If everyone voted for a wealth tax we could have small apartments and counseling for the homeless. No more homeless in our streets. :) the surplus of cash could also improve our infrastructure. More public transportation and bullet trains 😉
Half of the system exists to prevent people from exploiting the system. Most likely at a net loss. As in, it costs more to prevent people from exploiting the system, than would be lost by people exploiting the system.
Definitely at a net loss. It always costs more to police the system than is ever recovered or saved. The benefits given to any single person are insignificant to a government budget.
The fraud occurs on the service provider side. Medicare/Medicaid providers are a big one but anyone that collects the dispersement of these services since those create literal billionaires and aka support the exploiter class.
You shouldn’t think of it that way. It’s not about saving money, it’s about punishing, dehumanizing and marginalizing people in need and sadly, in the eyes of some people it’s worth it
It would preferably be about targetting the most egregious cases of fraud, as they’re the most risky for both parties (the government, and the majority of recipients). Those extreme cases are the ones most likely to endanger such programs.
…i guess I’m not completely against all oversight. Even though “not doing extreme acts of fraud” is a pretty loose condition (which probably applies across the majority of society anyways, wish it applied to the ruling classes and elites a bit more though).
Why end the homelessness crisis when you can criminalize homelessness and have an endless supply of slaves to produce “proudly made in america” things for 15cts an hour ? If you think the bourgeoisie isn’t that cynical, I have a bridge to sell you. It’s the people who caused the fentanyl epidemic by getting regular folks hooked on opioids for profits we’re talking about. Who do you think’s causing the homelessness crisis in the first place ?
Why end homelessness when we can hire our political friends high salaries to hold meetings and surveys to try to think of a possible solution? In America, it is an industry in itself.
Why end the homelessness crisis when you can criminalize homelessness and have an endless supply of slaves to produce “proudly made in america” things for 15cts an hour ?
Because slave labor is notoriously inefficient relative to precarious industrial labor (particularly as your prison population ages), the cost of incarceration eclipses the savings (especially as housing/energy costs climb), and the cruelty inflicted on the populous undermines the health and well-being of the overall population in a way that stunts technological and cultural development.
States like Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma are case studies in economic mismanagement through mass incarceration. Four of the highest incarceration rates in the country and some of the worst economic growth in the nation.
Trying to treat homelessness through incarceration is a bit like trying to treat malnutrition through cannibalism. The policy is inherently wasteful and destructive, sacrificing far more than one might hope to create.
If you think the bourgeoisie isn’t that cynical, I have a bridge to sell you.
The real value of mass incarceration is not in the people you incarcerate but in the submissive atmosphere you cultivate outside the incarcerated group. Mass arrests create a functional economic blacklist of racial cohorts and social dissidents. Associating with these people can be as poisonous for your welfare as being one of them. And “high crime” neighborhoods can be targeted for “economic redevelopment” which often means mass displacement of residents through state seizure of property and other “slum clearance” measures.
I don’t doubt there’s cynicism in the modern incarceration system. But it goes a lot deeper than just “arrest a guy and press gang them”. An enormous component of the War on Crime was busting up minority social welfare groups (The Black Panthers, most famously, but ACORN and BLM in more recent iterations) and scattering their non-incarcerated members.
We’re seeing the same thing play out on college campuses. Organizers and leaders are targeted for arrest and expulsion in order to break up cliches of students focused on that individual leadership.
Even in the short-term, mass incarceration is - at best - a loss leader. And if you look at what’s happening in the UK right now, even their police and prisons are getting cannibalized by a government intent on gutting every conceivable public service.
They’re farther along the death spiral than we are, but we’re all headed in the same direction.
The major “desired” impact, I suspect, is not in direct profits from the slave labor but in the wage suppression that it causes outside of the prison population.
You’re missing a critical point. The cost of housing the inmates is borne by the taxpayers. The profit from the labor is reaped by the corporations. It doesn’t matter how inefficient it is, all the costs are borne by taxpayers, so it’s perfect for businesses.
The cost of housing the inmates is borne by the taxpayers.
The cost of housing prisoners is far higher than the cost of housing the homeless. And it isn’t as though incarcerated people weren’t employed prior to arrest.
Moving a farm worker or a retail clerk to a chain gang isn’t economically efficient even discounting the moral atrocity.
It doesn’t matter how inefficient it is.
It matters immensely. And you can see it in the sector growth of states with high incarceration rates.
The motivations behind this policy aren’t purely economic. A lot of it just boils down to fascist bigotry.
The cruelty isn’t a means to an end. It is the end itself.
The cost of housing the inmates is borne by the taxpayers. The profit from the labor is reaped by the corporations.
From a company’s perspective, you have rock bottom labor costs but you can sell your product at whatever price the market will bear.
