Admittedly I haven't thought this through incredibly deeply but what if "nationalize" just means the US government owns half of the company? Then we get profits as recompense for building the company on our shared culture but there's still a profit motive for employees and a check on the direction of the company in the same way VCs have. But without necessarily turning the company into some red-tape bound bureaucracy.
> Then, in August, Trump called for Intel's beleaguered CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign, alleging ties to China. Days later, after Tan met with Trump, the president called him a "success," before announcing that the federal government had bought a stake in the company.
Somehow, this isn't derided by the right as socialism.
I would absolutely love to subscribe to Nebula but they don't have an Xbox app which is where I watch almost all my TV/Youtube/streaming. I hope they have the resources to do it at some point.
Beyond the fact that there's absolutely no reason for you to post this, I'm not sure what you're looking at. I'm not a pro but I've been building sheds and things for decades and based on the pictures here I don't see low quality. Maybe I'd put more joists in the roof but Portland doesn't get a ton of snow so I'm sure it's fine. $2k is a fine price for that slab, especially compared to the pain of lifting 80lb bags of concrete yourself all day. People shouldn't be afraid of spending the money on a pro if they've got the money to spend.
Maybe he could have saved a few thousand with different subs (maybe) but your comments are nonsensical. I see tons of janky builds people post on Reddit and this is not one of them. You should spend your commenting time over there.
i think it is pathetic that your rebuttal to a comment you dont like is go back to reddit
youare the same type that tell foreigners to go back to their country because you dont like being called stupid more than you dont like actually being stupid20k for this is a joke like yoi
And he built a $20k shack with asphalt shingles and T1-11 siding. A fool and his money are quickly parted is the current state of building in America.
It looks poor, it is poor.
But we also have a whole nation who thinks paying rent, an HOA, who can take your home from you, is a good idea so everyone can look equally poor together in lower middle class homes with textured walls.
Something in my work's SSO / auth mechanism does this and if you click No it silently screws up the internal website you're visiting. It doesn't block you from logging in, just parts of the site don't load/work. I haven't been able to get a good answer on what the heck is going on but it's extremely annoying.
I've definitely seen this. One of my least favorite parts of developing with AI is when I add print statements or small changes and the LLM removes them in the process of doing the next thing. I want to work _with_ the AI, not have it stomp all over my code.
One of the big issues with this is sequence of returns risk. If you retire and rely on your portfolio but the market dives for a year or two right after you leave the workforce, your total portfolio value is screwed because you were selling at a low point.
Tangentially: I think a lot of people forget/underestimate the degree to which the industries behind their job are ones that they need to diversify away-from.
In other words, a programmer should invest a bit more away from software than average, a realtor should invest a bit more away from properties than average, a coal-miner should invest a bit more away from energy and mining, etc.
If you have your job, you can weather a stock-downturn, and if investments are solid, you can weather a period of unemployment by liquidating some, but if both hit trouble simultaneously then that's much much worse.
That makes sense, and it probably should be said more. It's probably just because we invest in what we know. If you're a real estate broker, you have an interest in properties, you think about it all the time, so you'll buy your own properties, or invest perhaps in builder stocks. If you're in tech, well, I don't need to say it because that's most of us. If you work in the energy sector, I imagine you know a thing or two about transport and esoterica of speculative miners or drillers, etc.
> It's probably just because we invest in what we know.
I'm mostly thinking of folks that will passively invest in a big broad index fund, and then assume they've reached the end in terms of balancing industry/sector risk.
it's also why you shouldn't hold equity in your own company any longer than necessary (e.g., an apple employee shouldn't tie up the majority of their networth in apple stock).
stock options/rsus are a great example of some sort of cognitive bias (maybe it's the endowment effect?).
give somebody $1000 worth of shares in their company, and a lot of folks will hang on to them. but if you gave them $1000 cash to invest, they almost certainly would not choose to dump all of that money into their own company.
Tax-law also makes is sticky: StockX -> Money -> StockY means a portion of is lost as capital-gains tax on the money step. StockY might be better... but is it something that will perform better-enough to be worth the switching costs? (At this point logarithms and spreadsheets start getting involved.)
In contrast, starting with Money and then choosing between StockX or StockY is an easier choice.
most don't even have 3-5 years "spending money" (whatever that is) in total savings; if you're keeping that in cash you're getting 2-3% annually while the market has doubled.
Last week I was at the bank in my hometown, a small rural community. The teller took a phone call, and I overheard her say "You have $1.53 in your checking account, and $150 in savings".
