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Winning the War on Poverty: The Canadians are doing it; we’re not
- Pxtl 8y agoDon't worry - thanks to a horrendously mishandled scandal related to prosecutorial independence, our Liberal government is struggling to survive and the Conservatives will likely take power federally. Once the CPC is in power, we'll reposition ourselves on poverty into a place that the USA can more easily catch up.
- vkou 8y agoI don't understand why this is being downvoted. The current Liberal government is in the process of imploding (And since they've gone back on their promise of electoral reform, we're again looking at a Tory majority.) And before people praise Canadian culture as the reason for better support of the poor: Yes, there is a cultural sense in Canada that the government should work on helping the poor. It's held by ~45-55% of the population. There's also a similar cultural sense in the United States, and it's held by ~40-50% of the population. Small differences at the margins make a big difference in policy... But can also be lost, from a minor shift in sentiment. (And yes, Canada has all the same problems with homelessness that the United States does. Shutting down all the mental institutions, unsurprisingly, turns East Hastings x Main into an open-air mental institution, staffed by cops and bystanders.)
- ZhuanXia 8y agoUntil people start talking about dismantling zoning laws, I don't take them seriously when they say they care about homelessness. We deeply care about homelessness. Yes, we've systematically made dormitory housing illegal, but we deeply care about homelessness. Yes, we've outlawed any form of mixed use zoning necessitating a car for most jobs, but we deeply care about homelessness. Yes, we have made any form of construction basicly impossible, but we care so so much about homelessness. Judging by their revealed preferences, almost no one cares about homelessness.
- vkou 8y agoThere are people who will be homeless, regardless of what your zoning laws are. An income of $0 doesn't quite get you a roof over your head, regardless of how cheap that roof is. An inability to function in modern society won't keep you inside an apartment, even if its a shitty dormitory. Zoning is only a part of the homeless problem. Only a fraction of homeless are homeless because they were priced out of their homes.
- moate 8y ago>> An income of $0 doesn't quite get you a roof over your head, regardless of how cheap that roof is. I mean if the cost is "$0" then it does. But people don't want shelters being erected in their neighborhoods either, because then you'd have a concentrated group of undesirables nearby...
- beat 8y agoThat doesn't change the fact that zoning laws are a significant contributing factor for homelessness. I keep seeing PERFECTION OR NOTHING arguments on HN, and it's disappointing.
- mikepurvis 8y ago> Only a fraction of homeless are homeless because they were priced out of their homes. Do you have a source for this? It seems excessively cruel and smacks of "othering" a group of vulnerable individuals. My impression is that many people/families teeter on the edge of poverty, and not having enough "low end" housing supply is a huge part of that. If your entire support network is in a single city than just moving somewhere cheaper isn't an option, nor is going out to the suburbs where a car is required. So then you have this yawning chasm from $0 for "homeless" up to $1000+ for "tiny apartment". Sure, maybe it's possible to split something with friends (if you have/trust them) or whatever, but it's not hard to see a cycle where job loss leads to home loss and suddenly it's impossible to get a job again because you're not properly slept or groomed. Having dorm-style housing options at a half or quarter the price of "tiny apartment" would double or quadruple the amount of runway you have after job loss or injury before you're caught in the cycle of unemployability.
- peisistratos 8y agoThe government and corporate America is winning the war on poverty - in preserving it, as they (somewhat) openly desire to do. Just read Businessweek or the Wall Street Journal when unemployment falls. This is not seen as a good thing but a bad thing. I can link to dozens of examples if one can't figure out how to Google that. That this is the case has been known for a long time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
- tomjakubowski 8y agoIt's fine for unemployment to exist - for people to be seeking work but not finding it. The idiotic part is that we've structured everything so the reality is, for most people, continued unemployment leads to poverty.
- charliesharding 8y agoAs opposed to leading to prosperity? Call me crazy but that makes sense
- mikepurvis 8y agoSurely there's a middle ground where you can be unemployed and not prosperous, but also not struggling for your basic necessities? This is the entire premise behind UBI initiatives.
