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> We need to pass universal basic healthcare and solve the affordable housing crisis to make headway on that. Just like them, you jump to your own conclusions.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Just like them, Them? To whom are you comparing me? you jump to your own conclusions. I am not jumping to anything. I have spent a lot of years studying and contemplating certain problem spaces.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > Them? To whom are you comparing me? Well... > I just don't see this issue the way others do. Maybe the others you're referring to. You still jumped to the conclusion, you provided no reasoning to support the (not widely accepted) ideas that single-payer health insurance and subsidized housing will make people less desperate in a way which affects opioid addiction dramatically.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    I comment on this fairly often, so I saw no reason to do a long write up and lots of reasons not to. If you are curious as to my thinking on the matter, you can just ask rather than taking swipes at me.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      There's nothing to support your assertions on the first page of your current threads page [0], so could you explain your reasoning? It seems like a real pain to put the argument in words here, so is there an opinion piece somewhere which argues more or less what you argue? You write professionally, so have you recorded your position somewhere? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=DoreenMichele&next=16026598 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=DoreenMichele&next=1...
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        To my mind, this is a reasonable collection of related writings on the topic by me: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html But I don't know that it will seem pertinent to you. So let me try to give you a nutshell version: Average size of new homes in the US has more than doubled since the 1950s. Meanwhile, average number of occupants has dropped. We tore down up to 80 percent of SROs, a low cost form of housing that used to be common, but now has to be explained because people don't know what they are, so here is a link in case you don't know: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy Healthcare in the US accounts for a crazy high percentage of expenses and this disproportionately impacts the poor. If 20 percent or more of your income is eaten by healthcare and 50 percent or more is eaten by housing costs, life will be pretty damn bleak and UBI won't solve it. This likely is a large factor in things like the opioid crisis and rising suicide rates. Poverty in the US should not routinely mean homelessness or being unable to afford essential healthcare. It should mean you live in a tiny speck of an apartment and you can't afford a fancy wardrobe. The way we abandon our own people in a very rich country is monstrous and certainly promotes depression for a lot of people. I spent years homeless and asking for help to figure out how to make money online from people who make money online. The way I was treated was pretty psychologically scarring. I'm a tough cookie and have more support than is apparent from my general lack of sufficient income. If I had less education or less social support or whatever, I would not have overcome all that. I would have been destroyed by it. So I infer that's an issue for many Americans. You aren't required to agree. That's just what I think.
        microcolonel 9y ago
        > If 20 percent or more of your income is eaten by healthcare and 50 percent or more is eaten by housing costs, life will be pretty damn bleak and UBI won't solve it. This likely is a large factor in things like the opioid crisis and rising suicide rates. Figures do seem to indicate an increase between 2001 and 2009 in health care spending as a percentage of income, but isn't most of this a difference in real after-tax income? It's hard to make heads or tails of post-2010 data because of the PPACA. As for SRO, do you have some idea of why these properties have been disappearing? Has it become a bad deal for aesthetic/cultural reasons, or is it a matter of excess liability for the landlords? The Wikipedia article for them seems to suggest that they just don't make sense anymore for landlords in San Francisco at least. It seems to me like a simple matter of places becoming more financially valued, and therefore no longer viable places to rent for anyone below the naturally matching income bracket. If you want affordable housing, you'll have to travel a few kilometres in any other direction (this of course being especially hard for coastal cities, where you're typically restricted to 170 or fewer degrees of sprawl which may or may not offer attractive employment. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955379/figure/fig01/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955379/figure/...

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Just like them, Them? To whom are you comparing me? you jump to your own conclusions. I am not jumping to anything. I have spent a lot of years studying and contemplating certain problem spaces.

microcolonel 9y ago
> Them? To whom are you comparing me? Well... > I just don't see this issue the way others do. Maybe the others you're referring to. You still jumped to the conclusion, you provided no reasoning to support the (not widely accepted) ideas that single-payer health insurance and subsidized housing will make people less desperate in a way which affects opioid addiction dramatically.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  I comment on this fairly often, so I saw no reason to do a long write up and lots of reasons not to. If you are curious as to my thinking on the matter, you can just ask rather than taking swipes at me.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    There's nothing to support your assertions on the first page of your current threads page [0], so could you explain your reasoning? It seems like a real pain to put the argument in words here, so is there an opinion piece somewhere which argues more or less what you argue? You write professionally, so have you recorded your position somewhere? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=DoreenMichele&next=16026598 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=DoreenMichele&next=1...
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      To my mind, this is a reasonable collection of related writings on the topic by me: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html But I don't know that it will seem pertinent to you. So let me try to give you a nutshell version: Average size of new homes in the US has more than doubled since the 1950s. Meanwhile, average number of occupants has dropped. We tore down up to 80 percent of SROs, a low cost form of housing that used to be common, but now has to be explained because people don't know what they are, so here is a link in case you don't know: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy Healthcare in the US accounts for a crazy high percentage of expenses and this disproportionately impacts the poor. If 20 percent or more of your income is eaten by healthcare and 50 percent or more is eaten by housing costs, life will be pretty damn bleak and UBI won't solve it. This likely is a large factor in things like the opioid crisis and rising suicide rates. Poverty in the US should not routinely mean homelessness or being unable to afford essential healthcare. It should mean you live in a tiny speck of an apartment and you can't afford a fancy wardrobe. The way we abandon our own people in a very rich country is monstrous and certainly promotes depression for a lot of people. I spent years homeless and asking for help to figure out how to make money online from people who make money online. The way I was treated was pretty psychologically scarring. I'm a tough cookie and have more support than is apparent from my general lack of sufficient income. If I had less education or less social support or whatever, I would not have overcome all that. I would have been destroyed by it. So I infer that's an issue for many Americans. You aren't required to agree. That's just what I think.
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        > If 20 percent or more of your income is eaten by healthcare and 50 percent or more is eaten by housing costs, life will be pretty damn bleak and UBI won't solve it. This likely is a large factor in things like the opioid crisis and rising suicide rates. Figures do seem to indicate an increase between 2001 and 2009 in health care spending as a percentage of income, but isn't most of this a difference in real after-tax income? It's hard to make heads or tails of post-2010 data because of the PPACA. As for SRO, do you have some idea of why these properties have been disappearing? Has it become a bad deal for aesthetic/cultural reasons, or is it a matter of excess liability for the landlords? The Wikipedia article for them seems to suggest that they just don't make sense anymore for landlords in San Francisco at least. It seems to me like a simple matter of places becoming more financially valued, and therefore no longer viable places to rent for anyone below the naturally matching income bracket. If you want affordable housing, you'll have to travel a few kilometres in any other direction (this of course being especially hard for coastal cities, where you're typically restricted to 170 or fewer degrees of sprawl which may or may not offer attractive employment. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955379/figure/fig01/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955379/figure/...