Comment 40043

By moylek (registered) - website | Posted April 22, 2010 at 08:53:18

One problem I'm seeing in this discussion is that it's built on shifting sand - the definition of "poverty" keeps changing. One person discusses the habits of people living in a poor area, and another assumes that it as an attack on people on welfare; another takes up the welfare thread, and is attacked for assuming all poor people are on welfare. Let's not use that confusion to score mere technical points against each other.

I doubt that anyone here wants there to be poor people living miserably in this rich country. Many people are simply indifferent, granted; I try not to be. But if I am to entertain changes to our society meant to help the poor - high minimum wage; guaranteed income; free higher education; changes to social housing - then I need the advocates to be honest about human nature and the human condition. For example, an open recognition that some poor people are living in squalor not simply because they can't afford not to, that broccoli does not cost more than potato chips; that the satellite dishes on Barton Street are not planted there by aliens but belong to people who appear to be otherwise poor.

Wigan Pier's Orwell excerpt - which does show us people making bad choices - leaves me far more open to change than stories in the Spec about people so poor that they can't afford broccoli.

Now, I have a simple question which might require a not-simple answer. Let's take it for granted that the elimination of poverty is a desired end (which is debated and thus debatable, I realize). And let's not worry too much about how we get to that end. My question is: what does this city without poverty look like? What has happened to the people described in The Spec?

Comment edited by moylek on 2010-04-22 07:57:54

-- Kenneth Moyle Hamilton, Ontario

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