[Jaime_Souviens]

Robair Robair:

Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:

The buying up isn't all one way. At the very least TD Bank bought Price-Waterhouse, and is planning to move into direct consumer banking, if it has not already done so. And, yes, Wendy's bought Tim Horton's, but Tim Horton's also bought Bess Eaton, a donut chain in New England, and is now running it as Tim's.

I think there have been Canadian buyouts in newspapers and broadcasting, but I'm too uninterested to look it up.

So there have been some Canadian survivors as well.

Second, American companies are being bought up by foriegn companies as well, such as Chrysler, et c.

And third, some Canadian companies are being bought by non-American companies, (Labatt's).

My point being, yes, it's probably mostly Canadian companies being bought, yes, it's Nafta and related legislation, but there's also a lot more corporate integration internationally. Whether that takes 10% or 40% of the 'blame' I don't know, but it diminishes things at least somewhat.

Last, some of these coroprations should have always been considered bi-national. There's a lot of such corporations particularly in paper, but the most obvious examples being in automobiles, where the big three have always been as much Canadian as American.

Canada has way more foreign ownership than any other industrialized nation. Do Canadian companys buy American companies? Sure, once in a blue moon. But since Mulroney it's been hapening the other way around at an alarming rate.

Canada used to have something called the foreign investment review board... or was it agency... anyway Mulroney abolished that. You used to have to meet certain criteria before you could just waltz in here and buy up Canadian companys. The buyout had to benefit, or at least not harm Canada. Now everything is up for sale and its been that way since the mid 80's.

This article talks a little about the result.

When an american company buys its Canadian compeditor, jobs are not created in Canada. A small satellite company may be left in Canada but all the high paying Canadian jobs move south to the new head office. No more engineering, accounting or legal work for you Cunucks, sorry.

So how much foriegn ownership is acceptable? How much of Canada do you want to sell?

When do you officially stop being a country and become a colony? 20%? at 30%? At 40%? Cause we're almost there now. Canada is leading the way. I for one, would rather finish this race last. How about you?

I'm doing this real quick right now, but this info is available from some very reputable sources, just google some of the stuff you find in any of these articles. Or, for a good start, give the book at the start of this thread a read.

I'm not disagreeing, and I'm not saying it's not happening.

But I do think there is some complexity here.

For example, in the old days, Company A bought Company B, and the profits of B would then go to where A was. Fine.

But now, when A is a corporation whose stock is traded in New York, Toronto, and Hong Kong, and via the internet, is traded everywhere, where is the profit of B going? Well, still a good bit to New York, but also to investors around the world. Including, say, pension fund programs for teachers in Vancouver.

[Robair]

When company A (American) buys company C (Canuckian) here's the way it goes in the manufacturing sector:

Company C is building something in Canada (it could be horse trailers, garbage trucks, mining equipment, farming equipment, logging equipment...) and is kicking a little butt on its American compeditor to the south. The American compeditor is part of a huge conglomerate. It is easier for this conglomerate to absorb its little Canadian competition than it is to compete with them.

So, they buy the company. Then what?

Well, then they move all the managerial work from that little Canadian company south and pretty much run the satellite Canadian plant by remote control. When the head office moves south, all decisions at the top are now made by Americans. These manufacturing plants, when run by company C, used to buy their parts and supplies from Canadian companys and distributers. Well now, all that is switched over to the American suppliers that company A already has an account with.

So now you are taking business away from companys C1, C2. C3 and giving them to companys A1 and A2.

Now we move on to the subject of taxes. When these Conglomerates have a Canadian division that is turning profits (thanks to Canadas lower cost of doing business), they can move that profit (via the books) to their American plants byover charging the Canadian division for productsservice provided by the American Division. Guess what that means? They don't have to pay Canadian taxes!!

All of this is not just happening to 'some extent'. Do some reading, check out the numbers. But before you do, or even after you do, answer my question if you please.