Presumably this is their total net worth. I think this is way more common than people on this type of forum realize. Most will work until they literally can't anymore, then scrape by on social security until they die. I think it's important to keep that perspective.
Because the average person also makes a litany of poor financial decisions. $100K student loan balances for an state school arts degree, forgoing health insurance but expecting to receive $200K in care for free, or buying that $80K F150 on a 12.5% loan and rolling in negative equity.
The US is second in the world for median equivalised household disposable income, second only to Luxembourg and 10%+ above Norway. For daily median per person income after taxes and transfers, we're only behind Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Qatar, and the UAE. Outside of petrostates, microstates, and Switzerland, no country has richer "average" people.
The US certainly doesn't have the safety net of some of these other states, but these aren't holes you're being thrown into by society: they're pits you've deliberately jumped into in 99% of cases.
Your error here, or the missing piece if we're generous, is what people are spending money on. Health care is astronomically more expensive here. Schooling isn't free after high school. Day care isn't free. Hell, even property taxes are simply 'not a thing' in France or the UK, where the taxes and Council Tax, respectively, are a tiny fraction of what Americans pay in property taxes ---- which, of course, pay for the 'free public schools.'
Now, let's talk about insurance, that's also much higher. In states like California and Florida, home insurance is through the roof, in some states like NJ and NY, car insurance is through the roof. Both going up way above inflation (like the items in my first paragraph).
You might counter with energy costs are much higher in these European countries (and similar ones like Germany, Benelux, etc), and the purchasing power might be higher, but the wages are so so much lower.
That said, this trope of people misspending their money needs to consider this outrageous costs of things that many people around the world never need to think about. The shitty wages in France are overshadowed by so many essentials being available without a high cost or any cost in some cases.
>Your error here, or the missing piece if we're generous, is what people are spending money on. Health care is astronomically more expensive here. Schooling isn't free after high school. Day care isn't free. Hell, even property taxes are simply 'not a thing' in France or the UK, where the taxes and Council Tax, respectively, are a tiny fraction of what Americans pay in property taxes ---- which, of course, pay for the 'free public schools.'
A US worker at the average wage keeps roughly 70 cents of every labor-cost dollar; a worker in Belgium, Germany, France, Austria, or Italy keeps closer to 47 cents, even before you add in the effect of VAT. Nobody in Europe is getting those services you mentioned for "free" - you're just making everyone else pay for them with taxing their labor. You almost connected the dots when it came to property taxes paying for public services, but missed that Europe assesses income taxes.
>Now, let's talk about insurance, that's also much higher. In states like California and Florida, home insurance is through the roof, in some states like NJ and NY, car insurance is through the roof. Both going up way above inflation (like the items in my first paragraph).
This is a bundle of issues. As a quick list, compare the size/value of an average property in California or Florida to a property in Europe, assuming they even own the property (remember, Europe's home ownership rate is lower than Florida's). Same goes for car ownership costs: American cars are larger, more expensive, driven more, and are more exposed to damages from uninsured motorists, because states like NY, NJ, and CA think it's racist to enforce uninsured (or even unlicensed) motorist laws. Just like health insurance, allowing free-riders on insurance systems is financially disastrous.
>You might counter with energy costs are much higher in these European countries (and similar ones like Germany, Benelux, etc), and the purchasing power might be higher, but the wages are so so much lower.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Yes, Europeans can get a number of services paid for by their neighbor, but it doesn't make them "richer" by any reasonable measure. Quantifying standard of living is incredibly difficult, because even as this exchange shows, people will value different things differently. But broadly speaking, my original point still stands: Americans should not be struggling to live in America, absent poor personal decisions, particularly if you're willing to lower the standard of living to that of an average European (a smaller rented property, driving far fewer miles in a compact car, no air conditioning, etc, etc).
>That said, this trope of people misspending their money needs to consider this outrageous costs of things that many people around the world never need to think about. The shitty wages in France are overshadowed by so many essentials being available without a high cost or any cost in some cases.
What outrageous costs are those? Community college remains very affordable, and costs for 2 years at a state school can be managed, especially against the greater lifetime earning potential in America. Healthcare costs OOP is capped at $9,200 on an ACA plan, which can be nearly free for middle to lower income brackets, and that debt itself is basically unenforceable in most cases these days, assuming you truly don't have the assets to pay.
I’m assuming you mean you’re in the top 8 percent of income distribution? Ie about 90,000 euros?
