Moonlight Graham

I'm with Kimmy.

Why would have to round up all the time? Wouldn't you round up or down, whichever is closer, therefore balancing everything out for both consumers & businesses? Maybe this fair roudning (instead of just rounding up which some jerk businesses might try to pull off) should be a law?

Not the biggest fan of SunTV but I like to watch it sometimes because it gives a different point of than most Canadian news media. When the channel first came out it was on channel 68 or something for me, and since it moved to channel 145 or something like that (around channels I don't really watch often) I find myself watching SunTV much less now even though I've always had access to the channels. Also, based on there being some pretty crappy US/international-based channels under ch. 100, betsy and supporters make a pretty good argument. SunTV might at least be considered as part of the basic digital cable packages (sub-100 channels), analog is bit more tricky since there's even less channels under ch. 100 up for grabs.

What Waldo said, also, hold CTRL and press the 0 (zero) key to have font size return to the default normal setting.

You may not have laid out exactly what you mean by "equality of opportunity" and what this entails. Can you please help me better understand your argument by definining it exactly and give some more examples, ie: also what unequal opportunity would mean in policy also? Yes I started off this thread in a scathing tone, a miskate, but you seem logical so I'm very open to a civil, rational debate on this. We may end up disagreeing more based on ideology than facts.

How am I saying "a rising income gap is inevitable"? Also note that never in this thread have I advocated any specific measures to address this rising inequality, only arguing that it isn't a fair distribution of income. You're not understanding my argument, or you choose to ignore it. I don't just want to "take money from rich people" just for the heck of it, only because I want the world be "a better place" or something arbitrary like that. My argument is that the rich add economic growth to the economy (to various degrees), as does the work of the 99% bottom income earners (to various degrees). In 1982, Canada's GDP-per-capita was $22,671, and by 2010 it had risen to $35,663, that's about a 60% rise in GDP-per-capita in 30 years. The fact that incomes have risen dramatically for the top 1% income-earners since 1982, but have not risen at all, virtually zippo zero, for the bottom 99% of income earners tells me that in terms of income, the top 1% have benefitted dramtically from this GDP growth while the bottom 99% have not benefitted AT ALL in terms of income, despite both income groups contributing to Canada's 60% growth in GDP-per-capita. Since by simple logic the bottom 99% of earners help add to GDP growth (without their work this GDP growth would be impossible), yet have seen virtually no increase in income, by logic the 99% income bracket is being ripped-off of whatever portion of this GDP growth is due to their work (I have no idea how to calculate what the exact or even rough portion of growth the 99% are responsinle for and have been ripped off is, I only know that it's logically higher than ZERO dollars). You're right, people move in and out of income brackets. This doesn't change the fact that that during any one year approximately only 1% of the working population will be able to earn over 230k/year, and by default, 99% of Canadian workers cannot get into that bracket at any one time. Economic mobility isn't very high if the only way a large portion of Canadians are able to get into the 1% bracket is to sell their house maybe once in their lifetime. I understand your point that the 1% and 99% income brackets are not unified, never-changing groups. But I also understand that the vast majority of Canadians stay with the 99% bracket the vast majority (if not all) of their lives. How many people do you know what have made $230k in a year, besides selling a property? The fact remains that income inequality in Canada has risen dramatically the last 30 years, and it has benefitted a certain segment of the population. Unless you have had an amazing professional position or own a successful business etc., which is few people, you are unlikely to benefit in income from Canada's GDP growth.

Not sure whether I support the freedom of parents to teach their children whatever they want, or if it should be a crime to fill their heads will obvious nonsense like the origins of race described in the OP.

You mean absolutely proveable facts via countless scientific methods that the earth is far, far older than 6000 years? Can you find a high school textbook that says the theory of evolution and the theory of the evolution of man is 100% fact?

Interesting story, but it isn't clear who is responsible for this so pointing to motives like NATO/US-involvement in Syria is premature, pure conjecture at this point.

