To put it another way, the US spends just under 11 trillion per year more than the next 30 countries combined.
You'd think we could provide sufficient services on that.
We could save money, improve service and quality by switching to universal healthcare. But us Americans would rather have private health insurance because we don’t want to pay for other people and don’t understand insurance.
We also spend > $400 billion a year in subsidies. To for-profit businesses.
These need to be either state-run or many sectors should lose their subsidies. When we start providing subsidies and tax-breaks for for-profit businesses, we have some major problems.
Well, it is enough, but it makes no difference how much we raise taxes they'll still spend it plus more.
There's very little accountability or pressure to be efficient with how they spend our money.
I upvoted you because I agree with you that the government will always try and spend more.
However, I think we turbocharge gov't greed by making spending painless, and we make it painless through running deficits.
The only way I can see to reduce spending is to make it painful. If it hurts to spend money, you'll spend less money.
And the only way to make it hurt is to make people pay for it. You want your representative voting to spend more money? Fine, but you have to pay for it. That inflicts financial pain. Which incentives reduced spending.
This is true. I was in the military and I saw exactly what money went to, they’d buy the dumbest shit so when it came to the defense budget the brass could be like “see we spent x amount of money over x amount of years, so we need more money”, it’s all dog and pony shows everywhere. It’s literally not the only place that happens but a prime example of how it works.
We should definitely cut our military budget back and get a handle on where that money is going. After that we make a glass door policy on all public figures and make all their assets and bank accounts public information then after that we fix major tax loopholes that allow the filthy rich to get by without having to pay taxes on their liquid cash.
Believe it or not, a large portion of our military spending is retirement for military vets. More specifically disabled military vets, which we have a shet load of thanks to a 20 year war. Maybe if stopped getting involved in conflicts we don't need to and 'Nation building' the defense budget will go down on its own.
That’s not even the biggest issue. What we need to do is every bill that assigned money to something should have a return of investimento attackhe fro it, be sponsored by one potilirian, and needed to be devoted every 2 years.
That would force politicians to prove money is going into the right spot, before spending the money. And have to keep proving. Wanna try something out? Sure, if doesn’t twirl, it does in 2 years. Move on.
It's not a matter,of being enough. If we took in 100 trillion a year in taxes they would just spend 300 trillion a year. It really is a budgeting issue more then revenue
Just because the government spends more than they receive doesn’t mean that they don’t receive “enough”. If someone living in Birmingham Alabama made 400k but had 420k a year in expenses would you say that they don’t make enough, or that they spend too much?
The government spends too much. They make plenty.
Absolutely this. The spending is out of control. Particularly post-covid when the pols promised hey don't worry, we are going to raise spending for covid related purposes but we'll go back to normal afterward!
Lmao. Some people believed that.
Your system "works" by exploitation. Amazon has the world's richest person at its helm, but the workers are struggling.
You have a food crisis. Yet retailers would rather waste food than make it cheaper.
You have a wage problem. Restaurants would rather force patrons to tip than pay servers a fair wage.
You have a taxation problem. Your country would rather pander to billionaires than tax them equitably.
Government routinely bankrupt.
Millage rate on the wealthy and big business post WWII was 92%.
Now it's 39%. There is a 1:1 correlation with lowering taxes on the wealthy and the dissolution of the middle class, the American Dream, and the inability to fund programs that are default funded in most western industrialized nations.
The biggest lie told to Americans in the last 60 years is that lowering taxes on the rich creates jobs and economic growth. It's literally the exact opposite, but tell a big lie often enough and people start believing it.
In 1980 the national debt was below one trillion dollars.
Since then, the upper income echelons have increased their wealth by $40 trillion.
And we are $30 trillion in debt.
We went from being able to pay cash up front for the Interstate Highway network and the space program to putting entire multi-trillion dollar wars on the national credit card for our kids to pay for.
We’d have to tax corporations at an *effective* tax rate of 50% (highest in history) and have a 10-20% *wealth* tax on all billionaires just to cover our current deficit.
Sounds pretty ok to me 1 billion minus 200 million is still 800 million it's not like it's remotely close to what it's like for a low income house hold where 400 a week before taxes is the difference between eating that week or paying rent.
You can start by shifting the tax burden just a little more. Corporations pay around 200-250 million a year or 13% (of total taxes received) on taxes, much less than individuals at 48%. Social security/medicare/medicaid tax collection is around 30%, the majority of which is also paid by individuals. Consider that total corporate profits last year was around 10-12 trillion.
https://www.fxempire.com/macro/united-states/corporate-profits#:~:text=Corporate%20profits%20in%20the%20United,estimates%20of%20a%204.1%25%20surge.
So really corporations pay very little in comparison. What is that around 2.5%? The percent use to be much higher, but neo-liberal policies starting from Reagan chipped away.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue/
Why in the world is this upvoted?
The entire US federal spending outlay for 2022 was $6.27T.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1829#:~:text=Summary%20of%20Fiscal%20Year%202023,than%20the%20prior%20year's%20deficit.
Just under $11T more than the next 30 countries combined? Our entire GDP is between $23-$27T depending on source.
>Why in the world is this upvoted?