How much foreign ownership is acceptable to you? How much control of Canada should we hand over?

[Jaime_Souviens]

Robair Robair:

How much foreign ownership is acceptable to you? How much control of Canada should we hand over?

I understand the process. I haven't been denying that it happens.

I haven't even been saying that it's "relatively small compared to bigger issues".

All I'm saying is that it's worth understanding in all sorts of complex ways.

I'm not looking for a fight on this when we're both talking about two sides of the same coin.

[Streaker]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Streaker Streaker:

I believe he is the driving force behind ViveLeCanada, a fine site which I'm sure many are familiar with.

Incorrect Streaker. But thanks for the compliment!

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/multifaq/ind ... tlevel=009

I don't know where I got the impression that Hurtig was the head honcho behind the site. I stand corrected.

[Scape]

Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:

Robair Robair:

How much foreign ownership is acceptable to you? How much control of Canada should we hand over?

I understand the process. I haven't been denying that it happens.

I haven't even been saying that it's "relatively small compared to bigger issues".

All I'm saying is that it's worth understanding in all sorts of complex ways.

I'm not looking for a fight on this when we're both talking about two sides of the same coin.

The bottom line here is that not one major industry in the US is dominated by Canadians. By comparison in Canada our auto, gas, tire, chemical, soft drink and a myriad of other industries are completely dominated by foreigners. How long before our banks, roads and communications follow suit?

Your points are not to be ignored but if we are to be a country we must act like one. Notice that I have not received a reply from Motorcycleboy? I suspect he does not want Canada to die with a whimper but do you think he knew the extent of the damage? Canada needs to stand up for itself and the people who dare do that are being smeared as conspiracy theorists and whacks who are right fucking out of 'er. How the hell are they wacky when the country is being sold right underneath them and they have the gall to point it out? Wacky is being oblivious to it all and expecting things will take care of themselves.

When Canada is majority foreign owned then it ceases to be Canada and its destiny is no longer in it hands but to the fickle trade winds that will rip it apart if god forbid there is ever a downturn in the world economy. Canada will be liquidated at that point and we will be left with nothing. Begging for jobs in sweatshops or beating each other to death to be the greeter at Walmart. THAT'S NOT A FUTURE. We must be prepared to endure adversity and in such a time we will have only ourselves to rely upon and when everything in this country is owned by countries that will be busy covering their own ass when the shit hits the fan we will have only ourselves to blame (and perhaps feed upon) when we have nothing for ourselves. Your observations, astute thought they may be Jamie, will bring nothing but cold comfort when that time comes.

[Robair]

Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:

Robair Robair:

How much foreign ownership is acceptable to you? How much control of Canada should we hand over?

I understand the process. I haven't been denying that it happens.

I haven't even been saying that it's "relatively small compared to bigger issues".

All I'm saying is that it's worth understanding in all sorts of complex ways.

I'm not looking for a fight on this when we're both talking about two sides of the same coin.

Understood.

I'm just of the opinion that it is time to start ringing the alarm bells. I was obliviouse to any of this untill it 'happened' to me. The company I was working at was purchased. Then I started looking around Canada for a similar R&D job, but in many cases, that work was done south of the border.

That was three years ago, I"ve been doing some reading since then and the two major parties in Canada are fucked up.

If you vote Liberal or Conservative next election, you are contributing to the problem.

Tell your friends!

[Jaime_Souviens]

Robair Robair:

Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:

Robair Robair:

How much foreign ownership is acceptable to you? How much control of Canada should we hand over?

I understand the process. I haven't been denying that it happens.

I haven't even been saying that it's "relatively small compared to bigger issues".

All I'm saying is that it's worth understanding in all sorts of complex ways.

I'm not looking for a fight on this when we're both talking about two sides of the same coin.

Understood.

I'm just of the opinion that it is time to start ringing the alarm bells. I was obliviouse to any of this untill it 'happened' to me. The company I was working at was purchased. Then I started looking around Canada for a similar R&D job, but in many cases, that work was done south of the border.

