Dickens would be horrified by our poverty
When I was campaigning in Canada’s 2015 federal election, I knocked on thousands of doors with a candidate (now an MP) in some areas that were relatively poor. Having doors slammed in our faces was not rare; though a particular incident continues to haunt me.
Upon introducing myself, a man reacted by swearing loudly enough to wake someone in coma. What began as a verbal (though legal) assault led to a conversation that boiled down to a simple question: after decades of working hard, why was he so financially poor?
We live in a country in which a few people can buy fancy yachts, private jets and drop millions of dollars on paintings; one in which some Canadians are free to literally buy chunks of this planet, in the form of private islands, while others are homeless and rely on food banks to survive. The ghost of Dickens would be horrified at our level of inequality.
In the beginning of this year, the international NGO Oxfam astounded many observers by noting that the two richest Canadians had a combined wealth equal to the collective bottom 30 per cent of Canadians, or 11 million people.
Those two individuals reflect the broader problem quite accurately. The fact that the top 100 richest Canadians are each worth more than $1 billion is confounding when we consider the struggles of homelessness and food banks, in addition to issues that extend well into the middle class: Ontario’s compromised health-care system, unaffordable housing, soaring tuition costs and a job market that lacks the opportunities afforded in the post-Second World War golden age of capitalism.
If Scrooge was around, he’d celebrate the fact families can’t afford a second kid because of child-care costs. The miser would probably refer to his cheap “surplus population” line.
Such inequality leads to a state in which much of the population reasonably desires (and needs) more money, while sometimes falling prey to a popular fantasy: more money equals more happiness. Here, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is timely because it rejects that over-simplistic myth. The abhorrent Scrooge had enormous financial wealth, but was in dire poverty when it came to happiness.
Being wealthy and not happy hardly clashes with the conclusions that many psychologists (and social scientists) have reached. Many who have studied the re- lationship between money and happiness have concluded that after a certain point, more wealth doesn’t lead to more smiling.
In one study, prominent scholars Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton concluded that “high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness.” Additional studies have concluded that spending money on others supports individual happiness.
Moreover, the joy experienced by Tiny Tim shouldn’t be overlooked. In Dickens’ story, both the crippled boy and his family are happy despite barely being able to meet essential needs. It would be easy to find armies of social psychologists to explain away this happiness based on strong and meaningful relationships.
These are the very types of relationship that a transformed and philanthropic Scrooge rediscovered after being haunted. No doubt his transformation was romantic, though good deeds from the wealthy are not idealistic. In the real world, we can undoubtedly find wealthy people who are using their power to carve more justice on this planet.
But as a group, the ghost of Dickens’ classic novel would indict today’s super rich, not only because we have entered into a state of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age (i.e. late 19th century).
A Christmas Carol reminds us that Canada needn’t be haunted by the tribulations of homelessness, food banks and the like, simply because of the abundance of our wealth.
In a country rich with natural resources, incredible human talent and individuals who possess a level of wealth that even the pathological Scrooge couldn’t have fathomed, the unnecessary evils of our time should have never been born, let alone allowed to exist.
Thus the moral of this story: If Scrooge could ultimately transform, surely Canada can improve.