Canada's richest 1% getting richer

[Shady]

The problem is even more difficult then.

What problem is that?

[Michael Hardner]

Changing govt policy.

[Moonlight Graham]

You missed the point. A society where the composition of the richest 1% changed every few years would be very different than a society where the richest 1% is the same generation after generation. What matters in a capitalist society is equality of opportunity and social mobility - not equality of outcomes.

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.

A business owner is helped because he buys computers - should he/she volunteer to pay more to the computer maker because the computer maker 'deserves' a share of the profits? Labour is no different - people are paid based on market wages and how much the company makes from that labour is irrelevant.

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?

Why? Because it changed? Why couldn't you say that the levels of 30 years ago where unjust and now the system has corrected itself to the point where it is just? You are getting hot and bothered by a relative statistic that has no connection to anything real.

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.

I think the obsession with the 1% is absurd and driven by jealously. Any policy driven by jealously is going to be bad policy. If we want to have a rational discussion about what we should be doing it should be based on ensuring equality of opportunity for as many people as possible. We cannot have that discussion as long as people think they are entitled to something just because someone else has more than them.

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.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Moonlight Graham

[Moonlight Graham]

No matter how you spin your complaints about the richest 1% come across as the whining of a bitter person. It is not driven by a desire for justice but as desire for revenge. If you were really motivated by a desire for justice you would be talking about what is required to ensure equality of opportunity instead of obsessing over income growth statistics.

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.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Moonlight Graham

[TimG]

You've stated that you think people who want more income equality based on the stats are all jealous and filled wih revenge?

Note the wording I used: " your complaints about the richest 1% come across as". That word choice does not claim that you are like like that but that you *appear* to be like that.

You also set the tone with your opening post:

30 years of economic/GDP growth, and the rich are the only ones to benefit in income with everyone else running on a treadmill. These #'s are absolutely unacceptable. What a [scam].

Sounds pretty bitter to me.

I care about social matters, capitalism only cares about maximizing profit and wealth, but has no regard for its distribution.

Your problem is you have fallen into the mindset of judging a system by the equality of outcomes. No good policy can come from such a mindset because it is mindset that is primarily driven by greed and jealously. i.e. you won't be happy till all of the rich people are gone.

Good policies come from discussions of tangible problems such as access to quality education and how to pay for it. If we have a system where every one who is able gets a fair chance at success then we should not care about the differential between rich and poor.

Edited January 31, 2013 by TimG

[TimG]

Equal opportunity is hardly attainable.

Then you are saying that a rising income gap is inevitable. Equality of opportunity is the only policy that can possibly address it. Simply taking money from rich people an using to pay the bloated pensions of public servants does nothing to address the real issues yet this is the inevitable result of any policy that is based on the nothing other than a desire to take more money from rich people.

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.

Now you are making no sense. People transition in and out of different income brackets all of the time. 30% of the people in the 1% bracket won't be there in 5 years. Over the course of a lifetime many people will receive windfalls that put them in that bracket for a year or two if they sell a property or business. IOW - the number of people who will be in the 1% bracket at some point in their lives is much higher than 1% - maybe 10 or 20%. The same goes for the other brackets.

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.

But this is completely FALSE. The make up of the 1% is constantly changing so the money is NOT getting concentrated in the hands of the same 1% of the population. It is moving around.

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.

And more people would have jobs - the best welfare program you can find. That said, I don't oppose the market distorting effects of a minimum wage because we want employers to invest in employees to ensure they have the skills to demand the higher wages.

Are you saying Warren Buffet is jealous of the 1% and wants revenge?

Warren Buffet has specific tax policies which he thinks should be adopted (which may or may not have merit). The effect of these tax policies would increase the tax paid by people who earn money from investments who also tend to be rich. He also calls for rich people to donate more to charity. He is not calling for across the board tax increase on rich people just because they are rich. Edited January 31, 2013 by TimG

[Bonam]

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.