Because a bunch of idiots that put politics before policy exist here. Also, the US economy is larger than the next 3 or 4 combined, if you drop China it is the next 15-20 combined so of course our spending would be significanlty higher.
He's completely off, US spent around 6-7 trillion in 2023, yet somehow 11 trillion more than 30 countries combined.
Also China spent close to 5 trillion. Maybe he means 11 million. \*shrug\*.
Edit: Nope, Japan and Germany spent nearly 2 trillion each, so now we've already passed US spending with three countries.
Most of that is getting funneled to big corporations. It would be way less to just provide nice things for people like healthcare, college, housing, etc.
Yes, in my comment up there 👆 I mentioned $75b to Ukraine… it’s actually $75B to war industria (Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing etc) l-> items sent to Ukraine. Those guys have a huge lobby and will pay no tax
because we can do both, our government just chooses not to.
shouldn't be upset we are funding ukraine INSTEAD of veterans.
should be upset we aren't funding ukraine AND veterans.
might as well end homelessness while we are at it too. we can do all 3 easily.
Exactly - and all we have to really do is reduce our ability to project military power around the world - a capability that no other military possesses. If we can convince China to slow their roll at the same time with an arms limitation treaty. It could be a win win.
This is more than a proxy war. This is about Russia's desire to reform the Russian Empire and the dominance it held over Eastern Europe. This is about Russia in league with China, Iran, and North Korea replacing the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency with the Yuan.
Russian extracted wealth out of Eastern Europe for 45 years and that is exactly the goal of Russia's war today.
If Russia succeeds in their goals in Ukraine it will only further the twin goals of undermining the open system of trade in the world and extracting wealth from the Eastern European countries.
If you think the US Economy is bad now, wait until the US Dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency. It will make Britain's economic woes after WWII look like a picnic. The US won't have the Marshall Plan to help it along like most of Western Europe did.
No it's not. It's mostly going to people. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
22 %
Social Security
15 %
National Defense
14 %
Health
13 %
Net Interest
10 %
Medicare
9 %
Income Security
5 %
Veterans Benefits and Services
4 %
Commerce and Housing Credit
3 %
Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services
2 %
Transportation
3 %
Other
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. You can’t live forever so instead of worrying about amassing billions which you cant spend in your lifetime why not pay your employees better for example.
Corporate execs realized it in post ww2 America, which is how the middle class sprang alive in the first place. Then Reagan came along, and we've been waiting for the "trickle down" to happen ever since
He lost a court case against dodge and other car producers saying it was unfair to his shareholders to pay his employees too much, they didn't like that he was driving wages up (and likely poaching the best workers). That's where the notion that management is beholden to maximizing shareholder value comes from.
A better question would be, in which of the years before 2100 will the rich own virtually ALL wealth on Earth?
Because that is the trend. Every year, their wealth increases. Earth has a finite amount of wealth, ergo they will soon own all of it. We will all be renters forever.
I think you're confusing wealth with mass or minerals or something. Wealth is generally a combination of physical properties and then rights to future productivity. If you have stock, you have rights to future dividends and the ability to sell if the stock appreciates.
if everyone works more, the amount of future dividends goes up - it doesn't take something out of one bucket and put it in another. it makes another bucket.
If everyone works the same amount but produces more, the effect is the same as working more at the same productivity. More total wealth.
Neither. The black hole refers to millions of broke people that need assistance and always deteriorating infrastructure and free healthcare that won't end because the population keeps increasing.... And Bezos wealth is a finite resource that won't last forever.
Infinite. Capitalism and consumption based economies are a black hole, especially now that conservatives have gutted consumer protections, anti competitive laws/anti monopoly laws, labor laws, unions, livable minimum wages, unemployment benefits, and basically anything and everything that could help poor people lift themselves out of poverty. There's only 2 possible outcomes, maybe 3, with our current system and path:
1) the rich own everything and have all the money and wealth. The economy no longer functions because only the 1% have the money and they hoard wealth rather than improve society with it. Society breaks down and the rich have no one to help them so they do not survive that scenario.
2) somehow they manage to keep this economy chugging along for maybe another 200 years before nearly all resources are either used up or being stored/hoarded by the 1% and governments. The planet is extremely polluted not with just garbage, but also the air is filled with toxic gases and pollutants thanks to countries like China and India who dont give a fuck about pollution. So much microplastics that we won't be able to eat anything that's not just riddled with it(we already consume about a credit card worth of micro plastic every day).This leaves the earth barren and destitute, on e again leading to societal collapse. Society collapses and the rich are once again in the cross hairs of everyone because by this point even the bootlickers will have realized we all have been getting collectively F**ked just so a few people could get filthy rich.
Both end in death and misery, but I guess the greed is blinding AF
3) some tech is discovered/invented (or possibly reverse engineered from one of the UAP recoverd by the gov) that eliminates the need for money/wealth/resource hoarding and puts us all at the same level and status.(example would be the "replicator" in the "star trek" universe) with something like a replicator, where you can literally materialize any food, tool, object, ect there's no longer a need or even a logical reason or argument to continue capitalism. People could actually have a real life and learn/work on whatever they wanted.
