Poverty, Once Again
I’ve posted below a link to a column in the Guardian by Polly Toynbee re the child poverty target in the UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2225566,00.html
If you follow the comments below her column, it is striking how the response from the right precisely matches the recent discourse in Canada and comes with the same manifest untruths (eg that relative poverty must always exist, by definition.)
That said, as Michael Mendelson has noted, it is disappointing that Toynbee and child poverty advocates in the UK turn so strongly and automatically to costly increased transfers as the solution, as opposed to higher wages and lower wage inequality. For my money, we need both (an, in fairness Toynbee has been a strong advocate of living wages as well.).
An argument for universal daycare, along with before, lunch and after school food programmes.
I really hate to always be bashing the Conservatives. They’ve proven, along with the Liberals, to be capable of paying off the debt, something the NDP hasn’t had the opportunity to prove. If the money (such as a one cent GST cut) the Conservatives are successfully legislating into the pockets of very wealthy (top 5%) shareholders and bondholders were instead to go to the best researchers at said institutions, or towards increase the basket of GST exempts goods, or to meeting Kyoto; I’d have nicer things to say about the Conservative Party. It would then be economically a progressive Conservative party, no?
Why is it ‘disappointing’? Income is what matters, not how it’s generated. No-one’s giving out points for style.