101–110 of 206 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> have work very hard to achieve a good standard of living where I don’t rely on others for my needs. > Seeing as many people have helped you would you mind giving me that money and laptop you were given One of these things is not like the other
My solution is to pay them to pick up trash. Those that do are housed for free.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of reply is this?
[flagged]
If you need help, ask. Hopefully someone will offer help.
If you are in the USA, have a disability, and can seek treatment, there are resources to help.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weird, I do. I live within a minute's walk of three separate encampments of homeless people, most of whom seem reasonably sane when I talk to them, and if they have drug problems they certainly aren't more apparent than those of my coworkers on average
Can you state the location of one of these encampments? If it is within a short distance of San Francisco, I will have someone visit it in the new year and provide someone there with $500 (picked randomly as the kth person met, k generated by random.org) if they meet this criterion of being reasonably sane. I'm waiting for a direct action org organized by a friend to receive 501c3 status, so it'll have to be after th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google says avg American makes ~$60k/yr and spends ~$600/yr on drinking. 2% of 60k is 1200. So they'd need to be spending as much on weed/cigs/hard drugs as they do on alcohol. I think it's close, but unlikely?
Median vs. mean likely makes a very large difference here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government is very good at giving people money. It's less good at adjudicating whether people require that money. Replacing every government assistance program with direct, unconditional cash transfers would almost certainly be cheaper than the bureaucracy that must be maintained to ensure only "deserving" people get assistance.
I broadly agree with you, I favor UBI for similar reasons, though I'd maybe frame it less as "very good vs. less good", vs. just acknowledging the enormous overhead costs of means-testing, to say nothing of the consequences when bureaucracy turns corrupt or Kafka-esque. But devil's advocate: is there any reason the same outcome couldn't be accomplished with a negative income tax instead, leveraging a bureaucratic inf…
(US specific) The monthly advanced child tax credit, effectively a negative tax, lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty for the short time it existed. Building that into a permanent, regular, universal cash transfer is not mechanically difficult but is intractable politically.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government is very good at giving people money. It's less good at adjudicating whether people require that money. Replacing every government assistance program with direct, unconditional cash transfers would almost certainly be cheaper than the bureaucracy that must be maintained to ensure only "deserving" people get assistance.
I'm very much in favor of UBI. Replacing literally "every government assistance program" has me worried though. I think for most folks this will work well. I do wonder about people with special needs though for whom that won't be sufficient. Might it be physical or mental disabilities, it can get more expensive quickly.
The headline as written should surprise no-one. Anyone receiving free money would probably have their life improved along some dimension, even if it just means they're not doing as many dangerous things to get money to buy more drugs. The implicit assumption seems to be that giving homeless people money to improve their lives is inherently a moral good. Unlike many homeless advocates, I don't think it is a given that…
Cash is sometimes the most efficient way to distribute aid to ill people. Unless - do you believe we shouldn’t aid ill people at all?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that you call all homeless people "mentally ill drug addicts" is very telling. Do some basic research. I hope you find some empathy in your heart.
I don't need to research, I deal with them on a daily basis just to go about my day because in my town they are everywhere. The fact that you are ready to simply dismiss someones lived experience based on a few flawed studies tells me everything I need to know about your agenda.
Given the demographics of the site and people's explicitly stated experiences, it seems plenty of the people disagreeing have had experiences similar to yours.
The question is more if your fellow humans appreciates you enough to help you. On the other side even the egoistic view would give homeless people money just to have them of streets.
During covid in Australia, we just put the homeless in hotels. It didn't cost much in comparison to the other government spending around that time and homelessness was largely eliminated. Then we got over the pandemic and tossed people out onto the street. Homelessness for some is a choice by society. Especially in the west.