Regardless of whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney triumphs in the U.S. presidential elections tomorrow, it will be interesting to see how the world`s last superpower covers the ever-growing spider`s web of cracks in the facade of the American dream.
That apple-pie notion, MIT economist Frank Levy told the New York Times ``Described a mass upward mobility that is just harder to achieve right now.`` Through a combination of the so-called digital revolution that put a computer on every desk and cellphone to every ear, globalization, the Lehman Brothers crash, the weakening of unions and the continuing detoriation of American education, the median income of U.S. families fell substantially over the last decade for the first time since the Great Depression. In the U.S. at least, the kids aren`t going to be all right nor the sons or the daughters.
Across the pond, the right-wing Economist, no doubt inspired by its mother country`s love of pantomine, was indulging in a spot of ideological cross-dressing with a cover story entitled True Progressivism that highlighted the frightful state of rising inequality within the world`s key economies and the danger it posed to political stability. It was enough to pitch a tent for the Occupy Movement: according to the magazine`s special report, in the U.S. the richest 1 per cent has seen their share of the national income double, from 10 per cent to 20 per cent while the top 0.01 per cent - 16,000 families with an average income of $24 million - have seen their share quadruple from 1 per cent to 5 per cent.
It`s not as bad in Canada but it`s not quite time to start thumbing the nose at Karl Marx. According to a handy Huffington Post infographic, from 1980-2009, the top 20 per cent of Canadians saw both what they made and what they earned increase while every other percentile saw their share go down. Since the 2008, the unofficial start of the Great Recession, Canadian median household income has been flat while B.C. incomes have fallen, from $67,890 in 2008 to $66,970 in 2010 (Canadian median household income in 2010: $69,860).
The Times pointed out that, in the campaign between Obama and Romney, the rhetoric was particularly sharp and the policy was stunningly vague, with the race treating inequality with the nuance of a box of five crayons: Obama would call Romney a venture-capitalist bloodsucker and Romney would retort with preschool accusations of ``class war.`` While the language of the upcoming elections in B.C. will be just as trite - Premier Christy Clark did her best Cersei Lannister impression recently by warning of `socialist hordes` - it`ll be interesting to see if the clash between the laissez-faire privateers of the B.C. Liberals and the aforementioned bloodcurdling Bolsheviks of the NDP produces at least some light to compliment the heat.
The Liberals, no doubt conscious of Atilla the Dix and his populist siege machinery, have been trying to pivot towards both stimulating household income and addressing inequality, albeit in a right-wing way with their focus on jobs, training and education.
But, while Pat Bell cuts a fine figure as Jobs minister, Clark`s twee Families First plan has a rainmaker feel to it - there`s a lot of dancing about and hoping it rains. Shirley Bond`s initiative from the distant past - all-day kindergarten - would get a cheers from The Economist since education is one of the foremost tools of closing the inequality gap. Yet there are questions of how much strain it places on teachers, not to mention its place in general among the government`s focus on cutbacks, often to social programs that help address inequality, along with the B.C. Liberals` lamentable, vicious relationship with the teachers` union (although the Economist would hurray that too).
And it`s hard to forget both Clark`s government and her policies stem in part for the Harmonized Sales Tax,which many perceived, strong policy or not, as a reverse transferrance of the tax burden from businesses and their affluent backers to consumers and the families Clark ostensibly cares for so much.
The question is what alternative do Adrian Dix and the NDP offer. One could hardly pick a better mandate for a new generation of left wing leaders but the trick with addressing inequality is closing the gap without choking the economy as a whole. Has the Opposition genuinely learned from its years in the wilderness or will it pick off where it left off, with its stale, destructive prescription of uncontrolled, ever-growing, ineffective government?
The NDP is already showing a little of its new look with Enbridge, an issue that also, obliquely, ties in with questions of equality, namely: Who should benefit and to what degree from the bounty from - and risks to - this region and this nation's common resources?
Closer to home, one can see wrestling with inequality and wealth distribution play out at a municipal level. One could argue that Mayor Shari Green represents a different tack: she rose to prominence partly by her vehement opposition to higher taxes, particularly her run-in with then Mayor Dan Rogers over the hikes to the light industrial rate. Instead of finding money from business and its owners, she offered instead layoffs and cuts to municipal government that will be shouldred by the struggling and affluent alike, though not equally, through the core services review.
And that's becoming the key concern of the KPMG exercise: what should the city do and for which citizens should it do those things for? One can see it in the tension in the attempts from the unions of city workers to convince mayor and council to appear at their public forums on reviews. The elaborate acrobatics Councillor Dave Wilbur in particular used to avoid that same forum is something uniquely Prince George: his argument, though perhaps legally sound, that putting mayor and council in a room outside of city hall was dangerous because they made up a quorum sounded like a punchline: We put too many politicians in a room and a government broke out.
It was also risible: you could clone this council, twice, and no one could ever accuse them of forming an effective decision-making body. Don't worry Dave, let them eat cake - as long as council cuts it first, of course.
What Wilbur, Green and others of their ilk should consider is that if they chose to at best ignore and at worst exacerbate the growing ill of economic inequality, then, as The Economist opines, "... momentum for change will build and and may lead to a political outcome that serves nobody's interests... [There] are plenty of bad ideas out there."
The more they struggle to squeeze the haunches of city, the better more populist, less responsible choices will look on the ballot come next election.
