Modern Slavery in Canada Still Exists

With all the economic news I did some research into the existing poverty levels in Canada, and found a very disturbing series of facts.

Did you know that if you are on welfare (assistance in some provinces) and you get some temporary work, you do not keep a dime of the money, and to add insult, any costs regarding transportation is up to you?

So, for example, a person works for 2 weeks part-time and gets a cheque for $350, that money is taken off the next cheque, all of it. Basically you end up working for nothing at all. Some incentive that is! If you finally find a place to live, and there is a deposit required, that money is demanded back from your welfare cheque too!

If you used the bus to get there, which costs $5 per day, you end up in the hole for $50! Yeah, good incentive to get a job, NOT!

If you are a single parent, you must also cover part of the costs of daycare, so that comes out of your income too. Going further into a financial hole to get some kind of work experience.

If you do have kids or even one child, any support money the other parent pays goes to the government, not the child, which means the children are paying for being poor again! If the child needs to join in any school activities or trips with the rest of the daycare children, they are out of luck because the government will take any funds away again.

The various provinces all will take any tax refunds, child or alimony support payments, and wages from those living in poverty, making the people who do work basically slaves! This is in one of the very richest countries in the world. Sad, ugly, and yes, disturbing. What is even more astounding is that birthday gifts of money or goods is also repayable, so if a parent gets some money to buy anything for the children, that money is required to be reported, then is deducted from the next month income.  What happens here is that the children are penalized twice, once from living on basically less than families got 10 years ago and having any support from a parent never seen, gone, with no benefit to the children at all.

In the US there are several states that force welfare recipients to work, but they get little or none of the money they earn. Food stamps amount to around $3 per day to feed an adult. What on earth do people expect the poor to eat on that? So, there are basically some American people working as slaves for their governments too!

There are provinces in Canada that have the most millionaires, yet those are the ones that have HUGE numbers of people living in poverty, and those same provinces are the ones with the HIGHEST number of children living in poverty. Keeping people in what amounts to socialized slavery is probably the best hidden secret in North America.

Bashing the poor, especially children who do have responsible parents who support the children as best as possible, is making a very harsh example for those children. After all, the message is that Mom or Dad going to work is going to put less food on the table, make things much harder, and the value of the work is nothing, worthless, because there is NOT ONE DIME more for anything.

This is deliberate, make no mistake. Some states and provinces scream out “welfare fraud!” when the statistics on any fraud is less than 2% of all people getting support, yet those same statistics are used to make these very harsh policies. Talk about damning all because of a very very few!

There are seniors living in cars, families living in tents or car wrecks, all looking to find somethings just decent, yet the states or provinces make it virtually impossible to get one single dime ahead. Some provinces insist that people who have nothing  go looking for work for a minimum of 6 weeks and show they did go around looking for work before they are even allowed to apply for support! Question here. How on earth do you go out looking for work when you don’t have a dime, have no address, have no phone number that prospective employers could call, and have no clothes to go out for an interview?

Actually, in some provinces, that 6 week rule applies to anyone looking for any support. Which means that single moms who are trying to leave an abusive situation must leave their children somewhere to go out to look, which basically can force them to leave those children with the abusive person. Lovely, friggin’ lovely.

As long as the work people do is deemed worthless, and the support for children is seized by governments, and any chance of getting ahead are thwarted, there will be more problems for all of us.

Look at this from a child’s point of view. They need new shoes, sorry, no. They are invited to go out with the daycare, sorry, no. They want to have a Christmas gift for Mom, sorry, no. The child need a new coat and boots, sorry, no. Any possibility of going to the local zoo, swimming pool, movies, or any other outing is gone. Their lives become so narrowed, so lacking in any enjoyment, it become pretty bleak.

This research made me wonder, about those who make these policies, about our society which demeans and belittles these people, and about our own idea of society at all.

