This was the very graphic title of an article in the Canadian Globe and Mail on May 2nd, reporting on the official data from the 2006 census. In 25 years, income of Canadian workers has barely increased $1 a week! Measured in constant dollars, median earnings of full-time Canadian workers had increased from $41,348 in 1980 to $41,401 in 2005. The census data contains a wealth of information which backs up what the Marxists have been saying for a long time: this has been a boom based on the overexploitation of the working class, one from which the workers have not benefited and … it is now over.
The situation in British Columbia is even worse. There, "median earnings actually fell 11.3 per cent between 1980 and 2005". But this was not the situation for all Canadians, of course. Despite all the talk of class struggle having been abolished, clearly some have done better than others. In the same 25-year period, "the incomes of the richest Canadians increased by 16.4 per cent while incomes of the poorest fell by 20.6 per cent."
Speaking to the Globle and Mail, economist Armine Yalnizyian expressed her surprise at these figures, "because in 2005 we're at almost the tail end of a decade of strong economic growth, the strongest we've seen in 40 years, low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment, strong economic growth and people are worse off than they were in the 1980s and 1990s, which were recession plagued decades." Precisely, the boom of the 2000s was one from which the working class did not benefit (and we are talking here only about those in full time employment).
There is only one conclusion one can draw from these figures, even during an economic boom: capitalism does not work for working people. An economic recession coming after a boom from which only the wealthiest benefited is bound to have profound consequences on the consciousness of workers in Canada and the rest of the advanced capitalist countries where the situation has been similar.
