Can you imagine a life where you work all the time, not necessarily in a job you hate, but perhaps one in which you are not seeing immediate reward?
At the same time, you watch others, including those to whom you are close to and perhaps love, have more in their lives than you can ever realistically achieve in your own? It hurts and you try to achieve this standard, only to be disappointed and frustrated time and time again, because your efforts count for naught, when: (a) people don't hire you; (b) you are left out of hiring because of a so-called qualification you don't have because of a disability (e.g. driving, lifting, appearance such as a facial disability); or (c) do not have access to cash or credit to upgrade your situation.
There are some things that many in society has no clue about. That is dealing with ableism and classism. People of the middling or more often, upper classes of our society do not sense that escaping poverty is very difficult for those in it. Ironically, escaping poverty often requires money. Money that one can choose to use it in a way to help them escape poverty, as opposed to just catching up on over-inflated bills, which are henceforth, over-inflated as a result of the cost of living in poverty. We live in a caste system, just that we don't call it that. However, many are legislated into poverty.
When the topic is discussed online, many people just say that people who grow old and live in poverty from low pension or even no pension, have not thought about "saving for a rainy day" or spent their funds unwisely somehow. What if I were to propose that most of the time, those who did not save for the alleged "rainy day" likely had too many rainy days and not enough sunny ones to make up for them, or to accumulate enough funds for the next "rainy season"? How about those that have too many rainy days have to borrow much more than others do, whilst ending up further in debt and having to repay a larger portion of their income on debt repayment than someone of better means?
Not everybody is able to acquire good paying jobs that provide enough income to do this. If they are in a relationship, both members of the couple should be working in these well paid jobs in order to achieve this. I hear from many people that think that one parent (usually the woman) should stay at home and look after the kids and the house, while the other works. This usually ends up with the woman in poverty if that relationship ends. Those jobs that allow a single earner to support a full family and then have enough left over are gone. Families do better with both parents working. What if you have some work-limiting disabilities, perhaps because you have aged and developed some health conditions that limit the kind of jobs that you can have, while your partner does not work forcing you to pay for the entire freight? This imposes poverty on the entire family.
As stated, single income earners can hardly support a whole household anymore, although governments as policy are forcing people with disabilities who cannot work to be fully dependent on their working partners, even if this working partner is hardly earning past minimum wage. Put yourself in the shoes of this working partner. You cannot drive because of a health condition, or perhaps you simply cannot afford to pay for a vehicle and its insurance. Virtually every job that you are otherwise qualified for that pays a bit more than you are earning now states you must have a license and have daily access to your own vehicle. Do you lie to get the job, and then get let go later on when they find out you do not drive, when even the one occasion you need to drive comes up and you suddenly come up short? Or do you just move on?
There was a time in the US south, and even parts of Canada, where publicly available services were segregated between blacks and whites. I know many people in the non-driving category see these job ads similarly to those in the US south or those antiquated parts of Canada in the day as advertising for "whites only". Yes, some people can probably eventually get their licenses, but think about how the province's graduated licensing system works. It assumes you have parents or you live near them, and they are able and willing to support you learning to drive. This is your young person who is 16 - 24 and eager to get behind the wheel of a car. Older adults, particularly women, who did not have this same support as a young person, would often get support driving with a spouse who is fully licensed. What if you are much older, do not have parents and/or a spouse that can do this?
People on the middling and upper income range just think people can just go to a driving school and pay for this. People who pass their G1 but not their G2 need to have a fully licensed driver in the front passenger seat of their car at all times when they are driving (for up to a year), even if they driven before and have taken a hiatus and are seeking to regain their license back after a few years. While being super-focused on road safety which is a reasonable explanation for this rule, it effectively cuts out three types of people: low income, disabled and older people. Low income and people with disabilities often have little to no money to pay a driving school for this support. Many with disabilities are not allowed to drive. Older people often have additional barriers.
Research shows that people who drive and have their own personal transportation are able to do a few things to get and keep out of poverty: (a) get better paying jobs; (b) find additional side hustles to help them deal with inflationary price increases as most involve driving, delivery or ability to get to places to provide products or services related to the side hustle; and (c) are less isolated and able to find friends and potential life partners that they can hook up with to combine incomes and raise household income.
In the above scenario, people who are fully licensed and have their own vehicles do not understand how not having a license or their own vehicle contributes to a life in poverty, potentially draining the individual of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more over the course of their lifetime. If you live in a larger city with decent public transportation, this may not be as much of an issue, but many if not most people live in regions where a car is deemed almost a necessity. I have met people that have very well paying jobs that do not even have a license or bother to drive at all, but virtually all of them live in large cities, like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Those unfortunate enough to live outside of these kinds of cities tend to take lower paid jobs and in a narrow range of cases, are able to work from home.
