Poverty Will Last As Long As Capitalism Lasts

The Toronto Star of November 28 focused on an analysis of poverty in Toronto.
This was as a result of a report by social policy expert John Stapleton ad research analysts Alexa Brigs and Celia Lee. This was the first of its kind on a major Canadian city. Their findings were that the cost of poverty to the city of Toronto is between $4.4 billion and $5.5 billion a year. This includes added health care, policing and depressed economic productivity for the city's 265,000 families living in poverty. The annual impact of poverty on crime in Toronto is $436 million. The public health related cost of poverty is $730 million. The cost of hospital stays related to poverty is $237 million. Lost income due to poverty is $2.9 billion to $4 billion. Forgone taxes due to poverty $322 million to $345 million. Though no figures were shown relating to child poverty, the report mentioned Toronto was the child poverty capital of Canada.

  So what does Mr. Stapleton suggest? "The conclusions are clear: investing in poverty prevention would be less costly in the long run than spending to marginally mitigate on-going poverty in perpetuity."

 The city of Toronto has been fighting poverty for years and it's gotten worse. It's as logical as logic gets. If the economy goes down, businesses go broke, taxes aren't getting paid. This is not to say there is no poverty when capitalism has one of its boom periods, but it is to say that for as long as capitalism lasts poverty will too.

Steve and John