QUICK! SOMEBODY GET ON THAT CAT FUNDRAISER: After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States.
h/t Paula
QUICK! SOMEBODY GET ON THAT CAT FUNDRAISER: After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States.
h/t Paula
“They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.”
That’s a strange euphemism for electing Barack Obama.
Gee, which political party has been in power in Canada during that period of time? It certainly wasn’t the NDP or…let me think…
In fact, we’re the only country whose middle-class income is equal to or higher than that in the US, according to the graph in the article. No question, this is going to be on page 1 in the Globe and Star tomorrow.
I can’t believe the petulance of Stephen Harper, cynically instituting sound economic policies which raise incomes and lessen income inequality all in a desperate attempt to get more votes.
/sarc
Yeah, well the idiot Progressives in this country sure in Hell appear to have a problem with that. And I have no clue whatsoever why. Maybe they’re all sick.
In other news, MIDDLE AGED Gen Xers and late Boomers in California are moving back in with their Early Boomer/Greatest Generation parents in double the numbers that the Millenials do.
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2014/04/stop-cooking-with-cheese.html
Now -that- is a Recovery(TM)!
Well, if the NYTimes story is to be believed (I take it cum grano salis) the
Americans have got what they voted for – unicorns and cute fuzzy bunnies.
We in Canada also have received what we voted for, which is economic substantiality,
hopefully translated into a degree of prosperity.
Must be down to the stupendous economic recovery in the USA.
The one the Pressstitutes keep talking about, that no one else can see.
Another great achievement by the community organizer in chief?
This survival of the canadian middle class will be denounced as an act of oppression by the Evil Stephen Harper, cited by the Just-In crew as more evidence the Conservatives are uncanadian.
After all when the US economy tanks, the Libtards insist we follow in lock step.
This allows them to blame the USA for the consequences of their stealing.
What better time than now to turn over our country to a part-time, substitute drama teacher. Hasn’t he been complaining that the middle class in Canada has been under terrible pressure?
God help us all
P.S. Ooh, but look at his flowing locks!!!
Actually, I did hear it on CBC radio today…but they did not say “Justin Trudeau was not available for comment”.
Hope & change . Obama 2008.
Lots of change , no hope left.
Reminds me of my youth under the elder Trudeau.
As has been alluded to above the lesson here is that Obama and the dems and the red wing of the GOP (bush, dole, boehner, McConnell) abetted by the crony unions and capitalists have made a hash of the us economy over the last ten-14 years while the in Canada the LPC under pressure from the bond industry and reform and later PMSH have done the opposite.
The lesson: lower taxes and lower/better legislation benefits the middle class more than any other.
Quick! Tell Justin Trudeau! He can use this… or something.
All this means is that the socialist hordes will try to wring more freebees out of the so called middle class. Heaven forbid that tax freedom day actually slips back into May. Not that it matters much because the price of gas/diesel, electricity, all other utilities and ever growing user fees continue to decimate what’s left of the middle class. Take the Government jobs out of Ontario and it would start to look more like Michigan, with Toronto emulating Detroit. Harper may have his finger in the dyke (no, not that one) but if the Liberals or NDP form the next government we can pretty well kiss our new found status as #1 goodbye.
I’m still struggling with what that sentence from the article is supposed to mean.
Be careful, the author poses manyhypotheses, greater income redistribution again and again, stronger unions, higher minimum wage, lower ceo pay. But these dont explain why middle Income wages grew they may, repeat may, have something to do with income gaps.
They dont mention things like taxes falling and stable housing market. They dont speak of family foation or deformation. They dont mention ecomic growth in energy and construction.
They do mention greater rates of numeracy and literacy in the younger generations.
Hard conversation to have when you mix terms of income inequality and wage growth up.
The unfortunate trade off (at least for Ontario) is that although the wages are higher here, it buys less because of government supply controls/taxation and government debt makes a working income a liability.
Reading the article again I am amazed at the spinning going on. This is a measure of AFTER TAX income. So the authors discussions around redistribution are completely off base. The facts actually fly in the face of their proposed solutions of more re-distribution.
Next question is going to be is a health care premium paid to a provate insurance company included in their calculations or not. In the US technically it was not a tax and only the ACA penalty is considered a tax not a provately purchased plan. How in the world are they going to compare that? If you assume all Health Insurance Premiums are a tax then the US middle class just took a major hit to its incomes ont he order of hundreds in not 1000 + a year drop in income.
Aftertax income is fuelled by the the amount coming in at the top and the tax take. We know Cdn taxes have dropped for both personal and coprorate. The coprorate rate drop may be a contrbutor to increased business health, and the corresponding increase in wages that may drive, especially if it fuelled prodcutivity investments.
The article could well be placed in the “your moral and intellectual superiors” envelope. The author is an idealogue to whom facts must be made to fit their worldview. Squeezed middle class means more government, more union, more tax and more regulation……apparently the US needs more of the above according to this author
JDN – seems pretty straightforward to me. The NYT cannot or will not admit that the policies that they promote don’t work. If the current president were one who was not trying to bring the US down a peg or two then it’s unlikely that Canada would have caught up in this measurement. We have good government, they don’t. And it’s too late to scream “it’s Bush’s fault!”
