Unfortunately Pirjo Raits contaminates her encouragement of charity by using the Marxism-based income gap fallacy.
Marxism teaches an economic fixed-pie, ignoring that humans create and produce. Thus, according to Marxism, anyone who has more stole it from those who have less, and a growing difference in income means stealing more. Our society is testament to that productivity, in contrast to the USSR and North Korea – here people earn by producing.
The proper question is why poor people are poor, and how the chronically poor can actually be helped.to change their lives. (We have to exclude from the discussion those who chose to be poor to advance their education to earn much more in the future, or to travel frugally.)
Government is part of the problem, putting barriers in the way of earning (such as making it hard to fire someone thus risky to give someone a chance, and forcing quotas on occupations), and restricting mobility for work.
Voters have failed to protect individuals against initiation of force, which hurts poor people most as they have the least financial resiliency. Those voters elect politicians who spend on glitz and pet do-gooder projects instead of policing, courts, and re-education in prisons. Victoria area voters have seen problems with assaults and murders by repeat offenders who need to be locked away working for their food until they learn – which may be never, and successful re-education programs such as at William Head.
Much poverty comes from crime and intoxicant abuse, which leaves the perpetrator or their children without enough money. Effective education is needed, as the cause is bad thinking. Yet the educational bureaucracies are ineffective – many troubled individuals who will be the Occupy whiners and prisoners of the future (as well as many fine students who they will envy).
There’s also the cost of food, driven by the impact of eco-antis on fuel prices. And the cost of gasoline for what studies show is a key factor in getting and keeping a job – one’s own transportation. (Especially now that the combination of bus drivers and BC Transit is not reliable.)
And Raits should ask herself why she thinks that a person who has honestly earned what she has can feel shame but someone who has ruined their life with intoxicant abuse cannot, which is how I interpret her ending paragraphs.
She does make an excellent point that charity can be quiet. The challenge is identifying the deserving and advising people who have more money to give. In contrast Victoria has many people who try to gain points by blathering about their charitable giving – I avoid such businesses.
Keith Sketchley
Saanich