----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2002 4:40
PM
Subject: Re: Very gentle reminder to Ed
(was Re: community and money
Ed,
I saw recently a calculation that to be able to afford a two
bedroom apartment required a wage of $15.80 an hour. In any event, I believe
that the Feds assume 50% of a poor person's wage goes in Rent, while a third
goes for food.
(So, it's perfectly understandable why people live in
their cars.)
Or hold down two or three minimum wage
jobs!
Contrasted with 500 years ago when a laborer
probably got a free cottage from the local landowner and spent 29% of income
for food (19% for the artisan). This was for a family and I rather think
families were than a lot larger than they are now.
I think we both agreed that 500 years ago,
the aftermath of the Black Death, was a rather exceptional time in western
Europe.
For the most part, couples had large numbers
of children in the hope that some of them would survive to support them in
their old age.
So, how do we find your "low income
cut-off definition of poverty"?
It's essentially a situational definition,
based on what it costs to live and support a family in a particular place at a
particular time. It recognizes that it may be cheaper to live in rural
community than in a city, etc. Try the Statistics Canada website to see
how they define it.
If you give people money enough to
have a better life, we raise the "threshold" where sensibly people find it
better to take the goodies than work. You'll notice that I use "sensibly".
That's because I know that "People seek to satisfy their desires with the
least exertion". (Isn't scientific Classical Political Economy
wonderful?)
Harry, I don't think you and I agree on human
behaviour. You seem to see people as a bunch of mechanical louts whose
only objective is to take advantage of things. I agree there are people
like that, but most people will put in an honest effort. You really
should come out of the 19th Century, or at least recognize that the economists
of that time were essentially emulating the physical scientists of that
time. Just as physical scientists gave Newton his due and have moved on,
social scientists have given people like Ricardo, Bentham, Jevons, Malthus and
even Marshall their due and moved on. Nearly two centuries have passed
since the time of the great classicists, and a great deal of human history and
discovery has gone by.
So, when socialists concentrate
on charity rather than justice, they are bound to lose. As "living wage"
welfare raises the threshold, so do more join their ranks because it makes
sense to do so.
Absolute nonsense! We've had a lot of
high-tech layoffs in our area recently. I was down at one of our
foodbanks this morning, and heard that even some techies are starting to show
up. Why wouldn't they? They get things free, and that beats
designing software or whatever burdensome labour they were trained to do and
were performing.
However, as you know, I broaden the definition of poverty. And you
somewhat agree with me. You said:
"And given our insecure times, who
would want to take a month off without pay?"
But, hold it! We've just
been through 10 years of boom times, where for most people things were rosy.
Insecure times - surely not. Yet, we know, don't we, that the boom times were
carried on the back of two wage-earners, lots of overtime, hideous commuting -
and mounting debt.
I would suggest that "getting out of poverty" means
being secure enough to take a month off if you want to. Hence, our high school
definition of poverty.
It does sound very much like a high school
definition.
At times, I really get fed up with modern
"reformers". They campaign for a living wage, whatever that is, for full
employment (whatever that is), then go off in tangents, such as advocating
family leave for new parents (by golly, that's taking a month off, isn't it?)
You make it sound as though it is one and the
same group doing all of these things. In reality, it's the unions and
their political allies that led the battle for a living wage (shame be on
them!), classical economists who assumed that the economy would always find
its equilibrium at full employment (T'was the Keynesians who said it wasn't
so!), and, social change, the fact that a whole lot of women joined the labour
force that led to family leave for new parents. When our daughter was
born 16 years ago, my wife took a few months off work, I
didn't.
Not to mention blaming the rich for everything, as Chris is wont to
do - though he hotly denies it. Perhaps modern socialism, which used to be a
significant philosophy, has dropped its philosophic underpinnings and kept the
political propaganda.
None of us work for money. We work for bacon and
eggs, clothes, furniture, and a place to live. So, if I am rich, how many
bacon and eggs can I deprive you of, how many chairs can I forbid you to use?
A friend of mine has an enormous house with 11 bathrooms. How many bathrooms
are therefore taken away from the poor?
I had an interesting experience
recently. I drive small car (virtue is on my side!), which was recently
in the body shop. My insurance company gave me a vehicle to drive
meanwhile. The rental agency did not have a small car on the lot, so
they gave me a "Montana" for the same price. For those not familiar with
them, Montanas are huge SUVs (suburban assault vehicles), almost as big as the
state they are named after. For the few days that I drove it, I was
mostly alone in that immensity, though occasionally my wife and daughter were
somewhere in it too. I felt enormously enriched, consuming far than my
share of the earth's petroleum resources. But I kept telling myself that
it's alright, if I wasn't driving it, somebody else would be, though not
likely somebody poor. Or, perhaps it would be in Afghanistan firing
rockets from a rocket launcher mounted on top.
Anyhow, Harry, I have to quit and get on with
what I'm supposed to be doing, which is collecting the very good pension that
I have because I always had a good job because I happened to graduate from
university in the 1950s when just about any graduate who could count to ten
had six or seven employers waiting for him.
Best regards to you and the lady with the van
Dyke,
Ed Weick (in
purple)
