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Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

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Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#241

Post by temphn »

tokenadult wrote: post #162

Places with good weather have huge visible homeless populations. (I have traveled all over the United States, and have been to all fifty states. AFTER EDIT: I have been in, and have lived in, gritty "skid row" neighborhoods of large United States cities, and have lived in Los Angeles.) Places with lousy weather, like the place where I grew up and now live, certainly have people who are "homeless" in the sense of not…

  Places with good weather have huge visible homeless 
  populations
Singapore has great weather and no visible homeless population. The government there generally keeps mentally ill people off the streets.

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#242

Post by tobinfricke »

jarrett wrote: post #179

This article leaves out an important point: Most, if not all, programmers I know do care about these issues, but we can't solve them. We would if we could, but it's not what our profession is good at. The title of the article, "come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep," speaks to this. We programmers have the tools to solve many interesting and important problems, but certainly not all. D…

I think being a programmer does help the situation in one respect: by having a large salary, you also pay commensurately more in taxes, which could be used to pay for social services.

One reason the quality of life is so high in Germany is that it is, as far as I can tell, a nation of engineers. With an economy based on high value products for export, Germany can afford one of the shortest work-weeks in the world and some of the best social services.

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#243

Post by cheeseprocedure »

gummify wrote: post #128

Not too far north along the west coast, the homelessness situation is mirrored in Vancouver, Canada. I have friends who have volunteered with non-for-profit agencies that support homeless people in identifying their needs and allocating resources to them if possible, such as social housing. My friends have told me that the people she has interviewed from the streets nearly 75% are mentally or physically handicapped o…

> However, there is hope but we cannot rely on the government to sort it out.

Indeed:

"A change in public policy saw the mass discharge of Riverview Hospital's patients as an effort to integrate them into the community while the province considered the land for development. However, this caused a large influx of mentally ill into the DTES as poor follow-up support failed to reach a majority of these individuals."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Eastside#Mental_Illnes...

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#244

Post by tracker1 »

madaxe wrote: post #240
tracker1 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'd have rather taken Iceland's approach and let them fail... their assets would have been redistributed and bought out, and things would have probably recovered much faster, though a harder short term. Which may well have been better than what seems to be a long drawn out recovery. I'm also against a lot of the subsidies that are out there.. if we really want available food for the p…

Oh man, agricultural subsidies. Farm bills in the US, CAP in the EU. They're criminal, and socialist in form and nature. They're designed to protect the livelihood of farmers who wouldn't be otherwise economically productive and would fail in the face of labour from other regions which are cheaper, in other countries. This not only impedes development, but results in people selling subsidies to one another, buying ag…

I'm not saying we should eliminate regulation, or outright allow crap in our food (which to a large extent we do), only that we should really limit out spending/subsidies and gear our regulations toward increased competition, not less.

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#245

Post by georgefox »

eric_the_read wrote: post #191
mabhatter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people commute 45+ minutes each way to work... To live in a Suburb where the dont interaxt with any neighbors. a place with no public transport, no major retailers, and no place for "malcontents" to flock within 10 miles that's not private property. Even my small city has no "public space" or public transportation after business hours. We have lots of small parks designed to deter "being homeless" there. Every…

In my case: good schools for my kids. I looked at several options nearer to the downtown area, and in every case, the schools were rated at the middle or near the bottom of the rankings. The schools where I ended up are near the top.

That's a good point and seemingly common reasoning (at least around here), but it does raise some chicken–egg questions.

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#246

Post by jarrett »

tobinfricke wrote: post #242
jarrett wrote: post #179

This article leaves out an important point: Most, if not all, programmers I know do care about these issues, but we can't solve them. We would if we could, but it's not what our profession is good at. The title of the article, "come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep," speaks to this. We programmers have the tools to solve many interesting and important problems, but certainly not all. D…

I think being a programmer does help the situation in one respect: by having a large salary, you also pay commensurately more in taxes, which could be used to pay for social services. One reason the quality of life is so high in Germany is that it is, as far as I can tell, a nation of engineers. With an economy based on high value products for export, Germany can afford one of the shortest work-weeks in the world and…

That's very true. And it's kind of comforting, because you know that by earning well, you're creating positive externalities. This is why I'm happy to pay my taxes. (I don't necessarily support everything they're spent on, but everyone has to compromise on that, no matter what they support.)

