TARGETING THE MIDDLE CLASS AND OTHER POLITICAL MYTHS

If Canadians were surveyed today as to where they fell in the economic spectrum with respect to class, more than 75% would claim to belong to the "middle class".  Unfortunately, personal impressions and economic reality clash loudly on this question.  What IS the :middle class"?  There really isn't any formal definition of middle class, but examples depicted by the Media.

If you introduced this concept to a room filled with individuals and families living in long-term poverty, while some would think they belong in the "middle class" they really don't.  The only source of information most of these folks can get about the "middle class" is from the Mass Media.  If the Media were to be believed about what constitutes the "middle class", we are talking about families that experience the following and often take for granted and:

1. Live in large, single family homes in clean, safe and enriched neighbourhoods;
2. Enjoy cultural celebrations of their ancestors and family heritage by partaking in community events by enjoying cultural relationships and club memberships;
3. Enjoy family celebrations of common holidays like Christmas and Easter, have the resources to decorate their homes and enjoy hosting extending family during these periods;
4. Have one or more children in the school system who are involved with athletics, drama, music club, student government, among other costly ventures, as well as at least one parent that has the time to participate in their children's schools;
5. Have savings and resources to at least partially fund their children's post-secondary education, and would willingly support their children in this direction;
6. Have resources or benefits from which to draw to cover common childhood and youth medical and dental issues, such as orthodontics, sports medical and training issues, gym memberships and other "extras" that most take for granted;
7. Have at least one or two annual family vacations, which involve visiting the cottage up North or even traveling to Florida or some other similar destination;
8. Have more than one personal vehicle for use by members of the family, with support for the older children to obtain their driver's license and use the family vehicle;
9. Have some contacts which may assist their children in getting a start in the workforce; and
10. Once the children have left the home, the parents continue to have significant resources to spend to either renovate their home to suit their needs as ageing persons or to find a smaller residence to reduce the amount of maintenance required in the home.

Most of these families also have a pool in their backyard, which leads to only a few people raising concerns when the city starts to close outdoor pools in the summer, leaving only "aquatics centers" to use for swimming competitions for middle class households that have the time and resources to support something like this.  I actually heard our local politicians say that more families have backyard pools and the necessity of having municipal pools open has declined.

Articles about employment and human resources issues also address the false middle class environment as well, assuming that workplaces are all large, employing hundreds of people and utilizing several departments and department heads, hence the expression, "climbing the corporate ladder".  Very few articles of this type actually address situations in employers with less than ten or even five persons, as it is assumed that everybody works for large companies.  Even in articles intended to support those who have been laid off appear to reflect this myth about contacting human resources departments and checking company websites for job openings.

First, members of the Mass Media are completely out of touch with the lives of people that do not enjoy most or all of those above things, nor do they realize or ascribe this group of people as being much larger than people want to believe it is.  However, there are more stories coming out about young people leaving college or university, even professionally designated courses, who end up unemployed or under-employed when they come out, hence, their trip to their parents' basement (yet they do not write about those that graduate but do not have parents that would take them back).  The Mass Media wants to keep up the myth that most of us had these amenities growing up, or that those growing up today enjoy these amenities.  As well, the myth is perpetrated that everybody has family to rely on and back them up, even if just on an emotional level.  The writer has not experienced any of the above positive reflections of a so-called "Middle Class" fairyland, although technically, my family of origin was not poor.  We just never enjoyed these other things, probably because less people than the media think have access to these things.

Second, politicians are even more out of touch with the lives of people they are elected to represent than that of the Mass Media.  Politicians have identified a family income of being about $120,000 a year as being "middle class", and the idea that income splitting will benefit many members of this supposed "middle class",  Politicians do not want to hear that most families, other than families of the elite 15%, need two incomes to keep up with even the basics.  There is a prototypical (usually male) breadwinner that earns six figures in one of those rare jobs that can now pass along (on paper) up to $50,000 to his stay-at-home wife to save on taxes.  This policy will cost the government over $2 billion but not put one more cent into the pockets of the real middle class, or into services needed by the rest of us.  Don't be fooled if one of those politicians comes knocking on your door to try to convince you otherwise, especially if you are in a family like I am that hasn't noticed one iota of a positive difference in our well being since Harper took root, other than more costs.

