Since the early 1980s, Canada’s economy has expanded significantly, with GDP per capita rising by 70% in real terms. But while the wealthiest Canadians’ incomes have increased fivefold, those of the bottom half have risen just 1.5 times.
We hear a lot about economic growth — especially GDP growth — but less about who benefits most from it and who gets left behind. Neoliberal policies disproportionately serve the wealthy, sometimes exponentially so. This is no accident; it’s the result of deliberate political choices, made at the behest of those who profit most. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
To examine who benefits under the current economic order — and how policies could be reshaped to serve the many — Jacobin’s David Moscrop talked with Silas Xuereb, a researcher and policy analyst with Canadians for Tax Fairness and author of the report “Canada’s affordability divide: How the 1%’s rise left millions behind.”
Trickle-Up Economics 101
David Moscrop
Who reaps the lion’s share of economic growth in Canada?
Silas Xuereb
What we’ve seen over the past forty years is that the vast majority of economic growth has been captured by the top 1 percent. 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.
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…
Auteur: Silas Xuereb
