10 ms·

I think the problem would be more manageable if the government had a full employment program. Basically act as an employer of last resort, hire everyone who wan

I think the problem would be more manageable if the government had a full employment program. Basically act as an employer of last resort, hire everyone who wants a job and allocate them to something useful, possibly at cost. With good management such a program could probably pay for itself, and remove a lot of economic anxiety people are feeling now. People are focusing on housing, but a country of subsidized housing and scarce jobs would still be a pretty sad place. Jobs seem like the real issue to me.

master-lincoln 3y ago
This seems to assume most homeless people in the USA are unemployed. Is that the case?
adrianN 3y ago
How would that work? Is it forced labor? If not, why should people work there? Is there no social security in this scenario?
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Sounds like slavery with extra steps. Surely some type of universal basic income would be more practical and less open to abuse.
- newsclues 3y ago
  Make people work to pay for living expenses plus taxes to support the people who call work slavery…
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    And I suppose it's just natural for the people administering such a scheme to make a very tidy profit from it too.
- krapp 3y ago
  Technically it would be indentured servitude. Which is far more likely (along with debtors' prisons) to come back in the US than any useful form of UBI. The ruthlessness of American capitalism intersecting with the callous self-righteousness of the Protestant work ethic has bred into American culture an ideology that would rather see the poor starve and die in the street like dogs than suffer the indignity of a system that takes so much as a penny from them to help another. Hell, the US will simply normalize and commoditize homelessness before taking UBI seriously. Some brilliant startup will disrupt cardboard boxes and sell them as hyper-economy "nomad chic" living units. They'll do great with SV nerds who want to feel like they're really grinding it hard-core.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    I thought that Christianity was a big part of the U.S. - isn't charity and helping others quite a big part of that religion?
    - krapp 3y ago
      It is, but there are plenty of parts of Christianity that Americans tend to forsake, like the part about forgiving debts (see the recent debates over student loan forgiveness) or turning swords into plowshares (see the entire history of the US.) Americans will give a thousand dollars to a charitable organization for the tax write-off but not a dime to the homeless vet on the streetcorner, because "he'll probably just use it for drugs." Americans took a religion whose prophet said "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" and created the prosperity gospel, which claimed that wealth was instead a sign of God loving you more. If America were truly a Christian nation it would be far too "socialist" for many Americans to stomach.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      The trouble with the charitable mission of Christian churches and ecclesial communities is that they've been largely supplanted by entitlement programs. Many people in these United States felt significant shame if they needed to rely on charity for their basic needs, and so the State deemed it expedient to pick up the slack by using taxpayer money to provide for them instead. As a result, fewer and fewer modern Americans see any need to donate or support faith-based charities. Why should we, when the government is doing all the heavy lifting? Christian charities are practically redundant now. Of course, we are seeing some things come full-circle, as the government supports faith-based charities with subsidies, in order to reduce the size and burden of actual government-run programs and put them back into the hands of entities which have capably run them for thousands of years. Also, you've got to differentiate between the goals and mission of a State-based entitlement vs. the goals and mission of a faith-based charity. They're worlds apart.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  I think UBI will get a lot of people trapped in death spirals by preventing them from hitting rock bottom and then snapping out of their funk and turning their life around. UBI makes the government an enabler of people in self destructive loops. Instead, we need to streamline the process of getting people back to work in whatever capacity they can manage, so people can decide to go back to work on a whim in their moment of lucidity and immediately see real progress and improvement. Legitimizing day labor paid in cash at the end of the day, the same day you decide to show up. If you make people apply one day the say "you start next week" a lot of people won't make it to next week and will be back in their death spiral the next day.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    That hasn't been the case with the very limited trials of UBI in other countries, so what makes you think that? Surely the biggest trap that prevents people from seeking work is poverty. You can hardly even apply for most jobs if you have no fixed abode and no access to bathing facilities or clean clothes.