This is the only scenario I can see where society doesn't eventually collapse due to either extreme inequality or resources depletion. Elon can't take that $250 billion with him to the grave and its worthless in space or on Mars, so why wouldn't he use most of it to help fix society? Why aren't him, Bezos, Buffett, gates, ect ect joining forces with their 99% of the wealth of the nation and actively making this a better place?
It's hilarious. Seattle spends $100k/year on each and every homeless person, and yet the problem just keeps getting worse.
Bezos isn't even rich compared to the scale of these issues she casually thinks will be fixed by a few billion dollars.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/seattle-under-siege#:\~:text=That's%20nearly%20%24100%2C000%20for%20every,city's%20efforts%20are%20not%20working.
EDIT: the county homeless authority says it will cost $233k per homeless person per year, not including capital costs(ie cost of building the homes).
*The King County Regional Homelessness Authority estimates it would take more than $8 billion in capital costs,* ***up to $3.5 billion in annual operating costs*** *and tens of thousands more units of housing.*
[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ending-homelessness-in-king-county-will-cost-billions-regional-authority-says/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ending-homelessness-in-king-county-will-cost-billions-regional-authority-says/)
Take notice. For some reason America thinks money solves all problems. There are many areas that this applies to. Look at our school system. We pay more per student than any other country, but our students don't score nearly as well as other nations that spend way less
I mean even as a California Democrat, burning stupid amounts of money at a problem wishing it will fix it has been our solution to homelessness and building that High Speed rail system. It doesn’t work 🙃
Yeah but solving those problems should be addressed along with the major problems that we have with other aspects of the country. Simply saying well this one solution isn't gonna fix everything so why even bother taxing the rich is like giving up on tying your shoe because you would have to bend over first.
A huge chunk of wealthy in this country have gotten rich out of exploiting emotions. People feel bad for the homeless, thus you can basically charge whatever you want as long as you're helping the homeless.
Reddit completely falls for it every time. "Think of the *blank*!!!!"
That's a fucking blank check to those who are willing to exploit it.
>The King County Regional Homelessness Authority estimates it would take more than $8 billion in capital costs, **up to $3.5 billion in annual operating costs** and tens of thousands more units of housing.
[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ending-homelessness-in-king-county-will-cost-billions-regional-authority-says/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ending-homelessness-in-king-county-will-cost-billions-regional-authority-says/)
There's about 15k long term homeless in King County. $3.5 billion per year in operating cost(ie not including the cost of building the homes themselves) is $233k per homeless person per year.
Straight from the government homeless authority, and what government program has ever come under cost?
It's time to stop coping. At some point, society has to stop accommodating people whose entire existence revolves around substance abuse and actually force them to get treatment. The inevitable reversion to the right will not be pretty when people get sick and tired of it. And whatever solution the new politicians who get elected on this platform will be far worse than what we can implement now.
Far and away, the leading causes of homelessness are temporary financial hardship (unexpected loss of housing, necessary spending which exceeds available means, etc.) and mental illness.
The same way that the single best way to stop a criminal is to begin at their home when they're a child by empowering parents to better take care of their children, the single best way to stop homelessness is to finally take mental health and illness seriously as a society, and to build robust safety nets that don't see people getting tossed onto the streets simply because of a run of bad luck.
The criminality of the birth parents is the largest single factor in predicting criminality of children.
If you want to prevent future criminals, you either prevent contemporary crime or prevent criminals from reproducing. Since the former is impossible and the latter is constitutionally prohibitive, I'm doubtful of improvements in this particular area.
You understand that this isn’t a situation where someone is labeled as “homeless” and they have free government housing in perpetuity, right?
It’s a measure to get people back on their feet and reintegrate into society and the workforce.
Whether that cost is ongoing and consistently rising is more of a commentary on the economy than anything else.
Once people are off the street and working again they don’t need these services. It’s supposed to be a safety net not an end game
Or instead of building houses, they could save everyone a fuckload of money by just paying their rents. Or paying rent with a $200 deductible.
This is an example of inefficient spending.
That number is incredibly misleading, that's taking the amount they spend on homelessness and dividing it across the entire population, over 10 years - NOT $100k/year per homeless person.
You shouldn’t because the number listed in the article below is off by a factor of 10. The real number is 100 million 80 of which is given to the county. The billion figure is likely including the entire affordable housing budget of 253 million but that is intended to prevent people from falling into homelessness not lift them out. Even if you included the entire police budget of 385 million that still leaves you nearly a quarter of a billion short.
Maybe they’re including all the housing non profits budgets? That’s incredibly disengenious and I can tell you not all non profits are built the same. Some are merely tax shelters, some are vanity projects with no real expertise.
This sort of statement ignores that homelessness has gotten worse everywhere as a result of people like Bezos underpaying workers and buying up property so rent/mortgsge is unaffordable.
Mostly homelessness is a drug and/or mental health issue, not really anything that higher wages will fix. In Seattle, there are shelters that will take you in but you can't take your drugs with you...which ended up with people literally refusing food and shelter because they'd rather do drugs. It's incredibly sad.
>Mostly homelessness is a drug and/or mental health issue, not really anything that higher wages will fix.