Working from home is often deemed to be a possibility if you are disabled or have too many family responsibilities. The pandemic got people interested in this possibility but, in general, legitimate work from home jobs are usually held by people who used to work in an office in a higher paid position, or are specifically skilled in an area that not many people are, e.g. high tech, IT. The chances of going online and looking for a work from home job that will pay well is still slim to none unless you fall into one of the above exceptions. We hear about this in the media because these are jobs held by people in IT, programming, engineering, banking, finance and so forth, all of which pay people much higher than average. As such, these people tend to live in larger homes that can also double as a workplace.
On the other hand, I heard of many lower income people attempting to take a work from home job, but more often than not, they were scams and they were poorly paid if paid at all. Caste structure is alive and well in the work from home community too. It is less visible and those who are succeeding in this area, unfortunately, do not see their privilege either. This is not a legitimate avenue except for a small minority of those living in poverty as an option to escape from poverty.
This is not to say that those that do not drive, those who are poor and those that have disabilities do not have any job opportunities, but when they do, their barriers are: (a) getting hired; (b) getting a livable wage; and (c) getting opportunities for advancement. If you make it through the hiring barrier and get the job, it is unlikely the job is high paying or high skilled. The much talked about labour shortages are not in the high paid sectors, but in the low wage service jobs, such as fast food, accommodations, call centers, farm labour, etc. These jobs by their nature tend to pay low wages and have high turnover of staff, often because of the stressful nature of these jobs combined with poverty level incomes. People do not want to be trapped in poverty in these jobs. However, one can try to get additional education, but if one is poorly paid and has little to no savings, this is not likely to happen either. Further indebtedness is not a great idea if you are already in the hole.
You know you have financial privilege when the roof over your head is secure and you have options for financing of repairs, renovations, or even accessing a car loan. This does not mean you are rich. This does not mean that today's galloping inflation is not hitting you hard on the head and in your pocketbook. This is "broke" but not poverty. Canadians on average are getting further and further indebted as a whole and in particular, those having to renew variable mortgages are getting hit the worst. However, there is such a thing as a debt wall (for lower income Canadians), whereby you cannot access further credit and the repayment of credit cards, loans, etc. is taking up a larger and larger chunk of your income to the point you cannot pay your bills at all. This happens more often with a single earner, than with a family with at least two people working. Bankruptcy which happens will only further restrict one's job options.
It affects the latter type of person in many ways. There is the usual Kubler-Ross stages of grieving, whilst also knowing they would not be able to even afford the lower income lifestyle they have. Most people in this category are essentially in the lower caste and do not have the opportunities to just get a higher paying job, move to a location where there are more jobs or to cut back even a penny further. If they are on any kind of assistance, OW or ODSP, for example, they are almost enshrined into this caste whereby even if they manage to start earning a little bit more, they will experience major clawbacks from the income they do receive. There is no such thing as a two income household on ODSP, even if only one of the spouses is disabled. This program is designed to keep the family in poverty and prevented from "saving for a rainy day", as any funds that do come into the household are already spoken for before they even come into the door.
Doing ordinary things, let alone doing a job, is also a hardship for low income and even disabled. Buying groceries, shopping around for a specific item, visiting family, or attending community or social events are all part of a major planning process: (a) do I have the money; (b) how am I going to get there; (c) when will I have the time to actually get there (as transporting for poor people is both more expensive and takes longer than for those that drive); and (d) how will I get back (for events that happen in the evening, one usually has to Uber or taxi back because the buses stop running or you are likely to miss a bus that might continue to run but only hourly). In many cases, the person concerned just does not go anywhere at all, which contributes to their further isolation and in turn, poverty.
Family and friends are only available to help some people and even then, some of the time. Put the shoe on the other foot and imagine a brother, a sister, a mother, father or just a friend or neighbour you know that doesn't drive, but still needs to get around. You work full time and have other activities you engage in, so you know that you cannot realistically take them around, or even cover the cost of their bus or taxi fare. In these circumstances, our communities need to do better. They need to stop assuming that there are always family members and friends waiting in the wings to provide financial support to, drive people around as well as assist people in getting out of poverty.
Even in the most ineffectual sectors that are set up today to help the very poor and low income, such as food banks, soup kitchens and homeless shelters, which do nothing to get anybody out of poverty or even give them hope that they can escape it, these organizations themselves are now asking for help. They are helping more people and getting less and less donors, because those that used to donate are not able to do so anymore. They are looking to the government to take its duties back in providing a secure social safety net for those that keep falling through the one we have now. As a society, we need to stop "othering" the low-income, the disabled and the older population. Because all of us will eventually get there, we need to force the state to re-examine its existing policies to stop legislating a significant portion of the public into poverty and to respect the human rights of everybody.
Your thoughts?