That was three years ago, I"ve been doing some reading since then and the two major parties in Canada are fucked up.

If you vote Liberal or Conservative next election, you are contributing to the problem.

Tell your friends!

Fair enough.

[DrCaleb]

Streaker Streaker:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Streaker Streaker:

I believe he is the driving force behind ViveLeCanada, a fine site which I'm sure many are familiar with.

Incorrect Streaker. But thanks for the compliment!

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/multifaq/ind ... tlevel=009

I don't know where I got the impression that Hurtig was the head honcho behind the site. I stand corrected.

No Problem Streaker. You might have got that impression from Mel himself. I've heard him claim that Vive is his site at a book signing. Which is why we've dedicated an FAQ page to it.

[CFChucky]

fuck the americans, all we gotta do to stop them is to set the white house on fire again, we did it once and it worked.

[Streaker]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Streaker Streaker:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Streaker Streaker:

I believe he is the driving force behind ViveLeCanada, a fine site which I'm sure many are familiar with.

Incorrect Streaker. But thanks for the compliment!

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/multifaq/ind ... tlevel=009

I don't know where I got the impression that Hurtig was the head honcho behind the site. I stand corrected.

No Problem Streaker. You might have got that impression from Mel himself. I've heard him claim that Vive is his site at a book signing. Which is why we've dedicated an FAQ page to it.

Well I guess Hurtig's pretty enthusiastic about Vive. As for myself, I guess I'll have to re-familiarise myself with it!

[Motorcycleboy]

Just thought I’d take time out of my busy schedule to shred some of the tripe Scape tries to present as a link “supporting” his non-sensical rantings.

He’s pretty silly, so this requires quite the leap into the realm of humility from someone of my obviously superior intellect.

But people who post stupid links supposedly supporting their “point” must be destroyed mercilessly.

Sorry Scape, but you’re not being honest.

$1:

Scape's Link Wrote:
Introduction
Each year since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on January 1, 1994, officials in Canada, Mexico, and the United States have regularly declared the agreement to be an unqualified success. It has been promoted as an economic free lunch -- a “win-win-win” for all three countries that should now be extended to the rest of the hemisphere in a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement.
Yep, it should.
For some people, NAFTA clearly has been a success. This should not be a surprise inasmuch as it was designed to bring extraordinary government protections to a specific set of interests -- investors and financiers in all three countries who search for cheaper labor and production costs. From that perspective, increased gross volumes of trade and financial flows in themselves testify to NAFTA’s achievements.

Buzzer sounds, eww, yeah, sorry Scape. I guess you lose on that score. NAFTA has been an unqualified success as far as anyone in business is concerned. The Canadian Better Business Bureau, Canadian small business Association, Canadian Council of Chief Executives, etc. Not enough for you? OK, let’s talk about the leaders down at Ford and GM. They are quite happy with the current arrangements that allow them to ship parts back and forth across the border, guaranteeing them the opportunity to make money from the regulations under the Autopact. Pissed off at those corporate bastards are you? Try to find something recent from Pinko Buzz Hargrove of the Canadian Auto Workers that really attacks NAFTA. Don’t bother with the dated shit from 1989. Find me something recent. And make it a good, venomous attack like he was espousing in the early 90’s. You can’t.
Essentially, everyone who actually has a stake in the economy are fans of NAFTA. So, what makes you so smart then?

$1:

Scape's link lied:
But most citizens of North America do not support themselves on their investments. They work for a living. The overwhelming majority has less than a college education,

Not true. Check out the Stats Can website. You’ll find that just under half of people in Canada have some post secondary education. This guy’s either made that number up or included Mexico in his calculation. That’s apples and oranges. Regardless, there are still a number of restrictions on American imports that don’t apply to Canucks. And I don’t hear a lot of Canadian labour leaders complaining that jobs are flying across the border to Mexico!

