The Reality of Poverty
There are a bunch of things about which we don’t like to talk. Death, certain bodily functions, taxes, for example. Another thing which rarely gets much press is poverty. I mean economic poverty.
We live in a rather privileged society. Even the poorest Canadian lives better than the majority in many other countries. It’s rare, very rare, that one hears of a Canadian starving or freezing to death, and even when it happens it’s more often the result of mental illness rather than lack of access to food or shelter.
Jesus told us rather simply that “the poor you will always have with you”. There was no judgment in his words, just telling us the way it is.
Right wingers want you to believe that poverty is a direct result of laziness and opportunism, that the poor are calculating SOBs who sit under the shade of government largesse and milk the system, effectively living the lives of retirees on your dime. And to be sure, there are those who do exactly that, just as there are billionaires who milk the system for huge grants and “forgivable loans”, stuffing the proceeds in their pockets and looking for more. Same game, just different ends of the spectrum. But that’s not the case for most billionaires and most of the poor.
I practiced criminal defence law for enough years to know the reality of poverty in our society, because the simple truth is that the vast majority of criminal defence clients are rarely gainfully employed. That’s just the way it is. Street hookers and drunks and smash-and-grab thieves rarely come from the Glebe, nearly all exist on some combination of welfare, begging, selling drugs or themselves, or amateur violence almost always the result of little or no impulse control. If you think I’m making this up, talk to any police officer you know.
Outside of a few holy orders, poverty is almost never a choice. Nor is it “a lifestyle”. It’s just a nasty, grey, miserable grind of always having to think about keeping warm, getting fed, and seeking some substance or activity to make it go away, just for a moment. It’s living a life on the edges, trying not to think that your existence is at the mercy of others.
“All they need to do is straighten up, get out of bed at a proper hour, take a shower, and get a job!” Well, yes, that always sounds like a good idea, and anything we can do to encourage healthy life skills is laudable. But it ain’t that simple.
The reality is that the overlap between mental challenges and poverty is almost exact. Almost any of my criminal defence or legal aid matrimonial clients could talk a great line about “tomorrow”, going back to school, getting a job, achieving their potential. And almost all of them failed in the follow up. Because they couldn’t do it. Most were born lacking the capacity to connect cause and effect. How do you overcome that?
As harsh as it may sound to say it, most of our institutional poor were not given the full game set at birth. A disproportionate number suffer from physical health limitations, not as a result of their own choices, but as a result of their birth. You can’t, for example, undo being born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Similarly, ghastly nutrition and health care in your first six years can never be undone. You are, to be blunt, broken merchandise, and nobody wants you, and you know that to the core of your soul.
Depressing as hell? Absolutely. But sugar-coating the issue is not to solve it.
As Canadians, we do a reasonable job of managing the worst physical symptoms in our society, but more for our own benefit than for the down and out. Why do we publicly fund the Shepherds of Good Hope and the Mission? Perhaps a little bit of public mercy, but mostly to keep vagrants out of our nice neighbourhoods, congregated in manageable places. This is not a solution, just a management of awkward symptoms, less harsh than the “final solution”, but morally not by that much.
Jesus was right about poverty – it will always exist. But surely nobody would suggest we take the words of Jesus as an excuse to do nothing, or to simply warehouse the inconvenient. As a just and humane society we need to do more, to address the reality that those born irreversibly unlucky need more than a stipend, thoughts, and prayers.
Dealing with poverty in our midst costs. Financially and “managerially”. There are no snappy answers, just the ongoing chore of trying to do it a little better than we did yesterday. But don’t we send the snowplows out today knowing that it will snow next week, too?