The Rich Fight Back

Linda McQuaig on how StatsCan foments revolution:

So last week the Post was quick to denounce a Statistics Canada report revealing rising inequality, even accusing StatsCan of setting off a “class war”. StatsCan’s offence was to document the fact that the earnings of middle-class Canadians have stagnated since 1980. Meanwhile, earnings have risen at the top, while earnings of the poor have declined.

It’s not that the StatsCan report was inflammatory. It went out under the heading “Catalogue no. 97-563,” with the stirring title: Earnings and Incomes of Canadians Over the Past Quarter Century, 2006.

StatsCan’s knack for dull presentation perhaps explains why the venerable institution has been able to survive and assemble much important information, even though its data sometimes embarrass its political masters. (For this, retiring Canadian chief statistician Ivan Fellegi deserves considerable credit.)

But it’s easy to see why the Post is nervous about information on rising inequality getting into the hands of ordinary Canadians.

Ordinary Canadians might also be interested to learn that in the post-war years of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, most Canadians experienced real increases in their incomes.

Neil Brooks, a tax professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, notes that during this era the share of income received by the richest 1 percent actually declined - from about 20 percent in the early part of the century to about 7 or 8 percent by 1980. The rich didn’t like this, and have been waging a kind of class war ever since, convincing governments to impose “neo-conservative” policies like lower minimum wages, tighter monetary policy, less social insurance protection, open markets and shifting the tax burden from capital to labour.

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