The Rich Get Richer: 2010 Was a Very Good Year to Be in the 1%, Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic “This recovery has been a luxury item. For the bottom 99%, real income growth over the first two years of the recovery was one-fifth of one percent. The
Continue readingTag: Income Inequality
Northern Insights / Perceptivity: What will Canada be?
I wonder if evangelical christian Stephen Harper would agree with views of American fundamentalist Franklin Graham. That million dollar a year American preacher is the son of Billy who began in the Christian and Missionary Alliance church favoured by Canada’s Prime Minster. Stephen Harper seems at least to share the
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Canada too!
Will American Anti-Labor Policies Infect Europe?, Dave Johnson, Campaign for America’s Future The threat is in the air: “Shut up and take the wage cuts or we will move your job to China.” “…Workers in countries like China where people have no say have low wages, terrible working conditions, long
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: No net-zero reality for IHA executives
In the blog article Failing healthcare managers still paid handsomely, I noted that average earnings of the top 10 people at the Fraser Health Authority rose almost $4,500 per month between 2008 and 2011, a cost increase of 21% to FHA. Of course, in BC’s healthcare system, bumps in the
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: More not-net-zero reality
In Failing healthcare managers still paid handsomely, I noted that average earnings of the top 10 people at the Fraser Health Authority rose almost $4,500 per month between 2008 and 2011. That represented a 21% increase to FHA, indicating generosity that surprises considering the difficulties FHA has had in delivering
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: BC’s income disparity worst in nation
Look past the political rhetoric, the paid advertisements and the work of reporters shilling for the B.C. Liberals. Look at information generated by the provincial government’s own statistical agency. It tells a clear story, devoid of spin: “Based on data from 2008, the average income of the top 10% of
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Romney pays 15% tax on $200m personal fortune
Mitt Romney: the gaffes in full, Josh Marshall, The Guardian “As a fabulously wealthy man running to be the president of a country that prides itself on its middle class identity, Romney is permanently striving for the common touch while somehow keeping it real about just how different his life
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: America’s turmoil taking it toward disaster
At Truthdig, Joe Conason peels recent layers of “respectability” that hide a reprehensible man who happens to be frontrunner in Iowa presidential caucuses. The Bigots and Billionaires in Ron Paul’s Orbit. “For many years, Paul was merely an outlying crank in the ranks of the Republican Party—a “libertarian” who courted
Continue readingIncome inequality grows in Happy Harperland
Emily Dee points out the sickening reality of living in Fatherland. The rich are getting richer, the middle class is being crunched and the poor, well they just keep getting poorer. We don’t really need statistics to tell us that we are worse off today then we were five years
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: For many, this is a depression
Does living luxuriously in secure compounds and travelling the world first class, richly clothed and dining extravagantly in the company of hired sycophants, qualify a person to determine or advise on social and economic policy? Or, does it encourage the individual, convinced by material success, to join or fund those
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Economics 101: The Reality of Canadian Capitalism
In More Academic Terms
Continue readingTalking ‘Bout That Gggg-Ghettoization
Huffington Post Canada has carried a joint paper published by Queens University, The University of Toronto and Statistics Canada that shows Canadians are increasingly becoming ghettoized by income. The paper represent the difference that the income gap has grown between the richest and poorest neighbourhoods in Canada’s largest metropolitan areas. The
Continue readingTalking ‘Bout That Gggg-Ghettoization
Huffington Post Canada has carried a joint paper published by Queens University, The University of Toronto and Statistics Canada that shows Canadians are increasingly becoming ghettoized by income. The paper represent the difference that the income gap has grown between the richest and poorest neighbourhoods in Canada’s largest metropolitan areas.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Inequality at 30-Year High
Inequality in wealth quickly metastasizes into other afflictions including inequality in income and inequality in opportunity. It chokes off social mobility and nurtures the ascendancy of an oligarchy in which political and economic power is siphoned away, particularly from the middle classes, to a new ruling order. Now the OECD
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Trending toward turmoil
The Poor, the Near Poor and You, New York Times, Nov. 23/11: “…And times are tough for the middle class. But everyone needs to recognize a chilling reality: One in three Americans — 100 million people — is either poor or perilously close to it. “…The worst downturn since the
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Occupiers hold NYC park by force
NYPD Occupying Liberty Square; Demands Unclear “New York, NY — The NYPD have been occupying Liberty Square since 1:00am Tuesday morning, with the brand new occupation now set to enter its second day in just a few short hours. But will anyone listen to them when their message is so
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: George Monbiot explains national bankruptcy
The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen, George Monbiot, The Guardian
“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make f…
Thanks to Occupy, the term ‘income inequality’ now part of the national conversation
It took the media long enough to catch on but, as Ben Smith notes, ‘Occupy Wall Street is winning’.
A quick search of the news–including print articles, web stories and broadcast transcripts–via Nexis reveals a significant rise in the use of the te…
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: The myth of democracy
Oligarchy, American Style, Paul Krugman, New York Times Op-Ed
“We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in nam…
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: It is class warfare…
begun [by] the financial overlords who control all of the major levers of power in what passes for our democracy.
… three decades of rampant upper-crust greed … will be well marked by future historians recording the death of the American dream. In…
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