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> https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government....

Who is the Fraser Institute? Looking at their website, they seem to turn out libertarian and conservative arguments. For example, playing down income inequality, complaining about difficult investing in oil and gas, "Top 20 per cent of families pay 56 per cent of all taxes in Canada", etc. Wanting to reduce public sector pay would fit with that.




> they seem to turn out libertarian and conservative arguments

Better ignore everything they say, then!

> Top 20 per cent of families pay 56 per cent of all taxes in Canada

If that's wrong, then why not cite why? If it's correct, I suspect there's a good reason for it (e.g. progressive tax structures work and are objectively a good thing for society).


It is not wrong, but it is irrelevant except as propaganda: it frames the cost of government services as being borne by the wealthy and suggests the wealthy are being charitable already or that they should have some extra say over where their money goes. In fact it is the labor of the poor, extracted by the wealthy, then partially recovered from them in taxes that funds society. The wealthy hold the wealth not because they deserve it, but because they have used their power to take it.

Choosing to talk about what the rich pay, rather than how they have siphoned wealth from society (i.e. how much of their ill gotten gains should they be allowed to keep, rather than how much do they give) is not a "fact" even if it is a true statement, it is a political position, a rhetorical strategy, and a framing device -- it is an assault on your brain, an attempt to trick you into accepting a conservative frame covertly without being honest about it: "I'm just stating facts, what's wrong with that?" Well, everything is wrong with that. There are trillions of facts yet they state this one. For a reason, obviously.

You can reconstruct perfectly an ideological argument (of any ideology) based only on the sequence of facts they choose to present.


> The wealthy hold the wealth not because they deserve it, but because they have used their power to take it.

Who did JK Rowing rob to get her money?


It's definitely libertarian and conservative (by Canadian standards). But that doesn't mean it can't be right. FWIW, it's high on the list of known/established Canadian think tanks.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has done its own reports on this [1].

This also seem to be true in the UK, but at least there they say the gap is closing [2].

The IFS report says what I've also observed and what this [3] economist article states:

"Wage differentials are relatively small in the public sector. Lower-level workers, such as secretaries, are usually better paid than their private-sector equivalents, whereas higher-level workers are worse paid."

[1] https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/advocacy/wage-watch-comparison-p...

[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40480766

[3] http://www.economist.com/node/17849199




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