Left Behind, Parts 1 - 3

Over the past 30 years, the benefits of economic growth in Canada, the US and much of the rest of the world, have gone increasingly to the top one percent of the population. For the majority of families, however, incomes have stagnated. This rise in inequality coincided with a sea change in government policy. Beginning in the 1980s, governments in much of the English-speaking world embarked on what has been called the neoliberal revolution - deregulation, privatization and tax cuts, aimed at liberating markets and stimulating the economy. The rising tide was supposed to lift all boats, but it didn't. Jill Eisen explores what happened.

Photo: Occupy K Street demonstrators protest in the street of Washington, October 29, 2011. REUTERS/Jose Luis Magana

Listen to Left Behind, Part 1 (broadcast January 16)

Listen to Left Behind, Part 2 (broadcast January 23)

Listen to Left Behind, Part 3 (broadcast January 30)

Resources

Left-Behind Participants

Neil Brooks, professor of tax law and policy at Osgood Hall Law School, and co-author of The Trouble With Billionaires.

Alex Himelfarb, Director of the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs at York University and former clerk of the Privy Council.

Robert Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University and author of The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition and the Common Good.

Thomas Frank, columnist for Harpers Magazine and author of Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right.

Anne Golden, president of The Conference Board of Canada.

James Laxer, professor of Political Science at York University and author of Beyond The Bubble: Imagining a New Canadian Economy.

Linda McQuaig, columnist for the Toronto Star and co-author of The Trouble With Billionaires.

Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration and author of Aftershock: The New Economy and America's Future.

William Watson, professor of economics and McGill University and columnist for The National Post and the Ottawa Citizen.

Richard Wilkinson, epidemiologist and author of The Spirit Level: Why Equality if Better for Everyone.

Related Websites

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Canadians for Tax Fairness

Conference Board of Canada

Occupy Toronto Note: You can find occupy web sites for cities all across Canada by typing occupy (city) in you browser.

Occupy Wall Street

The Equality Trust

Reading List

Ehrenreich, Barbara. This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation. Holt Paperbacks. 2009.

Frank, Robert H. The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition and the Common Good. Princeton Univeristy Press, 2011.

Frank, Thomas. Pity The Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right. Metropolitan Books, 2012.

Hacker, Jacob S. and Paul Pierson. Winner - Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Hedges, Chris. Death of the Liberal Class. Nation Books, 2011.

Huffington, Arianna. Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream. Broadway, 2011.

Krugman, Paul. The Conscience of a Liberal. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. 2007.

Laxer, James. Beyond the Bubble: Imagining a New Canadian Economy. Between The Lines, 2009.

McQuaig, Linda and Neil Brooks. The Trouble with Billionaires. Viking Canada, 2010.

Naylor, R.T. Crass Stuggle: Greed, Glitz, and Gluttony in a Wanna-Have World. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens' University Press, 2011.

Reich, Robert B. Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. New York. Vintage Book, 2011.

Stanford, Jim. Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism. Fernwood Publishing Co. 2008.

Wilkinson, Richard, and Kate Pickett. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. Penguin Book, 2010.