As soon as one starts talking about "owning the means of production", it all becomes Marxist nonsense. The means of production in that context is a factory or oil well. But that is not the real means of production. Factories aren't just there, out of thin air, to be distributed evenly among the population. The real means of production is the mind of a man (or woman) who can plan that factory or oil well, to design its systems, to develop its business model, to run it efficiently and survive against its competitors. And no one owns someone's mind and its output other than that person themselves.

[eyeball]

The lion's share of income inequality in today's world is due to power inequality - corruption that is.

Screw the rich and especially the politicians/governments that enriched them.

[cybercoma]

thats making excuses, Its never closed. The disparity is the incentive.

Sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "I can't hear you" isn't actually an argument.

[cybercoma]

Why is the increase necessarily bad other than it makes you jealous?

We've had this conversation in the past. Despite your ignorance or refusal to accept the research, there are a hell of a lot more problems than just "jealousy" in places with greater income disparities, even if you only compare OECD nations.

Feel free to ignore Wilkinson's research though. I know it's inconvenient.

[cybercoma]

People can buy more with less income.

Except gas, electricity, and groceries because the volatility of those markets causes the statisticians to leave them out of the "basket" when calculating that. In Canada, those things are pretty important so you don't freeze or starve to death.

[Michael Hardner]

We've had this conversation in the past. Despite your ignorance or refusal to accept the research, there are a hell of a lot more problems than just "jealousy" in places with greater income disparities, even if you only compare OECD nations.

At more extreme levels - levels beyond those that, say, the US has today - the meritocracy goes away, because the chance of advancement through hard work is so remote to become unreal to the average working person.

Bill O'Reilly seemed to be lamenting the state of the lower closes (I accidentally typed 'loser classes' there) in his election night rant. There was no sense there that it may be more difficult to move ahead than it was in the past, but instead he lambasted what he called the new America. The O'Reillys, the Marie Antoinettes of the world don't know what its like in communities where there is no way to improve, where education is too expensive, where the only lucrative type of entrepreneurship is in illicit trade.

These are situations that we create when we set policy for trade, education, taxation and so on.

[TimG]

In Canada, those things are pretty important so you don't freeze or starve to death.

Yet we have people who constantly seek to artificially inflate the cost of those basics because of an obsessions over distant hypotheticals like climate change.

[TimG]

At more extreme levels - levels beyond those that, say, the US has today - the meritocracy goes away, because the chance of advancement through hard work is so remote to become unreal to the average working person.

We need to preserve the meritocracy and do what we can to ensure equality of opportunity. That does require taxation and government funded services. It could even require more taxation than we have now. But the conversation must start with a statement of the right objective: a society where people have real chance to improve their lot over the course of their lifetime.

If the discussion starts with the wrong objective we will end up with bad policy and worse outcomes. Reducing the gap between the rich and poor is the wrong objective.

For example, if the objective is to ensure equality of opportunity then policies that reduce the cost of delivering government services by limiting public servant pensions is in line with that objective. If the objective is equality of outcome then the cushy pensions for public servants become an untouchable entitlement.

I don't understand why people here don't seem to understand the distinction I am making.

Edited January 31, 2013 by TimG

[bush_cheney2004]

I don't understand why people here don't seem to understand the distinction I am making.

No worries...I understand your distinction. Some people here can't even make the distinction between so called income inequality in Canada vs. the USA, let alone what a meritocracy is.

[eyeball]

For example, if the objective is to ensure equality of opportunity then policies that reduce the cost of delivering government services by limiting public servant pensions is in line with that objective. If the objective is equality of outcome then the cushy pensions for public servants become an untouchable entitlement.

I don't understand why people here don't seem to understand the distinction I am making.

The objective should be equality of influence over power. Right now the objective is the opposite of that the result being a sense of entitlement with a capital E for those with the enhanced capacity to do so. That would be your beloved 1%.

[cybercoma]

distant hypotheticals like climate change.

Climate change is a distant hypothetical? This is just plain ignorance of reality. Sorry. But I can't possibly take you seriously if you ignore the plain truth.

