Andrew Coyne takes a sober look at the economic state of Canadians today and concludes that overall we’re doing pretty darn good. Of course, this reality doesn’t sit well with the members of the “Poverty Industry”, whose very livelihoods depend upon people remaining poor … or perceived to remain poor.
Imagine if a new drug were invented that instantly cured all cancers. While that would be a great thing for those inflicted with the disease, it would be terrible for the economic livelihoods of the millions of people around the world who work in the Cancer Fundraising & Research industries.
A similar predicament faces those employed by the Poverty Industry. While undoubtedly most have big hearts and want to help people on an individual, micro-level, it’s actually not in their own best interest for things to improve on a larger-scale, macro-level. For eventually they’d help too many of their clients and then their own jobs would be at risk.
It’s likely not too big of a leap to intuit that many who get jobs in Canada’s Poverty Industry were probably part of the “Math is Hard” crowd back in high school. So they must be forgiven if they find it difficult to understand the statistics that Coyne has clearly presented. Also, anecdotal evidence suggests that the vast majority of them tend to lean Left, sometimes Far Left, in their political views. This means, by definition that they are anti-capitalist, pro-socialist, which further means that they are more in favour of equal outcomes than equal opportunities. This line of thinking has consistently proven itself throughout history to be disastrous for the poor.
Sadly, those employed in the Poverty Industry seem incapable of realizing that their own socialist beliefs actually hurt their clients in the long run, rather than help them. But along the way they take great pride in fighting “the rich” and believing every morning they wake up that they are better, more nobler people than the “suits” they rail against. What they don’t spend much time thinking about is where the money to pay their own salaries comes from … you know, the money from the taxes that those “horrific” rich people pay. Selective ignorance is truly bliss.
h/t ET
Commenter ET astutely referenced one particular commenter to Coyne’s article. Here is his/her comment in full:
CanadianConsultant
Yes, the middle class has seen a slower rate of increase on their wealth, but that does not mean that the middle class is disappearing from sight, or that their standards of living have fallen, or that they are being hard-done by. I think the most important concept that nearly everyone fails to grasp is that wealth is not a zero sum game. Someone making a lot of money does not mean that you will make less as a result. There is not a finite amount of wealth that is simply being divided amongst ourselves. EVERYONE is seeing gains in their wealth. So the arguments such as Occupy are misrepresenting their own issues, at least in Canada. While the States has a very real income inequality issue, Canadians seem to think they can take the exact same protest and apply it here, as if our economies are mirror images of one another. But in Canada, the argument comes down to the fact that people are upset others are richer than them — not that they are seeing themselves get poorer while the upper class reigns supreme. The facts, as Coyne said, simply do not support that argument.
We either focus on a society of equal opportunity or equal outcome. But progressive taxation on the rich as a structural policy of our society is an emphasis on the latter, not the former. Most people would agree that a society of equal opportunity is ideal, as it does not impose as many socio-economic restrictions on citizens and gives everyone the same chance to succeed. But constantly taking strife with the fact that some people have more material wealth than others, with complete disregard for the reasons as to why that may be true, does not make for any sort of compelling argument to a society focusing on equal opportunity. That rather is equal outcome, meaning no matter how smart you are, what job you do, or how hard you work, you should end up with the same amount of money as everyone else.
let me see now, my father was an uneducated immigrant, bought his first house at age 47, and had it paid off at age 65. He lived within his means and managed his money according to his income, simple way to modest sucess!!
Makes one wonder why Coyne endorsed the Libs last election. But I fully expect him to do so again next election.
“Every one of the ailments we imagine ourselves to be suffering is a reality in the United States: where our incomes are growing, theirs are stagnating; where poverty here is at record lows, there it is at record highs; where inequality in Canada has not grown in recent years, in the United States it has surged.”
And yet, you guys think the model we want to follow is the one in the US, cuz we’re a buncha commies.
Don’t worry though. Your man Harper is doing his best to follow in George’s footsteps.
There’s also an excellent commenter after Coyne’s article.
” I think the most important concept that nearly everyone fails to grasp is that wealth is not a zero sum game. Someone making a lot of money does not mean that you will make less as a result. There is not a finite amount of wealth that is simply being divided amongst ourselves…
“We either focus on a society of equal opportunity or equal outcome. But progressive taxation on the rich as a structural policy of our society is an emphasis on the latter, not the former. Most people would agree that a society of equal opportunity is ideal, as it does not impose as many socio-economic restrictions on citizens and gives everyone the same chance to succeed. But constantly taking strife with the fact that some people have more material wealth than others, with complete disregard for the reasons as to why that may be true, does not make for any sort of compelling argument to a society focusing on equal opportunity. That rather is equal outcome, meaning no matter how smart you are, what job you do, or how hard you work, you should end up with the same amount of money as everyone else.”
