A friend texted me the other night complaining about how someone on the subway car was plucking her eyebrows during her commute home.
"I wish I was part of the one per cent," she texted me, with what I could only assume was a sigh.
I quickly reminded her that if I combined her annual income, the value of her inner-city Toronto house, her husband's annual income and the current value of their RRSPs, she was, by definition, part of the revered and simultaneously reviled one per cent.
Surprisingly, it takes a lot less than one would think to be considered a part of the upper echelons of Canadian society.
In fact according to Statistics Canada, an annual income of $89,000 is all that it takes to put an individual amongst the 1.2 million Canadians who make up the top five per cent of the country's tax filers. Even more worrisome, an income of only $181,000 is enough to put someone amongst Canada's EVIL one per cent!
To put these numbers into some perspective, over 1,000 (or one-tenth) of all TTC employees earn over $100,000 a year, and while I'm not here to judge or moralize anyone's salary (a lot of TTC employees make additional money via overtime), it IS fair to argue that there are probably a large number of people who are classified as part of the one per cent, but who certainly don't feel rich every time they look at their monthly credit card statements. Between mortgage payments and working 12-hour days, how many people in the working one per cent have time or money for all of that caviar and champagne? Am I right?
This is not a lament, however, for Canada's upper middle class (don't cry for us, we're already broke). The working rich are working poor because even with high household incomes, they have (to put it nicely) over-extended themselves in order to live in that nice inner-city Toronto house, send their two kids to private school and shop at Holt Renfrew, mostly because they feel like at this point in their lives, and at their income level, they really shouldn't have to live like the frugal students they were in their mid-20s.
A friend of mine admitted to me recently that although she and her husband make over $400k a year, they were struggling to figure out how to afford the monthly payments on a new Toyota.
"A Toyota," she admitted, almost embarrassed at the thought of it.
And while the one per cent is often portrayed as untouchably wealthy, they really aren't. Part of that statistical segment is the working one per cent -- the second tier in the great pyramid of our socioeconomic class structure. These people are the cogs in our great industrial machine; the junior lawyers, the accountants, civil servants -- and this group probably includes some of our teachers, and some of our TTC workers. The working one per cent includes those of us in junior management who, for better or for worse, make capitalism tick. And the working one per cent, a forgotten and overlooked group, is integral to the long-term success of any political movement.
That being said, the working one per cent are never going to give up a night's sleep in our over-priced, semi-detached slabs of real estate, so we can stay in tents and occupy St. James Park. It's not that we aren't really angry about buying RIM shares at $90 and watching them fall in value to $19.50. We are. And it's not that we aren't really galled by the fact that if we earn $89,000, the maximum mortgage we can qualify for is $450k (and Lord knows you can't find a decent house in the City of Toronto for under $600k). We are functionally irate about this.
See, the working one per cent has plenty to gripe about, too. And if anyone truly understands the gross income inequalities that are facing our society, it is probably those of us who live so close to the sun, but aren't quite there and may never get there.
But our problem with the Occupy Movement is that we have bought into the current system and have too much of a vested interest in it to get off the subway train (leaving our eyebrow-plucking friend) and walk over to join the protest movement at St. James Park. It's just too far from where we are (swimming in managed debt).
This leads us to the current state of Occupy Toronto, which was served an eviction notice by the City of Toronto on Nov. 14. Luckily (or not), the Ontario Superior Court gave the protesters a temporary reprieve. A judge argued that the movement should be allowed to stay until a Charter-based challenge on the right to Occupy St. James Park is settled. A ruling is expected Monday.
While some legal scholars, including David Schneiderman, a law professor at the University of Toronto (NB: Schneiderman snuck into the one per cent in 2011 by making $183,000 according to the sunshine list), have used legalese to argue that Occupy Toronto has an inalienable and constitutional right to occupy a public space, writing in the Globe and Mail, "Without question, the protesters are exercising their constitutionally protected freedoms of association, assembly and expression." I would argue that physical occupation is moot.
For the greater good of the movement, which like any protest requires growth if not maturation to continue, it is time to move past physical occupation. Members of the working one per cent will never dip their toes into the Occupy Movement while it is about sitting around a park in a not-so-nice part of downtown Toronto. We'd rather occupy our beds.
