A kinder, gentler Canada? Myth busted in one graph
Canada’s inequality problem is often overshadowed by the extreme situation in the United States. The graph below, courtesy of Mother Jones, shows why: the U.S does the least of the advanced industrialized countries to combat inequality through government taxes and transfers. The bad news? When it comes to reducing income inequality, Canada languishes at the bottom […]
Canada’s inequality problem is often overshadowed by the extreme situation in the United States.
The graph below, courtesy of Mother Jones, shows why: the U.S does the least of the advanced industrialized countries to combat inequality through government taxes and transfers.
The bad news? When it comes to reducing income inequality, Canada languishes at the bottom of that barrel too.
Things weren’t always this way.
In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, government taxes and transfers lowered the gap between rich and poor most in Canada, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden.
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, after massive cuts to social programs and taxes that once funded them, Canada had joined Switzerland and the U.S. as the countries with the smallest redistributive impact.
This redistributive fade in Canada is considered among the most dramatic among the 34-member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
A kinder, gentler Canada? Not so much.
Photo: ninazed. Used under a Creative Commons BY 2.0 licence.
Our journalism is powered by readers like you.
We’re an award-winning non-profit news organization that covers topics like social and economic inequality, big business and labour, and right-wing extremism.
Help us build so we can bring to light stories that don’t get the attention they deserve from Canada’s big corporate media outlets.
Donate
