Moustache power to the people
Since
I am not a Canadian citizen yet, I don't get to vote in today's Federal
election. And it would be so handy, because there is a polling place
set up in the upstairs rec room. Talk about ease of voting, since I
could just step in the elevator and go vote in my new slippers that are
shaped like the face of Homer Simpson! And here I was just thinking
that I don't pay enough taxes and that the welfare system is too
stingy, so I would really like to see NDP in power and vote for them.
Seeing that Conservatives are on the right, Liberals are in the middle and NDP is on the left, I wonder if Conservatives have taken a cue from their American ideological brothers and bankrolled NDP candidates in certain carefully chosen electoral ridings. Perhaps it will forever remain a mystery whether they made such a shrewd move! I know that Conservatives certainly didn't follow the recent American example of making the gay marriage the number one public talking point to force the Liberals and NDP make their stand explicit. I kind of doubt that the gay marriage would really play that well among the vast immigrant population around here, and might thus make the difference in GTA area which has so far been pretty firmly a Liberal stronghold. But different country, different rules, I guess.
I have not been able to find out about the specifics of how the welfare system works around here. I understand it to be a provincial matter in the Canadian system (and you know, the name "Mike Harris" sure seems to appear often in this context, must have been before my time), but it's hard to find exact rules of how much someone could get from it. Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough: I would be grateful to any reader who could point to me right direction. Since moving to this country, I haven't applied for one penny of welfare, of course: my sense of pride wouldn't allow me to. I don't even know if I was eligible while we had just moved in and I was looking for work. Probably not.
One thing is already certain, though. The welfare system here is far more stringent than back in Finland. For example, I don't think that someone whose income is low enough could automatically get a special subsidy for their rent (hmmm, perhaps I just solved at least a part of the question why housing prices are so much higher in Finland than here). The figures that I have seen are so low that you couldn't rent much more than a rathole in Toronto and still have enough left to eat. Of course, I don't see why living in the city is some kind of a basic human right: for those who can't afford it, there is a huge country out there in which life is a lot less expensive. The people on welfare also seldom add anything substantial to the city itself or make the life in it better for the other people. Quite the opposite, where the concentration of welfare recipients is above certain threshold, the general quality of life in that area tends to go down the drain.
Speaking of which, one thing I forgot to mention in my previous housing posting: unlike the Finnish system, where the idea is to place at least a few problem people to every apartment building, the welfare system here doesn't seem to buy single apartments and rent them for social housing. Or if it does, it gives them to welfare cases who are not that problematic. I know there are a few social housing buildings in Mississauga, and they don't look that dangerous. I don't know what the situation is in Toronto, but then again, you see a plenty of homeless people there, but I have never seen any in Mississauga. I wonder why that is. (Rhetorical.)
If it was for me, I would eliminate all welfare pretty much completely. I am just so damn tired of having to pay to support people who hate me and everything that I represent. (Then again, perhaps I am mistaking the welfare underclass for the leftists who loudly speak for them.) But if the idea really is that everyone is guaranteed some minimum level of income no matter what, and that money is taken from the rich (where else?) and transferred to the poor, then there is only one fair and efficient way to do this: the guaranteed minimum income.
Of course it is impossible and a political suicide for any politician to publicly advocate this system in any Western country, let alone in Canada or USA. The bumper sticker talking points against it for their political opponents would be just too effective. But I just can't see any other system of welfare being better, if there has to be some welfare system in the first place. There are weaknesses in it, for example the general existence of hippies who would just take the minimum level of money and smell bad, but the question is, are these weaknesses really bigger than the weaknesses of the present system, with all the bureaucracy needed to maintain the system and the existence of countless welfare traps?
The guaranteed minimum income system would especially allow the complete elimination of the minimum wage, which must be the single most wrong technique to help poor people. Even if we la-la-optimistically assume that minimum wage doesn't cause significant unemployment, the second half of the article "The Sin of Wages" by Steven Landsburgh explains why minimum wage is wrong: the system puts the full responsibility of supporting the poor people on the shoulders of the few employers (and the people who buy their products) who are actually willing to hire these people, while other people and the employers who hire better people for above minimum wage salaries get to skate away scot free, occasionally stopping to enjoy an inexpensive burger and fries.