If so, by my rough math, you’re paying about 25% more in taxes than an equivalent American couple based on PPP. That American couple would have about $30K USD/26K Euro more in disposable income, would likely have good quality health insurance paid for by their job, be eligible for $3K to $4K in social security retirement income per month, and be able to individually contribute to tax free retirement accounts, tax free college funds for their children, etc.
That's incredibly misleading. For a high salary, this American couple you mentioned, are probably living in California or New York or New Jersey or another high tax state.
Now redo the math.
I and most people in my peer group pay over 40 percent of income in taxes, and that's NOT including property taxes, which are much, much higher than in Europe. Some much more than that - like triple (city, state and federal).
State taxes were completely ignored from your math.
This message, and the message before it which I am at pains to rebut much of, contains a lot of misleading cherry-picking.
And you compared European universities to a two year county college degree?
Healthcare costs were also greatly glossed over. I'm hoping someone else is triggered but if not I'll be forced to step in and correct this stuff.
An average American makes $60K per person in 40 out of 50 states, so no: they clearly don't have to live in CA/NY/NJ. Furthermore, the German comment is from someone in the top 10% of income, so it gets even better for Americans once you're comparing the upper income brackets.
The US median household pays roughly 10–12% of income in federal taxes. A German median-wage single worker's net rate is somewhere in the high-20s to high-30s percent.
Germany will be 10 to 20% higher in total taxes: income, property, sales/VAT, etc; than an American at a comparable professional income. If you claim to be paying 40, you'd be paying 50%+ in Germany. $10 to 30K a year more gives you a lot of room to save for college, pay for medical expenses, etc: the "safety net" in Europe only helps you if you don't want to work or don't want to earn a significant income.
States feature low or 0 income tax, including desirable places to live like Florida and Texas. Yes, they'll have property taxes or others, but again: personal decisions. If you choose to live in CA, vote for CA policies, then you have to pay for CA's waste.
If you read my comment, you'll see I'm saying you can minimize college expenses by doing 2 years at CC, then transferring, yielding a total college spend of just a few thousand dollars (not the absurd $100K student debt loads people incessantly whine about online). Healthcare costs are simple: if you pay for ACA-aligned insurance, again, your costs are capped: $10K OOP max sucks, but if you made the decision to purchase insurance, you're not paying the $200K medical debt people claim online.
My central claim was and remains: America provides more opportunity to earn money, and people misrepresent the "downside risk" of America's approach to healthcare, college, and income by refusing to acknowledge that the worst outcomes are of people's own making. America gives you far more opportunity to excel, but also doesn't backstop your personal failures with your neighbor's work to the same extent (at the individual level, ignoring govt. bailouts of companies).
I did all that math a while ago when I was offered a well paying job in California .
Bottom line was that stuff is so much cheaper here than over there, that not much would have changed. We’d be able to save up a lot of money if we were willing to live frugally in the US though.
In the end the volatility of the current American political landscape in addition to the hostile immigration laws made it unattractive to move, at least for now.
Victim blaming. It always works, whether on HN or Reddit. And why, pray tell, is the system set up so that all the things you obviously should do are bad decisions?
"The system" isn't setup to make self-destructive, clearly bad decisions. People just choose to make them, and at some point the system can't help them by carrot or stick.
Here's the easiest example: with ACA subsidies the average cost of an ACA plan is $50, with low income people qualifying for plans as low as $10 a month. This will cover basic preventative care like screenings, tests, and vaccines; and importantly caps your OOP maximum, preventing a financial disaster if you have a significant illness.
Despite all that, many people still aren't insured. They aren't insured despite it being massively subsidized for them by taxpayers. They aren't insured despite the government running advertisements throughout open enrollment.
At this point, if you have a complaint about a massive healthcare bill, my very first question is: did you have insurance?
The same ideas apply to college, housing, cars, and health/diet: "the system" gives you a massive range of options, but people consistently choose poorly, shortsightedly, and wastefully. People need to take personal responsibility for their decisions.
If an option then system provides is self-destructive, maybe it should stop providing that option?
Some people don't even have $10 per month spare. Wealth inequality in the USA is extreme. But more importantly: they are busy and stressed. If it's so easy to get health insurance it should either be mandatory and automatic, or it should be a checkbox on your taxes or some other form.
When I paid my student loan it was a matter of just ticking a box on the employment tax declaration that I had a student loan. And then it was automatically taken from my paycheck. It wasn't about the money, but about the ease of use. If I had to send a monthly payment with a paper check I'd surely miss payments.
