How does poverty affect rich Canadians?

On 8/25/06, Chrystal Ocean <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From Thomas Walkom's Toronto Star article:
>
> "But in the end, politicians can't help but respond to the issues voters
> care about. And that stark political fact says something very unpleasant
> about us.
>
> 'Most Canadians would find it impossible to cope with the substantial
> income losses that welfare households have experienced,' the council
> writes. 'Coping is even harder for those who are already at the bottom of
> the income scale, given their already meagre incomes. Yet there appears to
> be little concern ...
>
> 'Have both governments and the Canadian public turned their backs on the
> poorest of the poor?'"
>
> Yes. Governments and politicians won't care until the general public cares.
> And the general public won't care until arguments and examples are
> repeatedly used demonstrating that EVERYONE's self interests are threatened
> when poverty exists.
>
> Appeals to compassion won't work in this individualistic, materialist,
> consumerist world and they may even be counter-productive.
>
> Where we once had socially-connected, vibrant communities in which residents
> caring for one another was as natural as breathing, we now have population
> densities in which Metropolis-like automatons work, then work some more;
> spend, then spend some more; vote for their corporate-backed masters, then
> vote for them again. The majority of Canadians are stressed to the max by
> the growing corporatization of their lives, yet they're kept so busy
> working, then spending, that they haven't the leisure to question the value
> of what they're doing or how they're living.
>
> For Canadians to care about poverty, then need first to be woken up. Then
> they need to be faced with the reality of how it threatens them.
>
> Ocean
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Chrystal Ocean, WISE Coordinator
> http://www.wise-bc.org/
>
> NEW - Scarlet Letter Campaign
> http://www.wise-bc.org/SLC/slc_intro.html
>
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