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Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

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Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#181

Post by emodendroket »

dazc wrote: post #69
emodendroket wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I lived in Finland for a while. Being homeless in that country is pretty hard core in the winter. Which is a reason that sheltering people there is not a nice to have; you either shelter them or you collect their dead bodies in the morning. It's that simple. Unfortunately there are any number of people who would be happy with option B in this scenario.

'Unfortunately there are any number of people who would be happy with option B in this scenario.' Since we are going on personal beliefs rather than hard facts, I suspect is number is very low.

I would encourage you to wade into commentary on the man strangled to death on the NYC subway if you think it’s outlandish that some people see the lives of the homeless as essentially disposable. Or you could just scroll down to the person in this very discussion thread who more or less argues for deaths from exposure. Or we could look at preferences revealed by policy demands, which often take more of an "out of sight, out of mind" approach.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#182

Post by ragazzina »

tempestn wrote: post #55
ddoolin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just IMO, many Americans probably don't think homeless people deserve free housing, because they have (the taxpayers) have to pay for their own housing and also contribute to homeless housing via taxes. "Fuck you got mine" is real here. Just see the nauseating argument against discharging student loans.

Even from a selfish perspective, I expect "solving" homelessness would ultimately save money for taxpayers, when you consider all of the police and healthcare resources that go into it now, as well as the negative effects on communities. But it would take a lot of time and consistent effort to get there, and the costs would be a lot more obvious and direct than the benefits. Not sure I agree on student loans though.…

>Even from a selfish perspective, I expect "solving" homelessness would ultimately save money for taxpayers

If saving money were more important than putting down poor people, the US would have universal healthcare by now.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#183

Post by kwhitefoot »

scotty79 wrote: post #175
sremani wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The scale of social problems in the US is on a whole other level. True. Just for some comparison, if Finland was a metropolitan in US, it would be ranked 10th. Above Phoenix metro and Below Atlanta Metro. I understand the good intentions of people trying to show case 'Scandinavian countries' as a model. They miss many things including Scale.

Do you mean that Phoenix Metro and every other place smaller should have fixed their homelessness as well as Finland or better already?

Not the op, but yes why not?

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#184

Post by kwhitefoot »

otikik wrote: post #123
jillesvangurp wrote: post #19

I lived in Finland for a while. Being homeless in that country is pretty hard core in the winter. Which is a reason that sheltering people there is not a nice to have; you either shelter them or you collect their dead bodies in the morning. It's that simple. Places like Helsinki never had a large community of homeless people to begin with (natural selection). But it has plenty of social issues of course. Alcoholism i…

> Shelters cost money and they have to be staffed and when they fill up you need to spend money on emergency shelters, which costs more money Yes but shelters can be privately run and then a corporation can make a profit from that, because private companies are more efficient than state-driven things. That a company makes profits more important than perpetuating the homeless problem, or waking up to frozen cadavers.…

> because private companies are more efficient than state-driven things.

Yeah, right.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#185

Post by cvwright »

Jedd wrote: post #159
sremani wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The scale of social problems in the US is on a whole other level. True. Just for some comparison, if Finland was a metropolitan in US, it would be ranked 10th. Above Phoenix metro and Below Atlanta Metro. I understand the good intentions of people trying to show case 'Scandinavian countries' as a model. They miss many things including Scale.

> They miss many things including Scale. Yes, it's very easy to completely miss scale, as well as missing sensible priorities, etc, and embrace a mantra of exceptionalism as a convenience. Apropos ranking, the United States spends more on military / defense than the next 10 countries combined.

Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free.

We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#186

Post by piva00 »

cvwright wrote: post #185
Jedd wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They miss many things including Scale. Yes, it's very easy to completely miss scale, as well as missing sensible priorities, etc, and embrace a mantra of exceptionalism as a convenience. Apropos ranking, the United States spends more on military / defense than the next 10 countries combined.

Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free. We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs.

No, you pay to continue having hegemony over multiple continents. Don't call American military spending in any sense some kind of altruism, it's done to keep the USA power and money floating around.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#187

Post by i_am_jl »

piva00 wrote: post #169
sremani wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The scale of social problems in the US is on a whole other level. True. Just for some comparison, if Finland was a metropolitan in US, it would be ranked 10th. Above Phoenix metro and Below Atlanta Metro. I understand the good intentions of people trying to show case 'Scandinavian countries' as a model. They miss many things including Scale.

