Dying for the Rich
Our income gap is really a life and death health issue.
Insecurity breeds stress, disease.
Statistics Canada confirmed last week the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class has been treading water for a quarter-century.
The Globe and Mail published a Second Coming headline about those findings. Pundits chimed in. Yet, despite all the chatter, we still seem unable to confront this fact: The wider the income gap in a country, the worse its life expectancy.
For close to a century, public-health researchers have been tracking this strange correlation. In countries with narrow gaps between richest and poorest, everyone lives longer. In countries with wide gaps, people die sooner. Every social class is healthier than the one below it, and sicker than the one above it.
National wealth and medical spending don't seem to matter. According to the World Health Organization, Cuba spent $230 per capita on health care in 2004. The U.S. spent $6,096 per capita. But Cuba has a lower infant-mortality than the U.S., and Cuban life expectancy, at 78.3 years, is just ahead of the Americans' 78.2.
So the U.S. ranks first in health spending and 38th in life expectancy. Canada spends just half of what the Americans do ($3,038 per capita), but we rank 11th in life expectancy at 80.3.
What's going on here?
Public-health researchers are still debating the correlation between inequality and health, and whether inequality is actually a cause of disease and early death. But most studies seem to confirm the correlation, and most researchers confidently assert that inequality really is bad for your health.
In the decade of World War I, for example, British life expectancy actually went up despite the carnage in the trenches. During that decade, the rich paid more in taxes than they ever had before, and workers got better pay and working conditions than they had ever enjoyed before.
The famous "Whitehall survey" has tracked the health of 17,000 British civil servants since the 1960s. In a country with a national health service, the clerks at the bottom of the pay scale have three times the mortality rate of the top mandarins, and die four times as often from heart disease.
Richard G. Wilkinson, a British epidemiologist who's studied the correlation between income and health, cites this and many other cases in his book Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality. He notes that in 1965, Japan had a slightly lower life expectancy than Britain. Japanese now have a life expectancy of 82 years.
What happened? Well, the income range between Japanese workers and top executives stayed fairly narrow. In Britain, Maggie Thatcher encouraged the enrichment of the richest, and the gap widened. Improvement in British life expectancy (currently 78.7 years) has lagged since then.
Wilkinson has also recorded some alarming U.S. data, where the gap has been widening for decades. In 1990, for example, Louisiana had the widest income gap of any American state. Half the population was living on 17 per cent of the state's total income. At the same time, Louisiana had the highest death rates and homicide rates in the U.S.
The Canadian gap: Not so bad?
A British Medical Journal article in 2000 compared income inequality and mortality in Canada and the U.S., and found, surprisingly, that while the income gap correlated with U.S. death rates, it didn't correlate so closely in Canada.
The authors speculated that we effectively narrow the gap thanks to our health care system and equal provision of services like education.
Canadian researchers have looked closely at our gap. Dennis Raphael, editor of the important book Social Determinants of Health, points out in the first chapter that income differences between Canadians are responsible for more premature years of life lost than any other cause except cancer. We may be better off than the Americans, but not by much.
What, then, is the mechanism for this loss of life? Most researchers attribute it to two related causes: psychosocial stress and the loss of social capital.
Psychosocial stress doesn't mean feeling sad because Bill Gates is rich and you're not. Wilkinson, in his 2005 book The Impact of Inequality, argues that as social animals we need to maintain a certain level of secure status and control over our lives. We feel stress when our status is threatened and we lose control. Cortisol, a stress hormone, plays a role in many diseases.
In egalitarian societies where the rich aren't that much richer than the poorest, everyone feels more secure. But where the gap is wide, the poor feel threatened, and the rich both despise and fear them.
Eroding social capital
Social capital -- the level of trust between people -- also erodes as the gap widens. In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore praised supposedly easygoing Canadians for leaving our front doors unlocked, and not feeling the need for a gun in the house. But Canadians who once walked to school now tote their own kids to school in SUVs.
Wilkinson argues that stress underlies violent crime, alcoholism, and drug use. When people can't control much about their own lives, they can at least punch someone else, or smoke, or get drunk.
