That's a very good question. I think the main problem we see in northern economies is that people are often living on extraordinarily low incomes, and the cost of living is extremely high, twice as high, or three times as high if we're just looking at food.
Trying to support the northern economy by shipping stuff up from the south, given the cost of energy, given the cost of food, is not really sustainable, and this is why we always bring it back to income. We can talk about how we respond to low income. We can talk about how we respond to poverty, but if we're not.... We don't talk, for example, about stock and flow. We talk about poverty as if it's the same people who are living in poverty year after year after year, when the reality is that hundreds of thousands of people fall into poverty each year and many others climb out of poverty each year.
I agree that we need to make people who are in poverty for long periods of time a focus. I think a lot of indigenous northern residents would fall into this category, but I think we also need to focus on preventing poverty because if you prevent people from falling into poverty, then you are going to see it drop significantly.
I'm not sure I totally answered your question, though.