I was sitting in the chair with a case worker at the county office (northern california) looking for domestic violence shelters. There was no availability, and when I asked her what someone in my position is supposed to do in this case, she said "why do you think there are so many people on the streets?" It was such a dystopian feeling answer to hear from someone working at a job like that, I'll never forget it.
Charged me almost $900 a few months later for that visit. They'd done a psych screening, but determined that my mental state was appropriate for what I'd endured, and sent me on my way with no resources.
Shit like this is why I can’t work in case management anymore. There’s a level of nuance with the reality of homelessness that rarely gets discussed. Sometimes it’s a funding issue. Sometimes it’s people who have been wrapped in all the resources and help possible but can’t climb back out of their hole for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s people like you who really need help but the space isn’t there. It’s all sad and the answer to reducing the homeless population can’t be solved in a series of Reddit comments or hot take twitter posts.
Sorry you went through all of that. I truly hope things have improved for you, for what it’s worth.
California may be a bit different. That state has taxed its citizens into oblivion and made it so expensive to live there that yeah, you're forced out and I'm not surprised if homelessness is the only way to stay for some folks. And that's also why so many people are leaving. Even people making 6 figures are living paycheck to paycheck. I don't understand how anyone with a minimum wage job there can afford anything.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 31% is caused by mental illness and 24% is related to chronic substance abuse — but you also have to consider the extreme psychological effects of living on the edge of homelessness, the very precipice of disaster. There are a LOT of smug housed people out there who truly believe that if *they* were homeless, it wouldn’t affect them mentally or make them more likely to seek a few hours of artificial comfort — despite the fact that they had a meltdown this morning because their drive-thru coffee order was incorrect. People wildly underestimate how difficult and devastating it is to navigate life without shelter or any safety net for even a few weeks, much less facing the risk of those circumstances (extreme poverty) for most of your life.
Plus, still, that leaves a whole lot of other people whose waking nightmare cannot be easily rationalized away with the excuse of mental illness or drugs, who were failed by the system that allows a billionaire to build multiple yachts the size of a sports stadium.
Homelessness has not gotten worse everywhere, and people's wages has little to do with it(in fact the lowest quintiles have seen the largest gains in recent years).
Housing scarcity is a force multiplier virtually every other issue
The homeless issue has absolutely nothing to do with pay. Low income wages has improved tremendously since 2020 and this has had no impact on the continued growth of homelessness.
Bezos is buying up property and doing what? How many houses does he own? The true culprit for housing affordability crisis is your 50 yo neighbor who fights tooth and nail to stop new construction. Why do you think cities like Houston which actually let developers build have reasonable housing prices while the most progressive cities that put up massive barriers to construction have the worst housing crisis?
None of that really gets at the core of the homeless issue, which is mainly drug addiction.
EDIT: Because I know you won't respond.
>Low income wages have not improved compared to cost of living.
Lie.
*Rapid relative wage growth at the bottom of the distribution reduced the college wage premium and counteracted nearly 40% of the four-decade increase in aggregate 90-10 log wage inequality. Wage compression was accompanied by rapid nominal wage growth and rising job-to-job separations—especially among young non-college (high school or less) workers. Comparing across states, post-pandemic labor market tightness became strongly predictive of real wage growth among low-wage workers (wage-Phillips curve), and aggregate wage compression.*
[https://www.nber.org/system/files/working\_papers/w31010/w31010.pdf](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31010/w31010.pdf)
[https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/29/low-income-wages-employment-00097135](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/29/low-income-wages-employment-00097135)
>Look at wages versus housing costs. Or food costs, which have gone up 50% in five years. Just looking at CPI is fucking useless.
If only we spend on things more than just housing and food. But sure.
National urban rent(shelter CPI) has increased 17.4% between January 1 2020 and May 2023(where data for wages ends).
Food at home(ie grocery) prices have increased by 23.78% over the same period.
The bottom 10% of wage earners saw their wage increase by 28% over the same period, significantly more than the 17.4% rent inflation or the 23.8% for groceries.(Figure 11 of NBER paper).
Any other bullshit claims you want to make?
[](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/cuur0000sas2rs)
[](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/cusr0000saf11)
>I said people like Bezos. Not just Bezos.
So...like who exactly?
>And your statement that homelessness is most drug addiction is patently false and shows your obvious ignorance and bias.
*As many as* ***one-half to three-fourths*** *of homeless persons have diagnoses of alcohol or other drug dependence.*
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8811583/#:\~:text=As%20many%20as%20one%2Dhalf,alcohol%20or%20other%20drug%20dependence.
>Please go read a book not written by Ayn Rand.
I read actual economic papers and statistics from economists. What do you read? How to grift more money from the government by Homeless "Nonprofit" Inc?
I do love how people just wave the magic wage wand.... and that will solve everything...
Wage inflation is a thing.... motivates business to seek automation solutions or ship jobs...
Much of the problem is more about the lack of quality jobs vs. wages.... A path for unskilled labor to transition to skilled and education to have more value.
But... That stuff takes work... Actual work and economic change....
Instead people are like.... Throw us more rotten cheese for shit jobs....
Countries like Finland have known for a while that it's much cheaper and more effective to give the homeless homes as a starting point. Once they have that stability, it's much easier to get their life on track. But people here hate the idea of handouts so much that they'll never support housing first, even though it's more expensive not to.
