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News Flash: richest still getting richer!
A few days ago CBC treated Canadians to this feel-good story about how the gap was closing between the 1% and the rest of us.
Turns out that when you took a good look at the story, they're talking vague generalizations about households that bring in a combined $215,000 per year. That's a household in Cold Lake or Fort Mac where both breadwinners are working in the oil patch, and if they were to be laid off, they'd miss their next mortgage payment.
They may be one percenters, but they are not by any stretch of the imagination “rich.”
So a couple of days later, the CBC comes out with the truth; the real rich are doing better than ever!
CBC labels these folks the “ultra-rich.” They assign an arbitrary $30 million cut-off point. That's a little closer to reality than calling folks who bring $215k into their home “rich.” These are folks who aren't going to have to skip a meal or a mortgage payment (because they generally don't have them) regardless of whether they are employed or not.
They're not ultra-rich, but they're comfortable. And while the CBC pegs their number at a mere 5,000 across the land, that seems modest indeed. I can name a few dozen who rose from DP obscurity to that kind of net worth just in the real estate and construction game in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph area in the great post-war boom.
And by the way, for the most part, they don't see themselves as “rich.” But according to the CBC, they are the “ultra-rich,” and they're getting richer.
Which pretty much erases that feel-good story the CBC had for us a few days ago.
Source: http://theviewfromfallingdowns.blogspot.com/2014/11/news-flash-richest-still-getting-richer.html
