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Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

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Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#421

Post by ageitgey »

toasterlovin wrote: post #261
ageitgey wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed 100%. I live in California which has the same massive homelessness issues as Seattle. I also travel to Europe frequently and have noticed the same stark contrast where they seem to do much better at this. To try to understand why homelessness feels so much worse an California than in Europe, I did some very basic research (which I also posted on a similar thread once before). The numbers are shocking: San Fran…

Curious if you've accounted for issues like metro area vs. city limits. It could very well be the case that the London contains more of it's metro area within city limits than San Francisco, thus increasing the divisor vs. the numerator.

SF has more unsheltered homeless people than the entire country of England according to these numbers. So even if SF's per-capita homeless rate is lower when you include some surrounding SF suburbs, it's still absolutely terrible and far worse than London.

And if you consider the whole Bay Area (which is closer to London in size), the homelessness rate remains very bad overall because homelessness is also very severe in Oakland and San Jose. Some of the smaller cities of course fair a lot better than others, but the total numbers of unsheltered homeless is very high across the whole Bay Area region.

Even Palo Alto has a high homelessness-per-capita rate when you count people living in vehicles as homeless. It's not nearly as bad as SF, but it's not good either.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#422

Post by icelancer »

staticautomatic wrote: post #156
CodeSheikh wrote: post #130

I dont't care if this is a PR stint to ward of recent criticism Bezos is getting from Bernie et al but if this fund goes and actually help and make a real life impact on the lives of homeless people, then I am fine and I will hold back my criticism of Amazon. I mean clearly I have not done enough to mitigate homelessness in this country who am I to question others motives trying to solve the same problem?

Bad actors must be held to account even if they occasionally do good things. I see no compelling reason to withhold criticism of Amazon because of this.

The reverse is true as well. It would apparently kill people to admit that giving two billion dollars to something like this is an act of good faith because their judgment is so clouded by hate.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#424

Post by quickben »

syn0byte wrote: post #267
fjsolwmv wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is contradictory. If money is how he keeps score than he isn't going to give any way.

Not at all; He already scored. He already got the headlines. Whatever he does with it after the fact makes little difference.

People think they have it scored when they make 10m, but some still don't stop.

The game at his level of scoring includes different variables in the profit equation. He has to worry if poor people repoduce enough, is the overall population growth expanding, etc.

He "scored" really doesn't apply.

I was told once that if you are a business, either the grow, or die.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#425

Post by yodsanklai »

jimnotgym wrote: post #419

Bezos can keep his donations, I just want Amazon to pay tax like any other business would in the UK, pay employees NI like any other business in the UK, and pay minimum wage like any other business in the UK. It shouldn't be up to the billionaires to choose where to spend money that should be in the hands of national governments and workers. This article for instance shows homeless Amazon warehouse workers living in…

> I just want Amazon to pay tax like any other business would in the UK, pay employees NI like any other business in the UK, and pay minimum wage like any other business in the UK

I agree with you, but you can't blame Jeff Bezos for UK legislation.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#426

Post by Veelox »

softawre wrote: post #201
CydeWeys wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not seeing all the other homeless people though who were displaced by high housing prices and who aren't spending all their time drugged out in highly visible urban areas. There are many homeless people living out of cars or shelters, or in tents. Many of them even still have jobs, they just can't afford housing. See: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ucla-anderson-forecast...

Agreed. See also, on reddit: /r/almosthomeless /r/homeless even subs like /r/povertyfinance contain some people that live in their car at times.

I find it really interesting the difference in views on money between /r/povertyfinance, /r/personalfinance and /r/financialindependence.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#427

Post by chillacy »

emodendroket wrote: post #328
chillacy wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if that’s the line of reasoning. A well known danger of democracy is rule by mob. For instance a tough thing to get right is protecting rights of minority groups. If everyone voted for their own direct benefit, we’d just be locking minorities up and taking their assets with power of the majority. Luckily doesn’t seem to happen much.

If the government taking things by force, or by the implied threat of force, is bad, then taxation is bad, and if you don't have any kind of taxation you don't have a government in any meaningful sense.

I think taxes are a bit better because you're also agreeing to pay your own money (vs only taking other people's money only as the original commenter said). I had a different reading of "taking other people's money by force" as meaning specifically voting to tax a minority group more just because you can. This is based on the GP comment being "We should tax billionaires out of existence" as opposed to "taxes are immoral"

OP can clarify if necessary.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#428

Post by DominikPeters »

fixermark wrote: post #218

Utilitarian question: Can he do more net good spending $2 billion to help the homeless, or spending an equivalent amount to double the take-home pay of warehouse employees and/or convert the "money towards medical insurance" plan into a company-supplied medical plan? (Follow-up question is "Given he doesn't have plurality control of the stock votes, does he have the authority to do so in a vacuum without getting ejec…

The homeless are usually worse-off than people having a job, so by diminishing returns one should expect to be able to help more by spending on the homeless. In addition, if worker pay is increased significantly above market rate, this will plausibly lead to things changing elsewhere to get closer to market clearing, such as via worse working conditions or additional automation or requiring Bachelor's degrees for pickers.

While we are being utilitarian, it seems clear that either option is far from optimal, and the money would better be spent on the global poor, or farm animals, or helping future generations.

Re: Amazon's Bezos Launches $2B Fund to Help the Homeless

#430

Post by komali2 »

stmfreak wrote: post #395
Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch your causality. You know what helps mental illness and addiction? Stability. The kind of stability you get from knowing where you'll sleep each night, knowing that you'll be safe, not simply trying to survive each day. It is a complicated problem. There are no magic bullets, no panaceas, but it's ludicrous to think that housing per se isn't a major aspect of this issue. The threat of homelessness introduces anx…

Most of the addicted once had stability, but lost it because they would not give up their addiction(s).

I've never once in my life met an addicted person that preferred to stay addicted, have you?
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