Latest news with #middleclass
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tories challenge Liberals on promised tax cuts
OTTAWA – Daily hot chocolates are off the menu. Fresh from the Parliamentary Budget Officer's new report showing the government's promised middle-class tax cut falling far from what was promised, the last Question Period of the abbreviated spring sitting saw the Conservatives demanding answers. 'Just like Trudeau, he can't even get a tax cut right,' said Calgary East MP Jasraj Hallan, accusing Prime Minister Mark Carney of deceiving Canadians. 'He promised $800, yet the average Canadian will only save $90 this year – not even enough to get a hot chocolate from Tim Hortons weekly.' Despite Carney's election promise that his middle-class tax cuts would save families an average savings of $825 per year, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said that number's actually closer to $280, with most families expected to see savings of around $90 in 2025. Tories accuse PM of thinking about Brookfield's 'bottom line' with EV mandate Pull plug on gas engine ban, Tories urge government Two-income families with a child could see the biggest savings, but no more than $750. 'I recognize the job of prime minister comes with many responsibilities, I didn't know addition and division were one of them,' Carney said in response, pointing across the aisle to jeering Conservatives. 'The Parliamentary Budget Officer refers to the reductions for all Canadians,' he said. 'The vote that the members opposite supported this government on delivers tax cuts for the 22 million Canadians who pay taxes.' The PBO priced the Liberal tax cut at just under $64 billion over five years, while the Department of Finance Canada pegged the cost at $27 billion over the same time period. — With files from The Canadian Press bpassifiume@ X: @bryanpassifiume
CTV News
2 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
‘Invisible poor': Middle-income households making up to $125K annually getting squeezed out of the GTHA: report
An office worker talks on the phone in the financial district of Toronto, on Thursday, June 2, 2016. The working middle class in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area – a group that includes teachers, nurses and other essential workers – have become 'the invisible poor' and could soon be squeezed out of the region due to the ongoing housing crisis, a new report suggests. On Tuesday, CivicAction published the first instalment of a four-part research series delving into the challenges middle-income workers in the GTHA face. The authors of the report defined middle class workers as those making anywhere between $40,000 and $125,000 annually. 'Despite steady employment, they are increasingly becoming our region's 'invisible poor—often overlooked because they have jobs and are assumed to be managing, even as rising costs push them towards financial precarity,' the report reads. Since those who belong to the working middle class make more than what would qualify them for traditional housing supports, CivicAction says that the group ends up spending 45 to 63 per cent of their income towards housing—far surpassing the 30 per cent chunk typically recommended by financial experts. 'I'll give you the example (of) a nurse earning $80,000 a year today, (they) will need to earn over $200,000 to qualify for a mortgage for an average Toronto home,' Leslie Woo, CivicAction's CEO tells CTV News Toronto. 'That's our current situation.' The report notes that while the annual median household income in Toronto is $100,400, salaries have not kept up with rising housing costs. As a result, Toronto's price-to-income ratio has now reached 11.8 times the median household income, meaning homebuyers in the city with an average income would need to dedicate 76.9 per cent of their salary toward mortgage payments on an average priced home. The report warns of a 'downstream crisis,' which is when working people and families are past their financial breaking point and have to make hard decisions, up to and including leaving the region entirely. In the last decade, more than 500,000 people from the GTHA moved elsewhere in the province, like to the Simcoe or Niagara regions, while roughly 31,000 people moved to other provinces in Canada, like B.C., Alberta, Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. Workers dissatisfied with housing and commute CivicAction and the Boston Consulting Group are actively conducting an online survey, analyzing responses from middle class workers who commute at least 30 minutes each way, either by car or public transit. The survey's preliminary results, compiled in early May after four weeks of polling, found nearly two-thirds of middle-income workers—62 per cent—are unsatisfied with either or both their housing or commuting situation. The majority of respondents—67.7 per cent—indicated wanting to do something to address their current dissatisfaction, with around 39 per cent considering changing jobs to so they are closer to home or just shy of 29 per cent looking to find a place to live closer to work 'We recognize that the folks who power this region, nurses, firefighters, personal care workers, teachers, they are—I think—a critical part of what makes this region livable, and their voice and an understanding of their needs, needs to be part of when policies are being made or initiatives that are underway, or money that is being spent, that