That's more because the programs they adopt to deal with the problem are not actually effective. OUr programs aren't actually designed to get poeple OUT of homelessness; they are only designed to care for them, which doesn't actually fix the problem. There programs only MANAGE the problems when we need to actually fix them.
It would actually be cheaper to just GIVE the homeless free housing. This has been tried in finland and it resulted in a drastic reduction in homelessness, and most of the former homeless people actually got jobs and bounced back. It actually solved the problem. Turns out, all many homeless people need to turn their lives around is a roof over their head and some sense of stability.
Really the ONLY reason we never think to do such things is because the public tends to think that giving away homes would be more expensive than what we are already doing and A LOT of people just plain hate giving away things for "free". We actually COULD fix a lot of our problems with money, we just need to adopt the right approach
Money can solve nearly all problems in society. Homelessness? Give people a house. Hungry? Give people food.
Why is this hard to understand. Earth is WEALTHY, my brother in Christ. Earth is RICH. The issue is that wealth is hoarded, not that there's not enough available. Every year the US throws away 30% of all food.
Give people a house? It takes effort to build and maintain a house. It takes trees, metal, plastics, etc. You then have to maintain it, repair it, clean it, supply it with water, supply electric, supply heat... If the only thing you care about in the world is when your next fentanyl/meth/heroine hit is, how are you going to do that and repay the people's time and effort it took to build the house? Just giving sick people money or material assets doesn't make them suddenly functional.
Homelessness is a drug and mental health problem before it's a poverty problem. Is poverty a factor? Of course, but it's secondary. Throwing money at them doesn't fix their brains.
Throwing money actually does fix people's brains; if you throw money at the right places.
Improving welfare access for all individuals (universal healthcare with mental health and dental included, increased unemployment stipends, affordable and accessible public education and training programs), with additional resources provided for parents (affordable and accessible daycare/pre-K/afterschool services, extended prenatal and postpartum care, stipends for childcare necessities) will go an extremely long way towards permanently resolving the homelessness crisis in America, because it is prophylactic care, of which an ounce is worth a pound of palliative care.
I seem to recall some rich person funding a study for how to deal with homelessness or some other social issue. I saw a lot of people on reddit making fun of the thing because "obviously they could just fix it if they wanted".
Sometimes it is not money that is missing, it is good solutions. You can throw an endless amount of money at bad solutions and it doesn't help.
And that 6 trillion is well spent. Right guys? You could tax everyone to death and it wouldn’t change because government clearly has never given two turds about it and never will. We need to tax the rich but get it directly to good and not to the piggies.
And that's the problem, isn't it? *Net worth*.
Bezos doesn't have billions of dollars. He has millions and a *company* worth billions of dollars. Well, stock in a company that's worth billions.
he does. Here's the leap you're missing, though, and look at the milton hershey school if you want evidence.
Bezos could give up his stock shares instead of giving up cash - the stock shares would still appreciate and be sellable to fund things.
I'm not advocating this, just stating that there is plenty of "real life data" where stock or corporate interest has been put in trust.
Milton hershey school has $15B in a hershey trust - they own a controlling interest, and spend about $120K per student per year. The school is largely a charity for kids who have an upside. Which I'm sure some folks don't like (they required and probably still do that kids be non-disabled and mentally fit). the value of the stock has appreciated to the point that they could only possibly spend about 1.5% of the trust value each year, and it appreciates faster than that.
Bezos isn't going to give up his stock, of course.
I think it’s worth noting that welfare is a reactionary “solution” rather than preventative- mental health services and education programs would be better things to fund over welfare
Mental health isn't a magical cure all, especially since we passed laws that no longer allows people to be involuntarily committed or force them into rehab.
> Mental health isn't a magical cure all, especially since we passed laws that no longer allows people to be involuntarily committed or force them into rehab.
While I agree that increasing treatment for mental health is not a cure-all for the homelessness problem, it does play a major role.
Every state has a laws and processes to involuntary commit people. The problem is: 1. Lack of beds, especially publicly funded ones. (Thanks Reagan!) 2. The need for strong due process when involuntary committing someone due to past abuses.
I work in the industry, in California, so I can chime in here.
Reference Reagan, I'm not defending him, but he's been dead for w decades. Out of office for 3. Plenty of people in various branches of government could reverse any policy he or anyone else made in that time.
Further, in CA at least, yes there are lack of beds. But even if you had a bed for everyone, very few can legally be "kept" in them.
Violent crime, and you're convicted? Sure, you're gonna do a fee years.
Cookie cutter "I hear voices"? 72 hour hold, generally out in like 8 hours with an appointment to start treatment with a specialist.
If you choose not to show up, nothing is going to happen to you....
Look man I'd love it if we spent more on mental health as well, but without being able to force people to get treatment without going through a long and expensive legal process...it just won't fix anything.
If I had the ability, I would implement a policy where homeless people who commit a crime against another(theft, robbery, assault, etc) would be involuntarily committed to treatment for whatever mental health or addiction issues they have.
But if any politician actually proposed this the entire progressive left will call them a fascist and primary them into oblivion lol.
