Thinkers Say Scrap Child-Tax Benefit

It\'s interesting that these great thinkers are trying to find a way to make people,especially single parent households work harder, attach the credit to their paycheque. Nice idea, anyone who has ever been a single parent knows they are usually, worked to death to start with, they don\'t need anyone\'s thumb on their head to motivate them. This is just more of the same old..., poverty will increase and the employer will hold all the cards!

Yay for workfare, which is what this is. Not.

God forbid you\'re a stay-at-home mom, which I\'ve been for most of the past four years. So what if you can\'t make more than a $5 a day profit by working outside the home because of the costs of child-care! You won\'t get your measly little cheque unless you do! I get a huge (sarcasm) $80 a month for two kids because my husband \"makes too much\" as a welder which is ridiculous when his has generally been the only income to pay for the family--we\'ve been living paycheque to paycheque for years, and that\'s only thanks to a lot of sacrifices.

Not to mention they also already claw back the benefit for people who are on welfare, so good luck to them too. Read mel\'s \"Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids.\"

This idea stinks. It\'ll make life even worse for people unfortunate enough to be poor.

What kind of society do we really want? More and more we see it children,being raised by strangers, who\'s morals etc are not the same as the parents, if they are allowed to impose any at all. Children need to be taught at an early age, nurtured and know they are loved and cared for by their parents, it is very sad that our society is saying,\' get out and work you lazy bums\', as if raising children was not an important job! In fact it is the most important job anyone will ever do, helping to create the future minds, our future academics, our future societal contributors, no wonder we have such high rates of juvenile crime now; nobody is at home, apparently nobody cares. This change would only help to reinforce those values!!! Sick sick sick, those who are the working rich, have nannies, housekeepers etc etc, those who are working poor, work all day outside the home and then put in another 8 or 10 hrs doing the housework, also there is the finding a daycare that works when you do, bundling up babies in the middle of winter to drop them off at a daycare, what if they are sick(been there done it); when exactly do the children get their parents attention??

If we really cared about the future of our children and therefore our society, we would give incentives to parents to stay home and raise their children, it would reduce crime rates, it would decrease unemployment, many people want to raise their own children but can\'t because of poverty, working one full time and often a part-time job, just to make ends meet, doesn\'t leave time to properly care for children. Some of you will say if you can\'t afford it don\'t have children...I say bull to that, as we know if keep on not reproducing we will not have workers to support our system in the future. Also it is a basic and natural process to reproduce and it should be encouraged, not discouraged.

We have become so materialistic now that the government can\'t even see the stupidity in such a counterproductive idea! It has become such a selfserving society that people can only see that without the burden of raising children, the adults would have more free time to work for the slave-drivers. No future in this, as far as I can see!

You can blame corporate Canada and corporate America for that. Bottom line. That says it all.

It takes two working parents to raise the kids and pay for the food and rent. Why is that ?

Who made it so ? Back in the 50\'s and 60\'s my dad worked, my mom stayed home, and we had four kids. Go figure.

Who would you blame for the economic mess we\'re in ?

Let\'s start with the government we\'ve had for the past 30 years. A good place to start.

Will it get any better soon ? Not with Paul Martin at the helm, for sure.

Looking like the NDP/CAP venture had better work out, or we are in for more and more of the same.

Keep emailing Jack Layton. I am.



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"Arrogance in Politics is unacceptable"
Jim Callaghan
Minden, Ontario
705-286-1860
www.misterc.ca

Who the hell are these \"think-tankers?\" Every time I hear the words, think-tank, I shudder. Here is another case of blaming the poor, or old or the just plain having a hard time dealing with life, for their problems.
So we\'re gonna punish the children for the sins of their parents\'. Maybe if we make it really hard for them, they\'ll learn a lesson.
Wow!
How dare they not be born wealthy, or healthy or the right color or the right frame of mind. Don\'t get me wrong here, I\'m not justifying sloth or drunkeness or abusing of children. I\'m also not rationalizing away the reasons for their poor states of being either. I\'m simply saying that a society so rich so very blessed with material things must avoid the word \'mine\' and start to think about \'ours\' and \'us\' rather than always \'me.\' it\'s time to realize that a nation is like a living body. When one part is ill...the other parts rally to help. Even if that help is rejected or doesn\'t have the outcome we expect/want, the body must own all of its parts.
I\'m angry now. I\'m angry at intolerance. All the hiding behind dogma instead of thinking for ourselves. I\'m angry at myself, for the years I wasted thinking the same way that the think-tankers did. So, I\'ve answered my first question and come round to the starting point of change.

I heartily agree with your sentiment! Layton effectively uses the analogy of being a householder with running this government. Do we pay down our mortgate when our children do not have warm clothes or enough food to eat? What I find very discouraging is how many working poor people espouse the popular propoganda that the homeless or welfare recipients have only themselves to blame and should go out and get a job. Is this a product of our corporate owned media\'s propoganda, or the Stockholm syndrom which essentially is victims\' identifying and assuming the values of the Agressor (read corp Canada). Either way, what is needed is a major shift in our collective values to put people and the environment ahead of the bottom line. Our and our children\'s survival on this planet is on the line.
Here is an interesting, obscene link in the face of this article. It features a poster showing the salaries of our top CEO\'s. www.socialjustice.org

I agree that this is part of a problem of seeing traditionally \"women\'s work\" such as raising kids as somehow less important than work outside the home--and many women now also seem to disparage it as being \"unliberated\" to want to look after your own kids, which almost seems to me like taking on the patriarchal ideas that \"women\'s work\" is less important than \"man\'s work\". I love working and find it fulfilling but why is it more acceptable to be a \"working\" mother rather than a mother who considers mothering/parenting (and house work) work? Women, including working women, end up doing the bulk of unpaid labour like parenting even in our supposedly progressive Canadian society, and for no thanks. Instead we get programs like this. We\'re now expected to do it ALL, and all at once.

Just in time, given that real Canadian wages have gone down in the last 20 years! How do you measure how hard people work anyway? By how much money they make? By how many hours they work? This is how the government and the corporations are getting around the standard 40 hour work week. And all these rich pigs in the \'stink tanks\' want to see it all regress even further! Piece by piece, they are creating slavery! The whips and chains aren`t there, but the economic conditions have been created to keep people living in fear of losing their homes or seeing their hydro shut off. Kids can`t afford to play hockey anymore. AND THIS IS CANADA! Oh, and these CEO`s and losers who sit in corporate boardrooms reward themselves with million dollar bonuses - EVEN FOR DISMAL FAILURE!

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Dave Ruston

Because the fiat currency system is quickly going to hell, the moneychangers are setting the stage for a two tier money system. For instance, Govt support money, ie. child credits, would become like \'food stamps\', reedemable for certain goods only. Money through wages would still be \'higher quality\' fiat currency, conceivably, you could still put it in the bank and collect your measily 1 or 2% interest. For the insightful, those that see the train barrelling down the tracks, he/she will of already got a pile of gold and silver, and have begun to stock up (hoarded) for the coming dark days (kondrateiff winter).

If we`re going by Kondratieff`s 50 year cycles, I hate to think that we`re currently in the summer of the 5th cycle! I feel the chill already!

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Dave Ruston