April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

growing gap

Revolution

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And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?

You may have noticed my blog tagline, one of the great quotes from George Orwell: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

This same premise is highlighted in the story of Mouseland, made famous by Tommy Douglas. When the mouse posits, “Why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?” “Oh,” they said, “he’s a Bolshevik. Lock him up!” So they put him in jail.”

Truth incites revolution. Truth is in fact the enemy of the ruling class. Truth should set you free but in all likelihood will get you arrested.

With the current swing to the right governments of all stripes are promising tax cuts. It plays well with the populace,yet taxes are what keeps us running as a society.

Look around your community. Your roads, government services, water, hospital, doctors, parks are all a result of taxation. The health card in your wallet that allows you free health care is a result of taxation. That health care is becoming more and more tenuous and why is that? It is not as some would have you believe because public health care is unsustainable, it is not because people are fatter and it is not because the sky is blue.

It is because the burden of taxation has been almost entirely lifted off of corporations and placed squarely on the shoulders of the citizenry. These tax cuts were promoted to us as necessary to keep and create jobs and wealth. Yet more and more jobs are being moved off shore and jobs which are being created are those in the service industry which require a household to secure employment with two or three employers just to keep the basic necessities.

Growing Gap.ca shows very clearly that truth is being subverted.

Canadian families are putting in more work time, yet most — 80% of them — are getting a smaller share of Canada’s growing economy

The rate of unemployment in Canada is lower than it has been in more than a generation.

Despite these changes — all of which were supposed to ensure greater prosperity for every Canadian — the reports continue to come in indicating the gap between the rich and the poor is greater than it was 20 years ago.

There is growing consensus that Canadian provinces must do more to bring the minimum wage up to a living wage (above the Low-Income Cut Off, or LICO).

As Jacobs writes, “We need to move faster. This is not new terrain; we’ve been here before. In the 1970s workers earning the minimum wage received a rate that was roughly equivalent to $9 an hour today. Thirty years later the Canadian economy is producing much higher levels of wealth and profit, but paying its most vulnerable workers less.”

A CBC headline states that Homelessness ‘chronic’ in Canada. Yet a story in today’s news reports,

Homeless people in Canada have more mental health problems than the rest of the population

people who are homeless tend to report higher stress, lower self-worth, less social support and different coping strategies, factors that are associated with depressive symptoms, substance abuse, suicidal behaviours and poor self-rated health.”

Well you could knock me over with a feather at these results. Higher stress, lower self worth, depression amazing. Interesting is it not, that after reporting on how homelessness is ‘chronic’ the story is followed up by one which attempts to place the blame on the moral or psychological deficits of the homeless themselves. Thereby mislaying the blame and misleading readers from the truth.

In cost cutting efforts the Harris government cut new affordable housing, reduced welfare to unsustainable amounts, closed a number of group homes that allowed the functionally disabled and those with diagnosed “mental health issues” to live in dignity.
Now those cuts and closures are coming home to roost.

If we continue to allow our truths to be substituted with bigotry, prejudice, half truths and downright lies, we allow ourselves to just follow orders. We allow ourselves to see our fellow human being as less worthy, as less important and as less. We trade our humanity for the crumbs that fall from the masters table and the dangled suggestion that one day we may sup there.

Now is the time for truth. Now is the time for revolution.

Lyrics from Pink Floyd Wish you were here.
Youtube Video

But we have no class!

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I’ve often heard my brothers and sisters of the Great White North patting themselves on the back for our lack of class system. Unlike other countries where class divides are marked.

I always did wonder if we had no class system why we had so many classes. Working class, middle class, lower middle class, upper middle class, blue collar, white collar–I used to ask what very poor was, dirty collar?

There is without a doubt a very strong class system here and the idea that class lines are easily crossed is naive.

A child from a poor or working class home is unlikely to have the same opportunities for post secondary education as a child from a middle class home. This starts right from public school.

A child who speaks out, grabs toys, and is bossy with playmates receives very different attention depending on the income of the parents concerned. One child will be seen as a leader, confident, assertive, the other as aggressive, lacking self discipline and a future behaviour problem.

Interviews will be scheduled and the parents advised to seek help now while s/he is young enough to “retrain” and parenting classes will be suggested.

Even if s/he is gifted s/he will be treated differently. There will be no extra supports or encouragement merely a derisive attitude that you would even consider that your child could somehow be smarter than his/her monied counterparts.

This attitude pounded grade after grade into a childs mind ensures they will have little belief in their abilities. The cycle of poverty is not created by the poor it is forced upon them.

Are there examples of people having lifted out regardless? Of course there are. That doesn’t disprove the reality of most. [Read more…] about But we have no class!