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      Poverty is a strong motivation to seek work. The forces working against this which prevent people from finding work are mostly depression and feelings of helplessness. When people hit their rock bottom (which is generally weeks to days before homelessness) they're faced with a choice to either bounce off it and turn their life around, or to die (e.g. the streets.) Many people choose death because the alternative seems too hard for them, they're scared of what it will take and think that trying to turn around will just prolong their suffering so they choose the "easy" way out and give up on life. UBI might keep people alive but I don't believe it's a path to recovery. It'll keep people suspended right above rock bottom, not working and on drugs and booze, permanently depressed with no future ahead of them. The longer somebody stays like this, the worse off they become mentally and physically. Enabling people like this is very cruel. More beneficial reform involves removing the friction and barriers to recovery. Make it easier for people to find work that they can cope with and grow with. Make it easier for people to get back into the cycle of fixing their own problems by removing all the bureaucratic roadblocks that make getting back to work seem like a daunting impossibility. Anything that makes it easier to work is good, anything that makes it easier to not work (including UBI) is bad. And its not all about removing bureaucracy; building out better public transit so people feel that it's easy to get themselves to a job is very important. Government initiatives that reduce the availability of used cars or raise the price of new cars (same thing) should also be eliminated. More bike lanes should be built between residential and industrial/commercial areas and ebikes should be permitted on these routes. The penalties of traffic violations should be made progressive so that rich people have to pay however much is enough to make them regret it. Across the board, the stress of transportation should be reduced to make it easier for people to turn their lives around. The stress of finding entry level jobs should be reduced, but not the importance of working because getting people back to work is how you get them on a path of recovery and growth.
lesuorac 3y ago
> if the US government had a full employment program. Like the US Military? Do you mean we should get some of the old anti-black laws on the books outlawing being unemployed? > allocate them to something useful, possibly at cost. I don't think the average person is ok with the government spending $5 to has a task done that will immediately require spending $20 to undo it and another $25 for somebody to do it correctly. People can do negative work. There's often a reason the private sector has passed over people for employment. > a country of subsidized housing and scarce jobs would still be a pretty sad place I don't think that would happen. There's a reason Amazon wanted to build HQ2 at NYC & NOVA; there's a ton of people here that could work for them. While people move for jobs; people also build factories/office parks where they can employ people. Although it could be the case that people taking subsidized housing don't have the skill set Amazon is looking for so there may be a limit to what job opportunities they have in the nearby area. And of course Amazon isn't interested in running a training program into SWE when they can just hire people who paid for it themselves (college).
- cousin_it 3y ago
  >> hire everyone who wants a job > outlawing being unemployed? Didn't read what I wrote. > There's often a reason the private sector has passed over people for employment. Yes: because they could hire someone overseas for cheaper, or because the work in question would benefit society but the benefit would be hard for the business to capture, and other such good reasons. > I don't think the average person is ok with the government spending $5 The average person would be so happy to not be under threat of unemployment anymore that they'd be ok with the government spending $5. The rich person, on the other hand.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Most people who cannot hold down a job are that way for basically psychological reasons, they can't bring themselves to consistently show up and quit any job you give them within days/weeks. What would help them the most is creating a new class of labor which works on a day-to-day basis with no paperwork/bureaucracy setup to hire them and fire them. I'm talking about legalized and legitimized unorganized untaxed day-labor, so people who can't hold down a regular job can at least easily earn irregular money whenever they find themselves able. If it requires applying for one day then showing up the next, that disqualifies most chronically unemployed people. Unfortunately well-meaning people will insist on creating bureaucratic roadblocks in this program ostensibly for the benifit of the workers, to make sure the workers are getting benefits, safety training, etc, that have the end result of making it a job you have to apply for in advance and show up for later. And once this is done, it will be no different from the normal sort of job that some people can't hold onto because they can't bring themselves to show up reliably.
LargeTomato 3y ago
Can one be fired from the guaranteed jobs program?
bilsbie 3y ago
Careful what you wish for.
lupusreal 3y ago
In America we've got these things called temp agencies. You walk in from the street and tell them "I have no experience and no skills, I haven't worked in many years and I'm on drugs but I need a job". Then they say "Certainly sir, here is a list of positions we have. Here, let me highlight the ones that don't require a drug test." Within a week they'll have you at one of these jobs and your new boss will be genuinely surprised when you actually show up, "you have no idea how many people just never show up and only apply because somebody forces them to. If you can consistently come into work we'll hire you full time." If you can actually show up you can get a job. It won't be your dream job but it will be a job and they'll be thankful to have you. So why do we need the government involved in this? (BTW before anybody tells me I'm wrong, the above is from my personal experience.)