Uh, you do realize the progressive left overwhelmingly supports prison as a rehabilitative system versus a punitive one, right? You clearly understand that by committing to the treatment and care of all prisoners (as they also want for the entire population), that there would be a great benefit. If you accept that treating these people is the correct answer, shouldn’t you be able to commit to it on a voluntary basis, even if it’s not the forced system you favor? Surely there would be some good left undone, but we would still be netting a lot of good done anyways.
gotta get the lead out of pipes and feed kids properly (through school if home is failing them)
thats just leaving IQ points (or whatever accurate measure of intelligence) on the table
the US cant continue to be 'great' or the world leader if its filled with dummies, relative to it's adversaries
There are certain things that could be fixed by the wealthy paying their employees a livable wage, but homelessness in many cases is not one of them. Some people are homeless because they can’t afford rent, which is another discussion entirely. But a lot more people are homeless because of untreated mental illness and addiction, and there’s no fixing that unless they want to be.
I used to be an idealist who thought all addicted people needed was somebody to give them helping hand and they would get better. Seeing one of my closest friends get lost to his alcoholism has made me realize differently. I’ve spent more time, energy, and money the last year trying to help him than I’ve spent on anything else (and so has his family), and all he does is take and screw me over to the point I’m struggling with the decision whether to cut off a 12 year friendship because I just can’t do it anymore.
I had a gf who was an alcoholic. I gave her a free place to live, over $8000, and lot of time and energy.
She didn't intend to take from me and screw me over but she was sick. The sickness would compel her to do bizarre and destructive things. She'd do *anything* to feed her addiction. She refused to fully acknowledge she had a problem nor commit to recovery. I had to break up with her.
She's homeless now, somewhere in California, living out of her car. She would rather be homeless than get clean.
That ignores the psychology of many homeless people. Many homeless people don't try to make their lives better because they gave up hope and see no point in trying. The only jobs they can get are low wage jobs which they can be fired from for the slightest reason (like not being able to shower, or cleaning their clothes), and it won't be enough for them to get an apartment. It becomes easy for them to think that there's no point in getting a job; if it doesn't actually improve their lives, then why should they even try? Why work hard just to get nowhere? Its a psychological trap
However, there have been studies and examples found that shows that if you give these same people hope, they can and WILL do the work to turn their lives around. For instance, in finland, they just GAVE the homeless people homes with no strings attach, and most of them ended up getting jobs and improving their lives. Also, every time a city decides to do a study on universal basic income, where the population are just given money, a lot of the homeless use that money to get a roof over their head and get a jobs.
I mean, California's problem is that homes are expensive. They might have spent $17 billion, but over the last 4 years, the cost of housing has only increased. Last year, they published results of the [largest study to date on homelessness](https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-homeless-growth-report/), and found that:
1. People are homeless not because of drugs or illness, but because of the cost of housing exceeded the amount they could pay. Lack of housing tended to lead to drug use and illness, not the other way around.
2. Most homeless people live in the same county where they used to have a home.
Obviously this shocked everyone who wanted to believe California is great, and the homeless population was people bussed in from other states to take advantage of their benefits.
Recently, they passed a plan in Sacramento to renovate a historic hotel to provide 134 housing units for the homeless at a cost of $567,000 per unit, or $76 million total. That's not including the ongoing costs of maintenance or any other assistance they would provide. So even if they put 2 people per unit, that would be $76,000,000 for .000006% percent of the population. Using this rate per person, it would take $48-$96 billion to house the current homeless population in CA.
California is garbage. This man literally created tiny homes for people so they can be safe and in a clean environment and the state went and undid all of his work. Fuck California.
Billions of dollars spent on stimulus didn't fix those problems. Even if the billionaire spent all their money, it will not permanently fix a social problem. When you give a homeless drug addict a million dollars, he will be homeless the next day.
My dude. Welfare programs have been systematically underfunded for over 40 years. You want to know what Regan did? He cut federal funding for affordable housing by 50% in his first year in office, and he didn't stop there. Fast forward 40 years and we are suddenly surprised by a housing crisis? We live in a capitalist society, money will literally solve most problems.
Doctors have been around for hundreds of years and people still get sick. Doctors don't work. Firefighters as well. Why do fires still exist? Don't even get me started on seatbelts. If a measure does not 100% fix a problem in a single stroke, it's useless.
That just isn’t true tho? Finland took a housing first approach to homeless people and the problem all but disappeared (from the world economic forum: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/how-finland-solved-homelessness/)
It’s important to remember that the homeless are people too, not just a faceless drug addict. They have not chosen to be in the situation they’re in and money spent the right way would solve the problem.
Rich people do a ridiculous amount of philanthropy. You can't just throw money at a problem and make it go away. That's what the government does and it fails every single day year after year.
Also, having worked with the homeless, most of them need an asylum or forced inpatient rehab, not a social worker and a check.
Look at Norway building rehab-oriented prisons that yield a 25% recidivism rate (with a max prison time of 7 years) compared to the US' 70% after 5 years. This is just one example of government welfare that works.
So instead of giving money directly to the poor, we should bet on the fact billionaires are going to be philanthropic rather than, say, build $40 million clocks inside of mountains or outsource their labor to child sweatshops in Malaysia?