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#247

Post by robeasthope »

beat wrote: post #107
jiggy2011 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those same arguments could be made against welfare to an extent. The advantage of this system is that it would be simpler and therefor cheaper to administer and possibly harder to game.

Yes, but I also figure that anyone smart enough to effectively game the welfare system is smart enough to do substantially better than what even gamed welfare can provide.

Trust me, in the UK at least, you really don't need much to game the welfare system.

While the government is making gradual changes the requirements and checks for UK citizens to claim job seekers allowance week after week are laughable low compared to the rhetoric thrown around.

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#248

Post by VMG »

wutbrodo wrote: post #178
VMG wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why should I want to subsidize single mothers? Why should I disincentivize teenagers from gaining their first work experience? I agree that there are some people who deserve financial support, but it should be up to the individual to decide who that is and how much they should receive.

This sort of economic blind spot is shockingly common, and presumably stems from the belief that economics is zero-sum. The idea behind subsidizing single mothers and keeping teens in school (which is the case that your parent comment was describing) is that the cost of this subsidy is theoretically lower than the expected cost of losing productive members of society or even worse, losing them to gang activity, which…

Don't forget the moral hazard. Women could choose to get a child instead of working. I personally don't think that it is a good idea to grow up in a family where no adult is gainfully employed.

These are complex issues and should be evaluated by each individual. You have different criteria than I and should have every right to donate your income to causes you see as worthy. If I was interested in reducing US crime and poverty, I'd donate to http://www.projectprevention.org/

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#249

Post by woodchuck64 »

ajross wrote: post #27
woodchuck64 wrote: post #7

> Stepping over the homeless, weaving between the street corner schizophrenics Imagine having a chronic disease simultaneously with an absolutely intolerable fear of doctors, hospitals, institutions and the social safety net. That's a hard problem.

I can't tell exactly the point you're trying to make. Obviously there are specific cases ("schizophrenics" here, I guess) who are going to be very hard to treat in any safety net, and the US has no monopoly on them. But the point was broader, that relative to the rest of the industrial world the US has far more people at the "bottom" , falling out of the net. Walking around cities in Europe, you generally don't find…

> relative to the rest of the industrial world the US has far more people at the "bottom"

Is that really true? http://www.homelessworldcup.org/content/homelessness-statist... puts Europe, US and UK at very roughly 3-5 homeless per 1000.

But in any case, my point is about the chronic homeless and http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/homeless-mentall... suggests that most chronically homeless are mentally ill in some fashion. How society should properly care for its mentally ill is an extremely hard problem. Strait jackets and padded cells? Forced drug treatments? Or let them camp under bridge overpasses?

Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

#250

Post by vitobcn »

onemorepassword wrote: post #183
tokenadult wrote: post #162

Places with good weather have huge visible homeless populations. (I have traveled all over the United States, and have been to all fifty states. AFTER EDIT: I have been in, and have lived in, gritty "skid row" neighborhoods of large United States cities, and have lived in Los Angeles.) Places with lousy weather, like the place where I grew up and now live, certainly have people who are "homeless" in the sense of not…

There is no Europe. I can only speak for my country, the Netherlands, and there is no such thing as people not having the personal funds to buy or rent housing. That's why we have minimum wages, social security, rent subsidies and regulated rent. The homeless here are people mostly people with mental health issues that reject or don't respond to treatment. It's by far not a perfect utopian system, but to have people…

I originally come from Spain, where the weather is nicer than in the Netherlands, and there certainly are homeless people living and sleeping in the streets, or in cold occasions during winter, they can also be seen under the roof provided by an atm / bank branch.

However, having been in SFO multiple times, the number of poor/homeless people with no resources is much more evident there. My take is that generally the unemployment, healtchare, etc. benefits offered in most European countries do play a significant role in reducing the number of cases.

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