CCPA Policy Note

Entries Tagged as 'inequality'

Top 10 Reasons for Upper-Income Tax Increases

January 17th, 2012 · · 21 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes

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 [...]

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Tackling inequality means rethinking upper-income tax rates

December 23rd, 2011 · · 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 [...]

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Reflections on the year past and the year to come: Inequality explodes into the public discourse

December 22nd, 2011 · · 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 [...]

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BC’s Top 1%: Doing fabulous, thank you

October 11th, 2011 · · 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, [...]

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What is a middle class income these days?

July 20th, 2011 · · 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, [...]

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Raising the minimum wage: not if but how much and how fast

February 10th, 2011 · · 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 [...]

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A Challenge to BC’s Leadership Candidates: Dare to Be Bold and to Tell Us the Truth

January 4th, 2011 · · 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 [...]

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Your Brain on Capitalism

September 7th, 2010 · · 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 [...]

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BC’s Urban Housing (Un)affordability

January 25th, 2010 · · 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: [...]

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There is more to good economic policy than protecting the interests of employers

May 6th, 2009 · · 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 [...]

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