Even Justin Trudeau who purports to speak for the "middle class" has never himself experienced being anything other than from the high priced elite.  Both the Liberals and Conservatives have ran deficits over the past several decades and lately, their answer to these deficits is to further cut the programs that mostly benefit the "middle class" and the lower income individuals and families.  At a provincial level, welfare and disability benefits go as far as they did in the 1970's, while paying today's prices.  Don't kid yourself.  Today, you may have a job, but tomorrow if you lose that job through restructuring, layoff or health issues, you too are more likely to rely on the state for survival, as less and less employers provide the kinds of benefits they did in the past to protect people under these circumstances, and according to some, less people are eligible for even EI benefits. Among those lucky to hold a steady job, which is the minority according to a recent article in the Toronto Star, their wages haven't been keeping up much either.  In my own community, every second person I speak to is receiving Ontario Works, ODSP, OAS/GIS, EI, WSIB, LTD (from their workplace) or similar benefits.  The mere number of these people have brought our average individual and family incomes down substantially, whereby Niagara Region is one of the poorest in Ontario.

One of the issues that is faced in Niagara is that more working poor are nervous about their own futures, so they see a need to attack those in a class below theirs.  Those with jobs call those without jobs "lazy".  Those that drive assume they are better than those that don't.  Those that own their own homes are "better and more stable than" those that rent.  This is felt throughout the community.  Nobody has to say anything, but if you mention to people that you don't drive, or that you rent an apartment (particularly in a co-op or in government housing which is really faux pas here), or that you are having a hard time finding a job, the sarcastic elite of the non-elite tell people there are "help wanted| signs at Tim Horton's, etc.  As if even if every single unemployed person applied for all of these jobs, that every single one of them will be employed ... Yeah, right.

Manufacturing is dead in Ontario, apart from some specialized manufacturing firms requiring high skilled workers and less of them.  Other jobs, such as those in the public or quasi-public sector are under attack by the right.  As if tearing down these jobs and the benefits they offer will increase the number of jobs and improve the benefits for those who are unemployed today ... the attitudes have to change.  The NDP, while they pretend to speak up for the :little guy" tends to associate themselves with organized labour.  While I have no animus towards organized labour, I feel those in unions represent the minority of working people and do not speak whatsoever for those in non-unionized jobs or for those who are self-employed but not running large corporations.  The labour movement if it wants to be successful needs to speak up more for all workers, including self-employed persons, to push for structural changes in our political environment that would guarantee pay, benefits, time off, etc. for all of us ... and not just for those lucky enough to belong to a good union.  Despite all of these issues being to the fore, the most the NDP has ever done about retirement, for example, is to push for the enhancement of the CPP - which will do nothing for the retirement of those who have not worked enough, contributed enough, or were self-employed most of their lives .... it is the OAS/GIS that needs to be substantially increased and restructured to address the retirement needs of people that don't have a defined benefit pension from their workplace or elsewhere.

Other proponents speak about housing as being the issue.  Housing is an issue, but if people had enough money, housing would not be an issue.  Left to the market, under conditions where people have a guaranteed annual income, the market would make necessary adjustments so that housing is available to more people at affordable prices.  Most landlords today tend to measure affordability where the cost of the rent they charge should not be more than thirty to thirty five percent of what a tenant brings in, so in consequence, under a GAI system, this market equilibrium, this "market rent" will be much easier to set.  As for home ownership, this should be made easier for people to get into the market and to maintain their housing after they retire, so people can "age in place".  This is in contrast to these commercials that repeatedly air on TV about retirement homes that cost in the range of $3,000 - $5,000 a month to rich seniors, or Premier Care in Bathing, which provides walk-in luxury tubs, which on TV are only seen being installed in bathrooms the size of most people's living rooms.  An older person on OAS/GIS will never be able to afford these upgrades and thus, will be more likely to be shipped off to a cheap nursing home, where their rights to basic medical care and even life itself might be at issue, based on costs.

After reading this, and our federal election gets under way, we need to ask our politicians what they define as the "middle class" and what the supposed "middle class" families can regularly afford to invest in right now without their help.  Ask if they know what the average family income for your particular neighbourhood is.  Have they researched it, or are their figures stayed from the time they stopped issuing the mandatory long form census?  My bet is that politicians do not really want to talk to you if you ask these questions, because you will challenge their very assumption of who they must speak for if they did get elected.