The phrase "personal responsibility" is a thought-ending cliche used when someone doesn't want to see the big picture. It's like if Microsoft changes Windows 12 to break Valve games and you blame the game because "developer responsibility" or "executable file responsibility" and ignore the bigger picture that Microsoft is trying to drive Valve out of business to move games off Steam and onto the Microsoft Store.
The ACA is about a 10 to 20 minute process, once a year, on a website. The average american of working age, employed, watches 120 minutes of TV a day. If one day they only watch 100 minutes of TV, they could have health insurance. Again, how much more handholding do people need?
For loan payments, somehow generations managed to pay mortgages, property taxes, and more with nothing more than a checkbook they manually balanced and gasp paper, envelopes, and stamps. Again, even if you have to log into a website to manually trigger an ACH, put a recurring calendar event in your phone and include a link. I bet you could get that down to 3 minutes a month, assuming they don't have autowithdraw.
Your Windows/Valve example has Windows taking action to make things harder for people. All the examples you provided are things that are easier now than they ever were in the past.
Even your initial premise that these options are inherently self-destructive is wrong. If you're a trust-fund kid and want to study art history for $100K a year, great! We shouldn't take the option away from everyone just because some people rack up $200K of student debt. We shouldn't further bureaucratize and regulate the healthcare system just because some people are too busy (read: watching TV) or stressed (read: can't follow instructions written at a 4th grade level) to work through a few questions on a website.
When you're headed into retirement, one possibility is to shift to saving more in cash-like options instead of a 401k (or whatever). It's should just be part of your retirement plan to account for possibilities like this.
The tax advantages of being forced to pay ordinary income rates on your distributions as compared to long term capital gains (which are low, capped, can be exercised before a tax hike, and avoided entirely if you just need collateral)?
401k reduces your taxable income when depositing money, this is more tax efficient than paying normal income taxes and then also paying capital gains.
401k lets you rebalance a portfolio with zero tax implications.
The downsides are generally high fees and a 10% penalty for early withdrawal which makes them surprisingly bad for young people. They tend to start in lower tax brackets, have fewer reserves when unemployed, and face fewer risks from an unbalanced portfolio.
Pay down debt then Roth IRA when young 401k after 40 is often better than defaulting to a 401k, but saving anything tends to be more important than such optimizations.
I am alone in my peer group for doing something like this.
Cars, student debt, credit card debt all gone. (And I dread needing a new car). Covered downpayment on my house and cash for a nice shed that matches the house and a fence so my kid can play in the back yard with no issue.
Invested low 5 figures into myself taking a year off and now I am getting serious about the 401k at 41. And I am ok with that.
I never worked at a big tech company and I covered my mom's down payment and appliances and new carpet and part of her move for her to move close to me. Dad died when I was 11 so I am all she has and she was a public school teacher so she's on a small pension.
We all walk a different life and I know people that make my entire life savings in a year but I will eventually grow a retirement to get me through 10-15 years and then it will be what it will be. (Maybe a tank of helium and bag)
Avoiding X% tax on money going in and paying X% tax on money going out aounds balanced. But you avoid the highest marginal tax rate when putting money in and social security alone doesn’t push them into the highest tax bracket.
So most people get taxed at lower marginal rates in retirement when they take money out. Which makes deferring taxes a meaningful advantage. This is especially true if you intend to money to a state with lower tax rates in retirement, but a worse deal if you intend to do the reverse.
Sure, but we're not talking about people who have no savings. FIRE people have huge investment portfolios while being frugal with their spending, and understand the risk of keeping 5-10% of their total net worth in cash equivalents (not dissimilar to having insurance).
I'm genuinely curious about even a hypothetical more detailed example of how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally. I can't wrap my mind about how it would actually happen beyond simplistic sayings.
I live in Portland, OR where we have a large homeless problem and I continually hear that the groups being given money to help are incentivized to keep homelessness high for their own purposes. Like, obviously people who are paid like to keep getting paid but how would they go about making this happen when their job is the opposite?
> would go about preserving a problem like homelessness
My state chose to outlaw homelessness [0] and to make it illegal for cities & counties to offer places to lawfully camp unless the campsites are basically enough to be KOA Campgrounds.
Actually solving homelessness is politically unacceptable, therefore it will be criminalized & preserved.
All you have to do is promote policies that make the problem more palatable but don't actually solve it. Treatments instead of cures. As long as the problem needs treatment, the organizations dedicated to treating it will still be around, but as soon as it is no longer a problem at all, those organizations will cease to exist and everyone working on it needs a new job.
