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Globe and Mail Sweeps Poverty Under the Rug
by John Clarke
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Toronto anti-homelessness campaign.
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On March 31, The Globe and Mail ran a front
page feature by Economics Reporter, Heather Scoffield,
under the eye catching headline, "Growth Spurs Decline
in Poverty." It is a truly classic piece of corporate
disinformation that really must be replied to.
In reading over this piece, I was struck by how
monstrously unfair it is that such nonsense can be
trumpeted from coast to coast. A very privileged
journalist, writing for a newspaper owned by a wealthy
corporation, selects facts and quotes from such
sources and "experts" as she finds useful, while
ignoring mountains of evidence to the contrary. She
is able to do this precisely because she writes for
what the millionaires and billionaires who own it,
like to call the "free press". If Ms. Scoffield's
arguments had to compete in any honest and fair public
exchange of views, they would collapse in ruins. If
she had to stand up before an audience of people
living in poverty and tell them her findings, she
would be shouted down unless she was mistaken for a
comedy routine.
Corporate apologetics are notoriously lacking in
originality. The Scoffield article is really a rehash
of a concept linked to 'Reaganomics', the "trickle
down theory". If the rich are allowed to dine at the
trough without hindrance, the story goes, they will
spill enough on the ground to eliminate poverty.
Ronald Reagan (or those who told him what to say)
advanced this idea before the poverty and misery it
would create had been brought forth. Ms. Scoffield,
however, is selling a magic cure long after the
patient who took it has been taken away in an
ambulance. Let's just examine her claims.
The first thing you realize is that basis for
Scoffield's assertion that Canadians of all classes
are benefiting from the thriving economy is pretty
meagre. After falling in 2002 and remaining static in
2003, a 2% increase in average family income occurred
in 2004. Also, she is able to inform us that 11.2% of
the population lived below the Stats Can low income
cut off in 2004 as opposed to 11.6% the year before.
During the period under review, it is mentioned in
passing that the "rich have been getting richer" but
our reporter, with great circumspection, leaves out of
the picture their much more impressive percentages.
However, modest improvements for the rest of us must,
presumably, involve out of unchecked enrichment at the
top. As one of Scoffield's sources of opinion
suggests, "The poor are much better off when the rich
get richer". If the Chief Economist of the TD Bank
tells us this, it must be true!
I'm not an economist, just an anti poverty organizer;
but a couple of points occur to me that Scoffield and
her learned sources seem to have missed. First of
all, in a peak year, a small decline in numbers living
below the cut offs can take place without it meaning
that the living standards of anyone have actually
improved. The vast cuts to EI and welfare programs
that the Globe has cheered along, have forced
people into the worst and most low paying jobs on
offer. Given the costs of child care, transportation
and suchlike involved in employment, people so pushed
into the low wage ghetto may have somewhat higher
incomes but still be poorer in terms of what they
actually have to live on. The Harris cuts reduced the
welfare roles in Ontario from well over a million to
less than 800,000 but the poor are poorer for all
that. (This point is, actually, even conceded in a
less conspicuous page six "social trends" article in
the same edition of The Globe and Mail).
Poverty, of course, is not just measured in terms of
how many are poor at a given moment but is also a
question of how poor they are. Somehow, when talking
to Statistics Canada, Scoffield overlooked what that
body refers to as the "poverty gap". This is the
amount by which poor people fall below the low income
cut offs. Had she strayed into this area, her
theories would have come to grief. The numbers of
people using food banks continues to increase. Here
in Toronto, 15% more people are being evicted from
their housing (almost all for economic reasons) than
took place during the period when Mike Harris was in
power. People are poor and they are getting poorer
with the passage of time as the economic agenda of
bank economists, Heather Scoffield, and those she
writes for, takes an ever deepening toll.
It has been said that "the politics of poverty are
only the reverse side of the politics of wealth". Let
those words be stamped all over this wretched insult
to the hundreds of thousands experiencing needless
hardship in this wealthy Country. There aren't enough
pulp and paper mills or enough printer's ink to hide
the truth of the presence of this poverty.
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