Changing Income Inequality

Improved Essays
arles Beach is Professor of Economics at Queen's University and obtained his BA(Hons.) from McGill University and PhD from Princeton University. His paper, Changing income inequality: A distributional paradigm for Canada, discussed the polarization of full-time workers, loss of middle-class earnings share and increase in a higher earnings gap (Beach 2016, 1229). Similarly, to Yalnizyan, he shows via the Canadian socioeconomic database from Statistics Canada that the share of income going to the middle class has declined between the 1970s and 2000s (Beach 2016, 1233). Correspondingly there was an increase in the share of income going to higher-income families between the 1970s and about 2000 (Beach 2016, 1233). Beach goes onto differentiate

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In “35 Soul-Crushing Facts about American Income Inequality”, the author, Larry Schwartz, makes it clear that the ever-increasing income and tax cuts the wealthiest Americans receive, as well as the decline in labor unions, results in the rest of the nation’s citizens to fare worse economically than those of previous generations. The writer shows that economic inequality, the difference between incomes across a population, has currently reached peak levels unprecedented since the Roaring Twenties, the period right before the Great Depression. Schwartz does an excellent job of supporting his claims by providing a vast amount of statistical evidence and historical background, which shows how dire the current situation of economic inequality is in the U.S.A. Despite the fact that the middle class has been taxed at an equal rate…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Brilliant Essays

    Institutional Analysis Paper Canadian Employment Insurance Commission Shane Calderwood SDS 231R Social Policy October 20, 2015 Introduction The Canada Employment Insurance Agency is a sizable functioning governmental Institution that is mandated to monitor, assess, and administer the Employment Insurance Program. Many organizations exist within the Canada Employment Insurance Agency. In this report, I plan to outline and explain the function of the Canada Employment Insurance Commission. The report will outline the description of the organization, history, the source of authority the organization has, funding of the program and organization, the structure of the commission, and the mandate of the commission.…

    • 1174 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Brilliant Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Summary: In the article, Politicians are ignoring poverty in chase after middle-class votes written as an editorial in the Toronto Star, emphasizes middle class families being a target on political agendas, rather those living in poverty for the upcoming 2015 federal election. There has been street protests in 50 communities across Canada to express the urge to build a national anti-poverty campaign, which politicians have not been discussing. Although, over time there has been a noticeable gap between the rich and poor, as within the past 25 years, incomes for the poorest 10%of the city’s neighborhood have only risen by 2%, while the 10% richest neighborhoods have risen their incomes by 80%. Research states that due to a heavy demand for…

    • 909 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Justin Trudeau Leadership

    • 1034 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The leader of the Liberal party, Justin Trudeau, has promised middle class Canadians a real change. His plan includes a higher tax rates from families with annual income of 200,000 and higher. Currently the wealthiest 1% of Canadians are paying 29% tax and Mr. Trudeau is planning on changing the rate to 33%. He is also committed to lowering the tax rates for the working class; currently most middle class families pay 22% and Mr. Trudeau’s goal is to make it to 20%. The liberal leader also talked about making Child Care Benefit tax-free to all families with annual income below than 150,000 and increase the Canada Pension Plan contributions.…

    • 1034 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The issue of Income disparity of the working class has been a prevalent economic issue, especially since the industrial revolution in the United States. In The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, he explores the exploitive nature of capitalism during the infancy of the industrial revolution in the United States and the struggles of the immigrant working class. While this piece of literature is a work of fiction, it gives a typical account of the abhorrent working conditions and the lack of policies which protect the rights of workers. This expose helped push legislation which aimed to protect the rights of workers, and strengthened unions. While this helped with alleviating the issue of income disparity, there has been an increase in income disparity…

