Tsimshian author Calvin Helin will be at the Lester Centre of the Arts at 6 p.m. tomorrow night (Oct. 23) for the Prince Rupert launch of his new book, “The Economic Dependency Trap: Breaking Free to Self-Reliance.” Helin was born in Lax Kw’alaams and published his first book, “Dances with Dependency,” in 2006 (he’s seen at a book signing for his first book, above). His first book became quite popular, and is still much-discussed and praised around Prince Rupert. Muskeg News‘ Chris Armstrong contacted him over the phone on October 20 to discuss his second book. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation. (For the full transcript, click here.)
Chris Armstrong: What inspired you to write this book?
Calvin Helin: In writing my first book, Dances with Dependency, I recognized that there were forms of economic dependency that impact everybody. And because they have creeped into our society and throughout the world over a long period of time, we don’t recognize them– we start to see them as just part of the way life is. And arguably they’re creating just as serious problems in the mainstream society as exists with the kind of problems economic dependency is creating with aboriginal people.
CA: So can we see this as sort of a follow-up to your first book?
CH: My first book was written about aboriginal people; this book applies to everybody. And it’s the first book ever to basically take all the principles of economic dependency and set out what those principles are and how they’re universal and how they govern the relations of people and how they govern the relations of governments. There’s essentially four kinds of economic dependency that I identify. There is government-to-citizen, and you know the aboriginal situation is one I’ve written about in Dances with Dependency. But that same dependency situation exists with governments and all citizens that are accepting welfare and are taking welfare whether they’re inner-city African Americans or Latinos or what they now call the growing white underclass in the U.S.
And the reason why this kind of system doesn’t work for people has to do with a couple of things. When I first heard the line in the song by the Quebecois songwriter Felix Leclerc that said the best way to kill a man is to pay him for doing nothing, it made very big common sense to me, but I didn’t really know why. And then I thought about what my grandmother used to tell me when I was a little kid, growing up in the village of Lax Kw’alaams or Port Simpson. She would say when I was moping around the house, “if you wanna feel better about yourself, go outside and do something useful and you feel better about yourself.” And that really is a very profound thing to say because it’s at the heart of why welfare doesn’t work.
When you get that welfare cheque, it bypasses the psychological payoff you need to feel that you’re worth something, and that’s of course why the best way to kill a man is to pay him for doing nothing. And when people hear me speak sometimes and they’ve not read my book, they tend to think I’m against welfare. But I think welfare has a role in a wealthy society where people are unable to work. But if you’re employable and you can find work, you should work. But what our welfare policy does, it enables an ongoing cycle of dysfunction and dependency, and it traps generations of people into poverty. And that’s why I’m speaking out about this.
We can no longer afford this kind of welfare system. To take for example the United States, they are $130 trillion in debt by a recent estimate of their federal government, state and municipal government debt, when it took Great Britain until 2007 to repay $80 billion in war debt from Canada and United States, how long is it going to take to pay off $130 trillion? When you look at the demographics – even if any of your audience disagrees with everything I say, the demographics are such that, for example in the United States, 80 million Americans are getting set to retire. Those people will no longer be paying into the social welfare system of government taxes, and they themselves will be reliant on very expensive government welfare programs like health care. You have your fastest-growing population segments accruing in the minorities who are also over-represented in using these social welfare programs already.
“I think welfare has a role in a wealthy society where people are unable to work. But if you’re employable and you can find work, you should work. But what our welfare policy does, it enables an ongoing cycle of dysfunction and dependency, and it traps generations of people into poverty. And that’s why I’m speaking out about this.”
~Calvin Helin
CA: So in all these cases of economic dependency that you’ve brought up, how can we learn from these examples and stop it?
CH: Well that’s the whole subject of my book I’m just releasing, The Economic Dependency Trap. First of all, before I talk about that, I think I’d like to talk about one that impacts not just poor people, but impacts everybody. And this is a case of – a category – of what I call intra-family dependency. In the wealthy classes all over the world right now, particularly in the West, since the mid-1990s, this is the first generation of people that have had either so much welfare access to such easy credit, that we’re buying our children material things either to live vicariously through them or to give them things we feel we’re deprived of. So you have a generation of people that never had to struggle, like probably you did, or, you know, in my case I certainly did. So what’s happening is these kids are never being challenged, they’re growing up with always being given things, and so they’re developing what psychologists call “affluenza,” and it’s a very severe problem. And the ironic thing about it is that it results in the same mindset developing as somebody on a reserve or somebody on welfare. You end up with this huge sense of entitlement with the inability to be self-sufficient. It comes with, you know, as part of the psychological profile, you end up with learned helplessness, the inability to cope, and it leads to depression. It’s quite a serious problem. And so the funny thing about all this, I guess also the paradox of it all, is it’s our wealth that’s creating this problem.
CA: So from what I understand, the state of economic dependency that we’re in right now is all-encompassing. So whether or not you’re poor or affluent or even middle-class, it seems like you’re part of this economic dependency trap. Am I reading that correctly?
CH: You are if you’re giving wealth and nothing’s being done in return for it. Because of what I talked about, about why welfare doesn’t work. Mind you, you can give things, but it must be done with a clear plan and a vision. You know, helping people with education, of course, is a good way to give it away that’s likely to lead to positive results.
CA: All this change and all this trap of economic dependency, it sounds like a very difficult cycle to break. How hopeful are you that it will be broken in the future?
CH: Well, if we don’t think about this and address this, you know, it’s possible we could be facing another Great Depression. And then you’re just not going to have a choice. Right now we do have a choice and we can make a difference and people can make a difference to their lives. But we have to have some sort of dialogue about these issues and we can’t pretend they don’t exist. On the one hand, I don’t mean to be the messenger of bad news, but this reality exists whether I talk about it or not. Aren’t we better off dealing with it?
~Images courtesy of Orca Spirit Publishing