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. It all started back in 2008 but culminated last week when social assistance rates were frozen and the Ontario Child Benefit (OC

Betrayal

ments over the last two politically unholy

rnments over the last two politically unholy weeks. For the nearly 90,000 people in Hamilton who live below the poverty line, the betrayal has been most stinging from the provincial Liberals. It all started back in 2008 but culminated last week when social assistance rates were frozen and the Ontario Child Benefit (OCB) was stalled by $100 a month. Back in 2008, Dalton McGuinty’s governmen

rnments over the last two politically unholy weeks. For the nearly 90,000 people in Hamilton who live below the poverty line, the betrayal has been most stinging from the provincial Liberals. It all started back in 2008 but culminated last week when social assistance rates were frozen and the Ontario Child Benefit (OCB) was stalled by $100 a month. Back in 2008, Dalton McGuinty’s governmen

Back in 2008, Dalton McGuinty’s government, through Minister of Children and Youth Services Deb Matthews, was in conversation with Ontario poverty activists about what should be done to reduce the growing depth of poverty. Setting a target to reduce poverty by 25 per cent in five years sounded doable, and academics and planners came up with concrete actions and numbers that could make it happen

first betrayal to the unattached adults who live in poverty and have no dependent children

People in poverty and those who care about them were disappointed with the announcement but we played nice anyway. We politely applauded the government for making this commitment. We said it was a good first step

We played nice even when yet another review of the social assistance system was announced despite the fact that Matthews had completed one just a few years before

Now, just months before they were to release their final report, social assistance rates are frozen

It is clear the Ontario government has abandoned its Poverty Reduction Strategy, leaving no hope for achieving even the minimal objective of reducing child poverty by 25 per cent in 2013

There’s no more time to play nice

At a meeting of the Roundtable for Poverty Reduction’s Social Assistance Working Group last week, the usually composed director couldn’t contain his emotion as he apologized to people on OW and ODSP around the table for continuing to build up their hopes for a government response which ended in betrayal

Her continued talk about “Ontario families” ignores the reality of thousands of Ontarians who do not live in family situations

It’s time to let her know that she must remember and act on behalf of her 90,000 Hamilton sisters and brothers in poverty

Now that the strategy has been released, ISAC will continue to be involved – primarily through work on the anticipated Social Assistance Review (see below). But we will also continue to advocate for improvements to the strategy, and continue to ensure that government meets its commitments.

As technological progress made possible an increase in the output of goods per hour worked, people would have to work less and less to satisfy their needs

dream of a workless future was always there in the background of his thinking

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

great book

He asked something hardly discussed today: What is wealth for? How much money do we need to lead a good life?

Making money cannot be the permanent business of humanity, for the simple reason that there is nothing to do with money except spend it.

A great crisis is like an inspection: it exposes the faults of a social system, and it prompts the search for alternatives

near-unanimous commitment to growth at almost any cost.

The first defect is moral

banking crisis

present system relies on motives of greed and acquisitiveness

divides societies into rich and poor

crisis has exposed capitalism's palpable economic problems

inherently unstable

When it goes wrong, as it did in 2008, we realize how inefficient, wasteful, and painful it can be

motivational basis of capitalism was "an intense appeal to the money-making and money-loving instincts of individuals."

economics for the sake of its practical influence, philosophy for the sake of its ethical imagination. It's time to revive the old idea of economics as a moral science, a science of human beings in communities, not of interacting robots

free-market economy both gives employers the power to dictate hours and terms of work and inflames our innate tendency toward competitive, status-driven consumption

now that we have at last achieved abundance, the habits bred into us by capitalism have left us incapable of enjoying it properly

Opposition to the growth juggernaut has gathered pace in recent years

failing to make us happier

environmentally disastrous

senseless

we need to distinguish between short-term policies for recovery after the worst depression since the 1930s, and long-term policies for realizing the good life

we are not in favor of idleness

Leisure

"purposiveness without purpose,"

It is only our culture's poverty of imagination that leads it to believe that all creativity and innovation—as opposed to that specific kind directed to improving economic processes—needs to be stimulated by money

The image of man as a congenital idler, stirred to action only by the prospect of gain, is unique to the modern age

Economists, in particular

We cannot expect a society trained in the servile and mechanical uses of time to become one of free men overnight

Insofar as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period

cult of efficiency

work is less boring than pleasure

Keynes put it well: "Dangerous human proclivities can be canalized into comparatively harmless channels by the existence of opportunities for moneymaking and private wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way, may find their outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and other forms of self-aggrandizement."

