How much damage did Covid do?

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

What if we give them free rides on sketchy submarines?

Compromise. We tie cinder blocks to their legs and drop them in the ocean. Let’s start with Elon and work our way down until there are no more billionaires.

[Azure]

What about the government officials that create policies such as TFW programs to drive down wage growth?

Can we shoot them into the sun as well?

Maybe we can also shoot the entire city of Toronto into the sun as well as they are supporting the government that is driving all this stupid legislation.

[kipperiggy]

Scary to think how 2.5 years of this could impact a generation. I totally agree, but that's a short time period greatly impacting a long time period. For some people the impact was shorter than 2.5 years though. I'd say I was one of the last to get back to normal and even I think it mostly is now.

[opendoor]

Just to add on to what I was talking about above, these numbers show it in the most basic way:

WWII to 1980:

Real Per Capita GDP growth: 2.3% a year.
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 2% a year

1980 to present:

Real Per Capita GDP growth: 1.8% a year
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 0.4% a year

So in the first period, wage increases for most people tracked at about 85-90% of the economy's growth. Post-1980, they've only managed to be about 20-25%. So the vast majority of growth is going straight to the wealthy. Which makes trickle down economics so ridiculous. Pre-Reagan, the wealth was trickling down effectively, but since then it is increasingly being consolidated.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Just to add on to what I was talking about above, these numbers show it in the most basic way:

WWII to 1980:

Real Per Capita GDP growth: 2.3% a year.
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 2% a year

1980 to present:

Real Per Capita GDP growth: 1.8% a year
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 0.4% a year

So in the first period, wage increases for most people tracked at about 85-90% of the economy's growth. Post-1980, they've only managed to be about 20-25%. So the vast majority of growth is going straight to the wealthy. Which makes trickle down economics so ridiculous. Pre-Reagan, the wealth was trickling down effectively, but since then it is increasingly being consolidated.

Just curious though, do you think that there is more upward mobility now than in that WWII to 1980 period? I feel like education alone over the past few decades has had an enormous impact in that regard, so that people who start out at minimum wage, unskilled positions, rise through the ranks faster and earn larger wages as a result?

[flamesfever]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Just to add on to what I was talking about above, these numbers show it in the most basic way:

WWII to 1980:

Real Per Capita GDP growth: 2.3% a year.
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 2% a year

1980 to present:

Real Per Capita GDP growth: 1.8% a year
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 0.4% a year

So in the first period, wage increases for most people tracked at about 85-90% of the economy's growth. Post-1980, they've only managed to be about 20-25%. So the vast majority of growth is going straight to the wealthy. Which makes trickle down economics so ridiculous. Pre-Reagan, the wealth was trickling down effectively, but since then it is increasingly being consolidated.

I can see by what happened in my home town in Ontario during those periods.

From WWII to 1980, a young person could get a job in a local factory, after high school, and make enough to get married, have kids, buy a house, and retire with a decent pension.

From 1980 to present, much of the factories closed down, because products were produced cheaper elsewhere e.g. China, and many of the young people, who elected to stay in town, ended up surviving on some form of Government assistance. You could also see it in their attitude to work in general, where they would formerly pick apples in the Fall, they now found it beneath them, and the farmers had to bring in Jamaicans to pick them.

Sound familiar

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Just to add on to what I was talking about above, these numbers show it in the most basic way:

WWII to 1980:

Real Per Capita GDP growth: 2.3% a year.
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 2% a year

1980 to present:

Real Per Capita GDP growth: 1.8% a year
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 0.4% a year

So in the first period, wage increases for most people tracked at about 85-90% of the economy's growth. Post-1980, they've only managed to be about 20-25%. So the vast majority of growth is going straight to the wealthy. Which makes trickle down economics so ridiculous. Pre-Reagan, the wealth was trickling down effectively, but since then it is increasingly being consolidated.

You’re still using 1980 as the date of transition, when 1973 was when broad economic growth slowed dramatically.

The whole narrative that the golden post-war egalitarian society was ruined by Reagan and Thatcher relies on ignoring the 70s and how dismal they were for most people. It was the failure of the post-war economic model to sustain broad prosperity that paved the way for Reagan and Thatcher to gain power, not the other way around.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Slava

Just curious though, do you think that there is more upward mobility now than in that WWII to 1980 period? I feel like education alone over the past few decades has had an enormous impact in that regard, so that people who start out at minimum wage, unskilled positions, rise through the ranks faster and earn larger wages as a result?

