The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says that by 2:30 this afternoon, the best-paid Canadian CEOs (average $6.6 million) will have earned collected as much money as the average Canadian ($42,988) will earn in a year. I’m not clear on whether this is 2:30 p.m. in Toronto or Alberta but it stinks in any time zone. Another thing that stinks: I somehow doubt this will get the level of attention reserved for so-called Tax Freedom Day.
Strangely, there’s apparently no political will to increase taxes on the extremely wealthy.
Then again, if it makes you angry that exceptionally wealthy people aren’t paying exceptional taxes, you’re probably just jealous. What’s wrong with a growing, 30-year-long-and-counting gap between the wealthy and the rest of us? You’re not some kind of pinko Bolshevik, are you? What have you been reading lately? Probably someone like that awful Linda McQuaig. Speaking of, she had a must-read column in the Toronto Star last week:
The massive upward flow of income has largely been invisible to the public, even though it may well amount to the most significant change in Canadian society in decades.
The impact on Canada’s social fabric is huge and likely to grow. Recent research — particularly the work of British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett — shows that less equal societies almost always have more violence, more disease, more mental health problems, higher infant mortality rates, reduced life expectancies, as well as less social cohesion. The effects are most pronounced at the bottom, but are evident throughout the society.
Something to ponder while you take your afternoon coffee break. Ponder and maybe work up a little healthy anger about.