we're truly benefiting them, and the best way to ensure that is to understand more deeply how they're affected and what it is that they need in order to meet their needs and their families needs,' Woo said. How this impacts the GTHA The high levels of stress mounting for middle-income workers in the GTHA can spill into other aspects of life, the report suggests, acting as sort of a 'canary in the coalmine' that can create an untenable situation for the region in the long run. The report notes a growing number of middle-income workers are less than 'one pay cheque away' from falling into serious financial distress, with the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada's well-being survey determining 56 per cent of Canadian households are struggling to keep up with their financial commitments—up from 38 per cent in 2019—while 35 per cent borrow money to cover the costs of daily expenses, which is up by eight per cent since 2019. More people are using the food bank, with Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank's 2024 report indicating a record-breaking 3.49 million visitors, amounting to one in 10 residents having used their food banks last year. But the affordability issue goes far beyond how it is impacting individual households. From the business standpoint, the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis in 2024 determined 29 per cent of local businesses reported difficulty attracting employees while 20 per cent struggle to retain skilled employees. 'Perhaps most concerning for regional economic development and competitiveness, the Toronto Region Board of Trade (2022) found that 42 per cent of businesses are considering relocation specifically due to workforce housing challenges,' the report notes. The workforce housing crisis can also impact the quality of service, as the report estimates $575 million is lost annually in the health-care system due to staffing challenges or overtime requirements, $320 million in losses in the education sector due to turnover rates and substitute staffing and $230 million is lost in the emergency services sector due to increased response times and staffing challenges. The GTHA's traffic infrastructure is also burdening the economy, with the report pointing to the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis' estimations in 2024 has cost $10.1 billion annually over the last decade with 88,000 fewer jobs. 'If congestion had been reduced, real GDP in the GTHA could be $27.9 billion higher today—representing a 4.9 per cent increase over GTHA's 2024 economic performance, corresponding to an additional $3,400 in economic activity per person,' the report states. What can be done? The report provided preliminary actions to address the housing affordability challenge for middle-income workers, suggesting employers could look into housing assistance programs or workforce housing initiatives, It also said that municipalities can measure and track data around shelter usage to understand the magnitude of the housing problem and provide adequate housing supports. However, CivicAction will be publishing three more reports, which Woo says will address, in part, why the math doesn't add up. 'I think we can anticipate that, at its crux, part of what we will see in the next paper is that no one source of funding is going to be adequate. No one sector is going to be enough, and that, then, really will lead to paper three and four, which will speak about specific solutions that we want to see some action on,' Woo said.. Are you a middle-income worker in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area choosing between moving away to somewhere more affordable or making it work in the region? Share your story by emailing us at torontonews@ with your name, general location, and phone number in case we want to follow up. Your comments may be used in a CTV News Toronto story.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Telegraph
I simply must have my Perelló olives: the rise of the posh shoplifter
Exhibit A: a former criminology lecturer, who self-identifies as the 'UK's poshest thief', nicking £1,000 worth of Le Creuset cookware. Exhibit B: middle-class commuters looting Marks and Spencer for snacks for the train home. Exhibit C: 'well-off, middle-aged women' being blamed for a shoplifting spree in Haslemere, Surrey. Need I go on? 'Shoplifting was always quite a grubby crime,' says Professor Emmeline Taylor, a criminologist and specialist in shoplifting and serious acquisitive crime. 'It has always been associated with the down-and-outs – you can't afford to put food on the table and clothes on your back.' Over the past five years or so, Taylor argues, that has changed. In 2016 she coined the acronym 'Swipers' to describe the emerging class of middle-class shoplifters: 'seemingly well-intentioned patrons engaging in routine shoplifting '. Since then, the swipers have got out of hand – shoplifting offences reached a record high last year, with the British Retail Forum revealing that 20 million incidents were reported in the 2023/24 financial year – costing shops £2.2 billion and adding an estimated £133 to the cost of an average household's annual shopping bill. For the first time, fingers are being pointed firmly at the middle classes, with John Lewis and Waitrose bosses pushing back at a growing category of entitled criminals whose thefts are motivated by 'greed not need'. So what's behind the problem? Self-service