$1:

Scape couldn't think up the word's to write this but linked to some liar who said
…has little leverage in bargaining with employers, and requires a certain degree of job security in order to achieve a minimal, decent level of living. NAFTA, while extending protections for investors, explicitly excluded any protections for working people in the form of labor standards, worker rights, and the maintenance of social investments. This imbalance inevitably undercut the hard-won social contract in all three nations.

In what way exactly? Tell me how the “social contract” in Mexico has been compromised by competition from better paid, better treated US workers? Tell me how a Tim Horton’s employee in St Catherines Ontario has a much worse working lot in life than a Dunkin Donuts employee in Boston Mass?

$1:

As the three reports in this paper indicate, from the point of view of North American working people, NAFTA has thus far largely failed.
In the United States, as economist Robert Scott details, NAFTA has eliminated some 766,000 job opportunities -- primarily for non-college-educated workers in manufacturing

.

Not true. Not even close. Oh, yes, a large number of manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the north American economy over the last decade. But overall unemployment has dropped by more than half. That suggests those employees have moved on to bigger and better careers in information technologies, service industries, etc.
But, for just one moment, let’s say the agreement did eliminate those jobs in the US. To whose benefit do you think that was? I’ll give you one chance. Starts with a “C”.

$1:

As Bruce Campbell of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reports, Canada’s increased market integration with the United States began in 1989 with the bilateral Free Trade Agreement, the precursor to NAFTA. While trade and investment flows increased dramatically, per capita income actually declined for the first seven years after the agreement. Moreover, as in Mexico and the United States, Canadians saw an upward redistribution of income to the richest 20% of Canadians, a decline in stable full-time employment, and the tearing of Canada’s social safety net.

Bruce Campbell, of CCPA? That’s one of the most biased and left wing think tanks in Canada. So if I cite something from the Fraser institute, are you supposed to be impressed? Try telling me what you actually think, instead of coming up with some shit some lefty wrote in the 90’s and expecting me to take it at face value. Give me a break!
The CCPA and all the others are full of shit. But even though they were slamming NAFTA, those outright opponents of the deal couldn’t come up with a better stat than the fact Canadian incomes declined on a per capita basis in the first seven years of it’s inception.

Interesting that this period also coincided with a world wide recession and the election of provincial NDP governments in Ontario, BC, Sask and MB.

$1:

This continent-wide pattern of stagnant worker incomes, increased insecurity, and rising inequality has emerged at a time when economic conditions have been most favorable for the success of greater continental integration. The negative effect of increasing trade and investment flows has been obscured by the extraordinary consumer boom in the United States, especially during the period from 1996 through the summer of 2000. The boom, driven by the expansion of domestic consumer credit and a speculative bubble in the stock market, spilled over to Canada and Mexico. Their economies have now become extremely dependent on the capacity of U.S. consumers to continue to spend in excess of their incomes. As the air seeps out of that bubble, the cost of those nations’ reliance on the U.S. consumer market is becoming apparent.

O.K. The “stock bubble” burst in 2000. So why is Canadian unemployment still running at historic lows Scape? Get back to me when you find another link.

$1:

More Scape quotes:
The current imbalanced structure of NAFTA is clearly inadequate for the creation of an economically sustainable and socially balanced continental economy.

Your hero has failed to prove this. The success of the economy over the last 15 years bears that out.

$1:

The experience suggests that any wider free trade agreement extended to the hemisphere that does not give as much priority to labor and social development as it gives to the protection of investors and financiers is not viable.

Here he's just pushing a union-centric agenda. Not true at all.

$1:

Rather than attempting to spread a deeply flawed agreement to all of the Americas, the leaders of the nations of North America need to return to the drawing board and design a model of economic integration that works for the continent’s working people.