I think this particular comment bears repeating:
“Someone making a lot of money does not mean that you will make less as a result. There is not a finite amount of wealth that is simply being divided amongst ourselves”
We seem fixed in our belief that IF those evil rich people take all the money THEN there won’t be enough for us. But that isn’t true.
Obama ensures that this false belief looms large in our minds, with his constant refrain about ‘our fair share’. But it’s not a pie; we don’t slice it up and then look with envy or disdain on how big the slice is of our neighbour.
Wealth is open and expanding; it’s created by businesses. Private businesses. So, if we all work, there’s more wealth created. There’s no finite pie of wealth. Should someone tell Obama that, or, is his real agenda to manipulate the people into dependency on Him.
Johnny Straw-metrosexual.
As Thatcher famously stated about “The Gap”.
You’d rather the poor were poorer so long as the rich were less rich.
It’s so hard dealing with people who refuse to see simple fact.
ET ,
People need to understand the difference between wealth , and money . Central banks , including our own ” Bank of Canada ” create money from nothing , at interest , to private entities , not Canadians .
John:
The US is currently MORE socialist than we are in Canada. The are trending toward more socialism and we are trending away from socialism.
Posted by: John at December 15, 2012 6:48 PM ….Wrong…..YOUR type,i.e….leftards…are trying to emulate the muzzie in chief.Let me guess.You are either on welfare,or a “public” servant,and belong to the math is hard class.(Sorry for feeding the troll)
Even trolls have to eat too. Always nice to see a few around to give the place some balance.
Bill D Carp
so if private entities aren’t Canadians, what are they, martian?????
best U rethink yer less that asstute comment
I once worked at a very large, very famous charity. The Toronto office once held a press conference to announce that the number of “poor” people in the city had increased a whopping… %1 over the previous year.
I asked why we were making such a big deal about a “margin of error” increase, and speculated that the number of “poor” (that is, those with an income under a certain amount) may have simply reflected an increase in the number of university students.
I don’t work there anymore, needless to say.
What percent of every welfare dollar do you think is used up by the welfare industry itself, instead of going for food, clothing, shelter and other essentials?
70 percent? Eighty?
”
What percent of every welfare dollar do you think is used up by the welfare industry itself, instead of going for food, clothing, shelter and other essentials?
70 percent? Eighty?
Posted by: Jamie MacMaster at December 15, 2012 8:47 PM ”
I would say,from personal experience,more like 98.9%.Remember,the welfare industry is run by and for itself.Leeches come to mind.
Canadian Consultant said “We either focus on a society of equal opportunity or equal outcome”. I probably have read that somewhere in the past and it is well to be reminded of it.
As most of you already know,my family came from Russia, where the Soviets had taken the country to a system of equal outcome. Well, at least for the vast majority of people, as those that were more equal than others lived well in the dachas and Black Sea summer resorts. The extended family had to endure this experiment for seven more decades, but had such a bad taste of the country due to so many family members being sacrificed as enemies of the people, that they left when the utopia collapsed.
Our family has done very well due to hard work and prudence over 86 years in a system of equal opportunity. One troll might disagree. 😉
I also particularly appreciate ET’s statement, “Wealth is open and expanding; it’s created by businesses. Private businesses. So, if we all work, there’s more wealth created. There’s no finite pie of wealth”. It seems that the “equal outcome” crowd just can not grasp this, or, as I expect, they do not want to grasp this, as this does not fit their world of power and control over people.
Btw, crony capitalism whereby the government picks winners and losers based on political affiliation or agenda is not equal opportunity but a facet of a manipulated equal outcome.
Conservatives should not so reactionary regarding the poverty problem. Poverty is made worse by government intervention in the economy. Most obvious being supply management and protectionism but most pernicious being central banking. There are tons of ways government makes poverty worse. Anti-statists should storm the moral high-ground as the true anti-poverty force.
Another “unexpectedly” for PM Harper.
The greatest contributor to poverty is the tax system. Look it up. Yet taxation is used as a tool to punish the rich/successful and ends up hurting the poor most.
LICO is a poor standard for poverty. Stats Canada says time and time again it’s a statistical measure only and not meant to represent the “poverty line.”
Anyway, as a society becomes more prosperous but the percentage of “poor” remains unchanged, it’s likely we are all better off, especially the middle class, who pay for everybody’s entitlements.
So statist tax and spend governments like the present US administration should be honest and tell their people they think the middle class is greedy and should pay more, because that’s where they’ll get the money they don’t borrow to pay off their poverty constituency vote block, not all of whom are “poor;” not by a longshot.