Scale... Isn't the USA supposedly federalised states? So each state has a small enough scale to solve its issues, with an added benefit that countries in the EU don't have as easily: a federal government that can work to provide funding, coordination and national-level programs to solve the issues. The closest to that coordination is at the EU level itself which is much more complex and less powerful than the federal…

>So each state has a small enough scale to solve its issues

The problem is that states are choosing to address this problem by bussing homeless to other states.

This is the primary issue with federalized states, solutions are crafted in the interest of each state, negative externalities be damned.

The federal government doesn't have the ability under the constitution to address this problem in any real way. Until it can, it'll be cheaper and more politically expedient for those in charge to maintain the status quo than to actually work towards a solution.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#188

Post by Jedd »

cvwright wrote: post #185
Jedd wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They miss many things including Scale. Yes, it's very easy to completely miss scale, as well as missing sensible priorities, etc, and embrace a mantra of exceptionalism as a convenience. Apropos ranking, the United States spends more on military / defense than the next 10 countries combined.

Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free. We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs.

> Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free.

If 'we' is the USA, then I'd suggest the USA pays to maintain a very lucrative industry, and as far as anyone can tell, they pay way over the going rate, and have very poor book-keeping.

The idea that some older equipment, rather than being retired or disposed of, is being sent to Ukraine, as somehow being exclusively a defence of a distant place, and 'for free' feels asymmetrical to reality.

The USA has some serious risk / concerns coming out of this conflict - not so much petroleum products, but certainly iron ore, argon, neon, cobalt, etc. That's the practical resource based risks, and then there's the whole regional stability, opportunity to assist in the downfall of an enemy empire, etc etc.

> We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs.

If 'we' is the USA, then I suggest you won't stop doing the former, and you won't start doing the latter.

In the past twelve months the USA's sent US$30B (list price) of equipment to Ukraine.

That's out of an annual budget of around 1,900B (or 845B) depending if you're looking at resources or obligations, but either way, 30 is a small component of that.

For context, the most recent US DoD audit identified at least 220B worth of equipment that they simply can't determine the whereabouts of.

So, yeah, I reckon the USA could look after its own interests by sending some equipment to Ukraine and address homelessness within its own borders, if it really wanted to.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#189

Post by otikik »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #184
otikik wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shelters cost money and they have to be staffed and when they fill up you need to spend money on emergency shelters, which costs more money Yes but shelters can be privately run and then a corporation can make a profit from that, because private companies are more efficient than state-driven things. That a company makes profits more important than perpetuating the homeless problem, or waking up to frozen cadavers.…

> because private companies are more efficient than state-driven things. Yeah, right.

Should I had put sarcasm indicators? :)

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#190

Post by jimnotgym »

cvwright wrote: post #185
Jedd wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They miss many things including Scale. Yes, it's very easy to completely miss scale, as well as missing sensible priorities, etc, and embrace a mantra of exceptionalism as a convenience. Apropos ranking, the United States spends more on military / defense than the next 10 countries combined.

Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free. We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs.

You do it for...free?

OMG, you can't actually believe that?

I live in the UK. We have an independent nuclear deterrent that we buy off the US for billions. We have plastic fighter jets we buy from the US at over $100m a pop. We have every credit card payment taxed by Visa and Mastercard. We allow US companies to operate here tax free, destroying local business.

When I was a teenager in the 1990s we finally managed to pay the US for selling us WW2. The US took our gold and the rights built military bases on a bunch of strategic islands. They left us as a vassal state.

The US base their front line in the UK against Russia so we get wiped out first. We are a buffer zone for the US defence of itself against Russia.

The US protects Europe 'for free' in the same way that the UK 'protected' India 'for free'.

Your (rather common) attitude will be the eventual downfall of the US empire. Every time the US acts as the world's arsehole (like by electing a protectionist moron as president) it loses legitimaticy. You also find Europe starts buying gas from Russia and turning a blind eye to its military adventures. When it starts looking bad for the US they turn up like 'Team America', blow up our gas connections to Russia and magically find cheap gas to sell us instead.

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