Pretty language from Jeff Faux. I can forgive ignorance, but not someone who is deliberately obtuse in order to promote an agenda.
Jeff plays to the crowd. Everyone wants to help the “working people.” But it’s all crap. The agreement’s not flawed. Jeff knows it, Scape knows it (or will when he starts working) and the “leaders of North America” should concern themselves with things other than interefering with the free flow of goods and services.

[Motorcycleboy]

[

$1:

quote="Robair"]When company A (American) buys company C (Canuckian) here's the way it goes in the manufacturing sector:

Company C is building something in Canada (it could be horse trailers, garbage trucks, mining equipment, farming equipment, logging equipment...) and is kicking a little butt on its American compeditor to the south. The American compeditor is part of a huge conglomerate. It is easier for this conglomerate to absorb its little Canadian competition than it is to compete with them.

That may be what happened to you. That’s not necessarily the case for everyone else.

$1:

So, they buy the company. Then what?

Many possibilities. Please go on.

$1:

Robair: Well, then they move all the managerial work from that little Canadian company south and pretty much run the satellite Canadian plant by remote control.

Not necessarily. Again. That was your experience. That’s not what happens all the time.

$1:

Robair: When the head office moves south, all decisions at the top are now made by Americans. These manufacturing plants, when run by company C, used to buy their parts and supplies from Canadian companys and distributers.

Because they were cheaper. Not because they were Canadian. Successful companies buy according to need, not nationalist bullshit.

$1:

Well now, all that is switched over to the American suppliers that company A already has an account with.

Well, those Canadian suppliers had better become a bit more competitive then, shouldn’t they? The 80 cent dollar might give them a head start!

$1:

Robair: So now you are taking business away from companys C1, C2. C3 and giving them to companys A1 and A2.

Not if C1, C2, C3 become more competitive and sell their product cheaper and better.

$1:

Robair:
Now we move on to the subject of taxes. When these Conglomerates have a Canadian division that is turning profits (thanks to Canadas lower cost of doing business), they can move that profit (via the books) to their American plants byover charging the Canadian division for productsservice provided by the American Division. Guess what that means? They don't have to pay Canadian taxes!!

But they do end up employing Canadian people at those offices who end up paying income tax, right?

And their Canadian investors still pay taxes on their dividends, right?

Keep going Robair, your business acumen is amazing!

$1:

All of this is not just happening to 'some extent'. Do some reading, check out the numbers. But before you do, or even after you do, answer my question if you please.

I’ve done some Reading!

If things are so bad, why is unemployment at a historic low?

Why is the Government running a 10 B + surplus?

Why have Canada’s exports Tripled since 1990?

$1:

How much foreign ownership is acceptable to you? How much control of Canada should we hand over?

[/quote]I’ll tell you what! I’ll answer that question!

a) As much as the market allows!
b) It’s not about we! It’s about individual investors. Unless you own stock in something that’s being “handed over”, you have no say. Nor should you!

[Scape]

Motorcycleboy Motorcycleboy:

Just thought I’d take time out of my busy schedule to shred some of the tripe Scape tries to present as a link “supporting” his non-sensical rantings.

He’s pretty silly, so this requires quite the leap into the realm of humility from someone of my obviously superior intellect.

But people who post stupid links supposedly supporting their “point” must be destroyed mercilessly.

Sorry Scape, but you’re not being honest.

The agreement’s not flawed. Jeff knows it, Scape knows it (or will when he starts working) and the “leaders of North America” should concern themselves with things other than interefering with the free flow of goods and services.

Well I caught you in one lie and I spent less than 15 seconds looking. Your presentation of the job market neglects the quality of jobs or where the net sum gain of jobs are really going, China. Did you miss their massive job growth? Compare China's GDP growth to ours and the US. Explain to the people on this board who have lost their jobs to cheap outsourcing by multi-nationals how they are now better off working at a call center or who had to move to another country just to keep their trade. I suppose you think it's funny that's why you had to layer the post with so much fallacious arguments. It's not funny, it's sad.

