On the post-recession world:
The economy took a hit and then is coming back up. But what Canada's and Toronto's economy will look like coming out of this is different than when we were coming in to it. The result of the shift in world economic conditions - a higher dollar, with pressures on a lot of traditional manufacturing jobs, and a tremendous commodities boom...all means that the skill sets you need are shifting. And that, going with a broad global trend - globalization is good for the world as a whole, but its benefits are not equally distributed, that's the core thing people have learned in the last 25 years, the people who do well in globalization are either the very poor in the emerging countries, that suddenly get to revalue themselves up, or people in the developed world who are sitting on scarce skill sets where in a sense they can leverage those skills and therefore their returns to those skill sets go up. But broadly many people in the working middle class are now competing with working middle classes around the world and they don't necessarily get the benefits of that.
On taxation:
Taxing low-income people could be the sweet spot of politics...some people say keep stimulus going, others say too much spending...I say why don't you cut the taxes of the most over-taxed people - and it isn't Ed Clark. It's the people at the low end, because they face the highest marginal tax rates, because we did some good things that trail off when you start to earn some money, which means they fall off. and (payrolls), if world eco system is leaning against those people, then we ought to find a way to reduce their tax burden as the right thing to do.
People desperately want to work. Nobody wants to be on welfare. They want to own their own houses, if you look at Habitat for Humanity...Why are we burdening them? People say you either stimulate and spend, or you don't stimulate. Well, I say why don't we stimulate the poor.
On growing stratification:
The great thing about Western society was the development of a vibrant middle class, and fundamentally a society that had a tremendous element of egalitarianism even tho there were differences. If you take the extreme end, what Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are doing, they're saying...it's not a good idea to say, I don't want you to be rich...but they've been giving their money back to society. Been proven that market economies work, but they work a whole lot better if they're encased in a value system that says, it isn't all about me, and that I've been a beneficiary of this economy. If doesn't happen, not productive places. in the end, societies where a few people get all the benefits don't generally do well.
Tavia Grant