]markets fail.[/b]
Critics of the markets are magic thesis got it right. The economic reference points for today are the works of economists Karl Polyani, John Maynard Keynes, Michael Kalecki, Joan Robinson or Hyman Minsky, along with Canadians Kari Levitt, Mel Watkins, Mario Seccareccia and Gilles Dostaler. The work of economists associated with corporate subsidized American and Canadian think tanks, inspired by Von Hayek and Friedman, notably, the American Enterprise and Fraser Institutes, was fatally flawed. . .
[ 29 October 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]
Thu, 2008-11-06 00:46
#11
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]Federally. But it dovetails, nicely, with the Harris attack on welfare recipients (1995)and later downloadings. Don't know about events in other provinces.[/b]
quote:
[url=http://www.comer.org/2004/2004b/connie.htm]In 1995 Paul Martin slashed federal health care transfers to the provinces by $28 billion.[/url] Sheila Copps, a former MP in the Chrйtien government cabinet, recently revealed that in 1995 Paul Martin was lobbying the Chrйtien government hard to scrap the medical care program. In the June 2004 election campaign, Martin promised to return a mere $9 billion to health care. Martin’s years of starving our once proud health care system are still ricocheting as provincial governments dismantle and privatize such services.Between 1999 and 2003, in addition to slashing funding for health care, our Canadian government slashed funding for education, unemployment insurance and various other social programs. The results for people have been deaths, debts, drop-outs, poverty, homelessness, marriage breakdown.
The result for government has been massive surpluses. Between 1999 and 2003, the Canadian government accumulated a surplus of $46.7 billion (Alternative Budget of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives)
Thu, 2008-11-06 03:35
#12
I really appreciate the data you dig up, Fidel. I'm tucking this away.
----------------------------------------
I agree about the devastating effect of the Liberal cuts to balance the budget.
But Mike Harris cut welfare benefits by 20 per cent as a first act.
Among a great list, including restructuring education funding and reducing it, he lowered the time required for personal attention to nursing home residents. I see the results of this almost daily.
My hatred for Harris is visceral. For Martin it's mixed with contempt.
Thu, 2008-11-06 05:06
#13
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]My hatred for Harris is visceral. For Martin it's mixed with contempt.[/b]
And this explains the problem that many of us on the left have. Paul Martin was just as bad as Mike Harris but we seem to give Martin a pass while hold our contepmt for Harris
both deserve our contempt equally.
Thu, 2008-11-06 06:52
#14
quote:
Originally posted by johnpauljones:
[b]And this explains the problem that many of us on the left have. Paul Martin was just as bad as Mike Harris but we seem to give Martin a pass while hold our contepmt for Harris
both deserve our contempt equally.[/b]
Like everyone else, Harris made me retch.
Harris was upfront that he would gut the province. I could not believe when voters stood around after voting him in saying, "I can't believe he DID that!". What did they THINK was going to happen? The difference was, Harris could be fought and beaten [and was a few times] because his forthrightness made him vulnerable. As an activist, I knew *exactly* what I was dealing with. The enemy in a war.
Paul Martin, like McGuinty--is devious. It's hard to grapple or fight with someone that slippery. And you always come away from it feeling like there's slime stuck to your skin.
Thu, 2008-11-06 14:11
#15
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]My hatred for Harris is visceral. For Martin it's mixed with contempt.[/b]
I've since decided that even [i]with[/i] the unprecedented debt accumulation by Tory and Liberal governments in the 1980s-90s - and even [i]with[/i] the bank bailouts and privatization of 95% of money creation since 1991 - the Liberals had alternative choices for the economy to the policies they chose. The Liberals were very laissez-faire themselves during the 90s. On economics and central bank policies, our Liberals were even further to the right than Reaganauts.
And I believe Liberal Party apparatchiks would have loved nothing better at the time than to scrap medicare across Canada. But like Richard Nixon decided that Friedman's rightwing neoliberal agenda and democracy were incompatible in the 1970's, so too did Jean Chretien understand that his chances for re-election would have been lost had they sabotaged that Tommy Douglas gold standard. Better to follow the three D's rule for neoliberalization by stealth: [b]defund it - defame it - deregulate/privatize it[/b]
[ 06 November 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]
Sat, 2008-11-08 22:09
#16
Paulie Pockets must have just [i]burned[/i] when he realized he wouldn't get his majority government after Jean Chretien began pulling back to the left in 2002. Too bad, so sad.