Saying the cows at the trough are singing the laurels of NAFTA does not sell it to anyone but stockbrokers who look to national treatment as a way to out vote citizens with their own money. A foreigner has more rights in this country than the very people who are born here. That's class warfare and it's a war vs the poor.

Motorcycleboy Motorcycleboy:

The success of the economy over the last 15 years bears that out.

Yep. It sure does.

As you can see the concentraion of the top 1% has excellerated over the last 15 years in North America and radically so from 3% of total wealth to 8% and meanwhile the top 1% is paying less taxes than ever before.

$1:

In contrast, the evolution of top income shares in the recent decades has been different
across countries: the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have experienced a large increase in top income shares while France, the Netherlands, or Switzerland display hardly any change in top income shares. For the anglo-saxon countries, this dramatic increase has been due
to a dramatic increase in top wages and salaries.

Real income growth has been much slower over the last 25 years.

The drop in top income shares over the first part of the century is extremely concentrated. There is no such decline below the top 1%, and even within the top 1%, most of decline is actually concentrated in the upper parts of the top percentile such as the top 0.1%.

Therefore, the composition of high incomes at the end of the century in the
United States (as well as in Canada and most likely in the United Kingdom as well) is very different from those earlier in the century: today, highly paid executives seem to have replaced the capitalists and rentiers of the early part of the century at the top of the income distribution.

The top 1% wealth shares were around 60% in the United Kindgom and France, and around 40% in the United States in the early decades of the century. By the end of the century, those top 1% wealth shares have converged to around 22% in all three countries.

Interestingly, in contrast to the surge in the top income shares, there has been only a modest increase in the top wealth shares in the United States and the United Kingdom over the last 25 years. This is consistent with the wage income surge explanation we described. The surge in top incomes seems to be due primarily to a dramatic increase in top wage incomes and not to an increase in top capital incomes. As a result, the increased income concentration has not yet translated into increased wealth concentration.

We have argued that the dramatic increase in top income shares which has taken place in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has been primarily driven by an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes.

The most impressive feature of the U.S. series, however, is the dramatic increase in the top wage income share which started in the early 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s, and especially the late 1990s, and has driven the top 1% share from about 5% in the 1960s to 12.5% in 2000, a level much higher than in the pre-World War II period. This feature confirms our previous explanation that the increase in top income shares in the United States since the 1970s is a labor income phenomenon driven by an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes. Panel B in Figure 7 displays the top 0.1% wage income share in the United States and Canada. There is a striking parallelism between the two series. In both countries, the top 0.1% is around 1% in the early 1970s and grows to 5.4% in the United States and to 4.3% in Canada. Thus, the surge in top wages has been almost as large in Canada as in the United States.

In most countries, there is no longitudinal data on top income earners to carry out such a study. Canada, however, has constructed a longitudinal administrative database (LAD) of individual tax returns since 1982 which is analyzed in Saez and Veall (2004). They explore income mobility at the top in two ways. First, they recompute top income shares based on average income over three or five years instead of a single year. If high incomes were relatively transitory, we would expect to see less concentration when incomes are measured over a longer time period. Figure 8, Panel A plots the top 0.1% income share using one year, three year and five year centered averages. The three curves match almost perfectly suggesting that income mobility has not increased significantly in recent years. Second and more directly, Panel B reports the probability of remaining in the top 0.1% group is about 60% one year later, about 50% two years later and between 40% and 50% three years later. This suggests that mobility at the top is quite modest. Consistent with the Panel A results, there is no increase in mobility since 1982, perhaps even a slight decrease. Those Canadian results suggest that the surge in annual income concentration documented in Canada is associated with a similar increase in longer term income concentration and welfare. From the Canadian findings, it seems plausible that the surge in top U.S. incomes is also not primarily due to increased mobility.

