Write your own topic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Write your own topic - Essay Example The basic distinction in views lies in identifying whether poverty is to be measured as a relative or absolute concept. On one side there is an unofficial coalition of government agencies, departments and many private sector organizations who posit their common mandate to be alleviating poverty. This group is in essence socialistic in its support for a highly regulated economy where, significant increases in government spending towards social problems are favoured (Goldberg & Pulkingham, 1999). On the other hand, there is the ‘pro-market’ coalition. This group is populated by both government and private sector agencies and institutions which converge towards a primary objective of promoting business in Canada and increasing trade between Canada and other nations. The ‘pro-business’ group supports a much less regulated economy and may be classified as political and fiscal conservatives who favour much less spending by the government on social issues and decreased taxation (Ligaya, 2007). The difference among these groups regarding the notion of poverty and its measurement finds its source in the way poverty is defined and measured by each of these groups. The first group assumes income to be the defining quality and arrives at a set of poverty lines for both individuals and families for different regions. As an example, the poverty line was set to be $33,365 for a family of four persons living in Toronto in 2004. Thus, families with similar characteristics whose pre-tax income was less than the foresaid amount were said to be living in poverty (Pohl, 2002). The second coalition, the ‘pro business’ group, contradicts the first group by describing their measures to be too broad to be pragmatic and thus deducing that, the set poverty lines resulting from the measures are inflated; thereby exaggerating condition of poverty in Canada. This group adopts a definition of poverty which is more restrictive and their means of measuring poverty