freshcutgrass
Senior Member
So, what is your solution? Forced sterilization? Applying "One Child Policy" for certain economical brackets? kkgg7, where did you grow up?
Given his overly myopic, narcissistic view on everything....he hasn't.
So, what is your solution? Forced sterilization? Applying "One Child Policy" for certain economical brackets? kkgg7, where did you grow up?
Toronto may have less poverty, but that is only a concern for those who risk ever being under the poverty line. The vast majority of people probably care more about income earning potential, tax rate, affordablity than poverty rate. Unlike safety, climate etc, poverty rate is not a universal concern. It only affects a small percentage of people. When you are not one of them, you simply don't care much.
Does povety rate affect livability? to some extent yes, particularly for those who have low skills and low education. Will someone with a MBA or an advanced degree in engeering care about which city has higher poverty rate when considering livability? doubtful.
My gf and many friends have paid rents of $400 per room (often in 2 bedroom homes, so $800-900 per apartment) to live in old post-war townhouse complexes in the suburbs, basement apartments, or 60s apartments say at Dundas in Mississauga. Others have paid similar amounts to live in rooming homes in the Annex, etc. They have more often than not shared their building/unit/neighbourhood with older immigrants on or around minimum wage.
2 people on minimum wage would make around $2,500 a month. If only one of them can work and they have a child, it's not like there's no safety net whatsoever. I know people who live in TCHC housing and cooperatives, and I know that while it's difficult to get a unit, it is not impossible.
It is relatively 'shitty', but something tells me that you haven't experienced poverty first hand outside the developed world, or even in the US.
I've met so many cab-drivers who tell me their children are in college. Cab-drivers who use the same hospitals I do, and who aren't 100x more likely to get shot than I am. I'm not saying the poverty situation in Toronto can't be improved, but you take these things for granted.
In Miami when you meet a low-income person you know that they are most likely in huge amounts of debt, will go bankrupt eventually, suffer chronical health-problems they can't afford to treat, and live in dangerous segregated neighbourhoods with no amenities and where a car (which they often don't have) is an absolute necessity.
you are being riduculous.
people should have the right to reproduce as many offsprings as they want, but just not at the cost of other tax payers' money. The social benefit/taxation system first of all should not provide incentive for low income folks to have more children they can afford to raise from a financial perspective. Everyone should be responsible for his own children (as well as retirement for that matter).
Your point can be summarized in a far less verbose and pedantic way: Rent is cheap health care is free and crime in low. I agree on all counts.
Toronto is in essence a lot like Apple- it offers something the masses can appreciate and enjoy while severely constricting foreign architecture and innovation.
OK, but what is your solution? Repeating that "everyone should be responsible for his own children" will not change the reproductive preferences of the minimum wage earners... Personally, I don't mind at all contributing my tax dollar to the welfare of these families.
Every child is the future of this great nation. We all have a responsibility to ensure that people have the tools and money to raise great children that will make Canada stronger and more proud. If that means that people receive a few dollars of assistance from the government every month so be it. We should be doing everything we can to help the next generation of Canadians. If we didn't do this, Canada would likely go from being the single greatest country on this planet to being one of the worst.
So if your neighbour next door have trouble paying his daughter's tuition this semester, will you be nice enough to say "ok, your daughter is our future, and I will pay for that"?
It is essentially the same idea as paying high taxes. But would you? Have you?
When you say you should, I think you mean "morally the right thing", but not "legally obligatory", right? I don't think I should pay for anyone else' kid's life expenses. When one feels like to, fine. Don't force them to.
^^ guess we won't be able to convince each other. I will stop here for fear of being considered trolling again.
I think you're in the wrong country. You seem to have no idea how this one works. You have the worst attitude on just about everything.
people would never plan a pregnancy if they thought about having kids in a purely logical and financial sense.
That's all very nice, but the ancient evolutionary programs that make you pro-create don't reside in your fancy human cerebral cortex, where all this logic and financial reasoning takes place...it comes from the primitive "reptilian" part of your brain called the limbic system. If this were not true, then there would not be 7 billion humans, and almost all of them are much worse off than these hypothetical Torontonians supporting themselves and their children on minimum wage. 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
Did you not see the "if" in my post. I know that people don't reproduce based on financial reasoning. What I said was completely hypothetical.