Wilkinson probably goes too far in blaming stress for almost every social problem we have, but he and Raphael and a host of others have raised some very serious issues about the way we distribute wealth.
Most Canadians accept the income gap as a fact of life. Responsible individuals, they believe, live with the consequences of their own actions. The rich are rich because they deserve to be, and the poor can be rich too, if only they'll get a job and work hard.
Even the poor tend to agree, and blame themselves for their own sorrows. This isn't surprising after a couple of centuries of North American optimism. Horatio Alger was a poor boy who got rich writing novels about poor boys who get rich.
But even Alger, in stories like Pluck and Luck, admitted that luck is as important as pluck. If you couldn't rescue a banker's daughter, you weren't going to get far.
To argue that the gap is a health issue, therefore, makes a lot of us very defensive -- you might even say stressed. It sounds like income redistribution, taking money away from the deserving rich and giving it to the feckless poor.
Some narrow-gap countries do tax the rich, but it doesn't go to the poor in one-time cheques. In fact, countries like Iceland and Japan don't seem to have many really poor people. That's because taxes support a solid infrastructure of housing, education and health care.
The rich robbing the poor
The problem is not the poor robbing the rich through taxes, but the rich robbing the poor through tax cuts that wreck the infrastructure. And the rich have to the chutzpah to tell us that this robbery is the way to prosperity for all.
Governments excuse themselves from delivering social services because they don't have the tax revenues any more. So private education and health care begin to look good to the affluent, while public education and health care, like public housing and transit, become down-market services for losers.
Because so many people still believe in Horatio Alger, the income-gap debate has stayed away from the health issue. Even the NDP and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives define the problem as one of fairness -- as if poverty were simply a needless inconvenience to the poor.
If the Raphaels and Wilkinsons are right, however, the growing income gap in Canada -- as in the U.S., Britain, Russia, and China -- is literally a matter of life and death. The poor are dying early to subsidize the rich, who are too stupid to realize they're dying early too.
Dennis Raphael quotes the 19th-century Prussian physician Rudolf Virchow, who 150 years ago argued that "Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale."
Virchow was wrong about some things, but he was dead right about that.
Related Tyee stories:
- Rich as Hell
Reviewed: Richistan: A Journey through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich - Harper Budget Stiffs Homeless
Ignores Vancouver mayor's idea to boost rentals. - Why Tax Cuts Make Us Weak
Taxes are the price of a civilized society. Support them.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
reality_check
05-05-2008
The pernicious percent
So, you thought that the 2% increase you got was fair if the big boss gets the same?
It sure sounds fair! Is it?
Consider a person getting a 10% raise on $10,000 and another on $100,000. Fair? I don't think so.
A would get $1000 and B would get 10,000$. A has gotten 10 times less than B or $9000 less. A has now $11,000 and B, $110,000. The spread between A and B is now $99,000. Before it was $90,000. The rich gets richer and the poor, relatively speaking gets poorer, just by the perversity of the %. Not yet convinced! OK!
Let's continue! A get's now a similar increase! A get another 10% raise and so does B. Fair? A has now $12,100 while B has now $121,000. The spread is now $108,900.It was before 90,000 and before that 99,000!
Over years and centuries. What would be the spread after one century of this nonsense.
So, folks, in essence, I think that no matter what ... the rich will always get richer and the poor will always be poorer in relative terms.
When B reaches about $1 MILLION (at a 12% annual return, compounded) A would have $100 thousand, a $900,000 difference, a whopping $900,000 difference!
It is not rocket science, but I think it does show what is often not mentioned.
What would be fairer? A flat raise! YOU get $1000 and I get $1000. Will the rich go for that? Ah! AH! Dream on! But, ya, the rich work so much harder and the poor are so lazy! We deserve it. Right? Wrong!
So, there is something incredibly rotten in this state of the world!
It helps to know Math to find out that the poor will always get poorer and the rich will always get richer, unless we change this mathematical perversity!
I know! I know! Everybody knows about this! If so, why is everyone accepting it? Why are the poor accepting it? The rich don't mind. Certainly!
Grumpy
05-05-2008
Of course the rich..........
......... get richer and the poor get poorer, the rich run the country and determine the who pays what, where and when.
