By Barry Stagg
January 1996
THE POVERTY INDUSTRY
The choices that the poverty industry establishment likes to put before the public these days are mis-named. These choices are represented as being between sustenance and hunger, between shelter and discomfort and between plenty and want. These choices are, in reality, lifestyle decisions that are forced upon various members of the wealthiest society in the world. That they are lifestyle decisions can be seen from the debate going on in Ontario, the fattest of the all the provinces. Since the Harris government came to power, a debate fuelled by inflammatory rhetoric from the welfare industry has flared and flamed over whether or not this is a Scrooge-like government dedicated to making the poor poorer and the wealthier even more wealthy than they now supposedly are. Look closely at the self-serving rhetoric of these wage-earners who take their pay packets from tending to the needs of the government welfare class. It is plain to see that the decisions that are now being foisted upon government workers are the same choices that the self-employed and the responsibly employed made long ago.
The choices that the self-employed and the responsibly independent made long ago were decisions to be independent and to be self sufficient. Those are simple decisions but they are profound in their impact upon any lifestyle. When self-employed persons make a decision to be independent, they decide that they will live within their means and during periods of wealth they will live a prosperous lifestyle. The corollary is that when times are tough the independent self-employed will live in as basic a method as it takes to survive. This means that today's millionaire business person, at the outset of that person's career, was prepared to endure plain and unexciting food and not much of it. He was prepared to live in poor accommodations, to wear cheap clothing and to endure until times got better.
These are the lifestyle decisions that the responsible citizens of this country made long ago. Some people decided during childhood that this was the way they wished to live. These decisions were, of course, an outgrowth of their upbringing. Still that is not the only explanation. There are plenty of people who lived in poor and dependent circumstances with parents who were anything but self reliant who despite all that, and sometimes because of all that, are the most self reliant and fiercely independent citizens of today.
The point is that the lifestyle choice is between one of independence and self responsibility and dependence coupled with an essential irresponsibility. Irresponsibility is not too tough a term to apply since government must make the point that those who refuse to get by on what is available to them are irresponsible in our wealthy society.
Perhaps some comparisons between the income of a person on welfare or mothers' allowance in Ontario and the income and buying power of others in third world countries is instructive. The income available to a person on that form of assistance in Ontario would make you a middle class and virtually wealthy member of society in a country such as Mexico. It is not enough to pooh-pooh this comparison saying that the buying power in southern Ontario is far less than that of Mexico with comparable money. The argument requires that you look underneath the obvious ways of wasting that money in southern Ontario and look to the methods that the Mexican peasant would use to get by. When a welfare recipient in southern Ontario refuses to prepare food in basic form and refuses to purchase in anything other than meal-sized cans or packages, that person is adopting a wasteful rich person's method of buying in a situation where she should be adopting the Mexican peasant's method of doing all the preparation of bulk basic food without paying the manufacturer or distributor anything at all for preparation. A simple example follows:
Chicken is one of the cheapest types of meat available to the consumer in Ontario. Chicken can be purchased from supermarkets in various forms. Bulk chicken is the cheapest, either whole chickens or chicken parts. Chicken becomes more expensive the more processing is done. Examples are skinless chicken from which the skin and all fat have been removed. This is expensive. The reason it is expensive is that the processor has had to pay various butchers and handlers to do the work that any energetic parent could do at the kitchen sink. That work consists of skinning the chicken and removing the fat. When a lazy meal provider decides to buy the expensive cut and pay the extra costs which are essentially the costs of the providers laziness, then the provider is wasting money.
There are other examples of cheap meat products to be purchased such as chicken necks, chicken backs, turkey necks, turkey backs and the like can be purchased and either eaten in stews or soups. If the mother or father preparing a meal on welfare today were to look back a generation or two they would find that parents and grandparents either of their families or neighbourhood families used these often discarded animal parts as the foundation for regular family meals.
Simply put, the cuts in the welfare programs of Ontario are forcing the component of self-reliance and responsibility back onto the backs of families on welfare. Formerly the welfare industry in the form of social workers, nutritionists, counsellors, stress therapists and doctors were able to be paid handsome salaries for taking on these tasks for welfare parents. The government is saying that these days are over. The welfare industry is going to fade back to a basic component which will essentially offer services to only those who absolutely cannot fend for themselves and who need the extra assistance because there is something lacking in their basic physical and/or mental/emotional makeup that requires assistance. For the ordinary able-bodied welfare recipient the question of individual responsibility for feeding, clothing and sheltering their families will fall upon that able- bodied person.
The welfare industry will always lead the parade with respect to criticisms of any government that attempts to cut back funding for welfare. Bear in mind that every service provider is making a handsome salary far above the welfare line. When a welfare recipient who is trying to rise above poverty is being lobbied by a welfare worker to protest against the government rather than put energy into a job search, perhaps the recipient might ask the welfare worker about the worker's pay scale. The worker may be making a salary well in excess of $40,000.00 a year and a little exploration might reveal that the worker's spouse is making a comparable salary or better making their household in effect, a wealthy government fed household. The welfare recipient might well reflect on whether there would be more available for basic assistance to the poor if there were less middle class government workers providing dubious services to the poor.
If the poor take on the responsibilities that everybody else takes on, as to feeding, clothing and sheltering yourself with what is available, then the poor will find that the road to better times is clearer. Welfare workers and the general collection of barriers, hoops, nets, and turnstiles set up by the welfare industry will be seen for the obstacles that they are.