- tiahura 3y ago
  Work! How regressive of you!
- cousin_it 3y ago
  Cool, and here's the personal experience of hundreds of people in just one reddit thread from yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/18zr2o4/why_does_no_one_want_me/ https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/18zr2o4/why_does_no_o... I see no reason to trust yours over theirs.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    People apply for the jobs they want, when they should be applying for any jobs they could conceivably do. When I went through this the job I landed was pulling boxes off the back of trucks onto pallets. That OP wants a job in food services and for some reason can't get one. He should try applying to the kind of jobs he doesn't want. If he can establish himself as a reliable worker at a shitty job, he'll have a much easier time applying for the jobs he does want.
  - tiahura 3y ago
    The abject failure to develop a sense of agency in large sections of society is disheartening.
newsclues 3y ago
Would abundant jobs but scarce housing be better (for worker, not landlords)? Seems like society needs a surplus of both, without excess abundance of either.
- cousin_it 3y ago
  This is a great question, and really highlights why my proposal would work or not. The surface-level answer is that unemployment increases homelessness, so fixing unemployment would go a long way in fixing homelessness as well. But the deeper answer is that I don't believe housing is actually scarce. It's just scarce in places that have jobs. Whereas in "job deserts", which might be most of the territory, housing can be quite cheap. So if the government made jobs spring up in more places, maybe housing wouldn't be a problem.
jmyeet 3y ago
Many people have a warped perception of what it is to be "homeless" or, more generally, "housing insecure". There are stages. The first stage is where you're staying with friends and family for variable periods. Couchsurfing, attics, garages that sort of thing. You probably still work but can't afford the security deposit and first and last months rent. Maybe you can't even afford rent. You probably lost your house because of a relationship breakup, an eviction from income disruption, etc. Stage two is where those options are exhausted and you're living in your car. You are probably still employed. Sometimes you may park that car with someone you know but as time goes on you'll be parking in parking lots and on the streets. You may suffer break ins, run-ins with the law, etc. At some point that car will break down and you will lose your job because of it. The car is staying where it is until the city impounds it. Stage three is the first stage people notice. You're living on the street because you've lost your car. In places like NYC the homeless may seek shelter at night on the Subway. This leads to a lot of "homelessness crimes" like loitering, turnstile jumping and traspassing. Stage four is where this life has taken its toll. You probably have mental health issues, drug dependency issues (initially from self-medication), etc. So stage three is where many think homelessness starts. They may still be able to work but this becomees increasingly difficult without access to a car and a permanent address. You might even use a Planet Fitness or YMCA to keep clean still. But housing security began long before someone gets to this point. And in all but the last stage, simply giving someone housing will solve their problems most of the time. As time goes on you may require other intervention such as mental health treatment, social work and treatment for substance abuse. But unfortunately a lot of this gets criminalized, which both costs money and makes it more difficult for someone to recover, having a criminal record. We live in a world where we'd rather spend a lot of money militarizing people to harass homeless people and on prisons to house them when we can spend a whole lot less just giving people somewhere to live.
- wdkrnls 3y ago
  This 4 stage model is insightful.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  There are also plenty of people that go straight to stage 4 after burning their family/friend support network with a bad substance abuse problem, or time out of prison with no where to go, so they never go properly through the other stages. It isn’t as simple as one path to homelessness. By stage 4 it is pretty much over, we failed as a society and that person is probably never going to be a productive member of society again. We should be throwing all of our resources at the previous stages, rather than sinking 99% of them into stage 4 ensuring that we just let more people slip into it because we didn’t devote enough resources to the earlier stages.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
People complain about housing mostly where jobs are abundant (which stokes demand for housing), and they complain about jobs in places where housing is not a problem. A lot of the people living on the streets can’t get jobs even when they are abundant because they have mental illness or substance abuse problems that prevent them from working at all. Sure, Seattle has a minimum wage of almost $20/hour, and plenty of jobs still go unfilled, but the guy having a fent crisis naked in front of the library isn’t going to help much (for example from my personal experience).