- tomhoward 8y agoI'm not expressing any strong view on what the most influential corporate and political leaders deep-down truly desire to be the case, but it can't actually be part of any coherent economic philosophy that widespread poverty is desirable, can it? It seems to me the requirements of any growth-based economic system must be to promote total economic productivity (which includes rewarding individuals for being competent and productive employees), whilst also distributing wealth broadly enough to enable widespread consumption of/sustained demand for companies' goods and services. Any system that fails on either count will fail overall, no?
- educationdata 8y agoThe number is simply too good to be true. Reduce poverty rate by 20% in 3 years in Canada? So when will they totally eliminate poverty? "there were 825,000 fewer Canadians living in poverty in 2017 than there were in 2015" from the official website. It's not the same as "Roughly 825,000 Canadians were lifted out of poverty in those years". Also, it's ridiculous to claim this scale of change was caused by the program described in the article. It's almost certainly caused by some large scale economical or statistical reasons.
- beat 8y agoYou should read Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. In the late 1990s, 29% of the world lived in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as less than $1.80/day in today's dollars. Today, that number is less than 9%. We've slashed extreme poverty globally by two thirds in twenty years. Too good to be true? No, facts on the ground.
- educationdata 8y agoWe are talking about Canada, not the world. Also 3 years, not 30 years. Also the poverty line here is totally different.
- judah 8y agoThe data brought to light by Factfulness also contradicts this NYT article, which claims the US is not addressing poverty. In fact, the US and most western nations -- and indeed the world as a whole -- are getting richer with less poverty. Already extreme poverty is virtually nonexistent in Level 4 nations like the US.
- beat 8y agoExtreme poverty and regular poverty are different things. Extreme poverty is nearly nonexistent in the US, but the regular poverty rate has been more or less static for decades (yes, I looked it up). Canada is making rapid progress on the regular poverty rate, which is what's so remarkable.
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- perardi 8y ago1. I would like if this had a citation. Any citation. 2. I'd like to see a rather more sophisticated breakdown of where the poverty has been reduced. Has poverty gone done universally across all groups? Including First Nations? This opinion piece puts a lot of emphasis on grassroots community-level change starting the ball rolling, but has that actually happened on the Prairies or the Atlantic provinces?
- perardi 8y agoTo expand on this: I'm a relatively recent US -> Canada immigrant, and I've already learned to be skeptical of a source that talks about "Canada" as some monolithic country. There's a world of difference between Toronto and Thunder Bay, even though they're in the same province. When Brooks uses stats that says poverty has declined, is that truly across the board, or is that just in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor? Because the urban-rural divide here is just as stark as in the States, and just saying "Canada" doesn't capture the spectrum of lifestyles here.
- chawco 8y agoOn the one hand, sure, this is true. On a deeper level this is just a criticism that the methods may not apply across the whole population -- that they may not be able to reduce the rate to 0. Fair enough. But given that more than 80% of Canada's population lives in urban centers, and indeed, that about half the country lives in the corridor you mentioned (Windsor-Quebec City corridor), it's a really good start, and may yield many more dividends yet.
- hi5eyes 8y agothunder bay/a lot of the east really shows the contrast between toronto/west end development and other areas
- smnrchrds 8y agoI live in Canada and I have no idea what this opinion piece is talking about. You would expect such an impressive improvement to be on the front page of every news agency, and the institute behind it become a household name. Yet this is the first time I am hearing about either of those. I would appreciate it if someone could shed some light on the claims.
- lorcan 8y ago3 rules to escape poverty ... graduate high school, defer parenthood and avoid drugs.
- cmurf 8y agoEqual rights for girls/women leads to all three so I would put that first, and now you've got two spare slots for new rules.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoEqual rights for girls/women leads to avoiding drugs? I'd like to see how you think that works.
- daenz 8y ago"Equal rights" in this context, through some semantic gymnastics, probably means "abortion and contraceptives." Calling it "equal rights" is silly because men don't get elective medical procedures and condoms for free.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoEven if that's what cmurf meant (and it probably is), I still don't see how it results in avoiding drugs.
- cmurf 8y agoMen also don't get pregnant for 9 months, or experience lower wages in anticipation of it. What is it with men and abortion? Scared of your inferior genes being rejected by conscious female logic who knew from the outset she definitely did not intend to produce your vile offspring?
- daenz 8y ago>Scared of your inferior genes being rejected by conscious female logic who knew from the outset she definitely did not intend to produce your vile offspring? Wow, that is ugly. Also I happen to hold some pro-choice views so please direct your toxic bile elsewhere.
