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If anyone is wondering why solving homelessness and poverty is so hard, this sibling reply is dead but I think people need to see that this opinion exists, and

If anyone is wondering why solving homelessness and poverty is so hard, this sibling reply is dead but I think people need to see that this opinion exists, and we need to contemplate the richest and most powerful people in this country share this sentiment: "we're not blind to it, half of us are sick of paying for it for multiple generations, accruing interest. we're paying for poor people from 20 years ago still. let them sink, let them go away. its a test, they failed it." Here, "go away" is a euphemism for "die from exposure". 20 years ago we had a worldwide financial crises caused by the capricious whims of the richest people in this country, they caused massive amounts of damage, destroyed people's lives and livelihoods, kicked them out on the street, and it's framed as "paying for poor people".

carlosjobim 1y ago
It's nobody's fault for becoming poor. But if you're staying poor (dirt poor) for decades, then there is something you're doing wrong. The other commenter puts it in a rude way, but there's something to it. If you evidently can't take care of yourself, then you shouldn't be given more money. You should be in some kind of institution which takes care of your basic needs.
- ModernMech 1y ago
  > It's nobody's fault Sure, but it's the system's fault, and we can point at the people who are keeping the system the way it is. The system is what it does, and what it does is syphon money from everyone else and pumps it upward to a few individuals. That's not an accident, people are responsible for that, they like the way it works, and they're intent on keeping it that way. Remember, in this system you get paid money for having money and you get charged a fee if you don't have enough. You get taxed more for working with capital than for owning capital. You pay more the less you buy. People always say "The hardest million was the first million". This is by design! > You should be in some kind of institution which takes care of your basic needs. Maybe, but we refuse to fund those because they're too expensive to operate.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    If it only pumped the money to a few individuals someone would've pushed those individuals off a cliff and seized power by now. The magic of the system is that there's enough trickle down to motivate the petite-bourgeois (I hate Marx, but I'll be darned if he didn't enumerate some good economic tiers) to make them keep the system running. Your media talking heads peddling division, your 200k+/yr software engineers implementing extractive algorithms to make the gig economy tick, etc, etc, etc.
    - TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
      It looks like the times are changing thanks to AI, so we'll see what happens when the petite-bourgeoisie stop being quite so bougie.
    - ModernMech 1y ago
      If that were true, the Vice President wouldn't be trying to convince us that housing costs are high because of illegal immigration.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    Have you seen "the system" sleeping on the streets, starving, or not having enough clothes? No matter who or what is to blame, the individual is who is paying the price and who should have the strongest interest to get out of that situation. Which means, if you're staying in that situation for years on end you have to admit to yourself you are doing something which isn't working. Thats why people have more sympathy for somebody who is poor because they are temporarily down on their luck or born into poverty, and less sympathy for somebody who has been poor as an adult for decades.
    - ModernMech 1y ago
      In 2024 over 700k people were homeless in the USA. That's a system failure. If you want to talk about personal failings you have to consider individual circumstances. But 700k being homeless is abjectly just not how a civil society should operate.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  No. So far as I know, every single UBI trial has had consistently positive outcomes. People get jobs, get training, get a roof over their heads. Giving people money does in fact give people more choices, and helps make the poor less poor.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    Which UBI trials do you know about? There's a list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots But only six of the listed pilots mention the results. 1970s NIT pilots: no noticeable improvements. Mincome: significant reduction in hospitalization. Slight decrease in work? Tribal profit sharing: better homelife for children, parents on the booze less. Madhya Pradesh: great success. Netherlands: increased employment slightly, not health. Finland: improved health slightly, not employment (employment was the goal). So, I don't know. I suppose it helps, but mostly in Madhya Pradesh.
    - lostlogin 1y ago
