There's a difference between moderate wealth and poverty and extremes of wealth and poverty. The extremes can never be a good thing.
Practical ways to help the poor?
- Thread starter White_Unifier
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There's a difference between moderate wealth and poverty and extremes of wealth and poverty. The extremes can never be a good thing.
I think Cordory is being polite. Banning things just because you don't like them won't make them go away, it will just drive them underground where the criminal element outside of government have control.
A hand up is the best process. Want welfare? Have to be enrolled in some kind of education even if it is just grade 12. Also have to pass a piss test or mandatory rehab.
The poor don't pay any taxes anyway so that won't help.
Can I sleep at your place for a few weeks till the cold spell ends?
While poverty cannot be eliminated, it can be painted though.
While poverty cannot be eliminated, it can be painted though.
I like the idea of a programmable credit card.
It would be useful to give your kid who was away at college a card where they could buy food from the grocery store but not junk food and not other things. Would not work after 6pm and lots of little rules you could program in.
Most of the rest of the op is rubbish.
It would be useful to give your kid who was away at college a card where they could buy food from the grocery store but not junk food and not other things. Would not work after 6pm and lots of little rules you could program in.
Most of the rest of the op is rubbish.
Addicts will just need help to kick the addiction. Restricting the advertising of addictive products and keeping businesses that sell such products and services out of sight (by legally requiring them to hide behind a front business and limiting their advertising to online only for example) could help with that.
The unskilled would just need more trades and professional education. The skilled or even semi-skilled whose skills are just not in demand in Canada might just need more open borders.
I don't think we need to help the moderately poor, but we do need to help the destitute. That said, I think the most efficient way to help the destitute is to help them help themselves as much as possible and then help them more than that only as required.
I'm not sure how easily a financial institution could program a debit card to buy only specific products and services. that would likely require a lot of work. I could see a financial institution more generally blocking access to businesses that sold any addictive product or service, though that would likely need government intervention to define such businesses, require such businesses to identify themselves as such to their financial institutions to be included in a list of addictive-products-and-services businesses, have financial institutions share this information, and then program client accounts so that a client could choose for himself whether he wants to block that category of business or not.
As for junk food, again, that would require extreme precision as far as I can tell. I'm not sure it could be easily programmed to that level of precision.
How so?
... and is a Moncton poverty line in anyway equivalent to a Mississauga poverty line?
The city of Medicine Hat has eliminated homelessness. Copy their model. Better funding to food banks would help eliminate the need for food. Food and shelter are the only necessities.
Then you have aboriginal bands but since they want to be "nations" let them deal with their own problems.
That leaves the mentally Ill. Since the law allows them to do whatever they want as long as they aren't hurting themselves there isn't much that can be done
Then you have aboriginal bands but since they want to be "nations" let them deal with their own problems.
That leaves the mentally Ill. Since the law allows them to do whatever they want as long as they aren't hurting themselves there isn't much that can be done
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There exist different degrees of mental illness. For example, if all the help an alcoholic needs is to keep businesses that sell liquor hidden from public sight, then why not? Anyone who would want to know where to find that business would just need to look it up online; but at least it would no longer be rubbed into the alcoholic's face.
Same for the gambler? What would be wrong with requiring a casino to hide behind a front business? Again, anyone who wants to know its location would just need to look it up online, but at least it would no longer be rubbed into the gambler's face.
Some people who suffer mental illness just need a little help to help themselves.
Not all for sure and definitely some, but if that's your solution to poverty, then it should be the cause of a lot of poverty. If none of those sources of poverty existed, would poverty be a serious problem? I would say yes.
You're proposing a law the would allow people to give their debit card limits? That assumes the law prevents that. It doesn't. You can put self-imposed limits on debit and credit cards. This surely helps people, but as a proposal to reduce poverty, it's a drop in the bucket and does not require the law but self-discipline.
And that comes back to my original point: the Victorian mentality was that the poor were poor because they lacked the discipline to work hard and not waste their money on vices. They either deserved to just suffer or the better classes needed to enforce that discipline. About the only thing you've updated from the 19th century is adding internet addiction.
I'm not against programs meant to overcome addiction, and for some people with addictions problems it is the cause of their poverty. But overcoming addiction is an end itself. Poverty is another problem that might be solved for individuals if you remove addiction, but won't be solved for all of society.
And that brings me to the only recommendation you have this isn't a Victoria anti-vice crusade: job training. Again, that's a great idea for an individual but it doesn't work for society. People also like to say low wage and low skill workers only have themselves to blame. Why don't they just get better jobs? The problem is that the economy won't work that way. We need these people doing these jobs. You don't want to walk into Tim Hortons and have every employee a manager or go into McDonalds and everyone is a ice cream machine technician. Someone's gotta flip the burger you won't flip yourself.
No law prohibits a financial institution from giving an addict more control over his finances, but I'm not aware of any financial institution at present that offers such a service. I tested it with my own institution as an experiment a few years ago. The best it could do was to lower my daily limit (and only to a minimum floor) for six months and then I'd have to go back to lower the limit again.
Also, I'd proposed Canada open its borders more since some Canadians might possess skills that aren't in demand in Canada but might be abroad. How is that a Victorian idea?
I also agree that we will always need people flipping burghers; but with more educated people with more options available to them, fewer would be applying to flip burghers and so their wages would naturally increase. Meanwhile, with more people in the skilled trades and professions, the costs of their services would decline and so reduce inflation in the economy. This too could benefit the poor.
And no, I'm not blaming the poor for their plight necessarily. Even many addicts are addicts through no fault of their own necessarily. That still doesn't change the fact that we should still try to help those who can help themselves to help themselves as much as possible and then focus the rest of our resources to those who can't.
So you're saying we need a law that forces banks to provide this service? I know some banks already do. When I've opened accounts at banks they've asked me about it, or mentioned that there was no limit.
Well, it's not a Victoria anti-vice crusader idea, but exporting your surplus poor was how this country was built. Besides, it's not something our government can just do. Being able to move to another country that has a higher demand for your skills depends on the country you move to. Usually those people are highly skilled and those skills might just as well be in demand here. No one is moving from Canada to another country because of their barista skills.
This is situation is already happening, but the result isn't wage increases. The result is companies seeking more unskilled labour from immigration. The wages stay the same.