Canadian Press has used a catchy lead to say that rich people are making way more money than you. “Elite” executives will earn “the average full-time Canadian wage by 11.47 a.m. January 3, 2017,” it says. The story is inspired by the work of Hugh Mackenzie of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Mr Mackenzie is a one-time assistant to Bob Rae when he was NDP leader of Ontario. The tone of the story plays into the frequently heard notion about “the widening gap” between rich and poor. What readers are intended to take from this is that people at the bottom are getting poorer. But in Canada, there isn’t any evidence of that. Yes, many rich get richer and they may do so faster than poorer people, or even the comfortable well-to-do. But the truth is that almost everyone is getting better off most of the time. There are some crushingly poor people. Government clerks make more in a week than your average homeless person does in five years. Take a look at the story and try to make it down to paragraph 16 (!) where it says this year’s addition to the gap was caused by one man’s stock options.
