Some feel we shouldn’t increase taxes on upper-income folks. After all, people know best how to spend their money, whereas the government will only waste it on needless activities. Well then, I humbly submit the following Top 10 list of reasons for upper-income tax increases (in descending order). #10: Ridiculous real estate. Check out Vancouver’s [...]
Entries Tagged as 'inequality'
Top 10 Reasons for Upper-Income Tax Increases
January 17th, 2012 · Seth Klein · 21 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
Tags: inequality·Taxes
Tackling inequality means rethinking upper-income tax rates
December 23rd, 2011 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
2011 was the year rising inequality finally exploded into the mainstream discourse. A few year-end reading recommendations: Victoria Times-Colonist editorial writer Paul Willcocks wrote a terrific piece on the subject (you can find it here); and similarly, a group of UBC economists (including CCPA research associate David Green) authored a series on inequality for the [...]
Tags: inequality·Taxes
Reflections on the year past and the year to come: Inequality explodes into the public discourse
December 22nd, 2011 · Seth Klein · 2 Comments · Climate change, Poverty, inequality & welfare
If this past year – marked by the Arab Spring and the fall arrival of the Occupy movement — has taught us anything, it is that we never know when historic moments come. And when they do, that which seemed political impossible is suddenly in play. Many of us found the explosion of the Occupy [...]
BC’s Top 1%: Doing fabulous, thank you
October 11th, 2011 · Seth Klein · 9 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
Occupy Wall Street has shone new light on the growing gap between the richest 1% and the rest of us (the 99 percenters). But that’s the U.S. right? Surely, our reality is different, eh? As the occupy movement comes to Canada in the coming week, we don’t really have reason to copy these American trouble-makers, [...]
Tags: inequality·tax cuts·Taxes
What is a middle class income these days?
July 20th, 2011 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · Poverty, inequality & welfare
Whenever we consider the pros and cons of a new policy, we want to know if it benefits or hurts the poor, the middle class and those who are better off. Often, the answer depends on how we define each of these groups. It’s said that 99% of Canadians think of themselves as middle class, [...]
Tags: income·inequality·middle class
Raising the minimum wage: not if but how much and how fast
February 10th, 2011 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Transparency & accountability
While lone voices from the business sector still oppose a minimum wage increase (as in this article in The Province), the minimum wage debate in BC has now firmly shifted past the question of whether we should raise it or not. Virtually all leadership contenders for both the BC Liberals and the BC NDP have [...]
Tags: inequality·leadership race·minimum wage·poverty·poverty reduction
A Challenge to BC’s Leadership Candidates: Dare to Be Bold and to Tell Us the Truth
January 4th, 2011 · Seth Klein · 15 Comments · Climate change, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
Some thoughts on what I’d love to hear in the current leadership contests: As a number of fundamental crises become more apparent (ecological and economic, not to mention the democratic deficit), the public is looking for bold ideas and bold leadership. Sadly, too many political strategists (as they will confess in private company) operate on [...]
Tags: campaign·carbon tax·child poverty·inequality·leadership·poverty reduction·role of government
Your Brain on Capitalism
September 7th, 2010 · Peter Prontzos · 3 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Environment, resources & sustainability, Poverty, inequality & welfare
At least as far back as Sokrates, people have speculated on the relationship between psychology and politics. In the 20th century, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and members of the Frankfurt School (such as Herbert Marcuse) pioneered discussion about how individual dispositions affect one’s social and political ideologies. On the other hand, social psychologists like Stanley [...]
BC’s Urban Housing (Un)affordability
January 25th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 4 Comments · Agriculture, Environment, resources & sustainability, Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
A new study published today by the Frontier Institute for Public Policy finds that Vancouver has the most unaffordable urban housing market not just in Canada, but in all of Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. This conclusion is based on a very simple, yet effective measure of housing affordability: [...]
There is more to good economic policy than protecting the interests of employers
May 6th, 2009 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · BC Election 2009, Economy, Employment & labour, Environment, resources & sustainability
Next week’s election will take place in the midst of an economic crisis which hit our province seemingly out of the blue last fall and hit us hard, causing 69,000 job losses between November and March (the April numbers will be released on Friday, May 8, and are expected to be just as grim as [...]
Tags: campaign·green infrastructure·inequality·Liberals·NDP·Obama·platform·recession·tax cuts·unemployment
