Kvetching Turds

I like ending child poverty.

I like taxing rich people.

I like Ed Broadbent.

And I don’t really mind the idea of taxing rich people to end child poverty, but it’s probably not the best solution.

The report referenced actually makes several recommendations, and they’re all sensible.

First I don’t really like the idea of a straight tax at some arbitrary cutoff. People making $249,000 can afford something too.

Second, simply giving an extra couple thousand dollars to families in poverty isn’t going to make poverty go away. “Here’s an extra couple thousand dollars so you can worry slightly less about working 80 hours a week at minimum wage” doesn’t sound like great policy in isolation. Surely money could be better spent on daycare, professional training, extra help for single-parent families, etc. And minimum wage could use a boost while we’re at it. Elementary school teachers should probably be made to accept more ECE help. Anyhow, it’s all in here and it’s a pretty good read.

I’m not trying to say Broadbent is wrong, I’m just pointing out that he chose to focus his word allotment on one particular recommendation of many.

And for what it’s worth, in Unicef’s Child Poverty Report Canada doesn’t look too bad, in the middle of the pack overall. Notably, of the categories measured, it’s primarily the subjective ones involving children’s own views of their situation where Canada performs exceedingly poorly. I’m not sure what to make of that right now.

source: http://www.campaign2000.ca/reportCards/national/2009EnglishC2000NationalReportCard.pdf