master-lincoln 3y ago

This seems to assume most homeless people in the USA are unemployed. Is that the case?

adrianN 3y ago

How would that work? Is it forced labor? If not, why should people work there? Is there no social security in this scenario?

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

Sounds like slavery with extra steps. Surely some type of universal basic income would be more practical and less open to abuse.

newsclues 3y ago
Make people work to pay for living expenses plus taxes to support the people who call work slavery…
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  And I suppose it's just natural for the people administering such a scheme to make a very tidy profit from it too.
krapp 3y ago
Technically it would be indentured servitude. Which is far more likely (along with debtors' prisons) to come back in the US than any useful form of UBI. The ruthlessness of American capitalism intersecting with the callous self-righteousness of the Protestant work ethic has bred into American culture an ideology that would rather see the poor starve and die in the street like dogs than suffer the indignity of a system that takes so much as a penny from them to help another. Hell, the US will simply normalize and commoditize homelessness before taking UBI seriously. Some brilliant startup will disrupt cardboard boxes and sell them as hyper-economy "nomad chic" living units. They'll do great with SV nerds who want to feel like they're really grinding it hard-core.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  I thought that Christianity was a big part of the U.S. - isn't charity and helping others quite a big part of that religion?
  - krapp 3y ago
    It is, but there are plenty of parts of Christianity that Americans tend to forsake, like the part about forgiving debts (see the recent debates over student loan forgiveness) or turning swords into plowshares (see the entire history of the US.) Americans will give a thousand dollars to a charitable organization for the tax write-off but not a dime to the homeless vet on the streetcorner, because "he'll probably just use it for drugs." Americans took a religion whose prophet said "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" and created the prosperity gospel, which claimed that wealth was instead a sign of God loving you more. If America were truly a Christian nation it would be far too "socialist" for many Americans to stomach.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    The trouble with the charitable mission of Christian churches and ecclesial communities is that they've been largely supplanted by entitlement programs. Many people in these United States felt significant shame if they needed to rely on charity for their basic needs, and so the State deemed it expedient to pick up the slack by using taxpayer money to provide for them instead. As a result, fewer and fewer modern Americans see any need to donate or support faith-based charities. Why should we, when the government is doing all the heavy lifting? Christian charities are practically redundant now. Of course, we are seeing some things come full-circle, as the government supports faith-based charities with subsidies, in order to reduce the size and burden of actual government-run programs and put them back into the hands of entities which have capably run them for thousands of years. Also, you've got to differentiate between the goals and mission of a State-based entitlement vs. the goals and mission of a faith-based charity. They're worlds apart.
lupusreal 3y ago
I think UBI will get a lot of people trapped in death spirals by preventing them from hitting rock bottom and then snapping out of their funk and turning their life around. UBI makes the government an enabler of people in self destructive loops. Instead, we need to streamline the process of getting people back to work in whatever capacity they can manage, so people can decide to go back to work on a whim in their moment of lucidity and immediately see real progress and improvement. Legitimizing day labor paid in cash at the end of the day, the same day you decide to show up. If you make people apply one day the say "you start next week" a lot of people won't make it to next week and will be back in their death spiral the next day.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  That hasn't been the case with the very limited trials of UBI in other countries, so what makes you think that? Surely the biggest trap that prevents people from seeking work is poverty. You can hardly even apply for most jobs if you have no fixed abode and no access to bathing facilities or clean clothes.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Poverty is a strong motivation to seek work. The forces working against this which prevent people from finding work are mostly depression and feelings of helplessness. When people hit their rock bottom (which is generally weeks to days before homelessness) they're faced with a choice to either bounce off it and turn their life around, or to die (e.g. the streets.) Many people choose death because the alternative seems too hard for them, they're scared of what it will take and think that trying to turn around will just prolong their suffering so they choose the "easy" way out and give up on life. UBI might keep people alive but I don't believe it's a path to recovery. It'll keep people suspended right above rock bottom, not working and on drugs and booze, permanently depressed with no future ahead of them. The longer somebody stays like this, the worse off they become mentally and physically. Enabling people like this is very cruel. More beneficial reform involves removing the friction and barriers to recovery. Make it easier for people to find work that they can cope with and grow with. Make it easier for people to get back into the cycle of fixing their own problems by removing all the bureaucratic roadblocks that make getting back to work seem like a daunting impossibility. Anything that makes it easier to work is good, anything that makes it easier to not work (including UBI) is bad. And its not all about removing bureaucracy; building out better public transit so people feel that it's easy to get themselves to a job is very important. Government initiatives that reduce the availability of used cars or raise the price of new cars (same thing) should also be eliminated. More bike lanes should be built between residential and industrial/commercial areas and ebikes should be permitted on these routes. The penalties of traffic violations should be made progressive so that rich people have to pay however much is enough to make them regret it. Across the board, the stress of transportation should be reduced to make it easier for people to turn their lives around. The stress of finding entry level jobs should be reduced, but not the importance of working because getting people back to work is how you get them on a path of recovery and growth.