checkouts Because otherwise decent and law-abiding citizens find it 'easy to lie to a machine in a way you wouldn't try to deceive a person', Taylor believes the introduction of self-service checkouts is a major factor in the trend. According to a poll of 1,000 British shoppers commissioned by The Grocer magazine last year, 37 per cent of customers admitted deliberately failing to scan an item at the self-service checkouts (with men and the under-35s most likely to try conning the computerised cashiers). A third (32.5 per cent) also confessed to weighing loose items incorrectly, with 38 per cent having used the 'banana trick' to pass off an expensive item as a cheaper one. On the Mumsnet forum users admitted to 'taking advantage' of unmanned tills to scan steak as onions, or on a more minor scale, passing off Pink Lady apples as Granny Smiths. Their accounts support Taylor's belief that these thieves 'don't think of themselves as criminals; they will think they've cheated the system'. Several argued that 'big chain businesses' could afford to soak up the costs and viewed their fraud as simply paying their 'wages' for scanning their own groceries. 'After all, they are saving so much money not paying staff to man tills anymore.' But they said they would never steal from independent shopkeepers, who they saw as 'real people'. 'It's quite a fun game,' wrote user1471434829. 'I would never ever steal from a person, but tbh [to be honest] Tesco is fair game!' Another using the handle VanityDiesHard confessed to scoping out the security at various stores in advance, noting that surveillance at the local Waitrose was too good to evade, but deciding that the unmanned checkouts at M&S were fair game. 'I am angry with myself if I don't at the very least put through a carrier bag without paying,' they wrote. 'If it is busy enough there, I also put pastries through as something cheaper, ditto bread.' Not just shoplifting, then, but M&S shoplifting. Another was occasionally tempted to 'select small loose onions instead of large onions that are marginally more expensive', admitting the crime was 'mostly due to laziness and in parts rebellion – why is there an effing price difference in them anyway?' Taylor says the same psychology has led to a rise in 'wardrobing': buying expensive clothes you plan to wear once then returning them for a full refund. In some circles, she says, such behaviour is 'seen as culturally acceptable even though it's fraud'. Being able to return items online allows the fraudster to avoid an 'embarrassing' human interaction in which a sales assistant might sniff the garments and challenge a shopper by saying they smell like they've been worn. Keeping up with the Joneses While the cost of living crisis has forced the poorest in society to choose between heating and eating, Taylor says that more entitled middle-class shoplifters refuse to adjust their lifestyles to suit their more straitened circumstances. 'Those individuals who have got used to having branded goods or nicer, higher value items are suddenly finding that their household budget doesn't stretch as far as it used to,' she says. The swanky store-cupboard staples displayed on counter tops as badges of middle class pride have been hit hard by food inflation. Taylor notes the eye-watering prices of olive oil (which has risen by more than 80 per cent over the past two years) and honey (set to rise by another 30 per cent this year). Last year Tesco began putting nets and tags on bottles of olive oil because so much of the 'liquid gold' was being stolen by those who'd decided that every drizzle helps. A similar trend was spotted during the 2009 recession, with the Centre for Retail Research clocking a spike in thefts of high end meat, cheese, alcohol, perfume and face creams as middle-class shoppers turned to crime to maintain their standards of living. 'I think there's an element there of keeping up with the Joneses,' says Taylor. 'Some people don't want to be having a dinner party where they've bought everything from Aldi or Lidl rather than Waitrose because that could raise a few eyebrows.' Was this what motivated former criminology lecturer Pauline Al Said and her husband Mark Wheatcroft to pinch £1,000 worth of cast iron Le Creuset cookware (along with steaks, premium wine and boutique gin)? The pair planned their 2021 and 2022 crimes in advance, taking a device for removing security tags with them to both a branch of M&S and a garden centre. Last month – after they were fined £2,500 for walking out of the stores in broad daylight with their luxe loot piled into trolleys – Al Said proudly adopted the title of 'UK's poshest thief' on her X profile. Richard Fowler, security manager at chi-chi health food brand Planet Organic, has previously flagged an increasing issue with 'posh totty' pilferers. The chain, which has eight stores across London selling only organic produce, loses £900,000 a year to shoplifters. Talking to the BBC last year, Fowler put a percentage of these thefts down to regular clientele who 'spend a lot of money with our business. [They think] 'Today I'm a little bit short of money, so I'm entitled to steal something'.' A similar sense of entitlement has been blamed for the rise in middle-class commuters pinching snacks from convenience stores around train stations. Last month John Nussbaum, director of retail at Kingdom Security, told The Telegraph that these 'petty thieves' targeted shops largely in the early morning or early evening, with a smaller peak around lunchtime because they 'can't be bothered to queue so just leave without paying'. The thrill factor 'Some studies show that if you get a bargain – something [for] 70 per cent off – it can release endorphins, a hit of dopamine that is pleasurable,' says Taylor. 