The provinces with the worst support are, ironically, those with the most millionaires in them, Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario. The rates for welfare in those provinces have actually gone down in the last ten years, making the support cheques worth less than those issued 10 years ago.

The golden rule says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or  “Do NOT do to others what you DON’T want done to you”

Guess some people forgot, or maybe we all JUST DO NOT GIVE A DAMN!

Deflationary Opportunities for Legislators

There are some interesting opportunities for legislators in deflationary times. One of these, especially with the lowering of the values in property, is to obtain subsidized housing stock. Especially when there are so many families diving straight into povery, this is one way to ensure stable homes for kids who would otherwise be moving around because of rental increases. Giving those who NEED stability the most, the vulnerable, is one of the benefits here. When parents have a stable housing situation, it is a hell of a lot easier to plan out the future. It also benefits the schooling systems, keeping students in a steady path, allowing opportunity for the children to develop social skills, friendships, and giving the entire family a support system within the neighbourhood.

New Orleans is perhaps one of the most dramatic examples. Before the hurricanes hit, yes, there was crime, yes, there was poverty, but people lived in neighbourhoods, knew who was the best person to talk to, who was the person to avoid. Now, the entire city of New Orleans is becoming one of the strongest examples of what not to do. Instead of rebuilding the city, with improvements and better chances for people returning to some semblance of neighbourhoods, money designated for that has disappeared. Crime rates in New Orleans have risen, mostly because of desperation, poverty, instability, poor schooling, and definitely because those who were supposed to help just flat-out did not give a damn!

The one thing I would avoid when buying subsidized housing stock is creating ghettos or making entire neighbourhoods into pockets of poverty. The better choice is to buy up stock in various places, so that children and families are exposed to the opportunities, greater information on how to make a living, and certainly not straining schools with problems all in one area. Mixing those who are working with those who are not will often make connections for those looking for work. We all know that as networking, so why not do it within communities?

Another possibility here is to find materials at cheaper cost for repairing buildings, putting into those buildings that are currently plagued with cockroaches, rats, and mold, repairs that otherwise would be far more costly. Toronto is one of the cities that desperately needs this cost saving. The housing authority there has been so lax in repairing their buildings, some of them resemble third world housing.

With people losing jobs, and others trying to subsist on no work, this may well be the time to get those living on the welfare rolls into the job market by allowing recipients to keep a portion of the money they make. Yep, start at the bottom, the real bottom. Give those who have been so severely disadvantaged the hope, the opportunity, the idea that they actually matter in our society. This means getting over the attitude so common in the game of “poor bashing”.  Currently a lot of those receiving welfare find a job, then find out that, not only are their wages taken back, but that the costs of clothing, transportation, and day-care are coming out of the money left over. Basically those living on welfare (known as assistance in some places) end up in a deeper financial hole! Some incentive that is, NOT! If you think this is not true, think again.This is where the legislation needs to change, to provide a basic honouring of the worth of that work too.

Fleet purchases for some jurisdictions can be done now at a far better price. No, I am not talking about companies like Translink or the Toronto Transit Authority, who run mass transit companies and  provide cars for employees, I am talking about power authorities etc. who use vehicles to keep our power on, our roads in repair.

Computers can now be bought with fewer dollars too, and if you really want to save on money, use LInux, Ubuntu systems that are free, open for anyone, and have systems that do work with virtually all applications. Forget paying for your operating systems and put the money into better operating supervision and technical support. Computers can be made now for less than $200, and with a free operating system, that is good savings, along with basic monitors. Schools can do this, as can agencies who have to keep their systems running 24 hours a day.

These are but a few, but with some intelligence, some planning, and with a much more open mind, it is possible to put a lot into the neighbourhoods, the cities, the states and provinces, with a hell of a lot less cost.

Tax Money, Whose Is It?

Town council, city council, state, province, federal, even tax for schools and roads, all depend on someone having to pay up. Lately I have noticed a laissez-faire attitude toward the spending, the use of those tax dollars, as if the supply will always be endless and plentiful. Bad attitude!

