The Poor

I am an ignorant person.  I have worked with poor folks for 30 years.  My kids watched as heroin addicts to come down crashed on our couch.  I have stood with a destitute mother of 4 who's partner just left her.  I have seen cupboards as bare as a baby's butt.  Or children who wear soiled diapers because there was no money to buy any.  I have seen the trap of alcoholism where a parent buys a mickey instead of child's shoes.  I know the deep darkness of depression and mental illness, exacerbated by stress.  I have watched suicides be lowered 6 feet down.

This sort of poverty is very difficult.  It tends to set up patterns that are hard to break.  I have no beef with the wealthy.  I am glad for those who can hire people struggling to stand up--and do so without taking advantage of them.  I am glad we offer something to people scraping bottom.  Though we raised 4 kids living below the poverty line, there was always enough soup in the pot for someone in worse shape than we were.

Sometimes I think that the difference between a rich man, a comfortable man, and a poor man has a significant luck factor.  If you are comfortable, and there is nothing wrong with that, it can be difficult to really understand the death-grip of poverty.  I am not sure 20k cash would help most of these people.  I can see the vampires move in: the drug dealers, the payday cash places, and credit companies that specialize in gouging the poor with 40% interest rates. *All vampires* should be illegal.

Studies from long ago realized that 100% of income received by the poor returns to the economy.  So 56 billion dollars would be a shot in the arm to some aspects of the economy.  And would ripple through it generating wealth and jobs for more Canadians--I suppose that is, all that money that would be left if they could pay off their debts...