Then the middle class will get the bill for the interest on future debt, as usual, not just the rich, though they can count on a gouging too.
Obama et al say they’re only asking the rich to pay a little more so they can do a lot more for the “poor”, but they really need the middle income earners to pay a lot more tax to temporarily give only a little more to the “poor.”
The people in the Poverty Industry, are the same people in the Grief Industry and the Entitlement Industry. They’re vultures.
A couple of decades ago, some Canadian ‘poverty’ group redefined poverty. Instead of defining it in absolute terms (i.e. income less than ‘x’, or only ‘y’ left over after paying for food and shelter, or any other objective standard), they started defining poverty as people who make less than a given percentage of the average income. Naturally, this means poverty is not only NEVER eliminated, as the average income level rises, more people who weren’t considered poor before, suddenly are.
As I’ve written here before, I’ve travelled a lot through Asia. When you see people living in cardboard shacks, five feet from a busy street, where the alley is their toilet, and there is no medicare, no drug benefit, no food stamps, no food banks, no welfare, and you come back to Canada to see overweight people living in apartments with cable and colour tv, who take freakin’ cabs to the grocery store, you realize that there is no real poverty in Canada (caveat: I haven’t been to any native reservations, but given the amount of money we lavish on them, poverty seems to me to be more a result of their own internal corruption). Our poor live like kings and queens compared to people all across Asia, and I for one shed no tears for them.
Taxpayers Suffer Where The ‘Public Servant’ Is King
….The bluer the state, the better the state workers do …
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/121212-636871-state-worker-pay-survey-shows-another-california-texas-gap.htm#ixzz2Ey1l3fwr
“Imagine if a new drug were invented that instantly cured all cancers. While that would be a great thing for those inflicted with the disease, it would be terrible for the economic livelihoods of the millions of people around the world who work in the Cancer Fundraising & Research industries.”
It wouldn’t be a terrible thing, it would be an inconvenience for a while (and a boon to those among their numbers who were struck by cancer). The free market would adjust wages and prices so that full employment equilibrium would be restored in due time. If we actually had a free market.
“Sadly, those employed in the Poverty Industry seem incapable of realizing that their own socialist beliefs actually hurt their clients in the long run, rather than help them.”
The Poverty Industry knows very well that it isn’t helping people for the long run. Its goal isn’t to help the poor, its goal is to waste tax dollars to whatever extent it can, the better to disrupt western society. That too is part of the Marxist agenda. Supporting welfare recipients most of whom would be gainfully employed were it not for the left’s economic depredations is a big drag on the economy, although the unproductive regulators and the activist groups are probably even worse.
ET: “I think the most important concept that nearly everyone fails to grasp is that wealth is not a zero sum game. Someone making a lot of money does not mean that you will make less as a result. There is not a finite amount of wealth that is simply being divided amongst ourselves.”
Exactly. New wealth is produced every day, a concept the leftists refuse to grasp. The economy is based on the voluntary trade of goods and services for mutual benefit, i.e., mutual profit. All progress (meaning a higher standard of living) derives from those who use their minds to produce more or cheaper or better goods and services.
Income inequality is only a problem to the “equality” ideologues. As a commenter here (not me) once said, “Income inequality is mostly the result of effort inequality”.
Nowhere is it written that everyone must be a businessman or must spend his time thinking about the nuts and bolts of the production of material goods. Mankind needs artists, writers, doctors, and many other such occupations. Too many leftists have fallen for Marx’s ill-thought-out notion that one could “hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner”. Marx spoke only for himself. Too many leftists think everyone would have plenty of everything if only we could get rid of capitalism. The opposite is true: only capitalism can raise the standard of living to the point where these pseudo-intellectuals can get paid for pontificating in an ivory tower instead of toiling in the fields. If capitalism goes down, their miserable lives will go down with it.
None of this, however, means that the middle class isn’t being eroded somewhat. But the reason isn’t the rich or the 1%, it’s the left and its regulations and its handouts.
Phil, you trim you’re toenails a little too short?? You’re extra bitter today!
The debt problem in Canada and ongoing deficit spending should temper any enthusiasm this report might generate. The Federal govenment is spending $30 billion from what a $200 billion budget on debt servicing. The fact that provincial government debt probably exceeds that of the national government appears to be irrelevent. Let’s continue down the ladder and look at personal debt which exceeds that of the lowly Americans on a per capita basis.
Canadians continue to take comfort in living in a fools paradise. Our federal, government who should accept the responsibility, of informing Canadians of how precarious our situation is does not.