The rich control politicians, who make the tax laws, which burden the poor with onerous taxes.
Notice that politicians almost never pass laws that would harm the wealthy, but the poor, they could die in the streets and no one would give a damn.
zalm
05-05-2008
Ummmm...
I'm not so sure Kilian talked about taxes on income, which is what I get from reality check's thoughts above, except indirectly. If he did, he shouldn't have. Taxes ought to be to penalize the waste of resources, excessive consumption, or to slow or eliminate non-productive activity. Income - at any level - is a public good, and it's only when the variation in income becomes too disproportionate to the resources employed to earn it (effort, education, skill, experience) that one might start taxing it.
Taxes on pollution and waste ought to be very high. Capital gains should be reinstituted on real estate, and especially on the exempt family home, to prevent the kind of speculation that's going on now that makes it difficult for those with low-incomes to stay in their homes. Paper wealth creation (printing money, brokerage or arbitrage of any sort, or any monopoly behaviour, including that based on copyright and patent law) ought to be taxed so highly that it fades from respectability, profitability and eventually existence.
Evasion of responsibility through corporate structure must be eliminated by eliminating the corporate structure. Insurance exists to take care of reasonable risk - all risk beyond this requiring the presence of a corporate structure is unreasonable risk and distorts society's aims and goals to no good end.
What you'll do only for monetary reward, isn't worth doing. If you can't genuinely feel good about helping someone or everyone in your choice of career, change.
Even some politicians, traditionally the last bastions of "public good" motivation, are succumbing to the lure of the monetary reward. And we're getting the kind of political system we deserve, as a result.
My view. Go ahead, take me apart.
murdock
06-05-2008
not so...
Such activity alone is not enough, since the 'dollar' is eroding away faster than anyone can get pay raises and/or save it.
Learning how and where to invest what they have earned and keeping more of those earnings is the key.
For the truly poor, such things as a roof are hard to fathom. Seeing a way out for these folks requires a level of co-operation that is not often seen in our society any more, though I have seen it with a few of the street men (down but NOT out-ers) whom are co-ordinating their efforts in a co-operative way. They will not tell me exactly what it is they do, but in a few successive months from December last year to last weekend I have seen them go from living in shelters with no food of their own to moving into their own co-op venture (a vacant commercial unit) where they are now selling consignment goods and some catalogue order items of reasonable quality.
For the so-called 'middle class' they need to turn off the TV and stop wasting their incomes on stuff...at least until they have investments that are giving enough passive income to buy what it is they wanted. Self-discipline is the key here.
Ultimately the kvetching about who has more or less is only noise.
The rich have the time to study and learn all the ways to their means, so changing the structure of the tax system or any other such action will have negligible effect.
Fomenting revolution will only see those with the means flee.
Would you act any different?
Cynic
06-05-2008
There's a structural element
There's a structural element as well. Money is loaned into existence, but only the principal. No provision is made for the interest portion of loans, and so now in Canada the debt exceeds the money supply by over 3 to 1. The effect is an inexorable transfer of money towards the apex of the income pyramid.
Is this how we want to live our lives? Of course not. But ignorance of money and banking perpetuates this situation which would be immediately rejected if people were aware of it. Meanwhile, the situation is taking on an increasingly sinister complexion. The illustration at the top of the article is perfect.
reality_check
06-05-2008
Well done, guys!
I agree with most of what was said above, although I relaize that we need capitalists and there should some rewards for taking some risks. However, when you are born with 1 million + , you have a house (mansion) paid, it is not so hard to take a risk. What I am opposed to (as mentioned above) is the excess luxury and blatant opulence that some of those exploiters/capitalists display. There should be a cut off off how many houses one should have, how many chalets, how many cars,... like mentioned above. Will it happen? Are you kidding? We know why some guys do it though. Let's be frank. The guys with the most toys gets the best looking women (most of the time). To deny this is being a hypocritical. Not all women are like that fortunately, but a lot of them look at how much bacon a man will bring, how much his mom or dad could bring, or the potential that both could bring to the table. I know for a fact that many guys are conscious to be driving with the BMW and living in Vancouver to attract women. Of course, there are a bunch of alpha males who like to be the center of attention too. Scientists studied top CEOs and found that a good number where psychopaths. A few of them drink a bit too much. At the end of the day, though, it is the system that makes it so. Capitalism. Dod eat dog. To get to the top anywhere lying gets you there most of the time and gets you there faster. It helps to be connected and have a few millions in the bank to begin with, gotten illegally most of the time, but I digress. At the end of the day, a poor person usually works harder, has more stress. At the very least, they work just as hard and they should be getting a bigger piece of the pie.