lesuorac 3y ago

> if the US government had a full employment program. Like the US Military? Do you mean we should get some of the old anti-black laws on the books outlawing being unemployed? > allocate them to something useful, possibly at cost. I don't think the average person is ok with the government spending $5 to has a task done that will immediately require spending $20 to undo it and another $25 for somebody to do it correctly. People can do negative work. There's often a reason the private sector has passed over people for employment. > a country of subsidized housing and scarce jobs would still be a pretty sad place I don't think that would happen. There's a reason Amazon wanted to build HQ2 at NYC & NOVA; there's a ton of people here that could work for them. While people move for jobs; people also build factories/office parks where they can employ people. Although it could be the case that people taking subsidized housing don't have the skill set Amazon is looking for so there may be a limit to what job opportunities they have in the nearby area. And of course Amazon isn't interested in running a training program into SWE when they can just hire people who paid for it themselves (college).

cousin_it 3y ago
>> hire everyone who wants a job > outlawing being unemployed? Didn't read what I wrote. > There's often a reason the private sector has passed over people for employment. Yes: because they could hire someone overseas for cheaper, or because the work in question would benefit society but the benefit would be hard for the business to capture, and other such good reasons. > I don't think the average person is ok with the government spending $5 The average person would be so happy to not be under threat of unemployment anymore that they'd be ok with the government spending $5. The rich person, on the other hand.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Most people who cannot hold down a job are that way for basically psychological reasons, they can't bring themselves to consistently show up and quit any job you give them within days/weeks. What would help them the most is creating a new class of labor which works on a day-to-day basis with no paperwork/bureaucracy setup to hire them and fire them. I'm talking about legalized and legitimized unorganized untaxed day-labor, so people who can't hold down a regular job can at least easily earn irregular money whenever they find themselves able. If it requires applying for one day then showing up the next, that disqualifies most chronically unemployed people. Unfortunately well-meaning people will insist on creating bureaucratic roadblocks in this program ostensibly for the benifit of the workers, to make sure the workers are getting benefits, safety training, etc, that have the end result of making it a job you have to apply for in advance and show up for later. And once this is done, it will be no different from the normal sort of job that some people can't hold onto because they can't bring themselves to show up reliably.

LargeTomato 3y ago

Can one be fired from the guaranteed jobs program?

bilsbie 3y ago

Careful what you wish for.

lupusreal 3y ago

In America we've got these things called temp agencies. You walk in from the street and tell them "I have no experience and no skills, I haven't worked in many years and I'm on drugs but I need a job". Then they say "Certainly sir, here is a list of positions we have. Here, let me highlight the ones that don't require a drug test." Within a week they'll have you at one of these jobs and your new boss will be genuinely surprised when you actually show up, "you have no idea how many people just never show up and only apply because somebody forces them to. If you can consistently come into work we'll hire you full time." If you can actually show up you can get a job. It won't be your dream job but it will be a job and they'll be thankful to have you. So why do we need the government involved in this? (BTW before anybody tells me I'm wrong, the above is from my personal experience.)

