Monday, November 17, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Families and Poverty in Canada, some brief thoughts
One of my classes this semester is Sociology of Families. It's an upper level course, and has an extra credit (4 instead of the average 3). Thus, there is a LOT of reading. Our participation mark is worth 25% of our final grade, and includes weekly homework assignments. This week, we are reading about families and poverty.
This is an issue near and dear to my own heart - I am poor. I'm not poor in an absolute sense, I have a home and food in my fridge. But I do not make ends meet on a monthly basis, and without my credit card, I might not be able to put gas in my car or feed my son cheese and meat.
Luckily for me, I live in Canada, and not the United States. Thus, I have basic medical. My son also has his basic dental and ophthalmologic care covered by the government (but not mine, I'm expected to pay out of pocket). As well, I'm eligible for numerous redistributive social payments, from lower income taxes for low income families (I get it all back, not that it's much, but I'm sure Americans don't have the same benefits, so I'm lucky in comparison) to social benefits like the Canada Child Tax Benefit and the National Child Benefit Supplement, which, combined, gives me a cheque for about $250 a month. This definetly helps pay the rent. I've also recently recieved a one time tax free payment of $250 to help me "deal with higher energy costs" I was eligible for this because of the above mentioned benefit programs.
Despite these efforts by the Canadian and provincial governments to help out people such as me, the working poor (okay, I'm not working right now, but I was, up until mid-July, when I quit after giving 13 months notice, to focus on my education. Now I'm living on student loans, another government financed program), not much is shifting, demographically. Women and immigrants (especially "visible minorities") are still struggling, even after a sustained period of economic growth and job creation (1994 - 2004). The evidence suggests that it was upper income Canadians who benefitted from that economic growth, and the gap between the highest and lowest quintile is growing.
Single mothers are hit especially hard. Lone parent families comprise about one in five families with children. Yet among families classified by Stats Canada as income poor, over half are single parent families. So, it is children who are increasingly living in poverty, with all the associated negative outcomes. This is despite a 1989 unanimous resolution by the House of Commons to end child poverty by the year 2000. Hey, folks, that was 8 years ago! Child poverty hasn't changed in 25 years!
So, it seems to me that we, as Canadians, are willing to pay lip service to the plight of women and children in our patriarchal world, but when push comes to shove, and it's time to reduce deficits, we're gonna cut social benefits to women and children (UI becomeing EI, and reducing eligibility from 70% of applicants to only 30%). What is my government saying to me? Sounds like, "go get married woman, find a man to take care of you and your kid."
Yikes. The second wave of feminism began in the 70's.
This is an issue near and dear to my own heart - I am poor. I'm not poor in an absolute sense, I have a home and food in my fridge. But I do not make ends meet on a monthly basis, and without my credit card, I might not be able to put gas in my car or feed my son cheese and meat.
Luckily for me, I live in Canada, and not the United States. Thus, I have basic medical. My son also has his basic dental and ophthalmologic care covered by the government (but not mine, I'm expected to pay out of pocket). As well, I'm eligible for numerous redistributive social payments, from lower income taxes for low income families (I get it all back, not that it's much, but I'm sure Americans don't have the same benefits, so I'm lucky in comparison) to social benefits like the Canada Child Tax Benefit and the National Child Benefit Supplement, which, combined, gives me a cheque for about $250 a month. This definetly helps pay the rent. I've also recently recieved a one time tax free payment of $250 to help me "deal with higher energy costs" I was eligible for this because of the above mentioned benefit programs.
Despite these efforts by the Canadian and provincial governments to help out people such as me, the working poor (okay, I'm not working right now, but I was, up until mid-July, when I quit after giving 13 months notice, to focus on my education. Now I'm living on student loans, another government financed program), not much is shifting, demographically. Women and immigrants (especially "visible minorities") are still struggling, even after a sustained period of economic growth and job creation (1994 - 2004). The evidence suggests that it was upper income Canadians who benefitted from that economic growth, and the gap between the highest and lowest quintile is growing.
Single mothers are hit especially hard. Lone parent families comprise about one in five families with children. Yet among families classified by Stats Canada as income poor, over half are single parent families. So, it is children who are increasingly living in poverty, with all the associated negative outcomes. This is despite a 1989 unanimous resolution by the House of Commons to end child poverty by the year 2000. Hey, folks, that was 8 years ago! Child poverty hasn't changed in 25 years!
So, it seems to me that we, as Canadians, are willing to pay lip service to the plight of women and children in our patriarchal world, but when push comes to shove, and it's time to reduce deficits, we're gonna cut social benefits to women and children (UI becomeing EI, and reducing eligibility from 70% of applicants to only 30%). What is my government saying to me? Sounds like, "go get married woman, find a man to take care of you and your kid."