      Everyone over 65 gets a state pension in NZ. And they hardly contribute to the tax take. I’d say that’s a partial UBI.
- d_silin 1y ago
  You are one major sickness and one layoff away from getting into the same situation, often to the point of no return.
  - xp84 1y ago
    No, I doubt they are. Most people who are on the streets chronically are there because they’ve burned every bridge. Most people have a dozen friends or family who would gladly give them the guest room for a few weeks if they had a job loss that put them at risk of hard times — on the other hand those who mysteriously have zero friends or family usually got that way by the same antisocial behaviors that contributed to their problems in the first place, until every last person that once cared said “don’t come around here anymore.” Not saying anyone’s a Bad Person for this, but treating everyone like zero-agency victims or helpless children has never fixed anything. You can’t fix people without at least their partnership, and generally it’s substances and severe mental illness that gets in the way of the cooperation. “Bitter pills to swallow” as the meme goes but anyone who doesn’t admit this is kidding themself.
    - d_silin 1y ago
      I can tell your income bracket from this phrase alone: > Most people have a dozen friends or family who would gladly give them the guest room for a few weeks. No, most people do not. I am aware of classic triad of "malignantly antisocial personality + substance abuse + criminal record" that makes people stay on the streets. But a lot of people end up on the streets simply because they were already only one notch above financial destitution and so all of their friends and family. Lose a job + get sick in body or mind, even temporarily = game over. "Friends and family" who are also financially vulnerable would ruthlessly shed the load of extra mouth to feed, much less to house.
      - ModernMech 1y ago
        The friends and family route works the first time around. You couch surf until you find a job, as you go through your contact list people are happy to host at first, but there comes the awkward "so... it's been a couple weeks... how's that job search going?". Then you have to put your job search on pause until you find a new place to live. Eventually your job search keeps turning up "no" because they don't like the answers to "can you explain this gap on your resume?" and they really don't like the answer to "do you have a permanent residence" or "do you have any drug-related convictions?" Hopefully you find a job before you've exhausted the good will of all your friends. And pray to GOD it doesn't happen again because the next time around, each one will have an excuse as to why they can't host you. "Oh sorry, we've got our inlaws, try X, Y, Z"... who are also "unable" to host. So then your car is your home. If you're lucky enough to have one. But the point is "just have friends" isn't a solution.
- tredre3 1y ago
  > You should be in some kind of institution which takes care of your basic needs. You're right of course. The problem is that such institution no longer exist in North America.
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    [dead]
- bluGill 1y ago
  > If you evidently can't take care of yourself, then you shouldn't be given more money. You should be in some kind of institution which takes care of your basic needs. We used to have those in the US. Things are better for the poor now without them - a few do freeze to death in the streets today, most do not, while the abuse of those old institutions did hit most. The people who need institutions are also those least able to advocate for themselves if they are abused. I don't like the current answer, but it could be worse and if you want something better you need to explain how it won't descend into worse. I don't have any ideas myself.
steveBK123 1y ago
I often find the loudest voices with this mentality either come from well off families, or were poor enough themselves in childhood to have benefited from the government programs they wish to destroy. The first is ignorance and the second is some sort of self hatred / shame. I rarely hear people that grew up fairly middle class and "made it" looking back at the poor as someone holding them back in this same manner.
- duskdozer 1y ago
  >or were poor enough themselves in childhood to have benefited from the government programs they wish to destroy or, are currently benefiting, but they're just getting what's owed to them, unlike all the other moochers taking handouts
piva00 1y ago
It's always sickening to hear more educated people (compared to the average) repeating this inhumane bullshit. Wanting people to die because they are poor, losing complete touch of why we humans even develop what we do: to the betterment of us all, to enrich all of our lives, to make the lives of future humans better. There's no other point to it, the absurd individualism is a disease, I'd much rather eradicate those from our lineage than the less fortunate, for a better future for humanity.