Besides, with the guaranteed minimum income system in place, the conservatives could easily impose their welfare cuts simply by lowering the amount of the monthly guaranteed income and then cutting the taxes correspondingly. So come on boys, implement this system and you get much closer to realizing your dream of drowning the government in a bathtub.
Seeing that Conservatives are on the right, Liberals are in the middle and NDP is on the left, I wonder if Conservatives have taken a cue from their American ideological brothers and bankrolled NDP candidates in certain carefully chosen electoral ridings. Perhaps it will forever remain a mystery whether they made such a shrewd move! I know that Conservatives certainly didn't follow the recent American example of making the gay marriage the number one public talking point to force the Liberals and NDP make their stand explicit. I kind of doubt that the gay marriage would really play that well among the vast immigrant population around here, and might thus make the difference in GTA area which has so far been pretty firmly a Liberal stronghold. But different country, different rules, I guess.
I have not been able to find out about the specifics of how the welfare system works around here. I understand it to be a provincial matter in the Canadian system (and you know, the name "Mike Harris" sure seems to appear often in this context, must have been before my time), but it's hard to find exact rules of how much someone could get from it. Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough: I would be grateful to any reader who could point to me right direction. Since moving to this country, I haven't applied for one penny of welfare, of course: my sense of pride wouldn't allow me to. I don't even know if I was eligible while we had just moved in and I was looking for work. Probably not.
One thing is already certain, though. The welfare system here is far more stringent than back in Finland. For example, I don't think that someone whose income is low enough could automatically get a special subsidy for their rent (hmmm, perhaps I just solved at least a part of the question why housing prices are so much higher in Finland than here). The figures that I have seen are so low that you couldn't rent much more than a rathole in Toronto and still have enough left to eat. Of course, I don't see why living in the city is some kind of a basic human right: for those who can't afford it, there is a huge country out there in which life is a lot less expensive. The people on welfare also seldom add anything substantial to the city itself or make the life in it better for the other people. Quite the opposite, where the concentration of welfare recipients is above certain threshold, the general quality of life in that area tends to go down the drain.
Speaking of which, one thing I forgot to mention in my previous housing posting: unlike the Finnish system, where the idea is to place at least a few problem people to every apartment building, the welfare system here doesn't seem to buy single apartments and rent them for social housing. Or if it does, it gives them to welfare cases who are not that problematic. I know there are a few social housing buildings in Mississauga, and they don't look that dangerous. I don't know what the situation is in Toronto, but then again, you see a plenty of homeless people there, but I have never seen any in Mississauga. I wonder why that is. (Rhetorical.)
If it was for me, I would eliminate all welfare pretty much completely. I am just so damn tired of having to pay to support people who hate me and everything that I represent. (Then again, perhaps I am mistaking the welfare underclass for the leftists who loudly speak for them.) But if the idea really is that everyone is guaranteed some minimum level of income no matter what, and that money is taken from the rich (where else?) and transferred to the poor, then there is only one fair and efficient way to do this: the guaranteed minimum income.
Of course it is impossible and a political suicide for any politician to publicly advocate this system in any Western country, let alone in Canada or USA. The bumper sticker talking points against it for their political opponents would be just too effective. But I just can't see any other system of welfare being better, if there has to be some welfare system in the first place. There are weaknesses in it, for example the general existence of hippies who would just take the minimum level of money and smell bad, but the question is, are these weaknesses really bigger than the weaknesses of the present system, with all the bureaucracy needed to maintain the system and the existence of countless welfare traps?
The guaranteed minimum income system would especially allow the complete elimination of the minimum wage, which must be the single most wrong technique to help poor people. Even if we la-la-optimistically assume that minimum wage doesn't cause significant unemployment, the second half of the article "The Sin of Wages" by Steven Landsburgh explains why minimum wage is wrong: the system puts the full responsibility of supporting the poor people on the shoulders of the few employers (and the people who buy their products) who are actually willing to hire these people, while other people and the employers who hire better people for above minimum wage salaries get to skate away scot free, occasionally stopping to enjoy an inexpensive burger and fries.
Besides, with the guaranteed minimum income system in place, the conservatives could easily impose their welfare cuts simply by lowering the amount of the monthly guaranteed income and then cutting the taxes correspondingly. So come on boys, implement this system and you get much closer to realizing your dream of drowning the government in a bathtub.
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