4 ms·

If you live in a city with a large homeless population, I think it would be interesting for you to go and talk with them. I live in San Diego, and I've talked

If you live in a city with a large homeless population, I think it would be interesting for you to go and talk with them. I live in San Diego, and I've talked to hundreds of homeless people while doing volunteer work and photography. You would not believe how many people, though they may be mentally ill, are smart, honest, good people, who just got fucked by the system. They're out here scrounging for food and getting Hepatitis A and dying in the canyons and not getting any medical or dental care, and their lives are incredibly hopeless. To take the Steven Pinker-ish approach, and talk about about how great everything is, comes off as ignorant/dismissive of these real problems. I'm not saying what you're saying isn't true, but the average person is (relatively) not better off than 50 years ago. See https://wtfhappenedin1971.com https://wtfhappenedin1971.com.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
West coast cities homelessness problems are indicative of nothing more than the specific economic and political realities in those cities. It is folly to extrapolate that to larger macroeconomic conditions. While some specific cities may have their heads up their butts with regard to public policy resulting in more visible homeless the living conditions of the "almost homeless" and working poor have very much improved since the early 1970s (as far back as my knowledge goes). You can say what you want about the blue collar middle class (off-shoring and student debt have hit them hard over the past decades) but things have very much been improving up for the poor as a whole even though some poor people are unlucky enough to live in backwards places where things have gotten worse locally.
- sebmellen 6y ago
  That's just not true. Please don't spread this kind of misinformation. Many cities and states bus their homeless into California. Drug addiction, homelessness, and mental illness are all huge problems throughout the US (though also in Europe, et al.). The downfall of the middle class is the downfall of everyone except the super-rich. Some kind of Portugal drug model / New Deal-type infrastructure plan would be necessary to fix this problem, which is present all across the US. Why do you think Donald Trump got elected? It wasn't bigots in the Midwest — it was impoverishment. See: — https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattle-san-francisco.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattl... — https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... — https://www.mintpressnews.com/500-homeless-mental-patients-were-given-bus-pass-california-by-nevada-government-program/210607/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/500-homeless-mental-patients-w...
  - jariel 6y ago
    "The downfall of the middle class is the downfall of everyone except the super-rich. " a) There was no 'downfall' of the middle class and b) Everyone with a job got materially richer, just not in assets like the 'super rich'. We used to have smaller working + bigger middle + smaller upper, but now it's levelled out but a lot of middle class people have moved up. Material surpluses for anyone with a job have gone up dramatically. Walmart has increased the material standard of living of working people hugely. For those 'without jobs' - it's been hard. And those with assets - it's been disproportionately good. But the material surpluses in the form of better products and lower real prices to the masses means higher standard of living.
    - sebmellen 6y ago
      There definitely was a downfall of the middle class! Why do you think we had Occupy Wall Street, and why are populists on the left and right, like Sanders and Trump, gaining in popularity? Why did Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders poll highest among Trump voters? It's because the real middle class of blue- and white-collar work at a stable career has been vanishing. Much of this is due to bad trade and jobs policy, some is due to automation. The number skills that are useful today are also less than they used to be. The need for actually skilled manual labor has been outsourced to China, Taiwan, and increasingly India. And don't forget the swindle of universities — 18 year olds signing themselves away to lifelong debt to party, drink, and learn at an institution that couldn't care less about their future prospects. People who leave college with degrees in anything but highly desirable fields are learning they've been lied to about the importance of a degree.
killtimeatwork 6y ago
> You would not believe how many people, though they may be mentally ill, are smart, honest, good people, who just got fucked by the system. It seems that they got fucked by mental illness, not by "a system". Not being helped is not the same as "getting fucked".
- sebmellen 6y ago
  No. First of all, most of them aren't mentally ill. But most who are would probably have been fine doing a normal job if they hadn't gotten hooked on drugs or become homeless, which exacerbated their condition.
jariel 6y ago
"I think it would be interesting for you to go and talk with them." Do you see gangs of homeless children wandering your neighbourhood? Because that's 'what it used to be like'. I am not denying that real problems exist. I am not denying that individuals face real, life pain, of the timeless kind. I'm saying that materially, on the whole, everything is better. Way better. In the Victorian era there would be homeless children wandering the streets. 50 years ago there were still orphanages. We really don't have that anymore: nearly all babies/very young children are adopted. 'Homelessness' is not a lack of wealth or resources - it's a) a social disorder and b) civic dysfunction. FYI I live across the street from a Women's shelter and there are homeless in my neighbourhood. It's complicated. 'Everything is Better'. For the first time in history we can really say that we have excess material surplus of every kind.
- sebmellen 6y ago
  Yes, again, I'm not disagreeing with any of what you're saying. But for those barely clinging on to society, and those who haven't had the chance to accumulate real wealth, life is still pretty hard. Or, at least, a millennial may find life seems hard in comparison with the Baby Boomer generation. Many Baby Boomers lived stable, tracked lives in the postwar economy, and have now accumulated vast generational wealth. If there's a generation that grew up in a bubble, it's the Baby Boomers, and you'll see this typified by the "in my day, I worked my way through college and bought a house while working my job at the coffee shop" sentiment. Millennial and younger generations just don't have this chance at stability and building wealth at a young age. Also, drug addiction, lack of any care for mental illness (even sanatoriums), and homelessness of the kind we see now are unique problems that started around the same time as the "war on drugs."