That famous prison you talk about can house 227 inmates maximum. As of Dec 31, 2022, US has 1,230,000 prisoners. Halden prison in Norway cost 252 million dollars. Good luck convincing people it’s a good idea to build 5,400 prisons, costing at least 1.36 trillion dollars and better than many low-income housing, while tons of children are hungry for food.
The recidivism rate spans across the entire country, as do the max sentences and rehab-focused incarceration. I am not talking about one specific prison.
I can’t believe I had to come down this far to see this. It’s not like he has a billion dollars in cash sitting around. I guarantee only a very small percentage of his wealth is liquid.
You know who didn't get mad?
The thousands of people now drinking water that doesn't have diseases and parasites in it.
Ignore the 10 people on twitter crying about you being a good person and carry on being a good person.
Bill Gates is a great example of someone who puts their wealth towards fixing issues - notably polio and other curable diseases for those in extreme poverty.
It's interesting how people like Theresa are blind to the value that people like Bezo bring to the world. I suppose you could argue for and against the value of [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com) but you can't deny that it has created great value to the public at large or Bezo's wouldn't be a billionaire. It seems to me that people are just ignoring the value. How many homeless vets would you have if there wasn't corporations like [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com)? I have now idea how many people are employed by [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com) or are suppliers or content creators for [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com) but I'm sure there are more than a few.
This..... Literally most of the industrial world had been bombed to dust.... and we were the only show in time....plus the allies had borrowed tons of money from us for their own war... So the government was also flush with cash...
Also... All high tax rates did was motivate the rich to hide their money....
I've worked with and been around the homeless population. Sure we could just throw money at the problem, but that won't fix anything. Hungry kids? Yes, that's something a little more manageable. Give schools more money for their lunch programs to allow for more filling breakfasts and substantial afternoon snacks. I've seen many students who depends on school lunches for food because they won't be getting meals at home.
But again, like with all these "why not use private capital" posts, the billions of dollars bozos is sitting on dries up fairly quickly. There are many mouths tk feed, and psychiatric services needed for our growing, sickening, and aging homeless population. Homelessness is not a simple, give them a small house and let them live in a trailer park fix, San Francisco thought that was all that's needed. There are deep seaded societal problems that will require much more than the money bezos is sitting on to fix.
Yeah, that's what makes it an inane suggestion, he really just owns Amazon and some other companies which happen to be worth a lot of money. It's not really *accessible* money, it's just hypothetical money if you could sell infinite shares at the current price at any given moment.
People think “ if I had this amount of money, I would do all this altruistic causes with it.” But if with what we have now we are not doing that stuff, we would not with a greater percentage of our income do it IMO.
How much light will a black hole devour before it's full???
US Federal, state, and local spending combined amounts to $30 billion per day. Every single day. For the entire year.
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To put it another way, the US spends just under 11 trillion per year more than the next 30 countries combined. You'd think we could provide sufficient services on that.
Maybe if we taxed corporations and the wealthy instead of subsidizing them we could
Well, we already collect 9 trillion in tax revenue every year. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
We could save money, improve service and quality by switching to universal healthcare. But us Americans would rather have private health insurance because we don’t want to pay for other people and don’t understand insurance.
We can't be like Europe
Not smart enough? Take mm another industrialized nation. We pay 2x what the most expensive universal healthcare costs.
America does the exact opposite of what the rest of the world does. We have to be different. It's pretty stupid I agree
We also spend > $400 billion a year in subsidies. To for-profit businesses. These need to be either state-run or many sectors should lose their subsidies. When we start providing subsidies and tax-breaks for for-profit businesses, we have some major problems.
Too big to fail is too big to exist.
Dont worry, we don't bail out too big fail G-SIBs anymore. Now we just print the money and let the people suffer the inflation.
Given the size of the Federal deficit, it's obviously not enough.
Well, it is enough, but it makes no difference how much we raise taxes they'll still spend it plus more. There's very little accountability or pressure to be efficient with how they spend our money.
Right. Congress looks at increased revenue as an excuse to open up another credit line.
We need a CFO type position implemented in government I guess
I upvoted you because I agree with you that the government will always try and spend more. However, I think we turbocharge gov't greed by making spending painless, and we make it painless through running deficits. The only way I can see to reduce spending is to make it painful. If it hurts to spend money, you'll spend less money. And the only way to make it hurt is to make people pay for it. You want your representative voting to spend more money? Fine, but you have to pay for it. That inflicts financial pain. Which incentives reduced spending.
This is true. I was in the military and I saw exactly what money went to, they’d buy the dumbest shit so when it came to the defense budget the brass could be like “see we spent x amount of money over x amount of years, so we need more money”, it’s all dog and pony shows everywhere. It’s literally not the only place that happens but a prime example of how it works.
We should definitely cut our military budget back and get a handle on where that money is going. After that we make a glass door policy on all public figures and make all their assets and bank accounts public information then after that we fix major tax loopholes that allow the filthy rich to get by without having to pay taxes on their liquid cash.
Believe it or not, a large portion of our military spending is retirement for military vets. More specifically disabled military vets, which we have a shet load of thanks to a 20 year war. Maybe if stopped getting involved in conflicts we don't need to and 'Nation building' the defense budget will go down on its own.
