Who are the richest 1%?

Rebel Youth

In our last print issue we published a special discussion about the strategy and tactics of youth and student struggle and the Occupy movement by Drew Garvie.

Since that time the Occupy movement has not gone away but its biggest impact remains its slogans of solidarity and class struggle, about the 1% and the 99%. Some of our readers asked for more information about who, exactly, are we talking about when we speak of the 1%?

Helpfully, the labour publication BC Federationist put out a quick summary of a new study from a group of University of British Columbia economics professors.

What the report doesn't conclude is, of course, key in our analysis here at Rebel Youth: that the real 1% are a class because of their relationship to economy or (more precisely, the mode of production) not percentages of income.

As the saying goes -- their are those who work, and those who work them.  As such the power and influence isn’t just from having loads of money (which can also be obscured from census collectors and the tax man) but as a class. Moreover, monopoly capitalists don't make a wage. Instead, they make profits which come from  -- like vampires sucking on workers wages.

Still, the information is useful and striking.

According to the BC Federationist the UBC researchers found, broadly speaking, that income distribution has not been this uneven in Canada since “the dark days of the Great Depression.” “The ratcheting-up of inequality in Canada is real,” the 43-page paper says.

In Canada, about 8 per cent of the country’s total income was concentrated in the hands of 1 per cent of the population back in the late 1970s. In recent years, that almost doubled to 14 per cent, the UBC paper said, which is based in part on details from the 2006 long-form census.  Reasons for the growing chasm vary.

The wage gap between those with a university degree and those with just high school is widening. Younger workers are facing worse earnings prospects than a generation ago. Outsourcing, declining unionization rates and technological change may also be playing a role.

Here are some more of the findings from the study, entitled “Canadian Inequality: Recent Development and Policy Options”:

• The top 1 per cent of earners amount to 275,000 individuals.

• You need an annual income of at least $230,000 to be part of the top 1 per cent; the average income in this group is $450,000, compared to only $36,000 for the whole Canadian population.  

• One could safely call this a brotherhood — 83 per cent of those in the top 1 per cent are men.   

• Just 10 per cent of people in the top 1 per cent work in the finance and insurance industry (despite garnering most of the public’s wrath). Senior managers and CEOs are over-represented in the top group, but still only account for 14 per cent of top earners. The only other large group of top income earners? Physicians, dentists and veterinarians who comprise almost 10 per cent of top earners, despite representing less than 1 per cent of the workforce.

The paper was jointly written by UBC’s Nicole Fortin, David Green, Thomas Lemieux, Kevin Milligan and Craig Riddell for the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network.

Did someone say 'eat the rich'?

Money manager Jim Doak of Megantic Asset Management, a former chairman of the Toronto Society of Financial Analysts, has likened [Ontario New Democratic Party leader] Ms. Horwath’s proposal [for raising taxes for the rich] to “ethnic cleansing.”  “It’s nasty,” Mr. Doak complained to CTV News last week. “She’s defined a group, not by culture or by language, but by how much money it makes, and she wants to get rid of them.”

Source: The Globe and Mail

Hardly - the Ontario NDP will likely support McGuinty's austerity budget! We thinks the capitalists doth complain too much... - RY eds.

IWD 2012

Message from the Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist League
March 8 is a day to honour women's struggles, take stock of hard‑won gains, and to demand full equality.

This year, International Women's Day comes amidst inspiring new struggles. The global Occupy Movement has exposed the growing income gap and political power disparity between the wealthiest 1% and the other 99%. Working people in Europe are conducting huge struggles against austerity measures.

Across the capitalist world, women are disproportionately paying the price for bailouts of the banks and major corporations, neo‑liberal cuts to social programs, public service layoffs and massive tuition increases.

In Canada, IWD 2012 comes amidst intense attacks by corporations upon the hard won pensions of workers, and by governments upon public pension plans. These attacks have the sharpest impact on women, given their lower average incomes, and higher rates of poverty.

Our view: the youth and student struggle now

Main Political Resolution, 

YCL-LJC Central Committee

Jan. 15th, 2012

Since our last Central Committee, we are still being told by politicians and the corporate media that the economic crisis is over.  At the same time, the crisis is blamed for aggressive budget cut-backs.

The economic crisis of capitalism is the main fact dominating the struggle of the youth and students today The latest Euro-zone sovereign debt crisis is a continuation of that crisis.

The Eurozone crisis: more crisis of capitalism

The sovereign debt crisis forcefully imploded across the European Union over the past several months. It began with the capitalist governments of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain suddenly announcing they could not refinance their national debt to the Banks (ie. the country is bankrupt). Consequently, they experienced a major downgrading of there credit ratings by finance capital, further aggravating the situation. Even France‘s credit rating has just been downgraded.

The crisis was not simply sparked by the quantitative amount debt of these countries. Because of the domination of banking and financial capital (that is non-value producing or parasitic) and its ever-greater concentration and centralization within the interconnected Eurozone, when a country like Greece defaulted there was a qualitative change: a domino-effect of defaulting (and a resulting political crisis; for example, in Italy the Berlusconi was suddenly replaced by high level administrators or “technocrats.”)

Nobody has a crystal ball, but the future of the entire EU is being drawn into question. The EU is now in a recession that has even hit Germany.  Can it be confidently said that Canada is immune? Not at all.

Evictions coordinated with Homeland Security, FBI, etc.

Occupy Vancouver

Rebel Youth re-prints this report linking the violent evictions of the Occupy demos across the USA with the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS was created following 9/11 with a mandate to prevent terrorist attacks, man-made accidents, and natural disasters; secret service, immigration, customs, boarder-patrol, citizenship and in total 22 government agencies are now included in its mandate. DHS has a 2011 budget of over $98 billion. It is coordinated by the White House.

The report raises important questions for here in Canada, where Occupy protests also took place relatively quickly. Why did all the cities move in the same week-long period? Was their coordination by CSIS, or PMO office?

WEDNESDAY NOV 16, 2011 8:53 AM

Did Mayors, DHS Coordinate Occupy Attacks?

BY ALLISON KILKENNY

When a series of crackdowns on the Occupy camps suddenly occurred in, more or less, the same week, many observers wondered if perhaps the attacks had been coordinated at a national level. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan confirmed that suspicion during an appearance on the BBC - excerpted on The Takeaway radio program - when she casually mentioned taking part in a conference call with the leaders of 18 US cities right before the raids.