Some of you reading this might say you don't vote or want to vote because none of the political parties speak for you, but I will tell you one thing ... this is EXACTLY what the elite want.  They want people NOT to vote, so they can continue to put their puppets into power to do more and more bidding for them.  I worked in elections for many years and have found that the percentage of eligible voters in well-off neighbourhoods far exceeds the number of eligible voters in low income neighbourhoods that actually fill a ballot.  Politicians KNOW this, which is why you don't see politicians, or at least most of them, conducting their campaigns in low income neighbourhoods, public housing projects, and so forth.  They will go to where people are most likely to exercise their vote and will target their proposed policies to those that do.  Because politicians know the poor do not vote as much as the wealthier folks, they don't feel obligated to do anything about poverty ... other than address it through criminal avenues, such as law and order provisions against those poor who sleep in the wrong places or do not have anything to eat.  On the contrary, if the poor voted in droves, politicians from all parties will be eager to develop policies to address their concerns ...

In addition to voting, we need to also train new voters to help them understand the impact of proposed policies from all parties and allow them to become informed voters.  As an informed voter, I will not vote Liberal or Conservative in this next election because I see very little for the true "middle class" and even less for the poorest of all.  But even if you exercised your vote for the Marijuana Party or the Rhinoceros Party, political campaign staff will note that you voted and that everybody in your neighbourhood also voted and this means, they will take your needs more seriously next time around.

Your thoughts?

A SPLASH FOR THE RICH FROM THE START OF 2015 ...

What is a cynic to say when this is a New Year, when bam!  ... 12:01 a.m. on January 1, 2015, a gift arrived for Canada's wealthiest families with children under eighteen.  Coming from a jaded perspective of "fairness", the federal government just threw them all a gift up to $2,000 a year in tax savings, while 85% of Canadian families with children get nothing.  Perhaps more money can be written off in daycare costs by some of us, but you have to have the cash first before you can benefit and how are less "entitled" Canadians going to benefit if they: (a) need to work; and (b) cannot afford upfront costs in daycare?  I suppose the federal government will tell these parents or parent, in the singular sense, to stay home and raise their kids ... and draw upon their independent wealth that we all supposedly have, or just suck it up and find a "babysitter".

First, the people that benefit the most by this dog's breakfast of a tax giveaway are two parent families, where one stays home to look after the kids and the male (usually) has a job that pays in the six figures.  Not exactly the kind of family in my opinion that badly needs this extra money, or any kind of example of a consumer that will spend this money in the community to generate jobs ... the extra money is likely to be thrown into investments or foreign bank accounts, as a family like this is not going to buy more groceries, another car or take more meals out than they already do, just because of this financial infusion.  It is a $3 billion drain on our federal budget, money which can be better spend on health care or infrastructure supports.   The health care accord between the federal government and its provinces and territories ended last year, which means that the federal government led by a leader that never supported the idea of medicare can feel more free to cut back the transfers it gives to the provinces by way of Canadian Health and Social Transfer, and by way of not enforcing the Canada Health Act to allow provinces to experiment with private health care.  This certainly won't bother the family with a six figure income breadwinner as they likely have health, disability and life insurance, while the rest of us will end up paying more out of pocket.

Second, two income families, which is what most families are these days, will not benefit (except where there is a very wide variation of wages, such as a minimum wage worker married to a senior public school teacher that earns over $94,000 a year).  There is no rationale for this handout to those richer than the rest of us.  Two-income families have much more expenses than those families with a single high income earner.  There is transportation, work clothes, lunches out, training and education expenses, as well as daycare, if there are children.  Those two items alone take up much more than the $2,000 gift their one income counterparts will be receiving this year (and in most cases, they will be getting a big zero from our federal government).  Calls for national child care policy have fallen on deaf ears with this current government.  In the eyes of Harper, the best that women can hope for is an iron clad guarantee that their marriage to their sole breadwinner man will last ... something we know is more likely to fail than not.  There are reasons women need to go into the paid labour force and remain financially independent, even if her significant other is a good earner.