For homelessness, it's things like shelters, free meals, needle exchanges, etc. Make the life of the homeless easier without actually getting them into permanent housing. The actual solution to eliminate homelessness is to build more housing, along with financial arrangements to incentivize ownership and make it possible.
For taxes, it's accountants and tax preparation software like TurboTax or H&R block. The actual solution is to make the tax code simple enough that anyone can understand it and then withhold the appropriate amount so that nobody even needs to file. The big tax preparers have repeatedly lobbied against this.
For medicine, it's lots of prescription medication that you have to be on for life to "manage" your condition, as well as recurrent doctor's visits to diagnose and treat it. The actual solution for the vast majority of conditions that kill Americans today is diet, exercise, fiber, reduce stress, stop smoking, and wear your seatbelt. Modern medicine is also very adept at solving acute problems like broken bones, bacterial infections, appendicitis, etc. But once you've got a chronic condition of indeterminate source (many of which are actually solved by the advice above), you're in the system and can expect to pay through the nose for no solution.
For many construction projects (like say CAHSR), it's performing endless studies about how to build the project without actually building it. Some level of design is necessary for successful outcomes, but many agencies go around in circles with proposals and reports and environmental impact studies and voter referendums without actually having anyone actually pick up a shovel and start moving dirt.
> For homelessness, it's things like shelters, free meals, needle exchanges, etc. Make the life of the homeless easier without actually getting them into permanent housing. The actual solution to eliminate homelessness is to build more housing, along with financial arrangements to incentivize ownership and make it possible.
I love the idea of building more housing, but I think a lot of homeless people have an income of literally 0, so wouldn't they be homeless regardless of how cheap housing is?
> For many construction projects (like say CAHSR), it's performing endless studies about how to build the project without actually building it. Some level of design is necessary for successful outcomes, but many agencies go around in circles with proposals and reports and environmental impact studies and voter referendums without actually having anyone actually pick up a shovel and start moving dirt.
Environmental impact studies are required by federal law for projects receiving federal funding. It's not CAHSR's fault that they have to be done. You then have to go through the process of acquiring land along the track, which you probably should do before people start moving dirt (it's going to be pretty embarrassing if your track has a hole in the middle where someone refused to sell their house).
> I love the idea of building more housing, but I think a lot of homeless people have an income of literally 0, so wouldn't they be homeless regardless of how cheap housing is?
There's research that shows why increased housing prices cause increased homelessness. One of the mechanisms is that the family and friends of the homeless can no longer afford the additional space to house the folks who have literally $0 because they themselves are priced out of larger homes or have to rent space to make ends meet.[1]
> Unlike Diona’s mom, Sherman’s parents had extra space. That’s very common among homeowning, empty-nest parents, meaning that a great deal of vacant housing is in the hands of the two people who are most likely to love and forgive an adult child in dire circumstances. But in more expensive regions, fewer parents (or other loving figures) have that resource, either because they couldn’t afford to buy a house in the first place or because there are demands from multiple family members to share the legacy residence.
> how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally
Simplistic version: San Francisco spends roughly $100,000/year on each homeless person. In services, salaries for people working on it, rent for office buildings etc. I am willing to bet many of these people would not be homeless if we just gave them $100,000/year without all the middle bureaucracy layers.
This is a fallacy because it's not the same people homeless each year. There's substantial turnover in the homeless population.
"Replace services with direct transfers" would eliminate homelessness for 1 year. Then new people would become homeless, and you'd have no services, because your budget is already committed to the "year 1 homeless-cohort."
The money spent grows quadratically (not linearly) over time.
If you only gave $100k to the people who are currently homeless that year, then (ignoring that people would start keeping themselves homeless for several years on purpose) you'd still end up better than the present situation.
Thus, cutting all budget for cash transfers could increase homelessness by 80%! (Are those 14,498 now-homeless people eligible for this year's $100k? They can't be, since you already spent it on the 7,973 currently-homeless people).
Model the situation as "X(t) people become homeless at year t, Y(t) people become housed at time t," and you'll see the most important metric is "how much can we decrease X and increase Y per dollar spent"?
"Number of dollars per current homeless" is not really meaningful at all.
If those are the actual numbers, you're proving GP's point. You can give each of those 14.5k people ~$55-60k instead of giving 8k people $100k and homelessness is still solved.
They had homes, cardboard box homes. Then the government said a home couldn't be a cardboard box, and confiscated the cardboard boxes and now they sleep on benches.
How many of the homeless people in SF are from other parts of the US and are given one-way bus tickets to SF by their own hometowns? Because just giving them money could only possibly make that problem worse.
