I'm not sure the last time they talked about class war in the Vancouver Sun but, from my experience it isn't a regular occurrence.
M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sid Shniad Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 3:29 PM Subject: Income polarization is a recipe for class war - Vancouver Sun http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Income+polarization+recipe+class/510700 0/story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+canw est%2FF7453+%28Vancouver+Sun+-+Columnists%29 Vancouver Sun July 15, 2011Income polarization is a recipe for class war The richest Canadians grab more of the pie while everyone else shares less By Stephen Hume A rising tide lifts all boats -including the life-rafts -so nobody should fret about the rich getting richer because the poor will get richer, too. This wishful thinking drove the decade-long ideological agenda of British Columbia's neo-Conservative proselytizers, including those calling themselves Liberals. Reality, however, has a way of sandblasting the rosy tint off the blinkered spectacles favoured by ideologues. The rising tide lifts some boats -their boats, it turns out -while others just swamp. This we learn from the Conference Board of Canada. Income inequality has increased rapidly over the past 20 years. The richest Canadians grab more total national income. Low-and middle-income Canadians share less. Only five of 17 developed nations have income inequality worse than Canada's. We lose ground in gender equity, too. Between 2006 and 2009, the number of seniors living in poverty grew; 70 per cent were women. As for those lifeboats, many sink, even as happy, self-satisfied neo-Cons sail away to Treasure Island. Oh, that we could all run upon the reefs, as did our chief navigator, Gordon Campbell, and then surf away to a blissful gig at public expense as Canadian high commissioner in London. Unfortunately, growing numbers are left clinging to foundering life-rafts despite that rising tide. Consider this from a Maclean's magazine survey in 2009. Compensation for Canada's top CEOs increased 444 per cent in the years from 1995 to 2007. The top dog at Power Corp. earned a paltry $5.6 million a year in 1995. In 2007, he took home $29.2 million. The big cheese at the Royal Bank earned $2.3 million in 1995. That rose to $44.2 million. Frankly, these folks make BC Ferries' CEO David Hahn's controversial $314,000-a-year pension look like chump change. Now, few sensible people begrudge a CEO high pay for running a company well; contributing to job growth which keeps middle-and lower income Canadians in work with decent benefits; returning a fair profit to investors and so on. Canadians are not dogs-inthe-manger. But the like-minded boards who reward CEOs with remuneration at rates hundreds of times the rate enjoyed by working stiffs, display an unsavoury -and unsustainable -ethos of greed. This remorseless widening of the income gap smacks of the not-so-gilded age of merciless tycoons. In B.C., while our provincial government was insisting civil servants were overpaid, contracting out jobs at much lower pay, imposing zero-percent increases and freezing the minimum wage, it was simultaneously inflating management salaries by more than 40 per cent, a bigger rise in one year than the average Canadian wage rose over a decade. Although the Conference Board's report deserves attention, the observation isn't exactly new. Statistics Canada's analytical studies branch reported in 2005 that the income gap between top and bottom had expanded by 35 per cent between 1989 and 2004. It warned that a prosperous middle-income class, upon which our political and economic stability is founded, was shrinking while the lower-and upper-income classes grew. In terms of wealth, while earnings for the top income group were increasing by 16.4 per cent between 1980 and 2005, earnings for the bottom group fell by 20.6 per cent. The shrinking middle stagnated. There will, of course, be shrieks from wealthy ideologues that it just isn't so; that the working poor are better off, while the rich are really poor. But the people most affected know what's going on. Our politicians had better pay attention. Severe income polarization is a recipe for class war. Keep it up and the political stability we've enjoyed for so long will vanish in a wink and we'll be back to Wobblies handing out pamphlets entitled How to Fire your Boss. Come to think of it, somebody handed me that pamphlet just the other day. The Wobs, it turns out, are back -and organizing on the Web, too. [email protected] _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