If the Occupy Movement is truly the start of some sort of proletarian war, a rebirth of democracy unshackled by corporate greed and a re-working on income inequality, then the working one per cent is a necessary part of that struggle. If Occupy Wherever truly wants to win the war -- they may have to concede their actual physical battleground.
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He is relying on a 2007 article from the Province, and it does not match up with Statscan figures from just a year later.
He says that the top 5% of earners - 1.5 million of them - make just $89,000. Using his figures, there are 30 million taxpayers. There aren't.
According to Statistics Canada's data on Income Distribution in Canada, in 2008, there were 24.7 million people who reported income.
18.3 million of them - about 75% of Canadians - made $50,000 or less.
11 million of them made $25,000 or less.
The top 1% make $200,000 and up. So when he talks about people being in the 1%, he is often wrong.
What he also ignores is that over the last 30 years, real growth for households with just one income earner has been flat. Household income had only gone up when two people are working.
Almost all of the economic growth over the past 30 years has accrued to the top 10% - the people who make over $75,000 a year. Between 2004 and 2008, the number of people making more than $250,000 increased by 50%.
That's what the Occupy movement is about.
My wife recently complained that she works so hard and cannot afford more than the basics. I told her to stop watching TV advertising. Seriously, no one can really live like that.
There needs to be a reality adjustment here as to what we need to live well, and what we think we should have because we are entitled to it by dint of our expensive educations and first world status.
The 1% that OWS is targeting is not defined only by annual income, but by how that income is derived. If it is derived by working in a senior management position at a large company, I doubt any of those people would say that was evil. That person pays taxes we suppose. But if you earn money off the backs of slave labor in third world sweatshops and by cheating the taxman, or by pulling a Madoff on your clients as an investment banker, then there's a problem.
Attempting to lessen the problem or the protest by pretending that the protesters are really against the common guy, who swims in debt despite a higher salary, is irresponsible.
There are many people in this country who have lost their savings on Wall Street and Bay Street, who were left unemployed when major tech companies decided to off shore to India and have exhausted all of their savings after their EI ran out.
This could only be written by someone who is so entitled that they live on a different planet.
~ george carlin.
this money comes from the imf, under the guise of the "bank of canada", which of course hasn't been any such thing for decades.
so, the banksters can buy up real assets with funny money, rubber-stamped by the government, which is fraud, under Law. legislated, "legal", and a violation of Law, and fraud, by definition.
1% owning is not a problem, its a symptom. fractional reserve accounting and fiat currency is the problem, along with corrupt politicians aiding and abetting criminal corporations.
the bank of canada is no such thing. we are the victims of legislated and politically-assisted fraud, imposed on us by complicit politicians and criminal corporations.
so its not so bad here? that's relative, we're taxed higher than most of the world, and have more resources, yet we have 3rd world living conditions in varied parts of the country, our communication infrastructure is terrible, and we're all going broke through unsustainable debt.
we pay interest on monies loaned the government by an international private institution, and these institutions then in turn loan out more money based on the money already loaned out, all of which they collect interest on, and further loan out again, for more profits at interest.
it is madness. we can never hope to repay the loan, because all currency comes from the bank! the bank of canada - the actual bank of canada, not the imf-bank in disguise - had the power to print actual money, without interest, yet our politicians signed this power away, gave it to criminal banksters, and we all go about our daily lives wondering why we're getting poorer and deeper in debt, no matter how "good" we are at managing our money, or how "much" we seem to get paid.
Occupy Montreal, Vancouver , Toronto is a HUGE JOKE ... Occupy any city in the USA is JUSTIFIED.
best of luck with that. occupy everywhere.
It's not even about filthiness, but rather that SO much of the population is stuck with low income and even lower net worth. "Upward mobility" is s fairly abstract concept, but the angst (in the US _AND_ Canada) reflects the very tangible fact that the CDO bubble let dishonest bankers profit by trillions, paid for by the ongoing mortgage meltdown.
It's _only_ the 1% who profited from CDOs (and the conservative fetish with tax cuts.)
Fail.
"A friend of mine admitted to me recently that although she and her husband make over $400k a year, they were struggling to figure out how to afford the monthly payments on a new Toyota."
I think that the friends must be mentally deficient if they are struggling on over 400K/annum. Which begs the question: what are they being overpaid for?
Anything more than this figure would be justified for a tax of 66%.
With sincere apologies to Kevin O'Leary.