Jeffrey J.
06-05-2008
Greatest Good for the Greatest Number
The principle of the greatest good for the greatest number has guided democratic societies since the Athenians first perfected the concept. Interestingly, Artistotle thought the highest good was creating just laws, mirroring the notion that politics is medicine on a large scale. So true.
How Western Society has been hijacked by the intolerant, neo-con agenda which is opposed to democracy is really quite bizarre. It is also a tragedy. At a time when we know so much, and have the ability to help others so effectively, it is unfathomable that we must listen to the endless propaganda from the Fraser Institute, Canwest Global, Stephen Harper and Gordon Campbell.
They recycle their ideas from mimicking the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Times, and other organs of right wing social engineering aimed at dismantling social programs.
As we now live in a world dominated by complicit national medias, there is little opportunity for citizens to debate the impact of the end of democracy.
Sadly, North American Western Democracies are failing. Who would have ever thought this possible.
Van Isle
06-05-2008
While working in my shop
While working in my shop yesterday morning I listened to the Bill Good program with Mel Hertig who's on a travelling road show promoting his new book. The book is about the black side of information on Canadian stats. For example our Corporation Taxes are 3rd from the bottom of the scale measured against other countries in the OECD.
SharingIsGood
06-05-2008
Van Isle
Van Isle:
Please expand, what does this mean? Pay the third lowest? Note that if Canadian corporate taxes are the 3rd lowest, they are being reduced further by our current BC government. If corporate taxes are lower in the USA, we know how well their system works on behalf of its people. That is not the model to follow.
The models to follow are the models whereby countries rank highest on the United Nations index of human development.
Canada is Currently fourth, behind Iceland, Norway, and Australia. The USA is 12th.
http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/
monty
06-05-2008
monty
Mel Hurtig speaks at the Vancouver Public Library at 7 pm tonight.
We are being severely snookered when folks like the Board at BC Ferries give themselves 60% raises and Funny Falcon says there is nothing he can do about it. This is our money these fools are using with gay abandon, piling up debt with over budget projects for the Hail Mary Blessed 2010 Olympics. We should all leave this province before the debt strangles us and causes early deaths.
realisticman
06-05-2008
Hold the Presses
What's Mine is Mine and What's Yours is Mine too!!!
Crawford Killian gives one person's view to a study result that has been more deeply reviewed and shown somewhat variable results, other than the rich getting richer, etc.
As for Canada having the 11th highest life expectancy, not really. Actually Canadian women have almost the top billing on this score, only beaten by Japan, perhaps. And, speaking about Japan, as the article does, remember that the level of self-inflicted, general property crime and lack of responsibility clearly visible in Canada would not and is not tolerated in Japan.
Also, if Britain under Maggie Thatcher caused such a lowering of lifespans then how come over 11 years of Labour government has not turned it around? Remember that Thatcher's successor lost to Labour in 1997.
The article reads like a general envy rant by an ideologue, attempting to conceal the constant sneers of envy in interpretive sociological obfuscation. No wonder these people make themselves sick! The fact that Canada has this type of 19th century soapboxing is testament to the privileged and wealthy society that modern Canada has become.
Commentator Zalm wants to outlaw copyright and patent laws! Yes Zalm, a great way to stimulate innovation, creativity and improvements to our lives. You invent or create it and I'll just steal it, right? I guess this guy buys all his software, music and movies from the bootleggers and the original creators don't get a dime. Sounds fair to Zalm.
Well, Crawford reports on last weeks figures, in a fashion. Yesterday, Stats Can released more detailed figures.