How does me using a single Marxist term/concept in my analysis suddenly discredit my entire analysis as " Marxist nonsense" (nor does it make me a "Marxist" or "Communist"). Marx had some brilliant & useful economic concepts, some flawed concepts, and some horribly wrong concepts. When I say the means of production, I mean that business owners own almost everything used in the production of goods/services other than the labour, which he rents out and renumerates via wages. Because they own the means of production, the owner(s) control the collection of profits derived from the production & sale of goods. Therefore, the owner(s)(including share-holders) keep all the profits for themselves except for taxes and the wages they pay their workers based on (usually) the lowest market price can get away with paying them. No matter how much profit is created from the work of a productive or innovative employee(s), the employee(s) will only see any of that profit in wages based on (usually, unless the owners/manager is really nice and gives bonuses/raises) the minimum $$ the owner can afford to pay him based on supply/demand of his labour. According to the stats in the OP article, 99% of working people saw about zero % sharing of the profits they helped produce over the last 30 yrs. I suspect all the rest of the profit (minus taxes/benefits etc.) has gone to the owners (& shareholders, CEO's, managers etc. ie: those who control profit distribution): much of it deserved since the owner has invested a lot of money in the means of production [ie: factory,materials etc.] and his own innovative ideas/work (and other things you quote below) to make that profit, but not all his profit is deserved since he/she could not have made all of that profit without his/her employees & their production/innovations. Logically, the owner would not hire employees if they did not increase the owners profits, therefore a portion of a company's profits are created by the employees (not just the owner), but the employee has no access/control of this profit so can't share in it. This is essentially a Marxist analysis of capitalist production, if you can find logical holes in it, please point them out.

Bitter? Maybe. PO'd, ya. Jealous and vengeful? I wouldn't say so. Agruing what I believe to be just/unjust? yes. Never in this thread have I said I wanted rich people not to be rich. In fact, I've argued the opposite numerous times. Rich people deserve to be rich, but the obviously productive (or else economic growth would not have occured) other 99% of workers deserve at least a little bit of the growth spoils as well in terms of income.

True, but the gap in income/wealth between the top 1% or 20% and bottom 1% or bottom 20% will/can change in an economy. That's the focus of this debate.

I think government can both make things better and make things worse. So can business execs. It's extremely dependent on the context of the gov't policy or the actions of businesses. Thinking such as "gov't usually makes things worse, so we should put all our trust in the free markets" is too simplitic and leads to bad policy, as proven in many different countries historically. On the flip side, thinking such as "big business usually screws things up, we should put most of our faith in government intervention " is also far too simplistic and leads to bad policy. Policies should be context-speciific based on desired outcomes.

Maybe not, but better government regulation in the US likely could have prevented the current recession, especially the "casino-capitalist" within the finance sector and the predatory actions of bank lenders. Isn't it the most useful discussion we should be persuing? It's the entire philsophy of our society's economic and social well-being! What is "fair" and what is "unfair"? How much fairness should determined by freely working markets and how much should be determined by civil society and government that has interests in other social factors?

Africans don't need handouts, they need to be treated fairly and equaitable in the international marketplace by the more powerful countries and their corporations. Foreign aid almost always comes with strings attached that benefits the donor countries. How much military protection does the US and other countries give ie: Taiwan, Japan (that has zero nukes), and South Korea? How much foreign aid did the US and other western countries give to countries like South Korea during/following the Korean War and Japan following WWII? How much private foreign direct investment do Western investors pump into and out of China per year? No, careful, context-specific, strongly state-directed liberalization and outward orientation (among other variables) helped these economies grow. It is very signficantly due to these Asian countries NOT being forced to implement blanket, context-lacking, US-directed market liberalization (such as in many regressed Africa and Latin America/Carribean economies in the 80's/90's ) which has allowed these countries to grow. There's a big difference between blanket free-trade, market-controlled openness, and state-managed openness.

