By now you have all
seen the OCED report that says “The richest 1% of Canadians
saw their share of total income increase from 8.1% in 1980 to
13.3% in 2007”. It was this discrepancy along with the actual
amount that the rich take home compared with the average working man that spawned the Occupy movement.
Recently questions are being asked, and rightly so, as to if or how
this effects our democracy and I will get back to that in a minute.
First, so that we can truly see what this divide real means let us
look at the actual numbers (as provided by Stats Can for 2009), below
is data extracted from two separate Stats Can tables combined for
easy comparison and with % columns added. Click on table to enlarge.
Data extracted from -
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil106a-eng.htm
Whilst all the dialog
has been about the top 1% and the remaining 99% I prefer to take a
little broader view. It can be see for instance that only just over
5% of individuals made more than $100,000 whilst the remaining 95% or
so are below that threshold. The same column indicates that a full
quarter of individuals took home less than $15,000 and that the
median income was $28, 840. Please note 'median' is not the same as
average, this indicated that an equal number of individuals made more
than $28, 840 as did make less. It does not of course show the
obscene salaries (and other perks) of those few at the very top but
(presumably) includes them in the 'making above $250,000 category!.
A warning here
statistics can be spun any which way and are reliant upon the input
data so if for instance some of those very low income individuals
filed income tax (which is I presume where this data came from) to
get the gst rebate and some did not it would skew the numbers, as
would the use of offshore accounts and creative bookeeping from the
more affluent. Never the less I find it more revealing to look at
actual income levels rather than saying the gap is getting wider or
the top XX% is getting XX% more than the bottom XX%, that to me is
pretty much meaningless!
I have transferred the
family incomes to the chart for the same income levels for
comparison, make what you wish of them but do note that nearly 10% of
FAMILIES bring home less than $25,000. One final note before I move
on, the report also says that “Since the mid-1980s, annual
hours of low-wage workers fell from 1300 to 1100 hours, while those
of higher-wage workers fell by less, from 2200 to 2100 hours.”
Its not so much the change that bothers me but the fact that those
with low income who NEED the hours cant get them, whilst those who
could afford to make room for a few more fellow workers by reducing
their hours do not. Not as simple as that perhaps but sharing a job
may be better than more on unemployment or welfare?
Any way, my excuse for
posting this was to talk about if such disparities of income effect
our democracy, I recently heard a discussion on TVO on this very
subject where one speaker said yes, the rich (particularly the
corporate rich) have greater access to government via lobbying and
'consultation' than do the poor. Another speaker (I believe it was
Preston Manning) said that so long as 5 or 6 citizens can form a
political party, expand it and develop it into a viable option then
democracy is alive and well! Well Preston you may have done that but
the party you formed is no longer in existence and conditions today
are a far cry from those days, nor does the ability to form a
political party constitute all there is to democracy. The ability to
spend vast sums of money to publicize and promote your point of view
has been clearly shown to be necessary to get the voters to take any
notice, a fact that our current government has grasped only too well
with their ever expanding 'publicity' department in the PMO and their
removal of per vote funding to developing and smaller partys.
Additionally, those that are on the upper rungs of the income ladder
can better afford to contribute larger sums to the party of their
choice than can the guys at the bottom for whom a $50 or $100
donation is a big hunk out of their budget.
So yes, income does
indirectly effect our democracy by a disparity of both access and
funding to political partys and thus effect both the platform,
actions, and media attention of whatever party the rich or poor
support gets. Money and the ability to spend on advertizing should
not affect the way the population votes and the party who gets to run
our government for a while, but it clearly does, and indeed recently
did, enough so that the conservatives 'bent the rules' so that they
could spend more. Meanwhile just to rub salt into the wound the very
services that the folk on the lower end of the ladder, and those who
have just been pushed back one more step, need are being cut.
“Employment
Insurance processing centers are being cut from 120 to 19.”
NINETEEN! across the entire country with “The
number of unemployed Canadians increasing for the second straight
month, climbing by 20,500 to 1,394,700.”
I bet these folk believe there is a effect upon democracy and
governance by income values!
And that’s the
way it looks to this lower income Canadian as service cuts loom, full
time jobs disappear, and banks and corporations report increasing
profits and I feel helpless to effect the choices that various levels
of government are making.
1 comment:
you are absolutely right! thanks for your post..
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