Whose dollars are those? Whose pounds, yens, pesos, are those? Often they come from the pockets of the poor, the fastest growing segment of most societies. This means children are often eating poorly, going without new shoes, clothing, so the taxes can be paid. Those taxes are coming from families with single parents working part-time, paying for daycare, rent and all those other daily expenses. Tax dollars come from the people who work in minimum-wage stores with no health plan. Tax dollars come from the small shops who make or sell things. Tax dollars come from welfare payments, retirement income, the small trust funds of children who have lost a grandparent. Tax dollars are seldom gained from those who live in the high-income brackets, because there are write-offs, tax deductions for stock losses, and other means to avoid paying taxes. For every 100 tax dollars, less than half of 1 % is from those who make the most.

Poverty bashing has been a growing game, with those who are forced to live on food stamps, unemployment payments, and welfare the people targeted for derision, scorn.  “Get a job!” “Come on, get off your butt and get out there, earn your own way!” “Stand on your own two feet, I am tired of you sitting there and collecting money, tax money, from my hard earnings!” Take a look at almost every industrialized country statistics and you will find a very ugly trend. Poverty is growing. One in ten children now live in poverty in countries that have huge wealth, why? Wages for single parents are usually low, college, university, even health care courses are all well out of the range for any children of single parents. Costs have risen consistently at all those higher education sites, putting the squeeze on money. How could any of those children even consider getting out of the poverty black hole? Food banks are a common sight now, when once, food banks were only seen in cities with huge populations.

This is where Barack Obama had it right, START AT THE BOTTOM! The real bottom. The middle class has virtually disappeared because of the huge gap between those earning the high wages and income and the lower. The middle class is quickly becoming part of the poverty class, the lowest rung on the ladder.

When the 3 auto makers showed up in Washington, for example, there was a severe public relations gaff they made. People were aghast that those CEO’s showed up via private jets to ask for the tax money. Hmm not a good plan, guys! This showed a complete lack of understanding and even comprehension about tax funds, where the money comes from.

This current shakeup is, in a way, ironic. Those who “invested” in CDS, who played funny-money with others hard-earned money, have lost a huge chunk of their own income from the stock market collapse, the losses in the real-estate speculations, the property bought as “investment” for rental. So, no longer are those people walking around looking like they “own” the world. But, those people are the very ones who distained the ordinary working person, the money and taxes from the growing poverty class, and spent like a lottery winner. CRUNCH!  Now maybe some people will realize that every person who is going hungry, who lives in misery, is directly connected to all of us, and in ways we don’t see, we are the ones who are hungry and miserable too.

The bottom line here is respect. We need to relearn respect for ourselves, to do what we know as well as we can. We need to have those who want to have our tax money learn to respect the work required.  Maybe, just maybe, we can then learn to respect those who live with the hardest struggles, those who have been scorned and derided, the Vietnam veteran, the father, the mom, the sister, the son or daughter who live on the cold streets.  Yes, they deserve respect too.

Most of all, we all need to respect our own lives, to realize that we do all have unique abilities, skills, and underneath, we all are sacred, no matter what religion or belief system we use. We also have to respect our world, making sure that we don’t create such a mess that animals starve or get sick and die from poisons we add to the world.

Every being alive looks for a better future, wants to create a better world, and every one of us is capable of doing that. What the definition of “better” is, is where we have to put respect, honour and care into choosing what we do.

Child and Family Poverty Growing in Canada

Little Change For 20 Years in Poverty Rates

Welsh Children and Families living in poverty

National Center on Child Poverty, Letting Poverty Remain Costs All Of Us

State by State Cost Of Child Poverty in the U.S.

As long as we all believe that we MUST be compared to others, we all lose perspective. Poverty WILL grow now, with job losses, houses foreclosed, debts rising, and support systems being slashed.