I guess that's a very small percentage of the population then. It seems to me that, in refernce to the statistics, only people who work as business owners (and by extension, shareholders), CEO's etc. who have control over the profits that come into a business have much of a chance to see any significant increase in income over an extended period, at least in these last few decades. What does this have to do with the general statistics in the OP? Even if you had a good trade, I find it unlikely that jobs in the trades have seen much of an increase in income (except in keeping up with inflation)...unless of course you own a contracting business or any other successful businesss in the trades. No. The 99% income bracket have been getting a share of the revenue (yes, paid in wages/benefts...and decreasing benefits in many cases I may add), but in terms of income, 99% of workers have statistically been getting about zero share of the profits (incomes haven't increased since 1982). Those who control the profits have, according to the stats, been keeping virtually all of the profits for themselves or shareholders etc. (minus taxes they must pay) I can't speak for the last 50 years, but for the last 30 years, there's a lot of people in the middle to poorer classes in ie: Africa and Latin America/Carribean who haven't seen much economic growth flow their way. Social development (health, education) yes in many cases, but income growth no if not negative and only improving in the last 10 yrs. If income inequality has grown in Canada and the US, it has become rampant in many countries there. Income inequality has also grown dramatically in China, and unemployment has risen since the mid-80's, though has remained stagnant since about 2003.http://www.indexmund...yment_rate.html . Domestic consumption in China has been dropping since the 1990's and has dropped virtually every year over the last decade. This means the Chinese masses are manufacturing things but are decreasingly able to buy them themselves, increasingly relying on the West to buy their goods. http://monthlyreview...ation-and-china (see pg 5 for consumption stats). The question is: yes the Chinese encomy is growing, but who is benefitting? Over the last 30 years, during the West-imposed free-trade drive, Income inequlity has grown in the US and Canada, as well as much and very likely most of the rest of world. Clearly's there's an issue. Between-country inequality has been shrinking but within-country inequality has been increasing: http://unctad.org/en...r2012ch3_en.pdf They sure are. Too bad Western business interests and governments haven't been giving many developing countries much of an even playing field in international terms of trade. Just look at the WTO. Funny how Western countries like the US espouse the tenets of free-trade & reduced state market intervantions internationally, yet they're fine with continuing their own argiulture and other subsidies domestically like a bunch of hypocrites. If consumers didn't buy your goods, you would starve too. Both your and my statements are essentially correct, it's a two-way street. That's how capitalism works. Business owners, wage-workers, and consumers work together to create economic growth. Without one of these groups, or one of these groups doing well, the capitalist economy would collapse and the other groups would be in deep doo-doo. My point is that you, as a business owner, are very valuable to the economy, but so are wage-workers (and consumers), and that business-owners/CEO's/investors etc. are not the only ones responsible for the increase in economic growth/profit the last 30 yrs, yet they've seen virtually all of the increase in income. On a person-to-person comparision, i'd argue business owners generally contribute much more value to the economy than any other group. Therefore, they defintely deserve the highest share, per-head, of the profits. But you couldn't get the profits you do without your other labourers, it's economically impossible. You obviously hire workers to increase your profits, if you didn't make more profit why hire them? Wage-workers deserve at least some small increase in income and share of the profits, don't they? Something other that zero? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with any of your actions specifically. Plus I don't know your business. It's natural for a business owner to pay the lowest price for labour. I'm saying there's something a bit unfair with the system as it has functioned the last 3 decades. I guess you haven't been reading the" business" section of the newspaper the last 5 years? 10 years? As I said above, on a per-head basis, yes you're almost certainly correct (ie: you are more vauable than any of your other employees). But if you're saying that 1% of the actors within the economy contributes a lot more to it overall than the other 99% (who are both workers for you and consumers of your goods/services) than I'd say there's a good chance you're wrong. ie: if you had 99 labourers working for you, who creates more profit in total for the business/economy overall?: Your own work/investment, or that of your 99 employees combined? See what I'm saying?

