Re: Think about others for a moment (Postscript, Aug. 31)
I remember a time in Victoria when there were no food banks, but due to changing taxation policy and unmet cost of living increases, temporary food banks began to appear. With dismay I noted that permanence set in when the provincial government saw that churches and community groups would attempt to make up the difference when employment insurance and welfare rates didn’t match rising costs for basic needs, and more and more people were “becoming poor.”
Food banks and soup kitchens became a convenient way to transfer responsibility for egalitarian social services from the many to the few. At the same time, the working poor were subjected to heavy tax rates in comparison to tax advantages being extended to the most wealthy.
It is the same across North America, where the gap between the most impoverished and most affluent has grown to a shocking degree, largely as a result of growing corporate power.
Yes, we should contribute to food banks if we are able – the need is there. Yes also, we must return public policy to the previously humane degree of equality, by ceasing to starve government funding via unfair tax rates.
Corporations and wealthy individuals should indeed “pay their fair share” so that less fortunate children, seniors, and jobless adults in this well-to-do country need not go hungry.
Whether one’s motives are Christian, humanitarian, or any number of other sources, it is a disgrace to leave things as they are.
Connie Foss More
Saanich
