One of the major forces behind the rapid increase in the income share of the top 1% in the United States and Canada has been rising senior corporate executive pay, especially in the form of stock options. 

The majority of the top 1%, and an even higher proportion of persons in the ultra-wealthy top 0.1%, are either senior managers of non financial companies or work in the financial sector where stock options are usually the biggest single part of total compensation.

The Oct. 19 Globe and Mail editorial supporting expansion of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) got it exactly right. The CPP is “one of the country’s great public policy successes” and “the best [savings plan] we’ve got.”

Notwithstanding evidence that many middle-income earners will face a sharp decline in living standards in retirement as a result of the erosion of employer pension plans and very low rates of private savings, the Harper government has refused to endorse the emerging provincial government consensus in favour of CPP expansion. The main argument against seems to be that the required increase in contributions (about 3 per cent of earnings) would amount to a damaging tax increase.

Rex Murphy’s commentary in the National Post on recent Mi’kmaq protests is misinformed and demonstrates a profound ignorance of our history. 

In his article, he suggests that the behaviour of Mi’kmaq protestors at Elsipogtog First Nation on October 17th constitutes a “rude dismissal of Canada’s generosity”. Even more “raw and provocative an insult”, he argues, is the suggestion that this and other protests (including the Caledonia blockade and the Idle No More movement) are legitimate struggles against oppression. Indeed, what Mr. Murphy appears to find anathema are the co-existence, today, of Indigenous struggles for self-determination and assertions of sovereignty and existing oppression and racism.

Canadian development economist Kari Polanyi Levitt has a reputation in Canada and abroad as an advocate for economic policies rooted in social justice and distributional equity. Levitt has worked tirelessly to build development studies as a multi-disciplinary field of scholarly endeavour, in which development economics plays an essential role but must be complemented by essential contributions from other social scientists and historians. Now in her ninety-first year, the Professor Emerita of Economics at McGill University has published a new book entitled From the Great Transformation to the Great Financialization: On Karl Polanyi and Other Essays