How did you come up with this hilariously misinformed generalization? You have no idea what I do for a living or my income level. You have no idea what my motivations are for supporting my arguments. You've stated that you think people who want more income equality based on the stats are all jealous and filled wih revenge? What a ridiculous over-generalization that you pulled out of your ass instead of the fact-box. I addressed this and the other issues in your quote in another reply to you. By the way, what "justice" is or isn't is a philosophical question, it's answer is entirely subjective. Plato and Socrates knew this well. I don't agree with your definition of justice, which seems to be whatever outcomes a free capitalist market produces. I care about social matters, capitalism only cares about maximizing profit and wealth, but has no regard for its distribution.

Equal opportunity is hardly attainable. Given equal IQ potential and work ethic, does a young girl have an equal opportunity (or even equal odds?) to get herself into the top tier of income-earners when she grows up as a young boy does? What about a black kid vs white kid? black girl vs white boy? Boy from rich family vs boy from poor family? There are many variables beyond work ethic and intelligence/creaitvity that factor into income & social mobility. How high is social mobility in Canada if the system has determined that only 1% of the working population will be able to earn over 200k/year? By default, 99% of Canadian workers cannot get into that bracket at any one time. How quickly people go in and out of this is significant, but due to a variety of social and economic reasons people often remain in the same or similar socio-economic brackets for most of the lives, but that is not to say smarts and hard-work can't mean economic mobility...i'm just saying there are other variables. It's completely relevant. It's most of the entire issue. You seem to have unquestionable faith in the capitalist market. Do you believe that whatever is fair and just is whatever outcomes the market naturally produces (via the "invisible hand" or whatever)? Capitalist markets create wealth, but they have absolutely no regards to social matters. Therefore capitalism creates wealth, but by the nature of how the system works, in a liberalized market this created wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very few (about 1 -2 % or whatever the number is gets a disproportionate amount of the wealth) while, as shown, the other 99% or so have had stagnant wages (inflation-adjusted) over the last 30 years. Labour is not even paid based on market wages. Laws have been implemented to ensure a minimum wage. If minimum wages didn't exist, owners/managers would pay people based on supply/demand, meaning more people would be earning incomes that under Canadian definitions would be under the poverty line. How much faith should we put into the markets? Do you believe we shouldn't have minimum wages? 1% of the population getting all of the income gains from vast growth over any 30 year period doesn't seem justified, unless those 99% did something lime not deserve any share in the increase like being unproductive workers. This would hardly ever be possible though, since the vast majority of productivity and economic growth is due to the work of 99% of the working pop. Is there any logical way that 1% of the working population deserves almost of the 100% compensation in wages due to this economic growth? It's almost impossible. By far the #1 reason why the 1% of the pop is achieving all the income increase is because many of the 1% are business owners (or significant shareholders or otherwise closely connected to the owners), and business owners have a monolpoly on the means of production. This means they have a monopoly on controlling what to do with all profits made the business makes. Obviously, owners/shareholders will keep all of it they are legally able to. Are you saying Warren Buffet is jealous of the 1% and wants revenge? Even though he wants more income equality? What about Noam Chomsky or any other rich people expressing similar? While some may simply be jealous, is it not possible that many people are annoyed with the dramtic rise in income inequality because they simply think it is not quite fair? Because it may be bad for the overall economy? Because it is to the detriment of society/human development? If you want the levels of health, education, crime rates/violence etc. in Canada to increase at a better rate, you are on the wrong side of the argument.

Ezra Levant is a shill for Canadian oil companies. He's from Alberta, Alberta has tons of oil, therefore he wants Alberta (and himself and his friends and cronies and whatever investments he could be involved with) to get as rich as possible from the oil. He doesn't like David Suzuki because his environmental messages attempt to undermine Alberta oil interests. Ezra will say just about anything to try and discredit Suzuki (and his ilk) because of this. Ezra Levant has some good points from time to time, but most of the time he's an ass.

