Part VI – A Deeper Look at GLI: How does responsibility fit in?

This web feature is Part VI in a series looking at the assumptions we have about guaranteed livable income. The first feature deconstructed the question of whether people would work if they had income security. Part II examined the issue of whether people have a right to income security, regardless of activity. Part III considered the availability of jobs in Canada, and whether it is reasonable to assume that every Canadian could have a job that would meet their needs. Part IV questioned whether policy makers and bureaucrats can truly and fairly judge the ability of others to engage in paid employment. Part V explored how our cultural notions of productivity have shaped our dominant perceptions about work.

“Why work when you can sit at home, have babies and collect welfare or overly generous employment insurance year after year?” Canada’s former minister of Human Resources and Social Development, Monte Solberg, asked in a newspaper column. For Solberg, the issue is one of responsibility. He criticized current government approaches as ineffective, musing “How do we help those who struggle in a way that encourages personal responsibility, independence and dignity?”

This is actually a fairly popular view of poverty and income security. Poverty, it is believed, is a matter of individual responsibility. The poor are those who have made bad choices, chief among them the choice not to hold a decent paying job. Providing income security – especially in an unconditional form such as a Guaranteed Livable Income – to those who are poor simply rewards irresponsibility. In order to end poverty, we need to punish people into developing self-discipline, so that they become responsible, productive members of society.

A prominent example of this discourse can be found in “Lending a Helping Hand: Welfare Policy in Canada,” by former Ontario premier Mike Harris and former leader of the Reform Party Preston Manning. They believe that people on welfare lack not only help and skills, but “motivation, and incentives” to change their lives, and that “dependence” sets in once people have received support, requiring “a push through that door” of opportunity. Government programs should be focused on helping people to lead “productive, independent lives.”

This view results in arguments for “tough love” approaches such as workfare, low benefits and limited eligibility for income support. It is expected that tougher rules will make people more self-sufficient, because of their strong “work incentive.”

However, there are a number of problems with this view. First of all, it fails to reflect the complex reality of modern poverty. It’s hard to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” when you can’t even afford boots. Not everyone has access to the same resources – our economic system is structured to create inequality, beginning with unequal opportunities and access to resources. Without any kind of support, some people will always be left behind.

Poor children have a greater than average chance of becoming poor adults. Those without access to education and training will be doomed to poorly paid, precarious work. Badly designed government programs force people to give up all their assets before receiving assistance, and then take away every dollar that they earn. Physical, mental and emotional disabilities can hinder a person’s employment prospects. And the reality is that our economy simply does not produce enough jobs for every person.

This view also fails to account for the very high proportion of working poor in Canada. In 2007, 60% of two parent families living in poverty in Canada received their principal income from employment and received no social assistance or Employment Insurance payments. These families can hardly be accused of dependence or irresponsibility.

Second, this view of responsibility lacks context. No one is truly independent of others. Even wealth is generated in the context of public infrastructure, government services and regulation, and the labour of others. Not all of this interdependency is positive either, as Canadian anti-poverty activist Jean Swanson notes: “In my value system, I think being dependent on profits creamed from paying extremely low wages should be more harmful to a person’s self-esteem than needing welfare to survive.”

Responsibility is an important element of CPJ’s public justice framework, but we also note that “Recognizing that dependence on God and our interdependence with others is part of our created nature, we must be careful not to define dependence and independence in strictly economic terms; where dependence is defined as receiving government income support and independence is defined as earning income in the paid labour force or from investments.”

Third, recognizing that we are all interdependent should lead us to a more holistic, communitarian sense of well-being. Moral responsibility compels us to look out for our neighbour and to care for the common good. 1 John 3:17 asks, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother and sister in need and yet refuses help?”

Recent work on well-being has demonstrated the negative impact of inequality on everyone’s health – rich and poor. More unequal societies have greater health and social problems, including lower life expectancy. We are all intimately connected to the society which we are part of. How can we talk about responsibility then without talking about the well-being of all members of our society?

Income security through a Guaranteed Livable Income can be one way in which we meet our responsibility to promote the well-being of every member of society, encouraging healthy interdependence and diminishing dependence on exploitative, poorly paid and precarious work.