"the game" should be subject to rules and limitations which do not move society away from the good life

Much lower stakes will serve the purpose equally well, as soon as the players are accustomed to them

To promote, as a matter of public policy, a positive idea of the good life is by definition illiberal, perhaps even totalitarian

Perhaps the chief intellectual barrier to realizing the good life for all is the discipline of economics, or rather the deathly orthodoxy that sails under that name in most universities across the world

We are condemned to dearth, not through want of resources, but by the extravagance of our appetites

The perspective of poverty, and with it an emphasis on efficiency at all costs, is built into modern economics

For Alfred Marshall, Keynes's teacher, economics was the study of the "material prerequisites of well-being," a definition that preserved the Aristotelian and Christian concept of wealth as a means to an end

scarcity at the center of economics and brackets out judgments of value

scarcity is a permanent feature of the human condition

think of scarcity in relation to needs, not wants

Flagrant manifestations of insatiability

widely viewed as pathological

problem is that a competitive, monetized economy puts us under continual pressure to want more and more

economists would become as useful as dentists

aim of policy and other forms of collective action should be to secure an economic organization that places the good things of life—health, respect, friendship, leisure, and so on—within reach of all. Economic growth should be accepted as a residual

Robert Skidelsky

Edward Skidelsky

How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life

In the years after the Conquest of 1759-60, the British authorities were exceedingly concerned about the strong French Canadian presence in the colony, and they tried repeatedly to assist in the establishment of schools that were outside the control of religious authorities. These efforts were undermined by the Catholic Church and, more importantly, by the disinterest of local communities, in which education was associated more with households than classrooms

The establishment of school systems across Canada during the 19th century followed a strikingly similar form and chronology due to the complex and often competing ambitions of both official educators and parents

proposals for a public school system

The characteristic conviction of the school promoters was that mass schooling could be an effective instrument for instilling appropriate modes of thought and behaviour into children; in their minds, the purpose of mass schooling did not primarily involve the acquisition of academic knowledge. School systems were designed to solve a wide variety of problems ranging from crime to poverty, and from idleness to vagrancy

leaders in a variety of communities in central British North America took up arms in pursuit of coherent demands for political change

The key element of family reproduction is its orientation toward the future, including considerable anxiety about the direction and pace of social and economic change. This anxiety has involved a fear of downward social mobility both intra- and intergenerationally. Certainly, such fear preoccupied families before the 19th century and explains why land was characteristically seen as the central component of material stability and family cohesion in both New France and British America. And, during the 19th century, land continued to be seen as the most secure foundation for family economies

However, the development of agrarian, merchant and industrial capitalism heightened perceptions of economic insecurity. Everyone became aware that while great fortunes could be made, they could also be lost just as quickly. The obvious insecurity of even well-paying jobs or successful businesses came to loom increasingly large in the minds of parents planning for their children as well as themselves as elders in the context of declining land availability.

One response was to have fewer children and to invest more in their education

Compulsory attendance legislation was passed in the Canadian provinces (except Québec) during the later 19th century but only a minority of parents were not already enrolling their children in class.

Some resistance to schooling did develop, particularly from those reluctant to pay extra taxes

Why many parents believed that schooling would improve the prospects of their children was primarily connected to the value attributed to academic training. Unlike the emphasis of school promoters on character formation, the shaping of values, the inculcation of political and social attitudes, and proper behaviour, many parents supported schooling because they wanted their children to learn to read, write and do arithmetic.

articulation of schooling with the labour market

By the late 20th century, schooling had become part of an institutional network which included hospitals, businesses, prisons and welfare agencies.

growth of formal instruction funded by taxes and supervised by the state. This growth resulted from concern about cultural, moral and political behaviour, from the emergence of a wage-labour economy, from changing concepts of childhood and the family, and from the general reorganization of society into institutions.