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Cash transfers to the homeless enough to cover sanitation and other basic needs doesn’t necessarily imply a universal basic income policy. > If you aren't will

Cash transfers to the homeless enough to cover sanitation and other basic needs doesn’t necessarily imply a universal basic income policy. > If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever come. I sometimes buy lunch for homeless people in my neighborhood, and have given people blankets and cash before, and donated to charities focused on helping the homeless, but it’s pretty hard as an individual to fully help someone who has lots of problems to find all the help they need and get into a stable comfortable situation, without making it a significant long-term project, and taking on huge amounts of personal responsibility. This is frankly a better job for publicly funded social workers, but I have a ton of admiration for any private citizens willing to take it on. Myself, I don’t have the spare attention or resources to drive someone to work every day, talk to them every day to make sure they stay on track, put them up in my house, hire them for a permanent job, etc. I have enough trouble just taking care of myself and my own small children. My meager bits of help (one meal, a blanket, a respectful conversation, lending someone a phone for a few minutes, ...) might be appreciated but are hardly life changing. Some of the homeless people I have talked to had trouble getting a job because they didn’t have a regular place to shower, didn’t have clean unripped clothes, etc., and then had trouble holding down a job once they got one because they had substance abuse problems, didn’t have enough structure in their lives to show up on time every shift, and so on. Of course the biggest and most obvious problem was a lack of housing. Which I really have no fix for. It’s a large-scale social problem which can best be tackled collectively.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
See, I meant that there are 5 million visitors to HN every month. I run multiple blogs. I do resume work. I do other things. I've been here nearly a decade. Yet, I still can't make ends meet. I don't need someone to drive me to work. I don't need someone to hold my hand. I'm not a drug addict or alcoholic. I am a woman, and sexism is alive and well, so that closes a lot of doors in my face. I'm dirt poor, so a lot of people just assume I'm incompetent and not worth hiring. Again, I'm extremely tired, moreso existentially than physically. I'm exhausted from saying the same things over and over and over on HN and watching them fall on deaf ears. I have six years of college. I have a Certificate in GIS. Stephen Hawking was medically handicapped. He had a real career. Of course, he was male. I'm quite convinced that classism and sexism are major factors in my intractable poverty. And when I try to talk about such things, no, no one wants to get the memo. They just want to assert they are one of the good guys. While not helping me. Because my ongoing problems are not their responsibility and are best handled by a social worker or the government. And it will all get better someday, when we have that mythical beast they call UBI. I'm a social creature more than a technical one. And I just can't help but feel that if people here really were as committed to resolving such problems as comments here tend to suggest, I would have long ago gotten hooked up with some kind of adequate income in excess of $20k annually. The fact that I continue to live with intractable poverty makes me feel like it's absolutely all talk and no one genuinely wants to get with the man in the mirror and ask the hard questions. The status quo works for them. They want it to stay the same. This is really a conversation I don't want to have. It's not a positive experience for me. It's also not likely to actually make a difference. A much more likely outcome is that I will eventually be banned if I openly bitch too much in a way that makes people here uncomfortable, as I was from Metafilter, a toxic classist cesspit of a forum that lots of people on HN gush about the wonderfulness of. Adieu. Edit: This piece was written before the first paragraph -- asserting that free money wasn't necessarily UBI -- was added to the comment I replied to. I'm too tired to edit the damn thing and make it make sense in light of that additional paragraph being added. To be clear, my point is that I don't believe the world will become a better place. If five million mostly well-heeled, high-minded people can't manage to help one pathetic, but well-educated person with a work ethic and yadda to resolve their problems, no, they won't really help people who are less "virtuous" than I am. The world will come up with excuses to blame those in need for their problems. They need to stop drinking. They need to stop using drugs. Etc. ad nauseum. You know, like we currently do.
- apacheCamel 8y ago
  I am not really sure what you want to come from this then. I don't think everybody here has the same exact idea on how to get there, but I do believe that everybody wants to the best for the world. It truly seems like you just want one of us to bow down to you and give you a job or help you directly just because you are yelling the loudest. Many of us are committed to fixing these issues everyday and to say we aren't is truly insulting. I am sorry you are going through this, but I think you can go about this in a better way.
Mirioron 8y ago
I think you're missing the point she's trying to make. She's saying that these types of bans have negative unintended consequences for the poorest people. These consequences get brushed aside "because we can just do X to really help them", but X is never actually done to the degree that it offsets the problem. Her mention of HN is that, this would be one of those places of high ideals where you would expect X to be done, but it isn't. So if it's not even done in a place like HN, then what's the chance that it will be done by the general public? And so X gets brushed aside and the negative unintended consequences pile up.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  So your argument is something like “if any system or policy incidentally helps the poorest people while also doing lots of unintended damage, then it is immoral to stop doing it, because replacing the incidental aid to the poor now cut off is politically intractable”? This is precisely the same logic that says we need to continue to use coal power plants because otherwise the coal miners will lose their jobs, and it’s impossible to support them except by continuing to hire them to mine coal. When the people who want to eliminate coal power (e.g. Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016) suggest cash transfers, reeducation plans, other industrial investment, etc. to coal-mining regions to offset the loss of coal jobs, the supporters of coal mining reject the proposals as politically infeasible. Instead of setting up advocates for the homeless and environmentalists as enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    So your argument They are not making an argument. They are trying to translate my words in hopes of bridging some communication gap. Instead of setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions. I'm an environmental studies major who gave up my car well before I became homeless, in part for environmental reasons. (In the US, this is routinely interpreted as "Obviously, you are just one of the useless and incompetent poor, not qualified to do any well paid work" rather than "Obviously, you are an extremist nutcase environmental enthusiast willing to walk the walk -- literally! -- not just talk the talk." Cuz: logic (by which I mean prejudice and classism).) So, I don't know why on earth you think I personally am setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies. I see myself as qualifying for both labels.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

