It truly may seem daunting to leaders around how to appease to all walks of life. Some people like to bathe in riches, others like living humbly. And then there’s those of us whom enjoy the in between. Perhaps we in the middle class do not adore the rich life not so much due to our distaste of giant mansions and McLarren’s but due to the perceived social bullying by the lesser-earning public of these titans and so we wish to avoid the easily tossed about words? Or maybe we do not wish to be humble as we linken it to poverty and having nothing? Perhaps it’s exciting to live from one backpack and be able to be on the go anywhere in the world but we’re not trained and lack the survival techniques for it? Or maybe we believe if we were rich we might be lazy and truly wish to help society. There are a multitude of reasons why people adopt a financial position in life when given the chance or even when asked to dream big. But for certain nobody willing chooses the financial position whereby food is inaccessible, water is not clean and easy to access, and shelter is difficult to find, or at least not without the help of some oppressive mindsets.
Those in the west and many other places have forever claimed that these problems are the result of faulty governmental leaders of nations with lesser freedoms than democracy affords its citizenry. Voting, they say, is a fundamental component of these rights, as is equality, and law’s perfection of scales. And yet even here in the wicked city of Toronto gross inequality, social discord, and peer pressure run rampant. Canada is a beautiful land full of amazing people so why am I as a disabled man with zero income giving my spare change to those begging for food on our corners and why is it not the super rich or the middle class? It seems Canada’s democracy is not truly the solution the rest of the world is buying into it being. Neither is America’s, and probably most other nation’s are failing on this aspect. Those well educated say defensive statements meant to cloud the issue further such as “You can’t have utopia!” and even further disrespecting us all when they say “Not everyone can be helped all the time”. These are ridiculous all encompassing exaggerations of what the problem and what the solution are. If I complained to a car mechanic that every time I brought my car in he found an additional problem I did not know about costing an extra few hundred his defence of “cars are never made perfectly, boss” would not truly be a valid argument would it? Granted, humans are not perfect, as we all suffer from greed, jealousy, ego and so forth, but is this not the twenty first century’s second decade? Have we not as a society, at least in Canada, which is apparently the peacekeeper of the world, not grasped at least the simple notion of “if I have a $50K car, my neighbour shouldn’t be dying of hunger”? I’m sorry if you were looking for a fancy psychology or religious reference but I am an uneducated bafoon for whom big words mean little in a world full of small people in possession of big accounts. The point I am trying to make here is, there is a detective lens we all can use when gauging if promises of a nation, of leaders and parties, are delivered, and none of us require a political degree.
It’s really simple. The litmus test of a nation’s laws, governance, and power structure as well as enforcement forces such as police is the presence of simple rusty elements none of us enjoy seeing. We can take flights of fancy in arguing that graffiti is art, that ripped jeans are style, and that even MMA fights are cool. We can give ourselves these freedoms because Canada has no war zones, we have no resource conflicts and a land bountiful of everything even the Lord himself would have wanted everyone to enjoy. Canada even has oil reserves and beasts as yet unnamed. But for Toronto’s streets to have potholes so large that a man like me with low vision can put his foot into them to his ankle? For Toronto’s transportation system to lack accessibility features and provide poor coverage? Our universal healthcare system now has two tiers, OHIP and OHIP+ and even now many are not even covered for basic essentials - kind of goes against the very word “universal”? While our anthem says we are a people from far and wide, in that we accept immigrants everywhere, what are we accepting them into? Cab drivers with PhDs? Doctors whose life long work is ignored as they’re forced to start from scratch? Seems only musicians can travel freely and do their thing wherever they go, with or without a diploma. If one merely walks about Toronto with a notepad, not even a cell phone or a camera, and writes down every single thing that is wrong, and if you simply spent an hour, you’d see there’s at least decades of work unattended to. As a middle-classer my income tax is around 35%. From the remaining 65% of income most of my money is taxed further at 13% HST, that’s about a 45% income tax rate. That’s almost half my earnings that go to the mighty Canadian government. And yet from half of my earnings, HALF, Toronto is covered in stickers, graffiti, potholes, rusty leaning poles, broken fences, and so forth.
I’m not certain about any of your views but here’s an analogy you might accept into the fog of governmental wrath. If your home was in ruins and you spent 50% on its upkeep, then clearly you either are not earning enough to have that home, or you are lying to yourself about where the money is going and are instead drinking much of it at the pub. From basic home ownership we know that after mortgage is paid, which the Canadian government isn’t paying the natives for at all, maybe 10% can be set aside for maintaining the dwelling. But currently we as citizens are giving nearly 50% and Toronto looks like this? Last time I was at the pub, a Molson cost me $10, not 50% of my income. And even then, it was a few Molsons a week not half of my waking hours. This fifty percent statistic is so intoxicating that I don’t think I can even continue, instead I’ll ask my bar tender to give me another and hope I don’t break my ankle crossing the streetcar tracks. Please guys, do a better job, and fix things, ok? And if you happen to not live in the best city in the world, Toronto, please look around your city, or better yet, ask your kids to walk around your neighbourhood with a notepad, and write down everything that bothers them, every little detail. Even if it’s the ugly faces of people who haven’t smiled in years.
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