'The same can go for risky behaviours, because it creates this fight-or-flight moment physiologically. If you put yourself in that danger moment of 'I'm going to steal this', the anxiety and the adrenalin is going. Then, when you then get away with it, that's replaced with this rush of reward.' Some middle-class shoplifters find themselves addicted to the crime, and compare it with gambling addiction. On the Mumsnet forum one woman wrote that she'd turned to shoplifting 'when I was menopausal and had urges, god knows why'. Another, using the handle Ladyofthepond, confessed to a history of 'slipping things into pockets or not scanning things at self-service' that was the consequence of 'a mix of undiagnosed mental health issues, which was probably one of the many things that led my alcoholism, which in turn led to a decimation of my finances. When you are in the depths of addiction nothing else matters, it also leads to a very nihilistic attitude towards life, so shoplifting from large supermarkets was easy in that state of mind to justify, also not getting caught was a ridiculous dopamine hit.' The poster claimed to be currently 'in recovery and managing my mental health. I have to get my dopamine from ice baths and running now.' Getting away with it – and a nice accent While many of these criminals claim they'd only steal from big chain stores and not independent businesses, the evidence suggests otherwise. In January independent shopkeepers in the upmarket Surrey town of Haslemere created a WhatsApp group to help each other identify the increasing number of 'very normal well-to-do people coming in and stealing things'. Small stores selling gifts, antiques and bicycles were targeted as well as grocers and cafés. Even one of the town's charity shops found thieves pinching retro clothes to resell online on sites such as Vinted. Taylor believes that, if caught, more affluent shoplifters expect retail staff to let them off the hook more easily than those genuinely in need. 'They will absolutely play upon their appearance, their accent,' she says. 'They get pulled over in the shop; if somebody says, 'excuse me, ma'am you haven't paid for those', they know they can be like, 'Oh, gosh I can't believe it!' And the likelihood is they will just get away with it.' In some circles she says that theft is considered 'cool'. 'There is an element of showing off, one-upmanship.' concludes Taylor. 'I always think it's a bit like that YOLO hashtag. I only live once, so sod it. You know, 'what are they going to do?''
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Trump must stop the AI bloodbath before it's too late
A white-collar bloodbath is coming. Not in theory. Not in ten years. It's already begun. Tens of millions of entry-level jobs — gone. Mid-level coders, paralegals, junior analysts, HR coordinators, customer service agents, entire rungs of the labor force about to be vaporized by artificial intelligence — not because it's more ethical or more productive, but because it's cheaper, quieter and doesn't complain. Unless President Trump acts fast, America's economic foundation — work itself — will be hollowed out and handed over to a class of unelected engineers and Silicon Valley kingmakers who believe your relevance should be determined by a model's capabilities. This is not paranoia. It's happening now. And the architects aren't hiding it. The people building this technology — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google — aren't sugarcoating the situation. They've run the simulations, watched the user metrics and tested the capabilities. AI is about to gut entire sectors of the economy from the inside out, beginning with those least able to absorb the blow: young Americans trying to get a foothold in a career, middle-class parents working clerical jobs to keep food on the table, veterans retraining to survive in a digital economy that shifts faster than policy can blink. This is where the president must make a choice that actually matters: Will he defend the American worker, or will he let Silicon Valley redraw the economic order while the middle class is shoved silently off the map? Trump built his MAGA movement on a promise — not just to revive the economy but to restore dignity through work. To bring back jobs. To make labor meaningful again. To tell the forgotten men and women of this country that they matter, because what they do matters. That mission now faces a threat unlike any we've seen. Not foreign competition. Not global offshoring. But extinction-by-algorithm. And as bleak as it looks, it isn't too late. Not yet. The federal government still has tools, and the presidency still has teeth. But it will take nerve. It will take a president willing to do something rare in this moment: to say no. No to unchecked automation, no to the idea that human labor is an inefficiency to be optimized away, no to the lie that faster always means better, and cheaper always means smarter. Trump doesn't need to burn Silicon Valley to the ground. He just needs to remind it who owns the rails. If a company takes money from the federal government through