You’re considering “the economy” as a single unit but it’s not. The public and private spheres have very different interests, and the private sphere is generally much more powerful.
Outside jobs can be coveted because they typically pay more and some states deposit a small percentage earned into a savings account for prisoners’ eventual release.
Who takes the rest? The prison.
Look up what these jobs produce and how they are remunerated.
I really wish things like this can happen in the US. With the amount of money we spend on stupid shit, we could more than end homelessness and then some.
All these Universal Basic * programs seem to work, and the only things holding them back are rich people not wanting to be taxed, and the people they have brainwashed into supporting them.
Depends on what you want. Handgun: reliable semiauto Glocks/SIGs/etc. can be had new around $500. Cheaper revolvers and semis can be had for around $200-250, but you can also go nuts and spend thousands on rarer or more pointless compensatory things like a Desert Eagle or a Smith and Wesson 500.
Shotguns: entry-level single shot break action at Walmart for around $125; the classic Remington 870 pump has Express models as low as $350 and Wingmaster models $900; popular Mossberg 500 is around $400-$500. For Benelli or something else fancy you can expect to pay much more.
Rifles: basic .22-cal Ruger with cheap scope for $125; decent .270-.308 bolt-action hunting rifles start around $300-600 with cheap scopes; entry-level AR-15 /AR-10 are in that same range with just iron sights; higher quality or more exotic round sizes start around $600 and quickly jump into the thousands. For good rifle scopes you can often expect to pay more than the rifle itself.
I think you have to have an FFL (dealer) license or pay some hefty additional fees if you want to own a fully-automatic gun. Having shot many of them, it seems like a lot more hassle and cost than they’re worth. The first couple times you shoot one are really fun, but the initial excitement quickly wears off and they just become something overly heavy you don’t want to have to carry or clean/maintain.
Used doesn’t necessarily mean less expensive, as the first thing a lot of people do is add fancypants aftermarket stuff. Models that are no longer manufactured demand a premium, as do models that are seen as historically reliable.
My numbers may be off, as I havent hunted for years and haven’t really looked at prices for 5-10 years. Truth be told, ammunition is where the real money sink lies.
A 9mm handgun can be as cheap as $100, however that is for a quite poor quality gun (hipoint). For something that is more standard, higher quality handgun like the Glock 19 is around $500.
There are some additional fees, if you buy online you have to have it shipped to an FFA which may charge you, in my state, you either need a conceal carry permit, or a ‘pistol purchase permit’ the conceal carry is like a lifetime pass to buy guns, with the idea being you proved you can be safe by doing the CCW courses and exams. The pistol purchase permit is like $15 and involves a background check.
Private sales require no ancillary permits or anything, so a used hi point 9mm could probably realistically be as low as $50-$75 if it were quite beat up.
A box of ammo for a 9mm may cost around $20 for 20 bullets depending on where you live and such.
That seems cheap and it is. But for regular use at a shooting range for example, a single box would only last a couple a minutes. If you wanted to go for an ‘all day’ thing at the range, it would cost $100-$200 (about 200 rounds) plus the fees for the range, $20 - $100 depending on the place, unless you have safe private property. Though with a hi point, it will probably fall apart before you get 200 rounds through it 😅.
Things do get real expensive though for people like shooting as a hobby, as more exotic ammo can get very expensive ($10-$15 a bullet or even higher)
Because of the way media seems to work these days.
There is no denying that a small percentage of homeless people are too far gone to help and would rather live that way for whatever reason.
Any person with some critical thought should be able to remove them from the discussion and focus on the vast majority of homeless people that can be helped, where the media will just show this one person and be like see there isn’t any point.
The same can be seen for peaceful protests. We have 10,000 people protesting peacefully and one lunatic being violent. We all know what the news will show the next day.
I read an interview with Bezos once a while ago, and he was asked why he didn’t use his wealth to help end homelessness. I’m paraphrasing here, but he said they did a study and they concluded poverty and homelessness was a moral issue and couldn’t be solved. Not that I believe for a second he actually did a study, and that a valid, science backed study would conclude that. What a total and complete piece of shit.
Hardworking people got more shitty neigbours… Thats not a solution, its just moving the problem inside.
We have this shit in sweden and I have observed it up close. Fucker didn’t want to work nor get clean. He was comfortable with his daycare for adults… They have this thing called work training - building products that no one buys to practice working…
Had a contact that could get him a job, he just said thats for idiots and I’m not and an idiot. Rather do his work training than get a real job and a real salary…
He’s dead now, killed him self with an overdoze from the anxiety medicine they prescribed to him.
So these things looks good on paper, but in real life not so much. Hope he’s and exception and not the rule.