Proportion with low income has fallen considerably
Thanks to economic conditions over the past decade, the percentage of Canadians below the low-income cutoff rate—the threshold below which a larger share of income than average is devoted to the necessities of food, shelter and clothing—has decreased considerably. Among all family types, the proportion fell from a high of 12.1% in 1996 to 7.4% in 2005.
From 1996 to 2005, the percentage of female lone-parent families living in low income dropped from 52.7% to 29.1%, partly because more lone parents are earning income. The share of seniors with low income hit a low of 1.6% in 2005. Also, the proportion of children aged 18 and younger living in low-income families stood at 11.7%, down from a peak of 18.6% in 1996.
So it's either all moot or needs a re-write.
realisticman
06-05-2008
Sharing is Good
Your question regarding corporate taxes.
Here's alink showing Canada has the fourth HIGHEST corporate Taxes, I'm sure you'll be glad to know.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1471.html
realisticman
06-05-2008
Sharing is Good
New Labour. So it wasn't Thatchers Conservatives that only were to blame, as you point out. It was also the soft-left wing Labour party that caused the decline in life expectancy. Thanks for the clarification.
SharingIsGood
06-05-2008
demographics shift, r-man
Realisticman, let's be realistic. The bbaby boomers are beginning to retire. Historically, no demographic of people in North America accrues more wealth than in the ten years prior to retirement: the kids are out from under foot, carreers are mostly stable, sometimes mom goes back to work, the house is paid off. When business slows down, they are the last to be laid off.
Now nearing retirement, the baby boom bubble is hunkering down, saving the money they finally can finally have for themselves now that the kids are done with school. It has next to nothing to do with economic policy. On the other hand, the university kids can't afford university, and their entry level jobs do not afford them accomodation in Vancouver. This, despite low unemployment and good chances for finding employment in many fields due to the retiring boomers.
doggone
06-05-2008
Obviously my kind of blog
Obviously my kind of blog here.
The wife wore a tee shirt that said:
"Eat The Rich"
Maybe that would make them pay attention (sorry, your cash ain't worth nothin' here)
I've been wathing the after affects of the Typhoon in Burma/Myanmar: 22K confirmed dead and 41K missing and presumed...
Now Herself and I are semi well off - own home, reasonable food, water and sanitation.
What I'm getting at is: just about everyone who reads or comments on this forum is "Rich" in terms of humans living at this time. This makes us vulnerable to those who are actually "poor" or even worse:"Hungry"
"It's gonna slide in all directions."
Leonard Cohen, "The Future"
realisticman
06-05-2008
Sharing is Good
My quote that you've quoted is verbatim from Stats Canada. To reinforce your point you say:
Now nearing retirement, the baby boom bubble is hunkering down, saving the money they finally can finally have for themselves now that the kids are done with school. It has next to nothing to do with economic policy. On the other hand, the university kids can't afford university, and their entry level jobs do not afford them accomodation in Vancouver. This, despite low unemployment and good chances for finding employment in many fields due to the retiring boomers.
Well said Sharing. You have basically negated any negative conclusions of both last weeks and this weeks Stats Can Report - as well as most of the gloomy and aggressive comments above.
*****
As for the statement regarding the Iraq war lowering the life-expectancy rates:
The Independent
31 March 2006
Hardly a statistic that would register on any scale in a country with 60 million people. Probably more people died falling in their bathtubs over the years that the British Forces were there.
Frank
06-05-2008
SharingIsGood
To be fair, realisticman had just read his National Post.
Even his own words
appear to be paraphrasing the National Post.
In a nutshell, the National Post and their acolytes (realisticman) are having fits because everyone is looking at individual income and not combined family incomes instead.
Perhaps in another 25 years they will claim that if we each married two other people instead of the traditional one, our family incomes would have grown by 50% and anyone who says different is trying to wave the feared "class war" flag.
And by the way, is there any bigger fear the NP has?
greengreen
06-05-2008
the rich are important
Of course Falcon couldn't do anything about it! Like he couldn't do anything after being stranded by a taxi. F...we have a Bill of Rights for taxi drivers Because Kevin "don't f..with Royalty" Falcon was inconvenienced. In a matter of months, this terrible problem has been addressed.
Addressing the 60% raise of the already well-off? This will not inconvenience the rich-no need for action.