But the idea that that is intentionally done is the leap, right? In my model of the world, it's very easy to believe how overlapping & duplicate programmes, middleman corruption, and ineffective programs can cause this without meaning to, rather than some deliberate attempt to engineer the morass of beuracracy.
Identifying and distributing 100k to each homeless person would require many layers of bureaucracy.
As it should. It is not responsible to give millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to an intern and tell them to start passing it out to random people on the street.
It may sound crazy but that may be cheaper than maintaining the status quo. The idea is serious and it’s called Universal Basic Income, or UBI. It may arrive earlier than most think.
In the homelessness example, it's not so much that the programs and groups want to justify their continued existence (though that might be happening too). It's that the programs themselves incentivize more of the problem. When they give things to homeless people, such as food, shelter, clothes, social services, even needles and a "safe place" to get high in some cases, and often with few or no conditions, they make being homeless more tolerable. Word gets around, and people who could not feasibly be homeless where they are are drawn to Portland because they will get more support there.
None of those things make homelessness appealing in any absolute sense. Like, if people had a (reasonable-to-them) path to getting a home, the vast majority would go for it even if there were a bunch of services available.
The real answer is that the electorate is vehemently opposed to providing paths like that if those paths feel even remotely like "unfair handouts". Votes hate that idea even if it would be empirically cheaper. We collectively preserve the problem of homelessness because we feel like people who can't/won't work deserve to be unhappy, because we believe that we need the threat of homelessness to coerce people into working, because we believe people on drugs/etc are undisciplined and immoral, because... well, you get the idea.
I don't think many people are being homeless by choice no matter how comfortable it is. Perhaps it makes more of them choose homelessness over suicide but I don't think it's making anyone choose homelessness over homefulness.
You know what does though? Making it really hard to get a home. That makes more people homeless. I hope that's obvious.
Quite a few are homeless by choice. There are shelters available but they choose not to go because the shelters ban drugs. So they choose drugs over shelter.
It's easy to frame it like this to portray them in a negative light. Many also ban pets, enforce strict curfews, force you to live in close quarters with people who you don't know and who can be dangerous to you, demand you practice their religion, separate you from partners, subject you and what they allow you to keep of your belongings to frequent searches.
I don't know about you, but that sounds horrible to me. I don't see how anyone can be surprised or aggrieved that some people choose to stay away from them under those conditions.
Shelters also ban lots of normal things that make them harder to use, or have onerous rules around your schedule that make working impossible. There are a lot more reasons people don’t use shelters
I was homeless for 6 years in the PNW due to PTSD. A lot of people do not, under any circumstances, feel comfortable sleeping next to a violent offender, child abuser, or gang member. So they sleep outside and risk a lot instead.
When I was there, I counted about 2 drug users out of 100 people in a shelter in Spokane, Washington. The rest were either ex convicts, disabled/mental issues, or just simply lost their home.
I thought most homeless were drug addicts?! It’s hard to believe a healthy person could fall into homelessness. Maybe as OC mentioned only those who don’t do drugs go to shelters.
You only end up on the streets if a lot of things go really wrong :
No family nearby. No friends willing to take you. No money to pay for rent even in the cheapest areas. No cheap temporary accommodation nearby of any sort. No government provided emergency housing available.
If you want to make it personal, I live in Sweden. There are lots of options available and no one lives on the streets if not for a mental illness that prevents you from seeking help, as help is available and easy to get. You can get a salary for indeterminate amount of time and pay for your own accommodation as long as you show you’re looking for jobs. If your job pays too little you can get a stipend from the government to pay for rent and food. So yeah I am sure I would never get homeless even if everything went wrong for me. If you live in a country where that’s not the case, you should really question what should the priorities of your country be (notice that basically all developed countries in the world and even many developing ones provide everything I mentioned above, with possibly one single, big exception).
I think you could solve homelessness really simple by allowing something like a favela. It will be an eyesore so pick an area out of sight of rich people. Then split it into like idk 200sqft plots. Give everyone enough corrugated steel to build a primitive shelter. Have like a central sanitation place with a shitton of toilets and showers.
You start by fixing the problem of people sleeping on benches and in tents. Then you go to those in cars, then those crashing on a couch, then those living 8 to a house, then families with small places, and so on. What the problem is keeps expanding until the resources allocated to it are spent.
But they're not even doing that. It's not the case that tents and benches have been solved and the definition expanded. There are still people sleeping on benches and in tents - more than ever before.
reply