The 13 Most Important Charts Of 2013

As we say goodbye to 2013, the economy is still failing ordinary workers.

What is being done to make it better? Not enough.

Public spending and public investment are too low, wages for increasingly productive workers are flat or falling, and the minimum wage is inadequate.

However, there is hope for 2014.

The policies that created these trends can be reversed. There is a renewed push to raise the federal minimum wage, states are raising their own minimum wages, and more policymakers are coming to terms with the downside of economic inequality.

9 Incredibly Important Things That Happened In 2013 That Most People Aren’t Talking About

In a media environment increasingly dominated by celebrity, scandal and the political horserace, many of the most important stories receive scant coverage. Here are nine hugely important things that happened in 2013 that are rarely discussed:

1. Human rights abuses in North Korean prisons reached a level not seen since the Nazi atrocities.

CREDIT: AP

A new report from the U.N. released in January found that hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are being subjected to historic human right abuses. Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge who took the lead in creating the report, told BBC News “They had to live on rodents, grasshoppers, lizards and on grass and they were subject to cruelty, All in all it is a very horrifying story, the like of which I don’t think I’ve seen or read of since the Khmer Rouge [in Cambodia] and the Nazi atrocities during the second world war.” A former camp inmate “told investigators that he was lucky when a warden ordered the tip of his finger chopped off for damaging a piece of sewing equipment used to carry out forced labor — he could easily have been executed for the transgression.

Canada’s economy in 2013: Fasten your seatbelt

Keep your seatbelt fastened in 2013, economists say.

Canada’s gross domestic product is likely to grow at just below 2 per cent in the coming year — and a big external shock could send the economy spinning.

In reports issued separately on Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund and CIBC World Markets Inc. laid out their predictions for 2013.