carlosjobim 1y ago

It's nobody's fault for becoming poor. But if you're staying poor (dirt poor) for decades, then there is something you're doing wrong. The other commenter puts it in a rude way, but there's something to it. If you evidently can't take care of yourself, then you shouldn't be given more money. You should be in some kind of institution which takes care of your basic needs.

ModernMech 1y ago
> It's nobody's fault Sure, but it's the system's fault, and we can point at the people who are keeping the system the way it is. The system is what it does, and what it does is syphon money from everyone else and pumps it upward to a few individuals. That's not an accident, people are responsible for that, they like the way it works, and they're intent on keeping it that way. Remember, in this system you get paid money for having money and you get charged a fee if you don't have enough. You get taxed more for working with capital than for owning capital. You pay more the less you buy. People always say "The hardest million was the first million". This is by design! > You should be in some kind of institution which takes care of your basic needs. Maybe, but we refuse to fund those because they're too expensive to operate.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  If it only pumped the money to a few individuals someone would've pushed those individuals off a cliff and seized power by now. The magic of the system is that there's enough trickle down to motivate the petite-bourgeois (I hate Marx, but I'll be darned if he didn't enumerate some good economic tiers) to make them keep the system running. Your media talking heads peddling division, your 200k+/yr software engineers implementing extractive algorithms to make the gig economy tick, etc, etc, etc.
  - TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
    It looks like the times are changing thanks to AI, so we'll see what happens when the petite-bourgeoisie stop being quite so bougie.
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    If that were true, the Vice President wouldn't be trying to convince us that housing costs are high because of illegal immigration.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  Have you seen "the system" sleeping on the streets, starving, or not having enough clothes? No matter who or what is to blame, the individual is who is paying the price and who should have the strongest interest to get out of that situation. Which means, if you're staying in that situation for years on end you have to admit to yourself you are doing something which isn't working. Thats why people have more sympathy for somebody who is poor because they are temporarily down on their luck or born into poverty, and less sympathy for somebody who has been poor as an adult for decades.
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    In 2024 over 700k people were homeless in the USA. That's a system failure. If you want to talk about personal failings you have to consider individual circumstances. But 700k being homeless is abjectly just not how a civil society should operate.
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
No. So far as I know, every single UBI trial has had consistently positive outcomes. People get jobs, get training, get a roof over their heads. Giving people money does in fact give people more choices, and helps make the poor less poor.
- card_zero 1y ago
  Which UBI trials do you know about? There's a list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots But only six of the listed pilots mention the results. 1970s NIT pilots: no noticeable improvements. Mincome: significant reduction in hospitalization. Slight decrease in work? Tribal profit sharing: better homelife for children, parents on the booze less. Madhya Pradesh: great success. Netherlands: increased employment slightly, not health. Finland: improved health slightly, not employment (employment was the goal). So, I don't know. I suppose it helps, but mostly in Madhya Pradesh.
  - lostlogin 1y ago
    Everyone over 65 gets a state pension in NZ. And they hardly contribute to the tax take. I’d say that’s a partial UBI.
d_silin 1y ago
You are one major sickness and one layoff away from getting into the same situation, often to the point of no return.
- xp84 1y ago
  No, I doubt they are. Most people who are on the streets chronically are there because they’ve burned every bridge. Most people have a dozen friends or family who would gladly give them the guest room for a few weeks if they had a job loss that put them at risk of hard times — on the other hand those who mysteriously have zero friends or family usually got that way by the same antisocial behaviors that contributed to their problems in the first place, until every last person that once cared said “don’t come around here anymore.” Not saying anyone’s a Bad Person for this, but treating everyone like zero-agency victims or helpless children has never fixed anything. You can’t fix people without at least their partnership, and generally it’s substances and severe mental illness that gets in the way of the cooperation. “Bitter pills to swallow” as the meme goes but anyone who doesn’t admit this is kidding themself.
  - d_silin 1y ago
    I can tell your income bracket from this phrase alone: > Most people have a dozen friends or family who would gladly give them the guest room for a few weeks. No, most people do not. I am aware of classic triad of "malignantly antisocial personality + substance abuse + criminal record" that makes people stay on the streets. But a lot of people end up on the streets simply because they were already only one notch above financial destitution and so all of their friends and family. Lose a job + get sick in body or mind, even temporarily = game over. "Friends and family" who are also financially vulnerable would ruthlessly shed the load of extra mouth to feed, much less to house.
    - ModernMech 1y ago
      The friends and family route works the first time around. You couch surf until you find a job, as you go through your contact list people are happy to host at first, but there comes the awkward "so... it's been a couple weeks... how's that job search going?". Then you have to put your job search on pause until you find a new place to live. Eventually your job search keeps turning up "no" because they don't like the answers to "can you explain this gap on your resume?" and they really don't like the answer to "do you have a permanent residence" or "do you have any drug-related convictions?" Hopefully you find a job before you've exhausted the good will of all your friends. And pray to GOD it doesn't happen again because the next time around, each one will have an excuse as to why they can't host you. "Oh sorry, we've got our inlaws, try X, Y, Z"... who are also "unable" to host. So then your car is your home. If you're lucky enough to have one. But the point is "just have friends" isn't a solution.
tredre3 1y ago
> You should be in some kind of institution which takes care of your basic needs. You're right of course. The problem is that such institution no longer exist in North America.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  [dead]
bluGill 1y ago
> If you evidently can't take care of yourself, then you shouldn't be given more money. You should be in some kind of institution which takes care of your basic needs. We used to have those in the US. Things are better for the poor now without them - a few do freeze to death in the streets today, most do not, while the abuse of those old institutions did hit most. The people who need institutions are also those least able to advocate for themselves if they are abused. I don't like the current answer, but it could be worse and if you want something better you need to explain how it won't descend into worse. I don't have any ideas myself.

steveBK123 1y ago

I often find the loudest voices with this mentality either come from well off families, or were poor enough themselves in childhood to have benefited from the government programs they wish to destroy. The first is ignorance and the second is some sort of self hatred / shame. I rarely hear people that grew up fairly middle class and "made it" looking back at the poor as someone holding them back in this same manner.

duskdozer 1y ago
>or were poor enough themselves in childhood to have benefited from the government programs they wish to destroy or, are currently benefiting, but they're just getting what's owed to them, unlike all the other moochers taking handouts

piva00 1y ago

It's always sickening to hear more educated people (compared to the average) repeating this inhumane bullshit. Wanting people to die because they are poor, losing complete touch of why we humans even develop what we do: to the betterment of us all, to enrich all of our lives, to make the lives of future humans better. There's no other point to it, the absurd individualism is a disease, I'd much rather eradicate those from our lineage than the less fortunate, for a better future for humanity.