tiahura 3y ago
Work! How regressive of you!
cousin_it 3y ago
Cool, and here's the personal experience of hundreds of people in just one reddit thread from yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/18zr2o4/why_does_no_one_want_me/ https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/18zr2o4/why_does_no_o... I see no reason to trust yours over theirs.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  People apply for the jobs they want, when they should be applying for any jobs they could conceivably do. When I went through this the job I landed was pulling boxes off the back of trucks onto pallets. That OP wants a job in food services and for some reason can't get one. He should try applying to the kind of jobs he doesn't want. If he can establish himself as a reliable worker at a shitty job, he'll have a much easier time applying for the jobs he does want.
- tiahura 3y ago
  The abject failure to develop a sense of agency in large sections of society is disheartening.

newsclues 3y ago

Would abundant jobs but scarce housing be better (for worker, not landlords)? Seems like society needs a surplus of both, without excess abundance of either.

cousin_it 3y ago
This is a great question, and really highlights why my proposal would work or not. The surface-level answer is that unemployment increases homelessness, so fixing unemployment would go a long way in fixing homelessness as well. But the deeper answer is that I don't believe housing is actually scarce. It's just scarce in places that have jobs. Whereas in "job deserts", which might be most of the territory, housing can be quite cheap. So if the government made jobs spring up in more places, maybe housing wouldn't be a problem.

jmyeet 3y ago

Many people have a warped perception of what it is to be "homeless" or, more generally, "housing insecure". There are stages. The first stage is where you're staying with friends and family for variable periods. Couchsurfing, attics, garages that sort of thing. You probably still work but can't afford the security deposit and first and last months rent. Maybe you can't even afford rent. You probably lost your house because of a relationship breakup, an eviction from income disruption, etc. Stage two is where those options are exhausted and you're living in your car. You are probably still employed. Sometimes you may park that car with someone you know but as time goes on you'll be parking in parking lots and on the streets. You may suffer break ins, run-ins with the law, etc. At some point that car will break down and you will lose your job because of it. The car is staying where it is until the city impounds it. Stage three is the first stage people notice. You're living on the street because you've lost your car. In places like NYC the homeless may seek shelter at night on the Subway. This leads to a lot of "homelessness crimes" like loitering, turnstile jumping and traspassing. Stage four is where this life has taken its toll. You probably have mental health issues, drug dependency issues (initially from self-medication), etc. So stage three is where many think homelessness starts. They may still be able to work but this becomees increasingly difficult without access to a car and a permanent address. You might even use a Planet Fitness or YMCA to keep clean still. But housing security began long before someone gets to this point. And in all but the last stage, simply giving someone housing will solve their problems most of the time. As time goes on you may require other intervention such as mental health treatment, social work and treatment for substance abuse. But unfortunately a lot of this gets criminalized, which both costs money and makes it more difficult for someone to recover, having a criminal record. We live in a world where we'd rather spend a lot of money militarizing people to harass homeless people and on prisons to house them when we can spend a whole lot less just giving people somewhere to live.

wdkrnls 3y ago
This 4 stage model is insightful.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
There are also plenty of people that go straight to stage 4 after burning their family/friend support network with a bad substance abuse problem, or time out of prison with no where to go, so they never go properly through the other stages. It isn’t as simple as one path to homelessness. By stage 4 it is pretty much over, we failed as a society and that person is probably never going to be a productive member of society again. We should be throwing all of our resources at the previous stages, rather than sinking 99% of them into stage 4 ensuring that we just let more people slip into it because we didn’t devote enough resources to the earlier stages.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

People complain about housing mostly where jobs are abundant (which stokes demand for housing), and they complain about jobs in places where housing is not a problem. A lot of the people living on the streets can’t get jobs even when they are abundant because they have mental illness or substance abuse problems that prevent them from working at all. Sure, Seattle has a minimum wage of almost $20/hour, and plenty of jobs still go unfilled, but the guy having a fent crisis naked in front of the library isn’t going to help much (for example from my personal experience).