Minister of Middle Class Prosperity - WTF?

Who's the minister in charge of calling the poor lazy? Is that role filled by Trudeau himself?

I didn't say "tyrant". I really don't need to criticize the Tories every time I criticize the Liberals, any more than you need to criticize Maxime Bernier every time you criticize Scheer. I criticized Harper plenty when he was in office, and I don't want the CPC back in power, no matter how often the Liberals stamp their feet and say voting anything but Liberal is a conspiracy to put the Tories in.

The carefully crafted Liberal spin line is that they're for "the middle class and those working hard to join it". Think about what that implies: Yes, there's a lower class; we're fine with that, because most of them are only there because they're not hard-working. We won't even say "poor". We don't give a shit if they prosper. It's the middle class who get their own minister.

The tories aren't in power so it doesn't matter if they are worse. Talk about damning with faint praise. 

At this point we need to tar both parties with the same brush in terms of governing on behalf of the wealthy. The middle class gets thrown some bones to keep them compliant but they too are getting screwed. Pitting the poor and middle-class against one another is divide and conquer. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/22/question-time-80000-super-rich-earning-workers

But there are some other lessons from the indignation of the man in the BBC audience. While he seems to misunderstand his own privilege, there’s also a mismatch between whom Labour talk about paying more tax, and those who will actually do so. When talking about the rich, Labour refers to bankers, big business and the wealthy elite. These people aren’t the top 5%. Many of them aren’t even the top 1%. They’re more like the top 0.1%.

And it is these staggeringly high-income people who have pulled away from the rest of us this century. The result is that today someone just inside the top 5% club, on £80,000, may have much more common with your average worker than the super-rich elite in the 0.1% club. So maybe it’s no wonder that a well-off employee in Bolton isn’t going to love being lumped in with globetrotting plutocrats in Kensington.

The situation is likely similar in Canada. Maybe not as bad but bad enough. "The left" needs to aim its arrows higher. Go after billionaires not mere millionaires. 

Ms. Fortier represents Ottawa-Vanier, which has  22.1% low income earners, and a child-poverty rate of 31.3%  She, and all the Liberals before her (the riding has been Liberal since its inception in 1935) have done little to alleviate this terrible situation. 

Too bad there isn't a Minister of Child Poverty.

https://campaign2000.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Canada_ChildPovertyRa...

Ok this discussion about the conservatives being worse is also a problem for two reasons:

1) The Liberals market their bait and switch policies to people who want progressive policies so theya re more in the way than Conservatives whoa re less liekly to do so. Increasingly the Conservatives are employing the same tactics and outright lying like Ford and his For the People stuff. But Liberals have a pattern of scooping support for one thing and doing another.

2) The Liberals have an extremely bad record of opposing policies when the Conservatives are in power, promising to do better at election time and then leaving the policies in place with little or no change

So sure the Conservatives when it come to policies ARE worse. However, politically, the Liberals are traditionally more dishonest about who they are and potentially more dangerous by blocking the power of the part of the electorate that actually wants progressive change. By being the in-the-way party they prevent more progressive parties from coming to power and undoing the damage the Conservatives create.

lagatta4 wrote:

I'm familiar with Ottawa-Vanier as a cousin who is Indigenous lived there in Indigenous housing. (Note, I'm not claiming to be Indigenous). It is horribly poor with respect to Ottawa, and a much higher percentage of francophones and Indigenous (First Nations and Inuit) people. But the Parc-X part of Papineau, Trudeau's Mlt riding, is also an extremely poor southern urban riding.

Vanier is a very interesting place with pockets of wealthy areas as well as some very poor ones. I don't think the poverty is as concentrated there as it is in areas of Montreal. Also the geographic area is very small especially when yu consider how much of it is now commercial or being attached to other areas and renovated. 

Ottawa has very few low rental places at this point. The people who cannot afford higher rents are being forced onto the streets.

lagatta4 wrote:

I'm familiar with Ottawa-Vanier as a cousin who is Indigenous lived there in Indigenous housing. (Note, I'm not claiming to be Indigenous). It is horribly poor with respect to Ottawa, and a much higher percentage of francophones and Indigenous (First Nations and Inuit) people. But the Parc-X part of Papineau, Trudeau's Mlt riding, is also an extremely poor southern urban riding.

All the more reason for the Liberal Party to work for low-income people, rather than for the middle class and those working hard to join it.  I hate that expression, which implies that if you're poor you're just not working hard enough.

lagatta4 wrote:

This is absurd - Ministry of Silly Walks - but unfortunately many commenters elsewhere use it to call for "smaller government", i.e. cuts to healthcare and education that benefit all. The rightwing never calls for fewer highways...

But it is strange to have a Ministry based ONLY on classist bullshit.

I've been trying to think of the proper word for it. Is it Orwellian?  Something about it creeped me out from the moment I heard it. It almost declares a class war doesn't it? It's worse than Harper referring to Canadians as taxpayers.