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

West coast cities homelessness problems are indicative of nothing more than the specific economic and political realities in those cities. It is folly to extrapolate that to larger macroeconomic conditions. While some specific cities may have their heads up their butts with regard to public policy resulting in more visible homeless the living conditions of the "almost homeless" and working poor have very much improved since the early 1970s (as far back as my knowledge goes). You can say what you want about the blue collar middle class (off-shoring and student debt have hit them hard over the past decades) but things have very much been improving up for the poor as a whole even though some poor people are unlucky enough to live in backwards places where things have gotten worse locally.

sebmellen 6y ago
That's just not true. Please don't spread this kind of misinformation. Many cities and states bus their homeless into California. Drug addiction, homelessness, and mental illness are all huge problems throughout the US (though also in Europe, et al.). The downfall of the middle class is the downfall of everyone except the super-rich. Some kind of Portugal drug model / New Deal-type infrastructure plan would be necessary to fix this problem, which is present all across the US. Why do you think Donald Trump got elected? It wasn't bigots in the Midwest — it was impoverishment. See: — https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattle-san-francisco.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattl... — https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... — https://www.mintpressnews.com/500-homeless-mental-patients-were-given-bus-pass-california-by-nevada-government-program/210607/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/500-homeless-mental-patients-w...
- jariel 6y ago
  "The downfall of the middle class is the downfall of everyone except the super-rich. " a) There was no 'downfall' of the middle class and b) Everyone with a job got materially richer, just not in assets like the 'super rich'. We used to have smaller working + bigger middle + smaller upper, but now it's levelled out but a lot of middle class people have moved up. Material surpluses for anyone with a job have gone up dramatically. Walmart has increased the material standard of living of working people hugely. For those 'without jobs' - it's been hard. And those with assets - it's been disproportionately good. But the material surpluses in the form of better products and lower real prices to the masses means higher standard of living.
  - sebmellen 6y ago
    There definitely was a downfall of the middle class! Why do you think we had Occupy Wall Street, and why are populists on the left and right, like Sanders and Trump, gaining in popularity? Why did Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders poll highest among Trump voters? It's because the real middle class of blue- and white-collar work at a stable career has been vanishing. Much of this is due to bad trade and jobs policy, some is due to automation. The number skills that are useful today are also less than they used to be. The need for actually skilled manual labor has been outsourced to China, Taiwan, and increasingly India. And don't forget the swindle of universities — 18 year olds signing themselves away to lifelong debt to party, drink, and learn at an institution that couldn't care less about their future prospects. People who leave college with degrees in anything but highly desirable fields are learning they've been lied to about the importance of a degree.

killtimeatwork 6y ago

> You would not believe how many people, though they may be mentally ill, are smart, honest, good people, who just got fucked by the system. It seems that they got fucked by mental illness, not by "a system". Not being helped is not the same as "getting fucked".

sebmellen 6y ago
No. First of all, most of them aren't mentally ill. But most who are would probably have been fine doing a normal job if they hadn't gotten hooked on drugs or become homeless, which exacerbated their condition.

jariel 6y ago

"I think it would be interesting for you to go and talk with them." Do you see gangs of homeless children wandering your neighbourhood? Because that's 'what it used to be like'. I am not denying that real problems exist. I am not denying that individuals face real, life pain, of the timeless kind. I'm saying that materially, on the whole, everything is better. Way better. In the Victorian era there would be homeless children wandering the streets. 50 years ago there were still orphanages. We really don't have that anymore: nearly all babies/very young children are adopted. 'Homelessness' is not a lack of wealth or resources - it's a) a social disorder and b) civic dysfunction. FYI I live across the street from a Women's shelter and there are homeless in my neighbourhood. It's complicated. 'Everything is Better'. For the first time in history we can really say that we have excess material surplus of every kind.

sebmellen 6y ago
Yes, again, I'm not disagreeing with any of what you're saying. But for those barely clinging on to society, and those who haven't had the chance to accumulate real wealth, life is still pretty hard. Or, at least, a millennial may find life seems hard in comparison with the Baby Boomer generation. Many Baby Boomers lived stable, tracked lives in the postwar economy, and have now accumulated vast generational wealth. If there's a generation that grew up in a bubble, it's the Baby Boomers, and you'll see this typified by the "in my day, I worked my way through college and bought a house while working my job at the coffee shop" sentiment. Millennial and younger generations just don't have this chance at stability and building wealth at a young age. Also, drug addiction, lack of any care for mental illness (even sanatoriums), and homelessness of the kind we see now are unique problems that started around the same time as the "war on drugs."