Comment 40083

By Meredith (registered) - website | Posted April 22, 2010 at 22:39:00

Hmm... okay. Let me try to address a few different points... if that's ok.

1. The definition of "poor people." Well, we have a few, right? Those on welfare. Those on disability. Those on pensions. Those who are unemployed but don't want to liquidate assets/go on welfare, and so make do with interim work. Students who rely on OSAP alone. Students who have jobs and no OSAP. Students who have both. Single moms (or rarely, dads) who rely on child support payments and government money. People at minimum-wage or part-time jobs that pay below the poverty line. Seniors who don't have retirement savings or qualify for pensions yet. Singles, couples, families, single-parent families, grandparents raising grandkids, teens living without parents.

I'm sure I've missed some, but that's a sampling of people I know. Sure, the person with mental health and addiction who lives on welfare is in a far different spot from the person in a skilled job who can only get part-time work, but they both play into the discussion -- people whose income is below a level that we have deemed, as a government and a society, "poor" in relative terms. People whose income is too low to fulfill normative expectations of the amount of money one should have available to live in North America to a reasonable standard of happiness.

2. Skilled workers who lose their job. It's not easy... but I have to say, if there are no jobs in your field, you either go to a place where the jobs are, retrain in something else, or take another type of job.

That's tough if you've been in the same field for 20 years. But it's reality. What else are you going to do?

I have met more than a few people in Hamilton who refuse to work outside their skilled field or liquidate their assets when they lose a job. They don't understand that simple fact that if you don't have sufficient savings, or exhaust them when you fall on hard times, you need to do painful things. You need to liquidate the assets you have the privilege of owning, and/or get a less skilled job in a different field temporarily, and/or retrain in a field that is hiring. And you either sell things off to pay your bills, work hard in a job that lets you pay your bills, or if you are bankrupt, you may have to declare it - but except for a few extenuating circumstances I've heard, that's often not required. (Then again, if you were in a pile of consumer debt, that doesn't help...)

Terribly unpopular, but something that people who get somewhere (and back to the work ethic factor, most immigrants) understand. When you can't get work in your field, you don't have the privilege of being picky.

And I've lived that - from emptying my RRSP to taking any horrible minimum-wage job (that galled my pride and treated me like crap), to having a pristine credit rating go down the drain from being unable to pay my bills, to taking extra debt to retrain in another field. I understand it - and have little tolerance when people say "But I used to be _________! I'm skilled in _______!" and have too much pride to do what has to be done - work to support yourself, and don't expect a fairy godmother or a rich relative's death or a government intervention to make it possible for you can keep up what you had before.

3. Looking in "apparently poor" people's grocery carts.... if you choose to ignore the giant lineups when people get their cheques or the loud conversation about their child support payments, then that's your choice.. just as it is a choice for a person of moderate income to buy unhealthy food, even if they're a vegan who knows better and chooses to thumb their nose at the impact nutrition has on their lives.

Luckily, the moderate-wage earners may get to primary cardiac rehab before they have a heart attack, or get a glucose tolerance test done before they develop full-blown diabetes.

If you make good money, you're more free to make bad choices and get them caught in time. How likely is it that poor people even will get the option of preventive cardiac care?

But if you're poor and claim you can't afford healthy food (like the mother in the Spec a couple years ago who claimed she could only afford chicken fingers for her kids...) it's not an issue of affordability but of the inability or unwillingness to make healthy choices. I don't believe you are unable to see the healthier, cheaper option that is FOUR feet away in the same area of the same grocery store. Maybe a poor person needs to be educated on how to eat well, but that's a cheaper and better solution than just handing out more money for more chicken fingers.

Thankfully, one can judge concrete behaviour without judging the person. (Although inferences about character can be drawn from behaviour, no?) But if the poorest area of town is one where a ton of junk food is sold (and there's no big rush on wheat bran or chickpeas!) that's concrete evidence of unhealthy eating patterns - evidence that shows up in StatsCan health statistics too.

Yes, poor people need more money as part of a solution... and the possibility of working for it to better their situation. If you're on welfare, you need incentives, not disincentives for working... but that's not ALL, and the simple, shotgun solution of "give 'em more money and that will suddenly up everyone's dignity" doesn't help if you think you're worth nothing and have a terrible idea of gender roles and no one's ever shown you another way to live than the patterns you've learned.

I know I sound like an arrogant ass. But I still live below the poverty line. My income used to be a lot worse - what I make now is livable, but tiny still. I get frustrated by both sides of this debate, and I do have a little experience... and I don't think I'm the only one in my situation or with my opinions, so I think they're worth stating.

Comment edited by Meredith on 2010-04-22 21:50:28

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