Actually, the article, and my argument, is careful to specifically state that it is gains in income (inflation-adjusted) for the 99% that isn't getting better. Standard of living is going up I would argue though, but a major portion of this is likely increased personal debt.

I'll also point out this from the OP article: This is key. I missed this in my analysis. Income has actually gone up for both the 99% and 1%, but buying power has not (essentially, the incomes are adjusted for inflation). This means that, adjusted for inflation, the average person working in 1982 would not be making any more money in 2010, while for the average 1% his income would have increased about 50%!

As I already stated, the cost of technology very often reduces as time goes on. I could buy a cell phone, tv, computer etc. with technology from 5 years ago for virtually nothing. Standard of living goes up because technology improves & then reduces in price so more people can afford tech items, but since 1982 the income for the the 99% income group hasn't gone up vs he 1%, both in Canada and the US. Standard of living has improved, buying power has not for most. Please continue trying to defend the status quo, for reasons I'm baffled.

Explained in my 1st response to you. It's not a question of jealously, it's a question of just compensation, economic health, and social equality. Again, why are you so aggresively negative towards my comments? Why do you defend the income inequality? Just because owners have control of the profits that come in, do you think they deserve to keep all of them pre-tax (or even post-taxes, as in the US)? Stats for this? Define "people with skills". They should, I never argued otherwise. I'm claiming they shouldn't get virtually ALL of the rewards, in terms of income.

The cost of technology very often reduces as time goes on. I could buy a cell phone, tv, computer etc. from 5 years ago for virtually nothing. Also, those are the days of single-income families. 2 incomes for a home often these days, but how much has standard of living in a home increased? We are also not comparing 50 years ago, we are comparing the last 30 years, since 1982 in the stats the study focuses on. Taking debt into account, has the economic standard of living for most people in Canada gone up since 1982? It probably has for various reasons, but its not because they're making more money. Are you aware that market liberalization schemes (thanks Reagan & Thatcher) from the 1980's and 90's forced onto many African countries as conditionality for restructing their debt repayments and new loans from international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank (SAP's), along with foreign aid conditionality from western governments like the US, UK, and whomever, was a significant reason that Sub-Sahara African countries on average produced negative GDP growth in those 2 decades, whereas the same region produced positive GDP growth in the decade prior and afterwards (1970's and 2000's)? Almost similar story with most Latin America/Carribean countries in those decades. With income inequality inherent with increased market liberalization, rich/elites gained a hugely unequal portion of the wealth generated in those countries, while in Sub-Saharan Africa the large poorer pop. saw income generally drop. There are other variables to consider obviously but neoliberal reforms are one of the biggest. http://www.ers.usda.gov/datafiles/International_Macroeconomic_Data/Historical_Data_Files/historicalRealPerCapitaGDPValues.xls

Says the statistics, very clearly. Yes, labels like "1%" and "99%" are very particular stats that would generalize "rich" and "the rest", and it's not that back-and-white, but if the "rich" and "the rest" are operationalized/defined as the 1% vs 99% income, the stats don't lie. No, because given the large profits created over the last 30 years, workers deserve at least some reasonable level of increase in income i compensation since they greatly helped produce this profit, together with the owners of business. But since the owners have a monopoly over the means of production, they are in control of these profits and keep it for themselves. Inequality is arguably inherent in our capitalist system, but I'm not arguing for perfect income inequality because that would be ineffecient and unjust, I'm saying the rich should stay rich but that the rise in income inequality with only one side beneftting is unjust. Levels of acceptable inequality is indeed subjective, & my argument from the OP is that the 1% getting virtually 100% of the income increase from the last 30yrs of economic growth compared to the 99% is unjust. It also arguably harms economic growth since consumers drive the economy, and them havingless money for consumption means less money/profits for business owners & less jobs etc. (its a virtuous cycle of growth via production-consumption, like Fordism). So why did you clearly react negatively to this thread? What do you think is an acceptable level of inequality? Why? Do you feel the distribution numbers from the last 30 years are just? Why or why not?