Thread by @acoyne

So how are we doing? A few years back all you'd hear was: the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class are spinning their wheels. Rising inequality, stagnant incomes. It wasn't true then, as some of us tried to show. But what about now? Some charts...

Poverty, first. By any measure, by any standard, poverty in Canada has fallen to *historic* lows. It's been falling since the late 90s, but in the last few years, thanks to the Canada Child Benefit, it's dropped like a stone (slight rebound in '21 most likely due to pandemic)...

Yeah, but what about at the top end? The notorious 1 per cent. Making out like bandits, aren't they? Taking a larger and larger share of the pie? Nope. Top 1 per cent share in Canada has been falling since 2006...

Same picture if you look at quintiles. Share going to top fifth falling, the rest stable or slightly rising.

What about those stagnant incomes? The struggling middle class? Here's median after-tax income, all households: after accounting for inflation, it's up 40 per cent since 1997 (as of 2021, the last year for which Stats Can has figures).

Real wages, likewise, are rising, up about 25 per cent.

One more: the Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality. Rising until the mid 2000s, has been falling since (lower Gini score = lower inequality). As of 2020, lower than at any time since 1976 (the year time began, according to StatsCan)...

Of course, the question is how long any of this can last, if productivity and output per capita continue to stall or fall. But we’ve been getting by until now...

What’s impressive is how we’ve been able to get inflation back down w/out — knock on wood — having to endure a recession/high unemployment. Why did real household incomes fall from late 70s to early 1990s? Because of 2 awful recessions: the price of stifling the Great Inflation.