Yikes. The second wave of feminism began in the 70's.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
First grader behavioural issues
Oh, what to do. My first grader is having behavioural problems at school. He disrupts the class. Here is an excerpt from a note she wrote me today in his planner:
"He also wants to lie down regularly on the floor and has a great difficulty when required to attend to lessons.... Please speak with him, as I am concerned about this behaviour if he will be accompanying us on Tuesday's field trip. Your support from home is appreciated."
The teacher is quite experienced, has a great attitude (we had a half hour conference about 3 weeks ago, I got a great vibe from her), and stresses positive interactions with him. But this is the first time my child's "strong will" has been an issue for a teacher or caregiver. He has been with his childcare provider for two years, now, and she was as surprised as I was to hear he has attention issues in class.
But now it sounds like he won't be able to go on the class field trip! As my only notification has been from the above planner note, I may be jumping to conclusions, but off the school grounds, safety is an issue for teachers, and if he can't listen in class, how about at the pumpkin patch?
Of course, the field trip falls on a day that I am unable to participate, or I'd just go with them, and make certain the little you-know-what minds his p's and q's. How can I possibly assure this teacher that he will behave?
"He also wants to lie down regularly on the floor and has a great difficulty when required to attend to lessons.... Please speak with him, as I am concerned about this behaviour if he will be accompanying us on Tuesday's field trip. Your support from home is appreciated."
The teacher is quite experienced, has a great attitude (we had a half hour conference about 3 weeks ago, I got a great vibe from her), and stresses positive interactions with him. But this is the first time my child's "strong will" has been an issue for a teacher or caregiver. He has been with his childcare provider for two years, now, and she was as surprised as I was to hear he has attention issues in class.
But now it sounds like he won't be able to go on the class field trip! As my only notification has been from the above planner note, I may be jumping to conclusions, but off the school grounds, safety is an issue for teachers, and if he can't listen in class, how about at the pumpkin patch?
Of course, the field trip falls on a day that I am unable to participate, or I'd just go with them, and make certain the little you-know-what minds his p's and q's. How can I possibly assure this teacher that he will behave?
Friday, October 17, 2008
Laziness has Nothing to do with Poverty
My inspiration for my last post was MomGrind's Blog Action Day post, which generated lots of interesting discussion in the comments. I added my two cents worth, was responded to (cool, or what?!), replied to the responses, and then got the following reply from MomGrind (the quote is from my reply):
“What I’d really like to argue is that poverty is not at all related to laziness.” I agree. I assume that a very small portion of poverty cases can be explained by laziness or by lack of drive, and those are the people who would indeed exploit a welfare system. But my assumption is that the vast majority of cases have nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with bad luck, lack of opportunity and other factors that have been mentioned here.
I don't want to leave a further comment, but I have a response to that, so I'm posting it here, on my private blog that no one's ever looked at, because no one knows about it!
I would argue that zero cases of poverty are related to laziness. I believe that the instances of welfare abuse, which has been chalked up to laziness, is actually the result of learned helplessness.
I was, again, reading away in my ethics textbook (Rachels, 2007, p. 97-98, see last post for full reference), this time about Utilitarianism (the founding ethical principle of democracy), when I came across the description of a psychological experiment from the 50's, apparently before animal rights and ethics committees @universities.
This was @Harvard. The experiment had 40 dogs in a "shuttlebox," a device consisting of two compartments separated by a barrier, initially set at the height of the dog's backs. The floor delivered electric shocks. At first, the dogs could escape the shocks by jumping over the barrier. Then they shocked the dogs on the other side as they landed. The dogs learned to anticipate the shocks, yet jumped over anyways. Then they blocked the passage between compartments with glass so the dogs couldn't escape the shocks at all. After 10 or 12 days the dogs ceased to resist the shocks. This was in an experiment to study "learned helplessness," a topic the psychologists thought important for the mentally ill (ibid).
If we extend the concept of learned helplessness to people experiencing poverty, who have had "bad luck, lack of opportunity and other factors that have been mentioned," it can be seen how people can stop resisting their circumstances, and essentially give up, thus being perceived as "lazy."
“What I’d really like to argue is that poverty is not at all related to laziness.” I agree. I assume that a very small portion of poverty cases can be explained by laziness or by lack of drive, and those are the people who would indeed exploit a welfare system. But my assumption is that the vast majority of cases have nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with bad luck, lack of opportunity and other factors that have been mentioned here.
