Inequality for All

Here's the link to an interview with former Clinton era Labor Secretary Robert Reich. The interview comes on the release of the new film "Inequality for All." The film is a documentary featuring Reich and his views on the causes and effects of widening income inequality in the United States.

Median Income (and Median Income Among People Like You) in Canada

According to the latest National Household Survey by Statistics Canada, median income in Canada is $49,351.  However, as pointed out by a blog post by the Vancouver Sun, this includes all Canadians.  As such, it includes men and women, high school drop-outs and PhDs, and all ethnic groups. 

In order to give you a better sense on how your income compares to people similar to you, the authors of the blog post created a calculator to identify the median income of "people like you" (based on the Statistics Canada data):

Learn About Tableau

 I found this an interesting tool. For example, the median income of "someone like me" is significantly higher than the national average:  $91K. The calculator also gives you the means to look at how different groups compare. For example, the median income for an individual without a high school education falls to $35K for all genders, and $22K for those 15 to 24 years of age.  I found some of the differences quite striking when I compared the average income of specific education/age groups by race.

Nina Munk's The Idealist

There's a new book about the progress of Jeffrey Sach's Millennium Villages projects and his overall campaign to end poverty.  Nina Munk's new book, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, takes a critical look at the results from these projects, and a pretty harsh look at Sachs himself. Here's an interview with Munk on CBC's the Current.