Conservatives are talking about affordability in this federal election, and their leader Andrew Scheer is sure to bring it up in the debate.
I'm not an elite. I began my adult life the same way many do today: searching for a full-time job, landing one short-term one after another without benefits, striking out on my own as a way to attain "job security," going into massive debt between steep housing rates (even with parental guarantees and strict bank requirements) and the cost of living, scrimping for years before finally achieving some measure of middle class stability.
Brain injury torpedoed that stability and sank me into poverty. Life has become unaffordable in a way that Scheer's non-elites -- and me previous to brain injury -- cannot imagine.
Affordability isn't about not struggling. I think every generation needs to find their way and that's going to involve some struggle. Struggling financially for so many years taught us how expensive adulting is, how tough financial decisions that pain one in the short term can pay off in stability in the long term, how so much of what we consider essential really isn't.
Living below the poverty line, dependent on others, being a witness to how easily people can afford computers and electronics out of my reach, has taught that last lesson even more harshly.
Scheer tells people, "Things just keep getting more and more expensive, people keep working harder and are just not getting ahead." (The Toronto Star)
This sounds like a mantra, a siren song that means nothing. I worked hard. It seemed like the harder I worked, the more I stayed in place. Yet the problem with affordability didn't come from working hard, not getting ahead, ridiculous interest rates, and tax rates. It came from the mind.
What is it we need? Food, shelter, treats.
Food inflation is a problem more now than in the past. Canada doesn't subsidize its farmers like Europe and the US do in order to drastically drop the price of basic necessities like milk, vegetables, and fruit. Yet if food is too expensive to afford, that's one reason Canadians aren't getting ahead. I don't believe any party is talking about this issue.
Shelter is necessary. Our homeless population is growing, and it all began when the Ontario and Federal governments under Mike Harris and Jean Chretien respectively, got out of the affordable housing business.
Some people will never be able to afford rent or to buy a house. Affordability for the non-elites shouldn't exclude the poor because accidents and illnesses happen and before you know it, you can't afford your shelter, especially if you haven't through good fortune and hard-nosed financial acumen aggressively paid off your mortgage before the unpredictable happened. This latter point is why Scheer's policy to go back to what caused the 2008 Harper government prorogation will increase unaffordability.
"Scheer said his government would increase the maximum amortization period — the time it takes to repay a mortgage — on insured mortgages to 30 years for first-time homebuyers, which will likely lead to lower monthly payments." (iPolitics, 24 Sept 2019)
Thirty years is a long, long time to carry the burden of massive debt -- mortgages are a shock when you first buy in, and the stress of paying monthly decade in and decade out an amount that overshadows any other monthly cost even when amortize it so as to reduce monthly, affects relationships, the sense of affordability, and health. Politicians breeze over that kind of financial stress as if it doesn't exist. It's why people develop a sense of unaffordability.
Yes, you may be able to buy that house for low, low monthly payments. But you'll be doing it on a lie. The current rules -- and the ones I grumbled about at the time but which saved my ass in the long run -- are set to ensure you really can afford a house or condo and the financial stress won't crush you.
The problem with unaffordable housing lies in governments not getting back into building affordable housing, making up for lost decades, and doing nothing about foreign rich people buying up stock and so inflating housing prices. Scheer is silent on these issues.
Treats are what makes life bearable and enjoyable. Prior to my brain injury, ice cream out was a treat but so were road trips and major vacations, new clothes, and a new computer every two years. I just didn't classify some of those as treats. Not doing so increases the sense of unaffordability -- what you see as essential not as a treat makes the perceived cost of daily living higher than it needs to be.
Now, post-brain injury, treats are specialty coffee, and I classify them as such.
Car crashes set me back twice, the second time permanently. Neither time was I remotely at fault, sitting in the passenger seat. That's the thing about affordability: it's not about whether you can work hard and not get ahead. It's about what safety nets are there to catch you when terrible things or ill health hit you. It's about what the government is doing to lift the poorest so that all of us can rise up, too:
The usual answer is: how do you afford it? Well, how do we afford subsidizing profitable companies, now? Why do we put our taxes towards dying entities instead of towards humans who, when lifted up, will prosper our country? The politics of resentment divides people and perpetuates the lie that the poor caused their own demise and that we will never be like them. Think again. Cancer, heart attacks, poor eating, lack of exercise, bad drivers, floods, fires, etc. etc. will land you in the company of the poor. Guaranteed. Unless you're one of the elites.
We afford it by not resenting lifting up the poorest as they can be and will be us, by pursuing tax cheats aggressively, by shifting government priorities, and by taxing those at the top.
Lifting the poorest enriches everyone.
"Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer brought his pitch on affordability issues to the GTA Wednesday, framing the upcoming federal election as a choice between the elites and everyone else." The Toronto Star, 11 Sept 2019
I'm not an elite. I began my adult life the same way many do today: searching for a full-time job, landing one short-term one after another without benefits, striking out on my own as a way to attain "job security," going into massive debt between steep housing rates (even with parental guarantees and strict bank requirements) and the cost of living, scrimping for years before finally achieving some measure of middle class stability.
Brain injury torpedoed that stability and sank me into poverty. Life has become unaffordable in a way that Scheer's non-elites -- and me previous to brain injury -- cannot imagine.