For the US at least, the data shows the opposite. Intergenerational Income Elasticity (basically how heavily a person's income is correlated to that of their parents) has risen sharply after 1980, nearly doubling from its low in the '50s and '60s. Canada is thankfully far better in that respect, with an IGE that's less than half the US's and one of the lowest in the industrialized world.

Though within the US, it's also very regional. I recall seeing something that showed that social mobility in the Western states (particularly in urban areas) was actually pretty decent, and not too far off Canada and some other European countries. But in the East (and particularly the South), it was basically as bad as it gets.

[flamesfever]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

You’re still using 1980 as the date of transition, when 1973 was when broad economic growth slowed dramatically.

The whole narrative that the golden post-war egalitarian society was ruined by Reagan and Thatcher relies on ignoring the 70s and how dismal they were for most people. It was the failure of the post-war economic model to sustain broad prosperity that paved the way for Reagan and Thatcher to gain power, not the other way around.

Alberta was booming throughout the 1970s. The money was flowing in from foreign sources e.g. Germany, and many people came out here to work. It was Pierre and the NEP that put a damper on that.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

You’re still using 1980 as the date of transition, when 1973 was when broad economic growth slowed dramatically.

The whole narrative that the golden post-war egalitarian society was ruined by Reagan and Thatcher relies on ignoring the 70s and how dismal they were for most people. It was the failure of the post-war economic model to sustain broad prosperity that paved the way for Reagan and Thatcher to gain power, not the other way around.

You're still conflating the economic pain of recessions that everyone felt, with economic pain being concentrated on the bottom 3-4 quintiles of income. That's not the point, and it never has been. Not once did I say anything about the 1970s being a boom time or a period of high growth, so talking about how miserable it was is arguing against a point that no one made. I'm talking strictly about income equality across different income levels and how it has changed over time.

If there's no or slow growth and no one's wages really go up, then people will be unhappy, but it's not evidence of growing inequality. However, when there is growth and it's almost entirely concentrated among the wealthy and high income earners, that is inequality.

As you can see, right through the '70s, lower wage workers kept pace with higher wage ones. Only in the late '70s did they really start to diverge, and then it really took hold in the '80s:



The income share of the top 0.5% and top 1% show the exact same thing, where their share continued to drop through the '70s (5-6 years after 1973) before rocketing up after 1980:



And those charts are before tax, so the effect of Reagan's tax cuts which dramatically lowered high earners' tax burden would have been even more dramatic.

[Fuzz]

This is a really good article on CEO pay and income inequality through the years:

And, of course, the ire is well-placed. “It turns out the tippy-top is where tons of the inequality is concentrated,” says Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, with a nice helping of dry understatement. “That’s a huge chunk of the national economy that goes to a pretty select group of people. CEO and corporate executive pay really does distort that entire upper part of the income distribution. If we had a top 1 percent that only claims 10 percent of total national income, the way they did in 1979, that’s a very different economy than one where they claim almost 20 percent, the way they do today.”

How different would that economy be? To get a handle on that question, Bivens and his colleagues at EPI calculate something they call the inequality tax: They assume an economy that grew at the same rate ours did over the past 40 years, pretend that income inequality didn’t rise, and distribute the spoils of that growth accordingly. “Basically, that means the middle 60 to 80 percent would be something like 10 to 12 percent richer than they are today,” he says. “Everyone gets a 10 to 12 percent raise.”

https://www.mensjournal.com/features...s-and-for-what

[CliffFletcher]

I’m not arguing that wealth concentration hasn’t happened (I’ve read Piketty too). So we’re talking past each other.

I frankly don’t care as much about concentration of wealth as I do about absolute material living stands. Sweden actually has more billionaires per capita than the U.S., but it still provides more robust public services and quality of life to its citizens. It achieves that by fostering an attractive climate for private business, and then imposing high tax rates on citizens at all income levels who work in those business. I don’t see anyone in North American today offering that as a model for a more egalitarian society going forward.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I’m not arguing that wealth concentration hasn’t happened (I’ve read Piketty too). So we’re talking past each other.

I frankly don’t care as much about concentration of wealth as I do about absolute material living stands. Sweden actually has more billionaires per capita than the U.S., but it still provides more robust public services and quality of life to its citizens. It achieves that by fostering an attractive climate for private business, and then imposing high tax rates on citizens at all income levels who work in those business. I don’t see anyone in North American today offering that as a model for a more egalitarian society going forward.

Not so sure we should strive to be like Sweden. The cost of living their is insane, and it's definitely a place where unless your parents are wealthy, you will have a very tough go of it. Sweden has a bigger wealth divide than Canada. Not as bad as the USA, mind you. Sweden also has far fewer immigrants than Canada. So lots of people who've been there countless generations enjoying the good life, while new people are clawing to get in. I'm not sure that's a model that would be feasible for Canada, a country of largely immigrants.