See, I meant that there are 5 million visitors to HN every month. I run multiple blogs. I do resume work. I do other things. I've been here nearly a decade. Yet, I still can't make ends meet. I don't need someone to drive me to work. I don't need someone to hold my hand. I'm not a drug addict or alcoholic. I am a woman, and sexism is alive and well, so that closes a lot of doors in my face. I'm dirt poor, so a lot of people just assume I'm incompetent and not worth hiring. Again, I'm extremely tired, moreso existentially than physically. I'm exhausted from saying the same things over and over and over on HN and watching them fall on deaf ears. I have six years of college. I have a Certificate in GIS. Stephen Hawking was medically handicapped. He had a real career. Of course, he was male. I'm quite convinced that classism and sexism are major factors in my intractable poverty. And when I try to talk about such things, no, no one wants to get the memo. They just want to assert they are one of the good guys. While not helping me. Because my ongoing problems are not their responsibility and are best handled by a social worker or the government. And it will all get better someday, when we have that mythical beast they call UBI. I'm a social creature more than a technical one. And I just can't help but feel that if people here really were as committed to resolving such problems as comments here tend to suggest, I would have long ago gotten hooked up with some kind of adequate income in excess of $20k annually. The fact that I continue to live with intractable poverty makes me feel like it's absolutely all talk and no one genuinely wants to get with the man in the mirror and ask the hard questions. The status quo works for them. They want it to stay the same. This is really a conversation I don't want to have. It's not a positive experience for me. It's also not likely to actually make a difference. A much more likely outcome is that I will eventually be banned if I openly bitch too much in a way that makes people here uncomfortable, as I was from Metafilter, a toxic classist cesspit of a forum that lots of people on HN gush about the wonderfulness of. Adieu. Edit: This piece was written before the first paragraph -- asserting that free money wasn't necessarily UBI -- was added to the comment I replied to. I'm too tired to edit the damn thing and make it make sense in light of that additional paragraph being added. To be clear, my point is that I don't believe the world will become a better place. If five million mostly well-heeled, high-minded people can't manage to help one pathetic, but well-educated person with a work ethic and yadda to resolve their problems, no, they won't really help people who are less "virtuous" than I am. The world will come up with excuses to blame those in need for their problems. They need to stop drinking. They need to stop using drugs. Etc. ad nauseum. You know, like we currently do.

apacheCamel 8y ago
I am not really sure what you want to come from this then. I don't think everybody here has the same exact idea on how to get there, but I do believe that everybody wants to the best for the world. It truly seems like you just want one of us to bow down to you and give you a job or help you directly just because you are yelling the loudest. Many of us are committed to fixing these issues everyday and to say we aren't is truly insulting. I am sorry you are going through this, but I think you can go about this in a better way.

Mirioron 8y ago

I think you're missing the point she's trying to make. She's saying that these types of bans have negative unintended consequences for the poorest people. These consequences get brushed aside "because we can just do X to really help them", but X is never actually done to the degree that it offsets the problem. Her mention of HN is that, this would be one of those places of high ideals where you would expect X to be done, but it isn't. So if it's not even done in a place like HN, then what's the chance that it will be done by the general public? And so X gets brushed aside and the negative unintended consequences pile up.

jacobolus 8y ago
So your argument is something like “if any system or policy incidentally helps the poorest people while also doing lots of unintended damage, then it is immoral to stop doing it, because replacing the incidental aid to the poor now cut off is politically intractable”? This is precisely the same logic that says we need to continue to use coal power plants because otherwise the coal miners will lose their jobs, and it’s impossible to support them except by continuing to hire them to mine coal. When the people who want to eliminate coal power (e.g. Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016) suggest cash transfers, reeducation plans, other industrial investment, etc. to coal-mining regions to offset the loss of coal jobs, the supporters of coal mining reject the proposals as politically infeasible. Instead of setting up advocates for the homeless and environmentalists as enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  So your argument They are not making an argument. They are trying to translate my words in hopes of bridging some communication gap. Instead of setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions. I'm an environmental studies major who gave up my car well before I became homeless, in part for environmental reasons. (In the US, this is routinely interpreted as "Obviously, you are just one of the useless and incompetent poor, not qualified to do any well paid work" rather than "Obviously, you are an extremist nutcase environmental enthusiast willing to walk the walk -- literally! -- not just talk the talk." Cuz: logic (by which I mean prejudice and classism).) So, I don't know why on earth you think I personally am setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies. I see myself as qualifying for both labels.