Affordability isn't about not struggling. I think every generation needs to find their way and that's going to involve some struggle. Struggling financially for so many years taught us how expensive adulting is, how tough financial decisions that pain one in the short term can pay off in stability in the long term, how so much of what we consider essential really isn't.
Living below the poverty line, dependent on others, being a witness to how easily people can afford computers and electronics out of my reach, has taught that last lesson even more harshly.
Scheer tells people, "Things just keep getting more and more expensive, people keep working harder and are just not getting ahead." (The Toronto Star)
This sounds like a mantra, a siren song that means nothing. I worked hard. It seemed like the harder I worked, the more I stayed in place. Yet the problem with affordability didn't come from working hard, not getting ahead, ridiculous interest rates, and tax rates. It came from the mind.
What is it we need? Food, shelter, treats.
Food inflation is a problem more now than in the past. Canada doesn't subsidize its farmers like Europe and the US do in order to drastically drop the price of basic necessities like milk, vegetables, and fruit. Yet if food is too expensive to afford, that's one reason Canadians aren't getting ahead. I don't believe any party is talking about this issue.
Shelter is necessary. Our homeless population is growing, and it all began when the Ontario and Federal governments under Mike Harris and Jean Chretien respectively, got out of the affordable housing business.
Some people will never be able to afford rent or to buy a house. Affordability for the non-elites shouldn't exclude the poor because accidents and illnesses happen and before you know it, you can't afford your shelter, especially if you haven't through good fortune and hard-nosed financial acumen aggressively paid off your mortgage before the unpredictable happened. This latter point is why Scheer's policy to go back to what caused the 2008 Harper government prorogation will increase unaffordability.
"Scheer said his government would increase the maximum amortization period — the time it takes to repay a mortgage — on insured mortgages to 30 years for first-time homebuyers, which will likely lead to lower monthly payments." (iPolitics, 24 Sept 2019)
Thirty years is a long, long time to carry the burden of massive debt -- mortgages are a shock when you first buy in, and the stress of paying monthly decade in and decade out an amount that overshadows any other monthly cost even when amortize it so as to reduce monthly, affects relationships, the sense of affordability, and health. Politicians breeze over that kind of financial stress as if it doesn't exist. It's why people develop a sense of unaffordability.
Yes, you may be able to buy that house for low, low monthly payments. But you'll be doing it on a lie. The current rules -- and the ones I grumbled about at the time but which saved my ass in the long run -- are set to ensure you really can afford a house or condo and the financial stress won't crush you.
The problem with unaffordable housing lies in governments not getting back into building affordable housing, making up for lost decades, and doing nothing about foreign rich people buying up stock and so inflating housing prices. Scheer is silent on these issues.
Treats are what makes life bearable and enjoyable. Prior to my brain injury, ice cream out was a treat but so were road trips and major vacations, new clothes, and a new computer every two years. I just didn't classify some of those as treats. Not doing so increases the sense of unaffordability -- what you see as essential not as a treat makes the perceived cost of daily living higher than it needs to be.
Now, post-brain injury, treats are specialty coffee, and I classify them as such.
Car crashes set me back twice, the second time permanently. Neither time was I remotely at fault, sitting in the passenger seat. That's the thing about affordability: it's not about whether you can work hard and not get ahead. It's about what safety nets are there to catch you when terrible things or ill health hit you. It's about what the government is doing to lift the poorest so that all of us can rise up, too:
- Affordable housing and penalizing foreign buyers to reduce homelessness and false inflation in housing costs helps everyone by keeping rent and housing prices at reasonable levels;
- Solving the food inflation problem;
- Affordable public transit that allows people to travel independently no matter where they live or how much they earn, that reduces traffic, improves societal health, and reduces the health care budget;
- Health care that covers every kind of registered health care professional, hospitals, clinics, and treatments because a population restored to health can afford more while a population that hobbles along under our current health care system can't earn as much and life becomes unaffordable;
- GST rebates (currently available if you file your taxes);
- Disability and low-income working tax credits;
- Providing affordable child care because tax credits can never meet the cost and work only for the elites who pay enough tax to receive the credits;
- Carbon tax and rebate coupled with rebates for carbon-free replacements for our current carbon-emitting technologies to reduce our overall spending (eg, electric cars that Ford cancelled by looking only at the short term, not the long term benefits on health and pocketbooks);
- A basic income so that when ill fate strikes, you don't have to worry about sliding down to zero and losing all your savings and RRSPs, but focus on healing and returning to taxpaying productivity.
The usual answer is: how do you afford it? Well, how do we afford subsidizing profitable companies, now? Why do we put our taxes towards dying entities instead of towards humans who, when lifted up, will prosper our country? The politics of resentment divides people and perpetuates the lie that the poor caused their own demise and that we will never be like them. Think again. Cancer, heart attacks, poor eating, lack of exercise, bad drivers, floods, fires, etc. etc. will land you in the company of the poor. Guaranteed. Unless you're one of the elites.
We afford it by not resenting lifting up the poorest as they can be and will be us, by pursuing tax cheats aggressively, by shifting government priorities, and by taxing those at the top.
Lifting the poorest enriches everyone.
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