[Craic] Entrenched inequality in Canada

Thu Sep 2 14:08:51 PDT 2021

Thank you Allan, a powerful if rather grim assessment of Canada and its
political masters!

Peace

Greg

On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 4:12 PM Allan Baker via craic <
craic at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From: *Allan Baker <allan.baker7878 at gmail.com>
> *Date: *September 2, 2021 at 3:06:41 PM EDT
>
>
> Somehow, an 85-year-old board game distributes wealth more fairly than
> Canada
>
> Hi, I’m Paul Willcocks, a senior editor here at The Tyee. This is The Run.
>
> People have been playing Monopoly for 85 years now. The rules are simple:
> Roll the dice, move around the board buying real estate and railways,
> collecting rents. Capitalism in 40 squares.
>
> In the game, players all start with $1,500 in brightly coloured Monopoly
> money. The rest is up to them.
>
> But that’s not how it works in Canada, as a report
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41658&l=90&ctl=B1188:E3985800732C92C68E9264A80E49DE0767ADE39EE60F83FA&> this
> year on family wealth from parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux
> reminded us.
> [image: Street art in Paris. Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash]
> Street art in Paris. Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash
>
> By *Paul Willcocks*
>
> Paul Willcocks is a journalist and former publisher of newspapers, and now
> an editor with The Tyee.
> [image: author bio]
>
> The richest 10 per cent of families control more than 55 per cent of all
> wealth in Canada. The bottom 40 per cent control 1.2 per cent.
>
> Here’s what a realistic Canadian Monopoly game with 100 players would look
> like. (You’d need a big table.)
>
> One player would start the game with $38,400. Another four would start
> with $6,750 each, and five with $4,620. That covers the 10 per cent of the
> wealthiest families.
>
> The next 10 would receive $2,570.
>
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> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41658&l=90&ctl=B1189:E3985800732C92C68E9264A80E49DE0767ADE39EE60F83FA&>
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>
> And the bottom 40 players would start with $45 a piece — not enough to buy
> the cheapest property on the board.
>
> The actual game would have vanished long ago if it was as unfair as
> Canada’s real-life version. Who’d play if they knew they were set up to
> lose?
>
> Income distribution is similarly concentrated in the richest groups. The
> top 10 per cent of tax filers in 2017 had 34 per cent of all income
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41658&l=90&ctl=B118A:E3985800732C92C68E9264A80E49DE0767ADE39EE60F83FA&>,
> with a median income of $124,000. The bottom 50 per cent had 18 per cent,
> with a median of $17,800.
>
> And the rich have been getting richer. In 1982, the top one per cent
> earned 6.7 times the median Canadian income. Thirty-five years later, they
> earned 9.2 times the median.
>
> This isn’t the inevitable result of mysterious market forces. Governments,
> lobbied by the rich and powerful, have chosen policies that ensure
> inequality will grow and wealth will be concentrated in fewer hands.
>
> Some are obvious, like tax loopholes
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41658&l=90&ctl=B118B:E3985800732C92C68E9264A80E49DE0767ADE39EE60F83FA&> that
> favour high-income earners and lax enforcement
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41658&l=90&ctl=B118C:E3985800732C92C68E9264A80E49DE0767ADE39EE60F83FA&> of
> the rules by Revenue Canada.
>
> But wealth and the economy aren’t the only ways inequality pops up in our
> system. Voters who are convinced that entrenched inequality is wrong and
> corrosive for society will also have to weigh the parties’ positions on a
> wide range of issues, from justice for Indigenous peoples to child poverty
> to pensions.
>
> Look at education, for example. Public education has traditionally been
> considered the great equalizer, but affluent families are increasingly
> opting for private schools, which promise better future opportunities for
> students. Same goes for quality child care, which is supposed to give
> children from poorer families a fairer start in life and allow parents to
> keep working. How will the parties address these issues?
>
> Governments have also allowed or encouraged precarious, low-paid jobs
> without benefits
> <http://tracking.thetyee.ca/t?r=3685&c=41658&l=90&ctl=B118D:E3985800732C92C68E9264A80E49DE0767ADE39EE60F83FA&> to
> replace the kind of stable, often unionized work that allowed generations
> of Canadians to build a future for themselves and their families. What are
> they proposing in this election to reverse the worsening world of work?
>
> And, of course, there’s housing, where soaring prices have enriched many
> homeowners and brought higher costs and instability to the lives of
> renters, who in turn are paying more and more of their incomes to simply
> keep a roof over their heads.
>
> It’s admittedly a daunting task to sort through all the policies. But
> we’re here to help. The Tyee has picked five critical areas to focus on in
> this campaign: climate change; housing; COVID-19 and what lies ahead;
> justice for Indigenous peoples — and wealth and inequality.
>
> Politicians — especially right-wing politicians — like to talk about
> Canada as a land of opportunity, where if you just work hard and keep
> trying you can achieve anything. (Which implicitly suggests that if you
> don’t succeed, it’s your fault, rather than the result of their bad policy
> choices.)
>
> That’s always been a myth. But over the last four decades the gap between
> myth and reality has been widening. It’s now a crisis.
>
> The current state of inequality is morally and pragmatically wrong.
>
> Morally, because an accident of birth should not decide the course of a
> child’s life. As a society, we can level the playing field, at least
> somewhat, to provide opportunity for all, not just a small group of the
> increasingly wealthy.
>
> And pragmatically because this accelerating inequality will in time
> destroy our political systems and society, with unforeseeable but likely
> dire consequences. (The U.S., with much higher inequality, offers at least
> one vision of the future that could be ahead for Canada.)
>
> There are many critical issues in this election. We hope you’ll consider
> this one of them. We will do our best to help you decide which party offers
> the best measures to reverse this dangerous, corrosive trend.
>
> Posted 02 Sep 2021
>
>
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