[PeteMoss]

While there are exceptions (including in this thread) - there is also a large gulf right now between people's own economic situations vs how they feel everyone else is doing. For some reason - people think everyone else is down in the dumps financially while they themselves are doing fine.

This is the US, but likely same deal in Canada:

Spoiler!

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by blankall

Not so sure we should strive to be like Sweden. The cost of living their is insane, and it's definitely a place where unless your parents are wealthy, you will have a very tough go of it. Sweden has a bigger wealth divide than Canada. Not as bad as the USA, mind you. Sweden also has far fewer immigrants than Canada. So lots of people who've been there countless generations enjoying the good life, while new people are clawing to get in. I'm not sure that's a model that would be feasible for Canada, a country of largely immigrants.

Sweden actually has greater social mobility than Canada (which in turn has more mobility than the U.S. or UK).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global...Mobility_Index

The cost of living (ie 25 per cent VAT) is the price that’s paid to fund more robust public education, health care, and pensions. The notion peddled in North America that we could boost our public services to similar levels just by going after the 1 per cent is a fantasy.

[Sainters7]

Originally Posted by kipperiggy

Scary to think how 2.5 years of this could impact a generation. I totally agree, but that's a short time period greatly impacting a long time period. For some people the impact was shorter than 2.5 years though. I'd say I was one of the last to get back to normal and even I think it mostly is now.

I'm back to normal now but my rent sure as #### isn't. Nice little 30% boost to it in June, disgusting. I live downtown, some people I've met at pubs had theirs go up 40%. The financial fallout has been brutal, and I don't know how it's going to end.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Sweden actually has greater social mobility than Canada (which in turn has more mobility than the U.S. or UK).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global...Mobility_Index

The cost of living (ie 25 per cent VAT) is the price that’s paid to fund more robust public education, health care, and pensions. The notion peddled in North America that we could boost our public services to similar levels just by going after the 1 per cent is a fantasy.

That mobility isn't felt equally across the board:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...me-2022-04-28/

STOCKHOLM, April 28 (Reuters) - Sweden has failed to integrate the vast numbers of immigrants it has taken in over the past two decades, leading to parallel societies and gang violence, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Thursday, as she launched a series of initiatives to combat organised crime.

A lot of these European countries have the advantage of relatively stable pre-existing populations that benefit greatly from colonialism, that allowed them to set up international companies that can then bring in cash and share it amongst stable populations with established wealth.

One thing I will say is that Sweden, and just about everywhere else, has a much better atmosphere for starting a small business than Canada does. The cost of capital, land, and labour is so extreme in Canada and we combine that with all sorts of red tape, zoning, and government induced oligopolies.

I do agree that Canada's taxation of the very upper earners and most profitable corporations is laughable. Specifically, the ability to keep profits in corporate solution long-term and only pay a fraction of the taxes on the profits. The purpose of these tax schemes was to allow corporations (particularly those just starting out) to reinvest that money back into the business. Instead, it just become a loophole for the rich, who don't need to use their income to sustain themselves, to hide from taxation. It's counterproductive to its goals, as any business starting out is not doing so on an even playing field.

Back to the Sweden comparisons, Canada's healthcare system is rated higher than Sweden's. As far as our educational system goes, he problem in Canada is lack of direction. Sweden provides more individual funding, but they also don't let students study whatever they want to. They have a strong centralized system that allocates post-secondary spots in proportion to what the economy actually needs. In Canada we have universities filled with liberal arts students and the government funds 90% of the costs. Sweden also doesn't allow students who are struggling to complete high school. They are transferred to a vocational program.

[Vinny01]

In many ways Covid felt like our real life version of the “blip” from Marvel movies. I look back at the 2-3 years and it is a blur. It felt like the longest and shortest time all at the same time if that makes any sense. I felt horrible for kids, young adults, single folks, seniors and people who lost their business or job.

I consider myself extremely lucky. I just shifted to working from home and still do 80% of the time. My wife had no impact on her job either and our Daughter was 3 in March 2020 and had very minor masking in kindergarten that is it. We saved a bunch of money during the pandemic and bought a house in early 2021 right before things went crazy in the real estate market.

I do agree we will be dealing with various ramifications of the pandemic for years to come

[Stewie991]

The only good thing out of Covid was the Freedom Convoy. What a party!!

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Stewie991

The only good thing out of Covid was the Freedom Convoy. What a party!!

Always interesting to watch people celebrate brain damage.