Who doubts that the EU and Japan are on the cusp of economic depression. When they go down the world will be lucky to escape a full international debt crisis that will far exceed 2008. Not only will Canada’s export of resources collapse but the value of what is sold will tank. The world isn’t operating successfully at 0 – 2% interest rates what happens when they soar over
+ 20%?
We will know the end is coming when governments go after the only aspect of our economy still operating reasonably well corporations. Governments will tax their treasuraries along with those individuals with higher net worth. Maybe people in the ROC don’t remember when the NDP had a 1% capital tax in BC. It will happen again.
I think we should pair this analysis described by Coyne (but known to idiots like me who read Stats. Can. studies) with the recent Fraser report showing income mobility over time. People like I was – poor – at the lowest percentile in University, once in the permanent work force move rapidily up the income ladder.
This is the principle of “reciprocity” whereby a policeman requires criminals to be employed. In US parlence, it’s the Baptist and Bootlegger.
I personally find this a jaded and somewhat twisted view, but at times it does appear to have a grain of truth.
John, the US is in its current predicament precisely because socialist ru(i)nning the joint.
I don’t know why it’s so shocking. What charity, upon reaching its goals, has ever wrapped up shop? None, they simply get co-opted by more radical employees who want more. MADD is the perfect example. They have taken drunk driving from socially acceptable, if not very classy, to the most anti-social thing a person can do, worse than murder to many. Despite having won, reducing drunk driving to the point that only die hard alcoholics and dumb younglings still do it, they keep pushing for harsher penalties and lower tolerance. They have even changed their name from “Drunk” to “Drinking!” to reflect their new attitude. Even when they achieve zero tolerance, when you have to blow into an interlock to drive, when a throat lozenge will set the device off and you can’t drive these people will still be pushing for more. It is the nature of advocacy at any charity. The people who work there don’t want to lose their jobs, after all.
Coyne …. bah!
We are under attack by statist bureaucrat paratsites and need to tell our government to get serious about killing the beast.
Screw Coyne and his mealy mouthed pandering.
MADD is an organization that is ostensibly against drunk driving.
However, they are just the old fashioned bunch of prohibitionists they always have been.
They rebranded themselves and found a reasonable sounding wedge issue.
Having accomplished what they initially set out to do, they are now free to further their prohibitionist agenda.
The push for .05 as the new legal limit is just another rung.
Their goal is .00.
Enough is never enough.
If you’ll forgive me for being a contrarian a–hole for a moment, I’d say that there are a couple of glaring asymmetries between Canada and the US, which account for a significant amount of Andrew’s differentials, IMO, that I think will have to be addressed, to wit:
– a monopsony (single-payer) health care system (in transformation in Canada, due to the recent Flaherty funding formula, which Dwight Duncan chose to make a fool of himself over, to the point where we no longer have a functioning government in Ontario), or complete lack thereof (USA).
– a national consumption tax (Canada; unified, for the most part, with the subnational jurisdictions), or complete lack thereof (US).
Supply management (which PMSH is working on), etc. are assuredly significant, but will not “make the difference”, as Jean Chretien laughably sold Ontario voters on in 1993.
And whereas the federal Liberals brought in single-payer health care with substantial support, particularly from Ontario Conservatives, between 1968 and 1971, the Mulroney Conservatives brought in the national consumption tax with absolutely zero support from anybody, except for me, including the Chretien Liberals (who laughably promised to “raplass zaa JST”).
I liked Herm Cain’s 9-9-9 plan a lot. At about the same time that Herm went down in flames, Don Drummond said that he didn’t understand why the USA didn’t just adopt a single-payer health care system and a national consumption tax (or words to that effect). But, who listens to Don Drummond, anyway? He was only hired by Dwight Duncan to make recommendations on the fiscal gap problem gap we have in Ontario.
As a (youngish, with no gut) middle-aged white guy with a lot of identification with the Republican Party, which, er, freed the slaves, brought in the women’s vote, got the USA out of Vietnam, defeated the Soviet Union, stood up for Human Rights (by which, I mean, the rights of all, including the integrity of the UN Security Council) in Afghanistan and Iraq, why don’t we take a walk on the wild side and bring in the measures suggested above?
I’m guessing that there’ll be a great many harsh letters to follow. Have at ‘er…
Coyne misses the clearest reason for increasing inequality in the US: immigration. It is possible to have the rich, middle-class and poor all upwardly mobile and still have growing poverty. Just import poor immigrants faster than your country makes the poor middle class.
Ward says it all – I never read anything that hack writes:
‘Makes one wonder why Coyne endorsed the Libs last election. But I fully expect him to do so again next election.’
Posted by: Ward at December 15, 2012 6:43 PM