    • 1091 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The article “Confronting Inequality,” written by Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University, emphasizes that the middle class suffers from social inequality and economic inequality. Krugman suggests making a stronger safety net so the gap between the poor and rich can be limited to an extent. Krugman uses this theory to highlight the fact that the middle class needs to be stronger and the only way to achieve that is to have a strong safety net. Income inequality is another point Krugman focuses on as he mentions the rich are finding loopholes in the tax system and the poor pay a relatively high tax compared to what the rich are paying. Krugman suggests these ideas to bridge the gap and restore income equality which at the moment is being…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Washington State University, Econs 102, Section 2, Christopher Weizhong Liu ID: 11487094 Writing Assignment #1 Why Has Income Inequality Been Rising Since the 1970’s? The propositions that look for the causes of growing inequality in the US either in the dependency culture or in the biased the government policy are entirely inconsistent with the findings of David Autor. However, the statement that Americans are falling behind because of laziness can be viewed as slightly resonant with the article if laziness should be interpreted as unwillingness to enhance one’s skills rather than to work in general. In his article, Autor claims that the major reason for rising inequality in the US is the recent drastic growth of the wage premium related to higher education and…

    • 710 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the United States money is a representation of the amount of power that a specific individual possesses. In today’s society people are striving to live an average life opposed to living the “American Dream”. Recent studies have shown that there are more people living in America who believe that the idea of going from rags to riches is simply unachievable. The new representation of the “American Dream” is obtaining economic stability for the future. As a result of the rise of income and social inequality over the past few decades, many economists and scholars believe that the gap separating the wealthiest Americans from everyone else will continue to widen unless the United States government puts forth effort to reverse it.…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Our society runs rampant with all kinds of inequality. Racism, sexism, and xenophobia are just a few of the problems that plague our world. These problems all have the potential to hurt people socially and emotionally. However, there’s another type of inequality whose impacts go beyond social and emotional harms. Income inequality hurts people psychologically and economically, and its implications span a global scale.…

    • 1431 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    How did you relate to the readings, videos and forum discussions? I related to the readings about cultural and linguistic competence as a future health care provider. I saw how my knowledge of these topics could affect the care and well being of real people. One hypothetical that struck me was about a nurse practitioner choosing a cheaper and less effective medication for a black patient. The nurse had done this with the well-meaning intention of saving a poor person from the bills that come with a higher level of health care, not realizing that the patient was of a high socioeconomic status (Hall and Fields).…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America is experiencing a large gap in income inequality between the working class and the wealthy class. According to Derek Thompson, the new wealthy class, which is the top 1% of America population, holds nearly 40% of America’s wealth; while the new working and social class holds significantly less than 7%. There are opinions thinking that this gap is caused by the rich, who only think about their profits and don’t even care that America is having job a shortage or people are working low wage for several years. On the other hand, some blame the working and social class for their “immobility”, saying that they are not trying hard enough to climb out of the bottom while depending too much on the government subsidizes. Both opinions are true…

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In a perfect world we would all be equal there would be no poverty, women would be paid equally, and we would not be so materialistic. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world and most if not all of these things are not true. As a nation we have various problem that must be solved but in order to do so we must make a change with in our selves of within our families and not solely rely on government aid. People and families face may hardships as they are trying to pull through their lives and it is imperative for their survival to receive government aid. According to the department of numbers the census states that, “the median household income for California was $61,933 in 2014.”…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Spirit Level Analysis

    • 967 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Introduction and background The Spirit Level is an exploration of the impacts of inequality on society. The book argues that inequality has a causal link with social ills, including but not limited to obesity, teenage pregnancy and crime. It also argues that everyone benefits from greater equality, even the rich. The authors, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, have academic backgrounds in epidemiology.…

    • 967 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In a capitalistic based economy such as the United States, it creates incomes that are small and large. Having an unequal amount of large or low incomes is called income inequality. Income inequality has become a major problem in the United States, increasing 24% from 1968 to 2012” (Cochran). The gap between the rich and the poor is growing at an ever increasing rate. In the United States the gap is measured by relative poverty, or “being below one-half the nations income” (Cochran).…

    • 1676 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Hunter Depalma ECON 221 Butler February 13, 2015 Racism & Income Disparity: Income Effect Income disparity is an ongoing complication within the United States not only between men and women, but between races. Many people in our country are poor, and the improvement in their lives that the ending of income inequality can bring them is great. For the most part this shifts demand curves from the incomes increasing and decreasing, negatively and positively. Some argue that our society here in America is set up to where the lower working class cannot escape poverty. We have provisions and burdens in our economy that will keep regressing the lower class.…

    • 2619 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Superior Essays