[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by RyeJay

Hilary Beaumont's work seems to be getting more popular. I know people in the Moncton area who frequent her material. I find her work enjoyable. In person, she's one of the prettiest, most friendly girls you'll ever meet, definitely. It's nice to see someone so passionate about journalism.

I'm flabbergasted at such a condescending, sexist comment. Does that mean that hard-nosed, less "pretty" women are not good journalists?

The easiest answer, an answer that I frequently hear from my conservative friends, is that ANYTHING regarding the economy: we should simply just ignore it and allow the market to "do its thing," (even though that has clearly shown to produce a level of poverty that eventually undermines our system of capitalism due to a stagnation in cash flow from the middle classes, since captial eventually becomes monopolised to the upper classes/largest private enterprises without appropriate regulations and taxation).

That presumes that nobody will ever work to improve themselves, to get ahead; that it is the role of govt to be the heavy hand that brings everyone to equal levels of misery. That is wrong.

I do not wish for communism by any means, but we do need to have modest regulations so that affordable housing can be better incorporated into more private developments in all major regions of the city; and by affordable, I mean someone living on minimum wage.

That is absurd. If I were to do a new development on Young Avenue or Inglis Street, it is foolish to expect that someone on minimum wage should aspire to live in such a location.

We need to admit that there are individuals, in what is a quickly growing segment of Canadian society, who will earn minimum wage for their entire life. These people are the working poor -- because 'minimum wage' has not kept up with inflation, the rising cost of living.

The poor will always be with us. Nothing govt can do about that.

(Elizabeth Warren, an American Senator from Massachusetts, is someone who has been advocating that a more numerically honest minimum wage would be just over $20, for instance.)

Warren is a nattering left-wing harpie who is the epitome of the Massachusetts champagne socialist. Only in a place like that would she get elected over a solid middle of the road type like Scott Brown.

Although modest regulations on the private sector are an obvious step in approaching this problem, we need to explore our options for more government housing. The subsidised housing needs to be located on the peninsula as well -- and yes, even the downtown. There are minimum wage jobs located in the downtown. It's better for the city's traffic congestion and for the financial well-being of these minimum wage employees if they live closer to their jobs.

Uniacke Square is a fine example of what you describe. A low rent area close to downtown. Not sure we need more of those. Those minimum wage workers that work downtown can take the bus.

This needs to be addressed, because most new jobs in Canada have been minimum wage retail jobs. Most Canadians are going to be the working poor.

Nonsense. It is a matter of choice. You can educate yourself, take appropriate training, and get a good-paying new economy job. Or you can do nothing and clean toilets all your life.

I don't think gentrification can be entirely stopped -- and nor do I think it should. At the same time though, we need to prevent the creation of ghettos and slums in the suburbs, which are expensive to police. A mix of affordable housing throughout the city is a balanced approach that will help give the working poor more options as well as job opportunities and a chance at some social mobility.

Unless you wish to recreate East Germany there will always be affluent areas and less affluent areas in our society. They are not life sentences. The policy option should not be to attempt to fix the ills of society through artificial land use planning policies. The key is education and breaking the mindset in ghettoized areas that the way out is through drug dealing and crime, or that the only thing the future holds is dependence upon the govt dole. That is a culture that is much tougher to fix, but is the only way to solve the long-term problem. Unfortunately people like Ms. Beaumont, the good Rev. Britton and others prefer to ignorantly decry the ills of improving neighborhoods in order to perpetuate the poverty cycle.