Even though Canada now has a lower per capita income than the United States, predictably, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail are waffling that a larger percentage of Canadians than Americans have an acceptable and sustainable standard of living because the United States has a larger poor underclass and a larger percentage of people of extremely great wealth. This is a quibble — the issue is that the total per capita amount of wealth in Canada has declined uncompetitively in the last decade opposite the United States, the country that for most of our history we were only narrowly behind by that measurement. How the national incomes are divided follows social and political preferences. The Americans are rugged individualists still dealing with the legacy of slavery and reckless immigration. By the universally recognized measurement of per capita national income, we are not competitive, and this government is not moving perceptibly to reverse that failure.