AP: Rich getting richer, middle class stagnates

[tuvor]

OTTAWA — Canada has entered a 1920s-like Gilded Age, where the super-rich consolidate their wealth while the middle class stagnates.

That's the conclusion of a new study based on income-tax forms filed up until 2007, showing that the richest one per cent of Canadians took home 13.8 per cent of all incomes claimed that year.

The share of total income going to the richest of the rich has risen steadily since the early 1980s, reversing a long-term trend toward a more equal distribution of the country's income during the postwar '50s, '60s and '70s, the study says.

"The higher up the ladder you go, the more colossal this glomming of wealth becomes," author Armine Yalnizyan, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said in an interview.

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