I don't want to leave a further comment, but I have a response to that, so I'm posting it here, on my private blog that no one's ever looked at, because no one knows about it!
I would argue that zero cases of poverty are related to laziness. I believe that the instances of welfare abuse, which has been chalked up to laziness, is actually the result of learned helplessness.
I was, again, reading away in my ethics textbook (Rachels, 2007, p. 97-98, see last post for full reference), this time about Utilitarianism (the founding ethical principle of democracy), when I came across the description of a psychological experiment from the 50's, apparently before animal rights and ethics committees @universities.
This was @Harvard. The experiment had 40 dogs in a "shuttlebox," a device consisting of two compartments separated by a barrier, initially set at the height of the dog's backs. The floor delivered electric shocks. At first, the dogs could escape the shocks by jumping over the barrier. Then they shocked the dogs on the other side as they landed. The dogs learned to anticipate the shocks, yet jumped over anyways. Then they blocked the passage between compartments with glass so the dogs couldn't escape the shocks at all. After 10 or 12 days the dogs ceased to resist the shocks. This was in an experiment to study "learned helplessness," a topic the psychologists thought important for the mentally ill (ibid).
If we extend the concept of learned helplessness to people experiencing poverty, who have had "bad luck, lack of opportunity and other factors that have been mentioned," it can be seen how people can stop resisting their circumstances, and essentially give up, thus being perceived as "lazy."
Thursday, October 16, 2008
some brief thoughts on poverty, morality, and responsibility...
Yesterday was Blog Action Day, where bloggers wrote about poverty. I'm a little slow on the draw, but here's my two cents worth...
I just read the following in my textbook for my Philosophy class Morality and Politics: "A 60 year old man shot his letter carrier seven times because he was $90,000 in debt and thought that being in federal prison would be better than being homeless" (Rachels, 2007, p. 82). This is in an argument disproving the theory of Ethical Egoism.
The example is one in a series of harmful, unethical things people have done for their own benefit. Other examples include a nurse raping unconscious patients, a paramedic injecting emergency patients with sterile water, so as to sell the morphine, and parents feeding a baby acid so they could fake a lawsuit against a formula company.
I can see how these other examples fail to be moral, and of course I can see how it is immoral to shoot someone to save yourself from possible homelessness, but I cannot place all the responsibility for the immoral act upon the 60 year old man's shoulders. Should not society itself bear some of the responsibility for producing such anxieties? That is, are we not all collectively responsible for such a tragedy? Where was the social safety net for this individual?
It's high time we remember the lessons of the Depression and start looking out for every member of our society as a moral responsibility. By looking out for one another, I mean providing people with agency, not giving people charity. I mean giving them the tools to make a better life for themselves.
I'd like to live in a Canada that had already met the millennium goal of eradicating child poverty.
References
Rachels, J. (2007). The Elements of Moral Philosophy. 5th ed. by Stuart Rachels. New York: McGraw Hill.
I just read the following in my textbook for my Philosophy class Morality and Politics: "A 60 year old man shot his letter carrier seven times because he was $90,000 in debt and thought that being in federal prison would be better than being homeless" (Rachels, 2007, p. 82). This is in an argument disproving the theory of Ethical Egoism.
The example is one in a series of harmful, unethical things people have done for their own benefit. Other examples include a nurse raping unconscious patients, a paramedic injecting emergency patients with sterile water, so as to sell the morphine, and parents feeding a baby acid so they could fake a lawsuit against a formula company.
I can see how these other examples fail to be moral, and of course I can see how it is immoral to shoot someone to save yourself from possible homelessness, but I cannot place all the responsibility for the immoral act upon the 60 year old man's shoulders. Should not society itself bear some of the responsibility for producing such anxieties? That is, are we not all collectively responsible for such a tragedy? Where was the social safety net for this individual?
It's high time we remember the lessons of the Depression and start looking out for every member of our society as a moral responsibility. By looking out for one another, I mean providing people with agency, not giving people charity. I mean giving them the tools to make a better life for themselves.
I'd like to live in a Canada that had already met the millennium goal of eradicating child poverty.
References
Rachels, J. (2007). The Elements of Moral Philosophy. 5th ed. by Stuart Rachels. New York: McGraw Hill.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Tomatoes! Tomatoes!
Yes! I have oodles of tomatoes!
About a week ago, my housemates /sisters and I cleaned up the garden for winter. Just in time, too, because the rainy weather is here.
We tore out all the beans and peas and sunflowers and squashes and tomatoes. We got rid of the lettuce that bolted in August. We planted new seed, plus broccoli and pac choi.