The same type of thinking has resulted in a complete refusal to raise the minimum wage. No one but the relatively poor are affected, so, why do anything?
Frank
06-05-2008
realisticman
Have any evidence to back uyp the assertion that Tony Blair's government was in office as British life expectancy decreased?
No?
Perhaps that's because it increased.
A quote from Richard Smith in the Guardian
And below is a fun BBC chart
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/uk_politics/07/blair_graphs/html/default.stm
Frank
06-05-2008
Corporate taxes
Lower corporate taxes usually means higher VAT/GST taxes.
The push to reduce corporate taxes goes hand in hand with the push to raise VAT/GST taxes, in other words shift the burden from corporations to consumers.
zalm
07-05-2008
Myopia's a killer to a good rant...
R'man couldn't be blinder to what I actually wrote. I said "paper wealth creation...based on copyright or patent law", not copyrights and patents themselves, is a terrible market-distorting force in society, and you will find a variety of economists agreeing with me to a great extent.
My view is that when the responsibility-avoiding corporate structure is not present, all risks are taken by humans, who are subject to law. Appropriating another's copyright or patent is therefore theft and can easily be dealt with by existing police agencies, and appropriate fines levied by the justice system, including, possibly up to 100% of the illegal income earned. Civil court can use the criminal judgement to make virtually-instant restitution to the inventor or copyright-holder.
Corporations are now not subject to the same law that humans are. The free-market-distorting forces of the corporation are by far the biggest impediment to the fair allocation of wealth among all citizens. Nobody, not even me, ever said we should all earn the same. That's functionalism, and nobody - not even followers of Technocracy or the worst Red Marxists subscribes to that strange thought. Those who put the effort and education in should get the reward, with a little extra for luck wherever and however it shows up. But that reward MUST be commensurate with the effort and education put into it.
The world is full of the early graves of people who had the effort, the education, the opportunity, but were screwed out of the rewards by someone who had more power, mostly by virtue of a monopoly of wealth, connections or knowledge. And most of these early victims' graves have kids in them too.
You still can't see that? Get glasses.
Stump
07-05-2008
Quote:Commentator Zalm wants
Corporations routinely use copyright and patent law to stifle innovation and creativity.
Call me a Godin-ite, but I think these days we see more innovation from the hackers, the downloaders, and the copyright-nose thumbers than any other group. Open-source and intellectual property-sharing is the answer, not the problem.
Da Vinci didn't need no stinkin' patents and he had a couple or twenty innovations under his belt.
Modern music would wither if every sample had to have the creator's approval to use it.
The length of time for copyrights and patents needs to be shortened so we can foster even more improvements to our arts and technologies. Gatekeepers just hobble the creative process.
realisticman
07-05-2008
Frank
No I haven't Frank. I, like you, wondered about the following snip from Crawford Kilian's article above.
BTW Frank, didn't read yesterday's Post.
G West
07-05-2008
Quick question for Realisticman
Maybe the National Post didn't cover this part of the census news either:
Lone-parent families make up a record one in four Canadian families with children, according to census information released Wednesday that shows the so-called nuclear family in dramatic decline.
Married couples with children were the only group to experience a drop in the five years since the last census.
There were 1.4 million lone-parent families — 26 per cent of all families with children — last year. That's up some eight per cent from five years earlier. While the vast majority of such households (80 per cent) were headed by women, the number of lone-parent families headed by men was up 15 per cent.
More than 2.1 million children are now living in a lone-parent family.
Evidence of the lone-parent phenomenon reaches back to the early 20th century, but the reasons more and more Canadian children are being raised by only one parent are drastically different than they were 75 years ago.
Regardless of the cause, poverty is a common thread.
In 2005, the median household income for two-parent families in Canada was $67,600. For lone-parent families it was $30,000 — meaning half of all single-parent families were bringing in less than that amount annually.
I always invite respectful comments to my posts at Tyee.
G West
realisticman
07-05-2008
West
Every news media has covered the first Stats Can release. I didn't read Monday's Post. I did read something from a Canada Newswire writer but the whole thing is there on Stats Can's extensive web site, which is where I did go. Stats Canada is also where I found this quote:
Reading of statistics can usually be spun to fit varying ideologies, the quote is from their summary. "Decreased considerably" looks fairly strong to me but like Petruchio and a substantial throng of eager press scribblers, perhaps you see something else.