- novok 8y agoProbably the biggest poverty problem with Canada is the cost of housing. All of BC & large parts of Ontario has horribly out of wack housing affordability ratios. The average across Canada is %50 of income going towards housing cost, which means people are not saving as much for their future retirements. http://www.rbc.com/newsroom/reports/rbc-housing-affordability.html http://www.rbc.com/newsroom/reports/rbc-housing-affordabilit...
- lwansbrough 8y agoA lot of that (most?) has to do with (illegal) foreign influence. Especially in Metro Vancouver, where illegal money laundering schemes that heavily impact the housing markets (that appears to be where the money is invested) exceed a billion dollars annually. It’s an issue that’s finally getting some attention beyond anecdotal “the Chinese own everything in Vancouver”.
- lazyjones 8y agoIt's easier to curb poverty if you don't let it migrate into your country.
- dba7dba 8y agoI'm surprised above comment hasn't been downvoted to oblivion. It can come across as cold/racist/nationalistic, but it is something that needs to be debated out in open.
- txru 8y agoI would describe it as a Culture War grenade. Throw a grenade behind you, don't look back. Doesn't cost much to the thrower.
- lazyjones 8y agoWhy would it be racist or nationalistic? Canada is very open to educated and wealthy migrants from all cultural / ethnic backgrounds and I appreciate it. Likewise, poor Migrants from Germany are just as undesirable als poor Africans. It's an indisputable fact that they will have less poverty this way. My comment will be downvoted anyway. Simply because some people don't like facts that are in the way of their ideological facade.
- jrace 8y agoWhat about the 25,000 Syrian refuges we brought in over the past few years?
- frosted-flakes 8y agoRefugees are different. They don't fall under the regular immigration rules.
- tenpies 8y agoAnd to be fair, the general consensus is that Trudeau has de-facto dissolved the US border since he came into power. It has been problematic for the cities and provinces who ultimately have to house/care for the people that the Federal government decides to allow into the country, the takes 2 or more years to process. Toronto for example, saw its tiny shelter surplus evaporate and over 40% of those using shelters are now of the "irregular" immigration category [1]. It got so bad that certain hotels became de-facto shelters (with the tab picked up by the tax payers). It's something to be quite aware of because it is impossible to do this without generating some level of resentment by the people who feel their hospitality is being exploited. Thankfully winter is over so being homeless is no longer a death sentence, but Canada should not be used as an example of how to handle poverty or immigration at this moment. --- [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-toronto-stands-by-data-showing-almost-40-per-cent-of-people-in/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-toron...
- zacharyaustin11 8y agoAs a Candian coming to the US I would like to look at the criminal justice system's influence on these statistics. I participated in a restorative community justice program while if in the US I would have landed in a detention facility.
- StaticRedux 8y agoPretending Canada or Iceland or Norway are some kind of utopia where everyone is rich, in perfect health, eats pixie dust, and shits rainbows isn't doing anyone any favors. Those countries have their own problems, even if they aren't the same as in the United States. Different cultures, different economies, different priorities. You can't solve a problem by saying "look how awesome this homogenous country with a population the size of a medium sized US city is!". That argument will always fall flat on it's face. And on deaf ears. Certainly we can and should learn from other countries. But it's getting really tiring to hear these empty arguments trying to hold some other country up as some kind of wonderous Paradise when it's simply not true.
- grawprog 8y agoAs a Canadian, I agree with what you say....except for the shitting rainbows part. That totally happens up here.
- josv 8y agoAs a Canadian, I hear frequently from Americans that Canada is a homogeneous place. I imagine there are a lot of different ways to measure that, but for what it's worth, per StatsCan Canada has the highest foreign-born population in the G8[1]. Subjectively, Toronto feels amazingly polyglot compared to most large US cities I've spent time in. (Although, as in the US, there's a lot of geographic variation.) Not to invalidate your point, but that particular assumption always strikes me as dubious. 1. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-0...
- StaticRedux 8y agoI was referring to Iceland/Norway more there.
- nojvek 8y agoWell if it’s any consolation, visit East Hastings st in Vancouver. Canadians are better than us at poverty, but I wouldn’t call that winning when the number of people in poverty are going up.