5 ms·

I'm from a country with a welfare state, where if you are unemployed the government pay your rent and give you a small amount of money to buy food until such ti

I'm from a country with a welfare state, where if you are unemployed the government pay your rent and give you a small amount of money to buy food until such time as you are employed again. Not understanding how the American system works, I find this article confusing. It sounds like there is a time limit on how long someone can claim unemployment benefit? So what happens after this time runs out, they just get kicked out of their home and starve/freeze to death? Even if you don't care about them on a human level, that sounds like it would be massively expensive in terms of increasing crime levels and providing hospital care for all the dying people. Honestly it sounds like something out of a dystopian cyberpunk novel.

lisper 13y ago
> they just get kicked out of their home and starve/freeze to death? Yeah, pretty much, though most of them can subsist for a long time on handouts before they actually die. > that sounds like it would be massively expensive in terms of increasing crime levels and providing hospital care for all the dying people Yeah, pretty much. This is one of the reasons the U.S. has the highest incarceration rates and health care costs of any industrialized country by a wide margin. > Honestly it sounds like something out of a dystopian cyberpunk novel. If only it were fiction.
- nsxwolf 13y ago
  This is insanely inaccurate so I downvoted you. There are many, many kinds of assistance available to people. It's not an either/or situation where you run out of unemployment and then your next option is death by exposure and starvation. Come on.
  - lisper 13y ago
    > There are many, many kinds of assistance available to people Yeah? Like what? > It's not an either/or situation where you run out of unemployment and then your next option is death by exposure and starvation. Come on. It's not like you run out of unemployment and die from exposure the next day. It's a very slow, gradual process. Many people survive for years on the street before they succumb. But unless something changes, or they are taken in by friends or family, the vast majority of the long-term unemployed will end up on the streets (or in prison) and sooner or later they will die there, because the sad fact of the matter is that at the moment there is no place else for them to go.
nsxwolf 13y ago
There are other welfare support programs besides unemployment insurance. They're just not all wrapped up in a neat bow by the central government. There's housing and food assistance and other programs at the federal and state levels, as well as charities, church food pantries, etc. In reality, very few people end up on the streets to starve and freeze to death.
- lisper 13y ago
  That depends on what you mean by "not very many." Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but as of the mid-2000's there were an estimated 750,000 homeless people in the U.S. That number is almost certainly higher now. Most of them manage to survive without starving or freezing because food and shelter are sporadically available. But it certainly doesn't extend their life span.
  - bluedino 13y ago
    A large amount of our homeless are mentally ill and live on the street by choice. There are shelters in most places, and the 'smart' homeless people hitchhike somewhere warm. It's a much easier time being homeless in California than it is in Minnesota.
    - lisper 13y ago
      > A large amount of our homeless are mentally ill and live on the street by choice. Yes, that's true (though "choice" is a little bit of a misleading term to apply to a mentally ill person -- their "choice" is often between the street and some mental institution which is not much different than a prison). But I don't see what that has to do with the topic at hand. > There are shelters in most places It is an extremely rare shelter that is not already heavily oversubscribed, especially when the weather turns nasty. > the 'smart' homeless people hitchhike somewhere warm That's true too. But the crop of folks who will be hitting the streets in the next few years as a result of unemployment benefits coming to an end are probably not very street-smart. But your point is well taken: we will probably not be seeing dead bodies of homeless people being hauled away by the truckload. But (I predict) we will be seeing a lot more homeless people.

lisper 13y ago

> they just get kicked out of their home and starve/freeze to death? Yeah, pretty much, though most of them can subsist for a long time on handouts before they actually die. > that sounds like it would be massively expensive in terms of increasing crime levels and providing hospital care for all the dying people Yeah, pretty much. This is one of the reasons the U.S. has the highest incarceration rates and health care costs of any industrialized country by a wide margin. > Honestly it sounds like something out of a dystopian cyberpunk novel. If only it were fiction.

nsxwolf 13y ago
This is insanely inaccurate so I downvoted you. There are many, many kinds of assistance available to people. It's not an either/or situation where you run out of unemployment and then your next option is death by exposure and starvation. Come on.
- lisper 13y ago
  > There are many, many kinds of assistance available to people Yeah? Like what? > It's not an either/or situation where you run out of unemployment and then your next option is death by exposure and starvation. Come on. It's not like you run out of unemployment and die from exposure the next day. It's a very slow, gradual process. Many people survive for years on the street before they succumb. But unless something changes, or they are taken in by friends or family, the vast majority of the long-term unemployed will end up on the streets (or in prison) and sooner or later they will die there, because the sad fact of the matter is that at the moment there is no place else for them to go.

nsxwolf 13y ago

There are other welfare support programs besides unemployment insurance. They're just not all wrapped up in a neat bow by the central government. There's housing and food assistance and other programs at the federal and state levels, as well as charities, church food pantries, etc. In reality, very few people end up on the streets to starve and freeze to death.

lisper 13y ago
That depends on what you mean by "not very many." Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but as of the mid-2000's there were an estimated 750,000 homeless people in the U.S. That number is almost certainly higher now. Most of them manage to survive without starving or freezing because food and shelter are sporadically available. But it certainly doesn't extend their life span.
- bluedino 13y ago
  A large amount of our homeless are mentally ill and live on the street by choice. There are shelters in most places, and the 'smart' homeless people hitchhike somewhere warm. It's a much easier time being homeless in California than it is in Minnesota.
  - lisper 13y ago
    > A large amount of our homeless are mentally ill and live on the street by choice. Yes, that's true (though "choice" is a little bit of a misleading term to apply to a mentally ill person -- their "choice" is often between the street and some mental institution which is not much different than a prison). But I don't see what that has to do with the topic at hand. > There are shelters in most places It is an extremely rare shelter that is not already heavily oversubscribed, especially when the weather turns nasty. > the 'smart' homeless people hitchhike somewhere warm That's true too. But the crop of folks who will be hitting the streets in the next few years as a result of unemployment benefits coming to an end are probably not very street-smart. But your point is well taken: we will probably not be seeing dead bodies of homeless people being hauled away by the truckload. But (I predict) we will be seeing a lot more homeless people.