I recently saw a cartoon that captured an essential political truth. It shows a small fish thinking: “There is no justice in the world.” Next to him, a somewhat larger fish (with mouth open, ready to eat smaller fish) thinks: “There is some justice in the world.” Finally, a very large fish (with mouth open, ready to eat all other fish) thinks: “The world is just.”

This helps explain the view of many in the corporate world. Reaping handsome rewards for their labour, they see a great deal of justice in our economic system and little reason to tinker with things—like the minimum wage—that would redistribute economic rewards, even just a bit.

This contentment among members of our elite, who have considerable influence with government, also helps explain why Ontario’s minimum wage is stuck at a paltry $8 an hour. This leaves a full-time minimum wage worker earning an annual income of $16,640—several thousand dollars below the poverty line, and even further below it if she’s a single parent.

Given the immense difficulty of living on such a wage, let alone supporting children, this should be a much bigger issue in the current provincial election.

Premier Dalton McGuinty promises to raise the minimum wage to $10.25 an hour—but not now.

There’s apparently no rush about this for McGuinty and his Liberals, who did however see some urgency (along with the Conservatives) in raising their own salaries last December—by 25 per cent.

While the NDP promises to raise the minimum wage immediately, the Liberals would let the working poor wait almost three years until 2010 for a chance to live above the poverty line.

Opponents of the raise argue it will result in job losses. But the 2006 OECD Employment Outlook concluded minimum wages at “reasonable” levels have no significant negative impact.

Right wingers also typically argue we’d all be better off if we avoided government interventions like minimum wages and left things to the “invisible hand” of the marketplace. But, in reality, the marketplace isn’t a magical domain where the “natural laws” of economics automatically work things out best for all.

Rather, it’s a real-life domain, governed by a set of man-made laws—laws that establish property rights, that determine workers’ rights to organize, to bargain collectively and to strike, and that also set out whether strikers can be replaced or forced back to work.

The nature of these laws—or interventions in the marketplace—determines whether the overall balance favours workers or employers.

In the last few decades, the balance has shifted sharply in favour of employers. Governments, under pressure from the corporate world and its academic and media supporters, have slashed social programs and taxes —and utterly failed to defend collective bargaining and other labour rights.

Indeed, one indication of this anti-worker shift is the way minimum wages—a government intervention that favours workers—have been allowed to decline in value. (In 1976, Ontario’s minimum wage was worth the equivalent today of $9.97.)

All this has contributed to the dramatic growth in inequality. A Statistics Canada report released last week showed that, while real incomes remained essentially unchanged for low income (and most other) Canadians between 1992 and 2004, those at the very top enjoyed explosive income growth. The average personal income in the top 0.01 per cent actually rose from $2.5 million to $5.9 million!

From this vantage point, it’s possible to imagine how one might think “the world is just.”

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...