A number of studies (see e.g., Feldstein (1995) and Feenberg and Poterba (1993,2000)) have argued that the dramatic increase in those top incomes in the United States might have been the consequence of the very large marginal tax rate reductions which took place in the 1980s during the Reagan Administrations. Indeed, similar tax changes took place in the United Kingdom, a country which also experienced a rise in top income shares, but no such reductions took place in France which experienced no increase in top incomes. Saez (2004) analyzes the link between top income shares and marginal tax rates in the United States for the 1960-2000 period. Panel A of Figure 9 displays the average (income weighted) marginal income tax rate for the top 0.1% income group, along with the share of income accruing for this group in the United States from 1960 to 2000. The figure clearly shows a jump in the top income share from 1986 to 1988, exactly when the tax rates for high income earners were reduced by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 from 50% to 28% (a point first noted by Feenberg and Poterba, 1993). However, although top tax rates decreased substantially in the early 1960s (from around 90% to 70% at the very top), the surge in top incomes did not start before the 1970s. Second, the surge in top incomes has been strongest in the late 1990s, when the top marginal tax rate increased significantly from around 30% to around 40%.

A more detailed analysis presented in Saez (2004) shows that there is clear evidence of income shifting (from the corporate sector toward the individual sector) following the tax cuts of the 1980s, and that there is evidence of short-term responses to top wage incomes around the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the tax increase of 1993. However, the evidence suggests that the secular increase in top wage incomes is not closely related to the timing of tax changes in the United States. If there is a substantial lag in the response of top wage incomes to changes in tax rates, it becomes very difficult to distinguish the impact of tax effects from other effects on the top tail of the wage income distribution.

The case of Canada, analyzed by Saez and Veall (2003), casts interesting light on this issue. As we showed on Panel B of Figure 7, Canada experienced almost the same increase in top wage incomes as the United States. However, the fiscal developments in the two countries have been quite different. Panel B of Figure 9 displays the average marginal tax rate for the top 0.1% incomes in Canada (along the top 0.1% income share). While the top 0.1% income group in the United States experienced a reduction in marginal tax rates from 70% to less than 30% from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, marginal tax rates in Canada for the top 0.1% were about the same (around 50%) in the early 1960s and the 1990s. Therefore, it seems difficult to attribute the dramatic increase in top wage income shares in Canada uniquely to the modest tax cuts that have been implemented there.

Saez and Veall (2003) show that Francophones in Quebec experienced a much smaller increase in top wage income shares than Canadians in other provinces. This evidence, together with direct evidence on the migration of highly skilled and educated workers from Canada toward the United States, suggests that the surge in top wages in Canada might have been driven by brain-drain threats from the United States. As top wages in the United States increased, migrating to the United States became more attractive for highly skilled Canadians, and thus Canadian companies had to increase the salaries of their best paid workers in order to retain them. If this explanation is true, it cannot be the case that the surge in top wages that has been observed in the United States can be entirely due to changes in tax avoidance such as shifts from the corporate to the individual sector or repackaging of income. If that were the case, the United States would not have become a significantly more attractive option for Canadians and hence wages would not have increased in Canada.

[hwacker]

$1:

A foreigner has more rights in this country than the very people who are born here. That's class warfare and it's a war vs the poor.

I'm shocked you posted that, all true, but you do know who are to blame for that right? Finish the sentence and stick the F'n Liberals in there somewhere and I’ll buy you a beer.

[Scape]

Just the liberals? If you had the same angst vs the Conservatives who started this mess under that traitor Mulroney then I would accept that beer. I get the sense that you see Harper is somehow a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Brian Mulroney era. That you trust him yet he stems from the same poisoned policies. The two federal parties have the same agenda yet repeatedly you single out just the liberals. Will you admit there is blood on the hands of the tories? I will heartily admit the liberals under the traitor Jean and Marin did as much, if not more damage than Brian and it could be argued it was worse because they could have reversed it and they even ran a campaign to get elected to do just that!