If the BC Government were a
basketball player...
This is what inequality
looks like in BC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vTxmi_i-vE
BC's Hardest Working
CCPA, SPARC, (2011).
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'Virtually impossible' to reach B.C. income assistance office: advocate
Lavoie, J. (2013). Times Colonist.
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Michael Prince - The Growing Income Gap and Polarization
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Peters, J. (2013). The Hook.
As in the United States, so too in Canada we have become a divided society. Today, the richest 10 per cent of Canadians and British Columbians now account for 40 per cent of all market income and own over half of the entire wealth. Over the past 30-plus years, the wealthiest one-tenth of one per cent has seen their average incomes rise by more than 300 per cent to roughly $1.4 million.
By contrast, middle-class incomes have stagnated. In B.C., the median income of working families (adjusted for inflation) actually fell by $1,569 to $52,278. As for B.C.'s working poor? The situation is even worse. The poorest of working families realized a mere $9,300 after taxes in 1990. Twenty years later, their after-tax incomes have dropped to $7,800. But they were hardly alone in trying to make ends meet.
By 2010, 1.2 million workers in B.C. earned less than $30,000 a year. A figure that, if looked at comparatively in terms of the proportion of the labour force in low-wage work, puts B.C. along with Canada among the worst in the rich industrialized world.
Unsurprisingly such inequality brings huge economic problems. Once so much income goes to the top, and the majority of British Columbia families do not have enough money to keep economic demand going, more and more have to go into debt.
Money has given banks and multinational corporations a disproportionate amount of influence in everything from lobbying and campaign contributions to consultants writing policy and bankers running government departments. This, Hacker and Pierson claim, has led to the public policies that have allowed the economy to grow in ways that benefit those at the top, and resulted in a "winner-take-all" political system more comparable to "one dollar equals one vote" instead of "one person, one vote" that their country was founded on.
The same seems increasingly true in British Columbia as across Canada today. In provinces like B.C., Ontario, and Alberta, more than 40 per cent of all political party revenue comes from business contributions. Add in the donations by individual CEOs, and corporate giving tops 50 per cent. Today, annual business donations to the Liberal Party in B.C. are the highest in Canada, averaging over $6 million a year.
At the same time, the numbers of corporate lobbyists at the federal and provincial levels have more than tripled over the last decade (though there are no hard numbers in B.C. where the legislation does not require businesses and consultants to register). Nor does anyone bat an eye when politicians and public officials leave office to sit on corporate boards, business consultants like KPMG and PWC write public policy, or businesses run provincial ad campaigns promoting policy reforms, like undoing employment standards that now allow employers to get out of paying wages and avoid paying fines for health and safety violations.
In almost all democracies, such developments are occurring. But in Canada, they've begun to gallop along. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, Canada's banks were offered $114 billion -- more in one year than has ever been spent on public child care -- despite the fact that Canada's biggest banks earned profits of more than $27 billion from 2008-2010.
Economies are not zero-sum games. They work best when everyone benefits and government does its job in keeping powerful economic interests in check. Start with fixing inequality and not only will B.C.'s economy improve, but so will its democracy.
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