Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id874462516
We need to be shifting our policy to focus on ensuring that everyone has the resources they need to live a dignified life rather than focusing on GDP growth in general, which as we know has not been shared equally over the past forty years.
id866602176
Since 1982, the incomes of the top 1 percent have increased fivefold. The market incomes of the bottom half of Canadians have increased only 150 percent, one and a half times. If we look even more closely at the top 0.01 percent, which is about 3,000 people in Canada today, their incomes have increased 950 percent — nearly 10 times — since 1982.
id866602251
When we look at GDP growth, including GDP per capita, the amount of money in the economy per person has increased by about 70 percent in real, inflation-adjusted terms over the past forty years. But it has not increased by 70 percent for everyone. The bottom half of Canadians have seen only a 29 percent growth — just 40 percent of the overall GDP growth. So, really, this gap isn’t just benefitting the upper middle class — it’s overwhelmingly going to the very top.
✏️ The bias and unbalanced lens inherent in GDP. It’s not an accurate measure of everyone’s wealth, just the top elite.
🔗 View Highlight
id866602625
the disposable incomes of households in the bottom two quintiles didn’t keep up with inflation during the pandemic. Meanwhile, incomes at the top actually grew faster than inflation.
id866602638
these kinds of single aggregate numbers — it might look like the economy is growing, that inflation has come back down, but this misses the fact that incomes are growing much faster at the top than at the bottom.