G West
07-05-2008
Realisticman
I didn't say a word about your reading material. Check again, Frank thought your comments were pretty close to what 'he' read in the National Post. I did notice that Sharing also put some pretty big holes in the credibility of your other favourite reading material ‘The Economist’ as a credible source for Canadian information.
As for the low income cut off, I also posted information last week about how phony and unrealistic that measure is too - and I know you read that.
As Frank often comments, you never seem to acknowledge all the body blows. How come?
I provided some links awhile back to poverty in Canada - it hasn't improved and Stats Can doesn't include statistics for First Nations people on reserves in the mix either.
Ever wonder why?
The only folks for whom things are getting better are the creme de la crème with whom certain unnamed individuals appear to think the world turns.
The rest, sadly, are seen as the grease for those wheels.
That's what I see and I've had no trouble finding plenty of empirical data to confirm it - and that was, as you know, something which started years before the latest census figures.
Things, by every measure are getting worse in this country and in our alter ego across the 49th parallel.
You might want to have a look at McCain's results in yesterday's two primaries by the way.
I always appreciate respectful comments to my posts here at Tyee.
G West
SharingIsGood
07-05-2008
r-man
just because baby boomers are saving, doesn't mean their incomes are rising. It is just that they are in the correct demographic.
There are many openings in many businesses/career fields. The higher paying positions require schooling, and schoolig costs more than ever. The Campbell government has cut funding to post secondary, so jobs are there, but young people can't afford to attend; the median income has gone down. Coffee shop jobs can't pay for schooling, the price of which has dramatically increased under Campbell.
Luke Skywalker
07-05-2008
SIG...
Check out "Disposable Income Per Capita" "Chained [adjusted] to 2002 dollars" from BC Stats:
Year/Income/% Change
1990: $28,282 --
1991: $27,368 -3.2%
1992: $27,078 -1.1%
1993: $26,576 -1.9%
1994: $26,466 -.4%
1995: $26,581 +.4%
1996: $26,282 -1.1%
1997: $26,320 +.1%
1998: $26,436 +.4%
1999: $26,795 +1.4%
2000: $27,726 +3.5%
2001: $27,727 0%
2002: $27,567 -.6%
2003: $27,797 +.8%
2004: $28,687 +3.2%
2005: $29,553 +3%
2006: $30,898 +4.6%
2007: $31,906 +3.3%
In 1990 the disposable income per capita (measured in 2002 dollars) was $28,282.
BC's per capita disposable income did not
again attain the 1990 level until 2004 (14 years later!).
Since then disposable per capita income has jumped another $3,000+ by 2007.
Says something about the current economic climate.
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/DATA/bus_stat/bcea/tab1.asp
G West
07-05-2008
Pardon me Luke Skywalker
Do you have a problem with Stats Can statistics?
I notice you always revert to the BC variety. I've actually noticed this in the past and never bothered to ask why.
Measuring any gross statistic by simply dividing total disposable income by the number of citizens tells you something about the economy - but not a single thing about the actual incomes of citizens and the way that economy 'spends' both its resources and its tax dollars.
In that sense it's like, as Ed would put it, wasting your time on a meaningless figure like GDP.
Thats why the census figures and the poverty figures are so much more useful.
So much of the disposable income reverts each year to the top 5 - 10 % of BC's elite that your statistics tell us absolutely nothing.
Since you seem to like bc stats though, I'd like you to look at the ones in this pdf:
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/pubs/eet/eet0606.pdf
Pay particular attention to the graph on page 2 and note, there, that:
Among the provinces, BC had the worst income gap between the rich and the poor.
Says something about inherent inequality and lack of fairness in this province.
I always welcome respectful comments to my posts at Tyee.
G West
SharingIsGood
07-05-2008
this is not the median - LS
Luke Skywalker,
Your reference seems to be to the mean disposable income, not the median. So, it does not further the argument that the average person is better off.
Yes, salaries and incomes went up for the upper wage earners, pulling up the average (or mean) income; but the median person, the one in the middle has less.