They like to consider themselves thinkers, but they can’t point out the 800 lb gorilla in the room: “the Democrats are completely running things, so it’s their policies that caused this”. Just try to show a Dem a chart showing unemployment rate that highlights who controls the senate. Every time the Dems hold the senate, unemployment goes up. There’s a logical inference to be made there somewhere, but I guess logic is racist.
Keep yapping Justin, you’re tightening your own noose every time you open your gob.
The boobs behind the Liberal curtain pulling his strings have no clue either, all they’re counting on is the wow factor they believe their chosen one has with a mop of hair, a smile and an empty suit with the right name tag to ride them to glory. Beside PM Harper he looks like a first year apprentice, far, far from ready to take over the reins of power.
“Finally, governments in Canada and Western Europe take more aggressive steps to raise the take-home pay of low- and middle-income households by redistributing income.”
😉
So, what you’re really saying is that, if you include health care insurance costs, the Canadian “middle class”, whatever that is (other than being, er, most of us) is doing very nicely, thank you very much, and really rather better than our counterparts in the USA.
It’s true, of course, that the public-sector debt load in Ontario and Quebec is an explicit and embarrassing subsidy of lifestyles past, but I’m particularly liking the 17-point lead that Stephen J. Harper has in Ontario in the new Angus Reid poll: I’m guessing, of course, but that would correspond to the 21-point swing in the Ontario by-elections of last year from the Liberals to the Conservatives (versus the 2011 provincial general election); so maybe there’s a chance we can at least start to clean out the outhouse and get some indoor plumbing.
I notice the articles promotes the meme that the rich are getting richer, therefore the poor are getting poorer:
“The findings are striking because the most commonly cited economic statistics — such as per capita gross domestic product — continue to show that the United States has maintained its lead as the world’s richest large country. But those numbers are averages, which do not capture the distribution of income. With a big share of recent income gains in this country flowing to a relatively small slice of high-earning households, most Americans are not keeping pace with their counterparts around the world.”
Hmm, according to the second chart in the article, Americans have seen real growth of their incomes starting at about $20,000 per year, so it is not true that “most Americans are not keeping pace with their counterparts around the world.” Quite the contrary, actually. Look closely at that chart – that rise is interrupted from about $25 – $30,000. I suspect that is where taxes and less access to government programs kick in and really hurt the worker who has to rise above that level to continue to enjoy growing prosperity.
Here’s an inconvenient fact: taxation is the number one contributor to poverty; the data clearly supports that. In Canada we are, slowly, moving away from bigger government; in the US they are catapulting towards much bigger and more intrusive government.
“Progressive” policies like soak the rich and green economy hurt everyone, but they disproportionately hurt lower income groups, particularly the working poor. The very people the progressives state they are trying to “save” are most hurt by their feel good (for them) policies.
Justin Trudeau’s central election plank has been demolished. No, the middle class is not afraid of Harper and therefore in need of hope, they’re afraid of what statism will do to their improving standard of living and hope Trudeau and the progressives never get their chance to endanger prosperity.
David,
It was more a question of how the study was conducted. Did it include HC or not.
We pay as a tax they pay seperately, or not pay as apparently the case. That speaks nothing for quality of service rendered etc. Just that the basket of money you get to make choices on appears to be equivalent now.
Of course was that measured at a time last year when the currencies were at par?
The bigger issue is the journalist somehow thinks income redistirbution would help improve after tax income, when in fact the middle class is generally a net payor or funds not a net beneficiary.
As I said, either iproving the enviuronment and for earning more, and/or reducing the governments take are the ways to improve middle class incomes. SO in fact a cut in corproate income tax actually may assist middle class incomes if it creates more and better paying jobs and opportunities for job creation. Nothing bids up wages more than expansion and nothing pays for it better than high productivity investments where the incremental job is high value.
You dont get more pie by just handing around smaller slices.
😉
Quite apart from which, I am truly mystified by the Liberals doubling-down on their usual bunkum that cloistered adolescence and adolescent rebelliousness is a winning electoral strategy. The whole thing started with William Lyon Mackenzie King, or maybe even William Lyon Mackenzie (the first, you know, rebellious mayor of Toronto), an ancestor of Mr. King.
After all, the Liberals grew up, consecutively, in the protective condominium of the British Empire-USA relationship, followed by the more discursive, but no less protective condominium of the Cold War.
With Mr. Trudeau, Jr., Chrystia Freeland, et. al, they have seriously, and unaccountably, raised their own stakes (they must be desperate) — they are attempting, as never before, to portray themselves as the “kids in charge in the playground”.
Paul Wells, if I am not mistaken, called Paul Martin, Jr. “weird” for invoking his father’s memory in trying to justify his proposed nationalization of the child care industry. Which led to a grown-up response: “The Liberals want to turn the raising of your children over to the experts. Well, I know millions of experts: their names are mom and dad.” It would look much better on Mr. Wells (to be blunt), a fellow graduate of my University, as it happens, if he quit hangin’ with Justin for selfies, and started calling Mr. Trudeau, Jr. “weird”.
I personally will be voting, again, for the grown up, and will be more than pleased to produce a good number of the 37 pieces of acceptable identification at the polling booth. I’m also quite certain that many millions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (if they had the chance), as well as their descendents and relatives in this country, would and will do the same.
Consider the possibility that if Churchill had gone to Prague for a “photo op”, as the boy-man calls it, rather than staying in London, how the world might have been different…