4 ms·

What she learned is that America is so rich that only the very poorest people near homelessness travel on a Greyhound bus, and that life for the very poorest pe

• pxmpxm 3y ago
  Also that policemen are armed.
• durkie 3y ago
  does it need to be surprising?
  • sixstringtheory 3y ago
    I don’t think so, but the tone of the article seems to indicate it.
• etempleton 3y ago
  I agree. I think there is a potential commentary about the bifurcation of America—I think it is getting harder to be poor, but the Greyhound just isn’t the transportation for the working class like it used to be. Most everyone flies any trip that is of sufficient length. The Greyhound, motels, etc are all dying. There just isn’t as much need for them anymore and there are alternatives. As the author said, she found a much nicer hotel for even cheaper.
• janalsncm 3y ago
  It’s sad but it’s a problem that compounds. Middle class don’t take greyhound because it’s awful, so ticket prices drop and it gets even worse.
• weregiraffe 3y ago
  >Is this supposed to be a surprise? It remains a constant surprise that the richest country on Earth can't make life better for its poorest homeless people.
  • rayrey 3y ago
    Because poverty is seen as a moral failing and with enough gumption, anyone can pull themselves out it.
    • gottorf 3y ago
      I don't think it's as simple as that. In some ways the very policies that made America the richest country in the world are ones that prevent the state from directly pulling the very poor and homeless out of the situation they're in; I'm speaking of a largely free-market economy with comparatively (to other advanced economies) smaller social safety nets, and a legal and cultural emphasis on individual freedoms. The latter was a big part of the deinstitutionalization movement throughout the 50s-80s; there were several Supreme Court decisions that made it more and more difficult for the state to involuntarily confine mentally ill people in psychiatric institutions. That same subset of people are now homeless and addicted to drugs. And in terms of social safety nets, two developed countries at opposite ends of the world (Spain and Japan), both with unarguably better social support than the US, have higher poverty rates[0]. And in all but one of those developed countries with lower poverty rates than the US, the median person is poorer[1]. It's possible that the very poorest of the poor (the kind you might see strung out on a street in San Francisco or Philadelphia these days) are better off in those other countries, but clearly providing that level of support incurs a cost that is borne by the rest of society. I'm not making a judgment call here on which approach is better -- merely pointing out that there is never a free lunch when it comes to social policy. Well, I take it back somewhat: there is a judgment call to be made on the way we "help" those very downtrodden today, where taxpayer money is spent on letting addicted people continue their addiction in the name of "compassion", all while ignoring the damage it does to everybody else that lives in those neighborhoods. Bring back the institutions if we must, but the current approach cannot be the right one. [0]: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median_equivalent_adult_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
• fransje26 3y ago
  I dare say that with 12% of the population under the poverty line, it surely is representative of what life it is like for a fair portion of the Americans. Now, once you factor in that the "poverty line" for a 2 people household is defined as 16'000 dollars a year, it is not a stretch to estimate that the population in poverty, or near poverty is around 20-25% of the population. That makes this social experiment a lot more interesting.