Archive for the ‘Equality’ Category
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »
Women still face barriers to equality
Two measures do appear to make a significant difference. The first is the availability and price of child care. That explains why all three Quebec cities in the index had strong scores. The second is the implementation of pay equity legislation. Cities which required equal-pay-for-work-of-equal-value among municipal workers outscored those with no such policies.
Tags: ideology, standard of living, women
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Misplaced euphoria over Canada’s middle-class supremacy
The chief value of the report is that it shows what happens when a rich nation permits an affluent minority to amass the lion’s share of national income, tolerates below-poverty wages and allows education to become unaffordable. Canada is venturing down that path.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Canada’s middle class is doing well? It’s not so simple.
“The study itself is fine… It’s just not getting to the heart of the issue and ignores longer term trends.” Data from the 2006 census shows that median real earnings of individuals working full-time from 1980 and 2005 increased to $41,401 from $41,348 — just $53 over 25 years, Graves said. Canada’s middle class is shrinking and feeling more pessimistic about the future… “As you move from older Canada down to middle age and younger Canada, people are seeing stagnation and in many cases decline,”
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax, youth
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Inequality punishes Canada both inside and out
… as a 2013 Conference Board of Canada study points out, the domestic economy remains near the bottom of the range in terms of spreading the wealth… The rich are getting richer but on an international level the relative economic growth of developed and emerging countries shows the exact opposite trend. Less wealthy emerging nations are generating a steadily rising portion of the global economy at the expense of high wage countries like Canada.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Making sense of Canada’s middle-class distress debate
In European counties like Norway, the poor fared better. Canada, as usual, tended to be in the middle. What the Times study does show is that, in terms of eliminating the welfare state, the Conservatives have more work to do. They have not yet finished the job… If they had, the poorest Canadians, like their U.S. counterparts, would have seen real incomes decline. But give Harper credit for perseverance. He has announced that cutbacks to medicare and old age pensions will kick in after the next election.
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Yes, our middle class has done better (asterisk)
The Times makes a series of assumptions to conclude that Canada’s middle class has “most likely” pulled ahead of its American counterpart since 2010. The last recession was worse there, and recent U.S. income growth has gone almost entirely to the rich, while a more redistributive tax system in Canada ensures that income gains at the top get shared more with those below… But the reams of data the report relied on come with many caveats.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
… inequality in so-called market incomes — which does not count taxes or government benefits — “is high but not off the charts in the United States.” Yet the American rich pay lower taxes than the rich in many other places, and the United States does not redistribute as much income to the poor as other countries do. As a result, inequality in disposable income is sharply higher in the United States than elsewhere.
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Thomas Piketty Undermines the Hallowed Tenets of the Capitalist Catechism
… in the late 1970s, the trend toward equality reversed. Workers’ output-per-hour continued to rise, but their wages and benefits flattened. Almost all of the gains from the increased productivity of the last three and a half decades went to corporate investors and their top managers. The poverty rate rose by a third… When they could no longer ignore the data, economists blamed the workers themselves for not being educated enough for the new information age… The ultimate solution, he writes, is a worldwide progressive tax on private capital.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, privatization, rights, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Equal opportunity a right that Canada must preserve
When young people cannot build roles as productive participants in an economic mainstream that is supposed to be open, competitive and welcoming, it is not only the legitimate prospects of youth but also the mainstream itself that faces peril… Social capital… is not about equality of outcomes but about equality of opportunity – a priority the right, left and centre must preserve.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living, tax, youth
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Lack of pay equity leads to labour pains for midwives
If a pay equity process had been established and maintained by the Ministry of Health, pay equity principles and law would dictate that midwifery work should be valued at nearly double the current compensation. It’s not right that as women front-line workers, we continue to subsidize health care by discounting our labour.
Tags: Health, ideology, women
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Recent Comments