I personally dont believe in it, I was on the same path once. Some hard truths got me on the right path again, worked hard, took alot of shit and today cant recognize my old self.
i’m genuinely happy you were able to get yourself together.
just know that there are any number of reasons someone else might not have your strength or capacity for change, or might not yet have reached a readiness for change like you did.
They solved his immediate problem of being homeless. I’d rather have a few shitty neighbors than to have people living and dying because they lack shelter.
I wouldn’t take this comment as anything but an anecdote. This is how some homeless people can be, so the take away is that the homelessness problem cannot be completely solved with housing. Some people are just cripplingly dysfunctional. They need more than housing, they need care takers. Just handing out keys to an apartment next to families to a dysfunctional drug addict who will smoke, vandalize and play loud music at night is not fair to the neighbors. These are normal middle-class people complaining, not some billionaire who can’t stand the sight of a peasant lol.
Because it sounds like your argument is that you live in a shithole both inside and outside and it will be less of a shithole if there are a bunch of homeless people around.
So am I understanding you correctly, that you say homeless are homeless because they shat not in bathroom? Shitting in outhouse is not a preferable living condition, but it cannot be reason why they are homeless.
And his life would have been even worse if he was on the street. I honestly don’t see the problem in this story. Someone with mental health issues had a place to live? Ended up dying to suicide? It’s a sad story but also the housing doesn’t seem at fault at all?
ideally like everyone has access to housing so there’s no “taking up space”?
how do you know it was a waste of time? maybe he has loved ones who he supported and brightened the loved ones, maybe if his mental health were better supported he would have thrived? not everything is about working. his life was not a waste of time, and even if he died, I’m sure it was better to die having housing than to die on the street, forgotten and discarded.
Dont agree, in a big city with demand bigger than the supply. So many people had to stand aside for people like him to not pay rent on time, get evicted for drinking. Its not fair.
We all tried our best, but he was just selfish and didnt want to change nor be a grownup. His daughter just wasted 10 years waiting for the call or the ring on the door until it came.
If there’s a program that is supposed to provide housing for everyone, and there aren’t enough houses … it’s the government’s fault for the wait list, not the individual.
We have a similar system in Sweden, strong social safety nets etc. Some years ago I volunteered in a soup kitchen giving free food to anyone, and saw some homeless people. We can offer apartments etc, but some people are not able to handle it due to mental illness and/or substance abuse. It’s quite sad, but ending homelessness completely is very difficult, and requires health care efforts on many levels.
i think it’s more accurate to say that a tiny percentage want to be homeless, and a slightly larger percentage only want to be homeless when their chronic mental illness or serious addiction is particularly elevated; they will need support to stabilize their lives more than once.
and typically, even the tiny percentage actively choosing it likely also have chronic mental health issues but have created a functional life for themselves. example - i knew a former vet some years ago who chose to remain unhoused. he had a lot of skills and worked off and on as needed. he also had some paranoia/delusions. he had autonomy over his life and felt safer the way he lived.
i think part of the problem is that the process of seeking services can be so slow and brutal, so it’s just easier not to bother. while my city has nationally recognized support for people experiencing homelessness, it also involves as much as a month of sleeping outside with others who may not be safe or stable yet, and being certain places and certain times every day during that wait. some feel safer and better able to meet their needs on the street; honestly, for some they’re right.
I don’t disagree, but at the same time, there are mentally ill people who have had the opportunity to get treatment for their illness and refused or rejected the treatment that they have gotten. There are many examples of mentally ill people who just stop taking their meds because they don’t like how the meds make them feel and they shouldn’t be forced to take them. So if someone is mentally ill, doesn’t want help, and wishes to be homeless. Let them. But anyone who wants help, give them help.
well said. i don’t think our perspectives are particularly different on this topic.
also sorry, i have this habit of dumping my thoughts connected to a number of comments on one person, you got lucky! i think because you mentioned people choosing it, and i think a lot of people use that as an excuse to argue against efforts to help when people want it or are ready, or to help only as much as they prefer.
In Sweden and Denmark, where I am from, it’s technically illegal to not be provided with a roof over your head. But as you say, some people just can’t live in a home, for various reasons. Some even choose to be homeless or more precisely; be a vagabond.
In Sweden, there are cracks in the system, especially if you are homeless but an illegal immigrant or from Romania (a common example). There are services but a big hurdle is having to have a legal personnummer or coordination number (though I’m told that doesn’t work for everything). In student towns, lots of homelessness is also among students. It’s even more difficult if you are a drug user. A lot of times the only shelters in the area are offered by churches and non profits which don’t have a large capacity and serve on a first-come-first-get basis.
I wish they would expand this to cover more vulnerable groups. I would love to see Housing First applied in Sweden. Since the recent inflation crisis, I notice more homeless people.
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