contracts, grants, subsidies or loans, it should not be allowed to quietly fire American workers and replace them with bots. No taxpayer should fund their own obsolescence. If these companies want the benefits of public money, then they answer to the public. And the public has a right to know who's getting replaced, when and why. Every company automating away jobs should be forced to disclose it, openly and in real time. Let the American people see which corporations are killing jobs while posting record profits. If they're proud of their efficiency, let them stand by it. If they're going to replace workers, let them say it with their chest. Enough with the silent rollbacks and euphemisms. Enough with the term 'augmented' when what you mean is 'deleted.' And if they insist on automating, fine. But they can pay for the damage. Every AI transaction, every commercial model use that replaces a real person's job, should be taxed. Not to fund some utopian universal income experiment, but to pay for something real: job retraining, trade schools, small-business grants for human-led enterprises. America isn't a testbed. It's a country. And it deserves policy that defends people, not models. And then there's the future. Not the tech future but the human one. We need a Federal Job Corps that actually builds futures again. Not a holding tank for the unemployed, but a launchpad for Americans ready to work in sectors AI can't touch: critical trades, skilled manufacturing, energy, health care, logistics, infrastructure. Real jobs. Real training. Real ladders. We cannot TikTok our way out of structural collapse. We cannot freelance our way into a middle class. If Trump wants to lead this nation through the next decade, he must be more than a fighter. He must be a builder of new ground. A president who understands that the battle ahead isn't just about borders or budgets, it's about value. What we value. Who we value. And whether the average American has any place left in the economy being written for them behind closed doors. AI is not evil. But the hands controlling it aren't neutral. They're interested in profit, in scale, in optimization. Not patriotism, stability or sovereignty. Trump can put a stop to this. But he has to act now. Because if MAGA doesn't mean standing between the American worker and extinction-by-code, then it doesn't mean anything at all. John Mac Ghlionn is a writer and researcher who explores culture, society and the impact of technology on daily life. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How Much the Average Middle-Class American Has Gained in the Stock Market Since Trump Announced His Tariffs
According to Gallup, 71% of middle-income Americans are invested in the stock market, and they've watched their fortunes rise and fall repeatedly during the volatile period since President Donald Trump announced his trade tariffs on April 2. But as the official start of summer approaches, those who resisted the urge to panic-sell during the frightening declines have largely seen their discipline pay off. Check Out: Read Next: It's impossible to gauge what the average middle-class investor might have gained or lost because the concept is a construct, regardless of the investor's socioeconomic class. Even if it were possible to put a dollar amount on the mean middle-class earner's stock investments, that would ignore critical variables like that investor's: Type, size and number of stock or fund holdings Portfolio makeup Portfolio diversity Degree of leverage from options trading or margin borrowing Trade frequency Fees and expenses Discover More: For context on just how differently two otherwise similar middle-class investors can perform, consider that Warner Bros Discovery Inc. (WBD) cratered on April 2 and retained a 24% overall loss through June 10. Conversely, Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) has been one of the top performers in the post-tariff era, adding most of its 74% year-to-date gains since April 2. Two middle-class stock pickers with identical incomes and backgrounds who rolled the anti-diversification dice by purchasing identical amounts in either stock on April 1 would have had radically different outcomes between then and mid-June. A more reliable metric might be the major indices that so many middle-class households invest in through their 401(k)s, IRAs, index funds and ETFs. Between April 2 and June 10: The S&P 500, the benchmark index for the U.S. stock market, gained 6.16%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which tracks the blue chips, gained 1.31%. The tech-heavy and more volatile Nasdaq gained 11.57%. The FTSE All Cap Index, which includes much of the global stock market with 10,000 small-, mid- and large-cap companies in both developed and emerging markets, gained 7.22%. The average among all four is 6.57%, which is roughly what typical middle-class earners might have gained since April 2 if they followed the conventional advice of diversifying their portfolios with a blend of blue chips, growth stocks and foreign equities, and holding their positions regardless of market behavior. More From GOBankingRates 3 Luxury SUVs That Will Have Massive Price Drops in Summer 2025 Clever Ways To Save Money That Actually Work in 2025 7 Tax Loopholes the Rich Use To Pay Less and Build More Wealth This article originally appeared on How Much the Average Middle-Class American Has Gained in the Stock Market Since Trump Announced His Tariffs