Luke Skywalker
07-05-2008
Oh Geeee West...
Note the year: 2004!
Income Gap Between Rich and Poor:
Poor's Avg Income as a % of Rich's Avg Income - 2004
BC: 16.1%
ON: 16.9%
AB: 18.4%
SK: 20%
MB: 20.9%
Again the data is only up to the year 2004 and not for any subsequent years.
Going back to:
Disposable Income Per Capita" "Chained [adjusted] to 2002 dollars" from BC Stats:
Year/Income/% Change
1990: $28,282
....
2003: $27,797 +.8%
2004: $28,687 +3.2%
2005: $29,553 +3%
2006: $30,898 +4.6%
2007: $31,906 +3.3%
Why the increase in BC's disposable per capita income only since 2004?
'Cause BC's economy sucked big time through the 1990's and into the early 2000's.
G West
07-05-2008
Look Luke - I already told you
I already told you that the statistic per capita disposable income means no more than monkey spit.
You take a huge number - total provincial after tax income (including a whole lot of interest and investment income which means diddly squat to most of the middle class and working people) and divide it by the population of the province.
Meaningless - just like crowing that a constantly increasing GDP does anything about poverty or income discrepancy.
The income of British Columbia's lowest income earners as a category was only 16.1% of the income of the province's highest income earners.
THE WORST SHOWING IN CANADA - Manitoba and Saskatchewan, big surprise, were significantly better.
DO you get the point?
Let me just post the last para of the report for you:
Despite Alberta’s rich having the
highest average income in Canada,
after transfers and taxes, of $134,400,
compared to BC’s rich at $119,900,
there is less inequity in Alberta as the
benefits of Alberta’s strong economy
have been spread more broadly. The
average income level of their poor
($24,700) is 17 per cent above the
level of average income of the poor in
BC ($19,300).
This province, far from being the 'best place in Canada' is, in fact, the worst when it comes to income disparity.
That's the whole point of the discussion - which seems, somehow, to have escaped you completely.
I always welcome respectful comments to my posts at Tyee.
G West
Luke Skywalker
07-05-2008
Ohhh Geee West....
Ya just don't get and ya never will.
'Cause unlike Alberta's economy in the same time frame, BC's sucked big time until around 2004, when it finally really turned the corner.
A rising tide eventually raises all ships.
As for the "rich", where do you think they prefer to live???
BC, Alberta, Ontario? ...where the poor's avg income as a % of rich's avg income is between 16.% - 18.4%?
Or Saskatchewan and Manitoba?... where the poor's avg income as a % of rich's avg income is between 20% - 20.9%
I would suggest that the disproportionate share of Canada's "rich" reside in either BC, AB, or ON, for obvious reasons, which affects those above figures.
Use some common sense man.
G West
07-05-2008
Luke Skywalker
The figures I'm talking about are from 2004 - well into the current CEO regime. If I had more recent stats I'd post them - they are, after all, from your chief source of data, remember?
Lower income British Columbians had only 16.9% of the income of wealthy British Columbians in that year - How many times do you have to be told something that basic?
The 'best place on earth' had the worst record for income equity in the whole country - I don't care what disposable income per person averaged out to - this province is the butt end of confederation when it comes to creating decent communities and circumstances for ALL its people.
I always welcome respectful comments to my posts at Tyee - however, as I told you before, I won't respond to anything that isn't addressed to G West.
realisticman
10-05-2008
Sharing
I too was homeless once Sharing. No money and no place to go. I slept rough for a little while but soon realised that I had to find work and function in society and I did. I've never looked back. I made a choice that I was not going to get wasted and neither was I going to live off of the state.
A wise man once said to me that when you're depressed is not the time celebrate and get wasted. I've always remembered that.
As I've repeatedly said; I do believe in assisting the truly unfortunate.
SharingIsGood
10-05-2008
I'm glad you got through it, R-man
I'm glad you got through a rough stretch, R-man; most do, but not everybody does. I believe this government has been making it harder for people who lack resilience to get through those rough stretches. As a matter of fact, it has been my experience that people have been becoming less resilient under this government. We are now seeing a higher percentage of people who are truly unfortunate.