All of this discussion around the so-called Family Tax Break has been so convoluted by media portrayals of what constitutes an average family.  None of us have ever seen real families portrayed in the media as being legitimate, such as those with single parents, those with same sex partners, those where the only breadwinner is supporting the other spouse with a disability, or cases where the total family income is insufficient to meet even basic costs, let alone enough to benefit from any tax breaks ... families that struggle to put food on the table will not be putting their children in hockey or other extracurricular activities.  The idea of shuffling kids around in a minivan is completely foreign to many, many Canadian families, yet the media likes to portray this type of family as being "average".  Politicians especially of the Christian right in Canada tend to believe they are benefiting all families by only catering to families much like their own.  Studies have shown that politicians are more likely to come from high income backgrounds and supportive families, while the majority of Canadians have mixed experiences.  Not experiencing a struggle gives politicians no right to determine what rights the rest of us have.  They do not understand what the "rest of us" need because they never needed to.  Many have never held "real jobs" as your or I refer to them ... having inherited trust funds from their parents, been educated in the best schools, and enjoyed prestigious positions in companies owned or influenced by their parents, and similar situations.  These are the types of people that usually complain about high taxes (Canadian Taxpayers' Federation) - folks who are financially secure, often earning six figures or in a high profile profession, such as journalism, law or finance. While I don\t have much information on the demographics of the membership of these groups, but a perusal of their board of directors' thumbnail bios, or by researching the backgrounds of particularly high profile spokespersons for these groups will give you an idea.  While this does not determine their personal values or advantages they likely had in reaching the positions they have, nor does it comment on their personal character or even makes a statement against their credibility (as in fact, I do enjoy the writings of many of these same people), but - put it this way, I have yet to see a single parent juggling three jobs and three kids joining an organization like this or caring a whit about what these people have to say.

The Harper Government is expected to hold an election this year.  Perhaps, this is why he is throwing goodies at his wealthy supporters at this time.  It is important to get these changes in before the election so he can add these things to the list of things he supposedly done for Canadians, yet more and more of us are wondering if we are even living in Canada today, as the Canada of today is so different than the Canada of yesterday.  For example, I don't have any faith that there will be any public pensions available for people that are not availing themselves of their own savings or of employer-based pensions.  Stephen Harper and his ilk doesn't give two hoots about elderly people, particularly women that don't have access to private pensions.  Even if one maxes out their entitlements to OAS, GIS and small amounts of CPP one might be entitled to, these folks will be living in deep poverty.  I doubt even this will be around by the time I reach the ever moving target called the age of retirement.  I am also finding that more and more health care services are not covered by provincial medicare, which means to many of us, we simply do without ... this doesn't help the man with the abscessed tooth that ended up dying, the woman who mysteriously died after being admitted to hospital with a dental infection, or the patients who are clogging the wait lists for orthopedic care due to the lack of funding for physiotherapy.

I think that among those of us that do not belong to the economic elite better stop voting for politicians that are part of this elite.  We need to vote those out that are supported by the elite (such as lobbied by the big oil companies which receive billions of taxpayer dollars in annual subsidies) and those that continue to not give a tinker's damn about the rest of us.  I vote municipally for those that are not "too good for" public transportation, and for those that are not interested in closing more schools without examining the impact that it has on housing values in the neighbourhoods serving them.  I vote provincially and federally for politicians that once held ordinary jobs, and know what it is like to do so and try to raise a family.  I also vote for those that operate small businesses, who did not inherit that business from somebody else.  I will support any politician that will actually do something about the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and not just wring their hands over it.  For example, stop the 1% from begetting the future 1% through inheritances ... this unearned money over a certain amount should be taxed heavily and perhaps prodigy of the rich might have to try to make it like the rest of us.  Start clawing back incomes over $150,000 at a higher rate ... and use the proceeds to invest in lower income people to help them raise their income or create opportunities for themselves, as well as provide a living income for those that cannot do this.

I am not just speaking as somebody who is against wealthy people, because I am not.  Higher incomes should be encouraged and the number of high earners should increase.  In fact, I had many jobs in the past prior to losing my driver's license that paid quite well, and never did I ever whine about the taxes that I paid during that time including the so called "high income surtax" that the top 10% had to pay at the time, but since reduced.  I personally think politicians should ask those coming to them complaining about taxes to require such individuals to disclose their own incomes, both gross and incomes held in wealth, as well as line 150 in the previous year's tax assessment and then asked if they had a choice between earning what they do now and paying what they currently pay in taxes (or a little bit more), or to pay absolutely no taxes and just earn $20,000 a year for all of their needs, including housing, travel, food, etc. and see what they say.  For those that say this is an infringement of privacy, please know this is how poor people are treated all the time before they can get one penny of any kind of help, yet the same wealthy people we speak of continue to benefit from much more of our tax dollars, directly or indirectly, than the whole gaggle of poor people in Ontario.,