[TimG]

Climate change is a distant hypothetical? This is just plain ignorance of reality. Sorry. But I can't possibly take you seriously if you ignore the plain truth.

Your are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts. The facts are that there is no compelling evidence that climate change is having a net negative effect on human society today. The endless claims that are made in the media (e.g. Sandy) are simply falsehoods that have no scientific basis. Edited January 31, 2013 by TimG

[cybercoma]

Whether the effects of climate change are negative or not is a matter of opinion. That climate change is happening is not a "distant hypothetical." It is a fact. So, your first sentence pertains to your opinions about climate change. Meanwhile, your original post that I replied to was vaguely about climate change itself.

[TimG]

Whether the effects of climate change are negative or not is a matter of opinion.

It should have been obvious from the context that I was referring to the push for policies to deal with a problem that I believe is purely hypothetical at this point (implying climate change may be occurring but the problem part is hypothetical). It also does not change the fact that anti-climate change policies are hurting the middle class by increasing the cost of living for no real benefit. Edited January 31, 2013 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

If the discussion starts with the wrong objective we will end up with bad policy and worse outcomes. Reducing the gap between the rich and poor is the wrong objective.

...

I don't understand why people here don't seem to understand the distinction I am making.

I see your point now.

[Argus]

For example, if the objective is to ensure equality of opportunity then policies that reduce the cost of delivering government services by limiting public servant pensions is in line with that objective.

Drivel. Equality of opportunity would arise when everyone had the same quality of education, the same chance of going to the same quality university (based only on merit) and the same chance thereafter of being hired by the best firms (based not on contacts, which is how most young people get theri first jobs now, but on merit alone).

How you manage to wedge in taking pensions down as a means of equality is quite literally beyond me.

If the objective is equality of outcome then the cushy pensions for public servants become an untouchable entitlement.

So your idea of 'equality of opportunity' is based on the lowest common denominator? Ie, no one gets pension. No one gets benefits. EVeryone is dirt poor. There are virtually no government services. Therefore, all are equal? Have I got that?

Except, of course, the people who have no need of government services, or pensions of any kind: the rich.

Unsurprisingly, they have been pushing for exactly this sort of 'equality'.

[TimG]

How you manage to wedge in taking pensions down as a means of equality is quite literally beyond me.

Reducing the cost of government services means more services can be delivered. It is not necessarily required but it is 'consistent' with the objective.

If you state that 'equality if income' is the objective then rationalizing government pensions would not be discussed no matter what the technical merits because the usual rhetoric over 'preserving (upper) middle class' benefits.

So your idea of 'equality of opportunity' is based on the lowest common denominator?

Hardly. Access to quality education, training programs, healthcare and income support are all essential parts of a strategy for equal opportunity. However, these objectives are undermined if government employees are given excessive pension packages that drain taxpayer money away from providing services. Edited January 31, 2013 by TimG

[Shady]

Yet we have people who constantly seek to artificially inflate the cost of those basics because of an obsessions over distant hypotheticals like climate change.

Exactly. They're so important, that they'd rather use food to produce fuel instead of feeding people. Despite the large increases in food costs that it causes. Same with fuel in general. They'd rather have higher costing energy than using lower costing energy that they deem to be problematic. Even though food and fuel are huge costs to middle income and especially lower income people. And yet they claim to care about them more. It's ridiculous.

[Argus]

If you state that 'equality if income' is the objective then rationalizing government pensions would not be discussed no matter what the technical merits because the usual rhetoric over 'preserving (upper) middle class' benefits.

There are a number of reasons why the government pays reasonable pensions, among them, that working for the government sucks, and the pensions and benefits help retain skilled people who would otherwise flee in droves for other opportunities. They don't call it the golden cuffs for nothing.

[

Hardly. Access to quality education, training programs, healthcare and income support are all essential parts of a strategy for equal opportunity. However, these objectives are undermined if government employees are given excessive pension packages that drain taxpayer money away from providing services.

And what do you consider to be excessive? What exactly do you know about government pensions? How would you compare them to, say, the pensions for the CAW?