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Thursday, October 24, 2013

Poverty epidemic? I’m not buying it

It's not about charity, it's about justice; As long as some suffer, we all are diminished (Opinion, Oct. 19)
I'm always amused reading columns by Deirdre Pike, an executive within the poverty industry, who claims "60,000" people in Hamilton are collecting social assistance. According to city hall statistics, 22,327 people were collecting Ontario Works benefits (OW) and another 26,221 people collecting ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Payments). By my mathematical calculation, that's 48,548 people receiving social assistance payments, not 60,000 as claimed by the writer.

Pitting people who work hard, and manage to gain wealth, against those that don't is an argument long used to try to leverage money from those they envy for their wealth. Every doctor and professional makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This is called free enterprise, unleashed from the chains of poverty, self-made individuals of great value to society. "Poverty" is a relative term that has been distorted by all manner of groups who make up the industry that enabled poverty to become an epidemic, or so they say. I, for one, am not buying it.

Mark-Alan Whittle, Hamilton

3 comments:

Pissedoff said...

She either has to do this or get a job.

Frances said...

And those professionals spent long hours acquiring the skills they are now using, often incurring debt in the process.

Anonymous said...

Read that Richard Bergeron the leftist ecologist running for mayor of Montreal gave zero dollars to charity last year. Ha, ha...