Can Increasing Inequality Be a Steady State?

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The equity of people is a basic tenet of all major, world-wide faith groups.

In the United Church of Canada, a Christian denomination, all of God’s children are welcome at the communion table. All are served the same bread and wine; the symbolism of unity in God’s presence matters. This is not so in the secular, political world of some governments today.

PressProgress summarizes the findings of an important OECD study on incomes in Canada, Australia and the United States of America. They report that:

“Increasing levels of economic inequality are the “new normal” and we can expect them to get worse, not better.

That’s the key takeaway from a recent study on long-run levels of income growth in Canada, Australia and the United States published by the OECD.

The study highlights the explosive rise of incomes in the top 1% over the last 30 years, and their growing share as compared to the bottom 90% and 99%. Authored by eminent Canadian economist and Broadbent Fellow Lars Osberg, it argues “there is no natural upper bound to the real incomes of the top 1% and thus no natural upper bound to their income gap with median households.”

Similar to the findings of French economist Thomas Piketty and the OECD, Osberg suggests that the balanced growth of the post-World War II era, which produced a more stable and fairer income distribution, bucked a broader trend in which inequality accumulates and deepens over generations.”

 The full report from PressProgress is available at: http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/rising-income-inequality-new-normal-study

For people of faith, reports such as these are worthy of deep reflection. What is it that our faith calls us to DO in these circumstances?

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