-
Poverty tax fund idea
Published by
on
You know what, I’ll tell the internet about a project I want to be working on: a revolving pot of money people can borrow from for things like buying in bulk and avoiding “insufficient funds” charges.
A very simple ledger. No humiliating means testing or grovelling. The “loan” could be paid back when/if the “borrower” starts to see a benefit from the project.
This seems like something people who aren’t paying the poverty tax1 could fund for people who are. A nice community project that might actually do some good, unlike however much time we’re spending talking about fair taxes for people who have summer cottages to sell.
I think the closest “competitor” for the idea would be short-term lenders, but this “loan” wouldn’t be for profit so it shouldn’t be subject to the same laws. The only real consequence if nobody pays their loans back is the project ends.
But maybe people would borrow in good faith, and then not having to pay the poverty tax would help them, and then they would put money back in, and then more people who need it could access it.
I’ve read circulating money this way is good for the economy, if you are a person who needs that kind of rationale in addition to, you know, potentially keeping your neighbours alive.
Thoughtful comments, as always, are welcome.
- I had a question on this. The wikipedia article on “cost of poverty” includes a few other names for the same concept, as well as some really good examples of it. ↩︎
2 comments on Poverty tax fund idea
-
July comes before October
Published by
on
From a CBC news story today, “Government tells Ajax woman she may not be Canadian”:
Last September, 32-year-old Arielle Townsend came home to a letter from the federal immigration department stating her Canadian citizenship was at risk of being revoked. …
In the [Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada] letter to Townsend, which CBC Toronto has viewed, the government says it believes Townsend was actually born before her mother became a citizen — even though Townsend was born in October 1991 and her mother became a citizen in July 1991.
I would bet there’s racism going on here too, but this sentence made me think of all the times I had to explain something comparable to “July comes before October” to a government department and it’d still take them years to agree with me.
The government should be embarrassed about this one. Making someone live with that kind of uncertainty for five months is inhumane.
-
“This question could end up in court and is beyond your pay grade”
Published by
on
I was thinking again today about the decision that held Air Canada responsible for the garbage spewed by its “customer service” chatbot, as I tried repeatedly to explain a very precise question to a call-centre agent. Likely under-paid. Definitely under-supported.
I asked to be transferred to either her “superior” (her word) or to legal. I said in these actual literal words “this question could end up in court and is beyond your pay grade” but her “superiors” still refused to take the transfer.
She was very pleasant, even as the call went on and on and on and I kept repeating that the question she was answering was not the one I was asking.
I’m sure she could barely hear me; there were many people talking in the room she was working from. (Likely under-ventilated.)
Even where audio is good, it is frustratingly common for a questionee to register only a few key words before hitting play on a pre-packaged response.
Maybe this is sufficient / efficient most of the time, for most customers, for most questions.
But I had already:
- Logged in to get as much information as I could on my own,
- Checked out (1) the FAQs and (2) the community, and
- Attempted to find / generate an answer using their online “assistant.”
This phone call was my last step, not my first. But it honestly sounded like their “customer service” model is to cram people into a room to type the same obvious keywords into the “assistant” and then read the (inapplicable) answers (inaudibly). It was frustrating.
When I asked again to be escalated, the same agent came back to tell me something wasn’t possible because of privacy. I had to explain that doesn’t even make sense to say to the customer who has the privacy interest to waive. Still her “superiors” would not let her pass the call on.
Eventually it seemed my actual question was being understood. The answer still came back no. “No” feels legally incorrect.
And I have no doubt that if this does indeed get to court and the answer is actually yes, their corporate and legal will again try to dump the problem on the minimum-wage employee reading the chatbot aloud.
(Are server rooms better ventilated than call centres?)
Tags: customer service|
-
Punishing individuals for societal failures
Published by
on
I tried private practice once, criminal defence law specifically. I didn’t last very long at it.
In part this was because I was brand new and the learning culture was more sink or swim than mentoring. I remember getting berated once by the person on the bench – presumably into the record – because I had not promptly appeared in their courtroom, which was because I was trapped in another courtroom. My attempts to explain this were seen as disrespectful; my role was to stand there quietly and get berated for structural problems.
Another factor was that it was just so depressing. The clients were, for the most part, people who needed life help but were instead getting criminalized. The only help I could offer was getting them out on bail but, in the absence of food and shelter and mental health services and actual choice, they often just got slapped with more charges including now, as a bonus, breach of conditions. It was a revolving door of human misery and it was pointless. All of that money could have been spent helping them, but instead we punished them for society’s failures.
I did a research paper about drug treatment courts once, for the John Howard Society of Canada, with the guidance of the indefatigable and kind Graham Stewart (then Executive Director). If I recall correctly, what I read showed that people remain under the supervision of the court for longer this way than when they plead out, which is intrusive. I think I also learned that outcomes are better when a person has access to high-quality voluntary addiction services than when they are shunted into services via the criminal law system, and that voluntary services are cheaper too, without that added layer of government involvement. But good luck, person in need, getting easy access to preventive, voluntary, high-quality mental health services when most of the budget goes to cops and “correctional” institutions and their surveillance and control tech.
Then I spent years on Parliament Hill, where I learned that even politicians whose rhetoric is compassion and evidence and results will knowingly throw money away to punish people rather than help them. The problem was not, it turned out, that they were unaware.
We do, as a society, love to punish people for things that are beyond their control.
|
-
Paying people for their work
Published by
on
I was very stubborn at someone today re: the principle that they deserved to be paid for their work.
I’ve been seeing a lot of reluctance to this idea, including from government workers who are expected to donate their own time and resources to their employer, effectively subsidizing their own jobs.
It blows my mind that “payment for labour” is a radical position under capitalism. Or maybe it’s technically an accepted position but “labour” has been defined to exclude basic human facts and also all sorts of effort.
People are so used to being extracted from as part of the “bargain” of a job, which often begins with the usually unpaid, often absurd gauntlet that is the hiring process. I think this creates an expectation and a culture of employees doing unpaid labour, particularly when and where everything feels precarious.
We make exceptions, because we care. We devote extra hours and bankroll work supplies. Sometimes we perform significant emotional labour for clients or coworkers or even management. We sacrifice our “free” time to be a team player or a workhorse. We are expected to smile infinitely, even where work doesn’t pay enough to live, even where our health is suffering.
I doubt I can succeed at convincing governments and corporations to care about their workers and customers more than their money. But I can insist on personally living the radical principle that people deserve to be paid for their work.
I’m sorry that this makes people uncomfortable.
-
-
About the author
CKirkby
- earned degrees in language / literature and law (but is not currently a lawyer or a journalist);
- worked for over a decade on Parliament Hill;
- misses writing; and
- appreciates thoughtful comments, en anglais ou en français. (Email addresses are not published.)
Categories
Archive