We had a laundry basket full of green tomatoes. We thought only a very few would ripen, so we spread them out on newspaper in the basement in the dark. The rest have been sitting in my kitchen, waiting for me to turn them into green tomato salsa for Christmas prezzies for those who have been VERY good ; )
But they've been ripening like mad! Now I only have a pot full of green ones, so maybe only two batches of salsa? Maybe if I keep waiting, they'll ALL ripen!
But what to do with all the ripe ones? They're ripening too fast!
The whole haul:
About a week ago, my housemates /sisters and I cleaned up the garden for winter. Just in time, too, because the rainy weather is here.
We tore out all the beans and peas and sunflowers and squashes and tomatoes. We got rid of the lettuce that bolted in August. We planted new seed, plus broccoli and pac choi.
We had a laundry basket full of green tomatoes. We thought only a very few would ripen, so we spread them out on newspaper in the basement in the dark. The rest have been sitting in my kitchen, waiting for me to turn them into green tomato salsa for Christmas prezzies for those who have been VERY good ; )But they've been ripening like mad! Now I only have a pot full of green ones, so maybe only two batches of salsa? Maybe if I keep waiting, they'll ALL ripen!
But what to do with all the ripe ones? They're ripening too fast!
The whole haul:
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
And so much for that...
It seems I am too busy to write every day, or even every week. Scratch that, new goal - let's try getting something onto the blog once a month!
This past month has been very busy with the beginning of the school year - for myself, and for the boy. He started grade one, full days at school, and has decided that he really doesn't like school, he just likes playing. And his teacher wants to talk to me about his classroom behaviour. Still waiting on that call, teach.
As for my education, it is getting more and more expensive and my educational goals are getting more and more muddled. I'm taking 4 classes, all in different disciplines. Two of them are in an extremely disorienting online format. I've been behind in my reading from the get-go. As I am every semester, so why do I still complain?
But the tomatoes are finally starting to ripen!!
It's not the bumper crop I always imagine, and I'm certain most of them will have to be picked green or risk rotting on the vine as autumn creeps in, along with the ubiquitous West Coast rain, but I finally got to eat garden fresh tomatoes. I've been waiting ALL summer for this.
Any good recipes for green tomato preserves?
This past month has been very busy with the beginning of the school year - for myself, and for the boy. He started grade one, full days at school, and has decided that he really doesn't like school, he just likes playing. And his teacher wants to talk to me about his classroom behaviour. Still waiting on that call, teach.
As for my education, it is getting more and more expensive and my educational goals are getting more and more muddled. I'm taking 4 classes, all in different disciplines. Two of them are in an extremely disorienting online format. I've been behind in my reading from the get-go. As I am every semester, so why do I still complain?
But the tomatoes are finally starting to ripen!!
It's not the bumper crop I always imagine, and I'm certain most of them will have to be picked green or risk rotting on the vine as autumn creeps in, along with the ubiquitous West Coast rain, but I finally got to eat garden fresh tomatoes. I've been waiting ALL summer for this.
Any good recipes for green tomato preserves?
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Hello blogging world!
This is my very first attempt at blogging. I've been thinking about trying it out for a few months, but, being new to the world of blogs (I read my first one in February), and having an innate need to 'figure it out' first, I've been waiting and reading, hoping to learn all the rules first. I've since come to the conclusion that the world of blogging is so very vast that I will never learn all the customs and rules of blogging communities, so I might as well just jump in.
So here I am. A blogger. Yikes, hope I don't screw it up! I don't know if I like the name of my blog, but I do know my favorite blogs are about frugality, so I'm guessing I may end up writing about this topic a fair bit.
I'm also quite passionate about social justice. I can see myself also writing about topical news, and my reactions to it. That's not really about being frugal, but I couldn't come up with a title that encompassed both. As this is a trial run, and as I'm not looking to develop an audience for this blog, I'm allowing myself to experiment a bit, even if that means not being focused. Really, I just want to practice writing.
So let's give it a whirl!
So here I am. A blogger. Yikes, hope I don't screw it up! I don't know if I like the name of my blog, but I do know my favorite blogs are about frugality, so I'm guessing I may end up writing about this topic a fair bit.
I'm also quite passionate about social justice. I can see myself also writing about topical news, and my reactions to it. That's not really about being frugal, but I couldn't come up with a title that encompassed both. As this is a trial run, and as I'm not looking to develop an audience for this blog, I'm allowing myself to experiment a bit, even if that means not being focused. Really, I just want to practice writing.
So let's give it a whirl!
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