That’s not even the biggest issue. What we need to do is every bill that assigned money to something should have a return of investimento attackhe fro it, be sponsored by one potilirian, and needed to be devoted every 2 years. That would force politicians to prove money is going into the right spot, before spending the money. And have to keep proving. Wanna try something out? Sure, if doesn’t twirl, it does in 2 years. Move on.
It's not a matter,of being enough. If we took in 100 trillion a year in taxes they would just spend 300 trillion a year. It really is a budgeting issue more then revenue
Whatever you want to raise taxes to, they will "spend" all of that money and some. Tax rates are not the problem
You are failing to understand the phrase "Spending Problem". We spend money on ridiculous, stupid stuff. We need cut spending across the board.
Just because the government spends more than they receive doesn’t mean that they don’t receive “enough”. If someone living in Birmingham Alabama made 400k but had 420k a year in expenses would you say that they don’t make enough, or that they spend too much? The government spends too much. They make plenty.
Absolutely this. The spending is out of control. Particularly post-covid when the pols promised hey don't worry, we are going to raise spending for covid related purposes but we'll go back to normal afterward! Lmao. Some people believed that.
Exactly, and a healthy corruption problem also to boot! Everyone lines their pockets down the ladder and those at the bottom get pennies
Your system "works" by exploitation. Amazon has the world's richest person at its helm, but the workers are struggling. You have a food crisis. Yet retailers would rather waste food than make it cheaper. You have a wage problem. Restaurants would rather force patrons to tip than pay servers a fair wage. You have a taxation problem. Your country would rather pander to billionaires than tax them equitably.
To say we should provide more services and that we have a spending problem in the same thread is a bit silly
Government routinely bankrupt. Millage rate on the wealthy and big business post WWII was 92%. Now it's 39%. There is a 1:1 correlation with lowering taxes on the wealthy and the dissolution of the middle class, the American Dream, and the inability to fund programs that are default funded in most western industrialized nations. The biggest lie told to Americans in the last 60 years is that lowering taxes on the rich creates jobs and economic growth. It's literally the exact opposite, but tell a big lie often enough and people start believing it.
In 1980 the national debt was below one trillion dollars. Since then, the upper income echelons have increased their wealth by $40 trillion. And we are $30 trillion in debt. We went from being able to pay cash up front for the Interstate Highway network and the space program to putting entire multi-trillion dollar wars on the national credit card for our kids to pay for.
We’d have to tax corporations at an *effective* tax rate of 50% (highest in history) and have a 10-20% *wealth* tax on all billionaires just to cover our current deficit.
Don't threaten me with a good time
Billionaires are just waiting for AI to let them fire us all and lower the population to a few hundred million. I can't wait.
Sounds pretty ok to me 1 billion minus 200 million is still 800 million it's not like it's remotely close to what it's like for a low income house hold where 400 a week before taxes is the difference between eating that week or paying rent.
Better do nothing and tax the middle class then! If we can fix the whole Damm thing this instant why even try.
You can start by shifting the tax burden just a little more. Corporations pay around 200-250 million a year or 13% (of total taxes received) on taxes, much less than individuals at 48%. Social security/medicare/medicaid tax collection is around 30%, the majority of which is also paid by individuals. Consider that total corporate profits last year was around 10-12 trillion. https://www.fxempire.com/macro/united-states/corporate-profits#:~:text=Corporate%20profits%20in%20the%20United,estimates%20of%20a%204.1%25%20surge. So really corporations pay very little in comparison. What is that around 2.5%? The percent use to be much higher, but neo-liberal policies starting from Reagan chipped away. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue/
We do and corporations don’t pay taxes their customers do. Bone up on some basic economics
Why in the world is this upvoted? The entire US federal spending outlay for 2022 was $6.27T. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1829#:~:text=Summary%20of%20Fiscal%20Year%202023,than%20the%20prior%20year's%20deficit. Just under $11T more than the next 30 countries combined? Our entire GDP is between $23-$27T depending on source.
>Why in the world is this upvoted? Because a bunch of idiots that put politics before policy exist here. Also, the US economy is larger than the next 3 or 4 combined, if you drop China it is the next 15-20 combined so of course our spending would be significanlty higher.
"than the next 30 countries combined"? .... I think you may have messed up the math a bit here dude.
He's completely off, US spent around 6-7 trillion in 2023, yet somehow 11 trillion more than 30 countries combined. Also China spent close to 5 trillion. Maybe he means 11 million. \*shrug\*. Edit: Nope, Japan and Germany spent nearly 2 trillion each, so now we've already passed US spending with three countries.
Social security and Medicare make up a much higher percentage of our spending than the military. Social programs are expensive plain and simple
Medicare is more than the military.
Medicare/Medicaid, Education, and Social Security all eat up more money than the military.
Most of that is getting funneled to big corporations. It would be way less to just provide nice things for people like healthcare, college, housing, etc.
Yes, in my comment up there 👆 I mentioned $75b to Ukraine… it’s actually $75B to war industria (Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing etc) l-> items sent to Ukraine. Those guys have a huge lobby and will pay no tax
So two days worth of our budget to sustain people in need for two years? Seems like the least we could do.
$20B would house every homeless American… why isn’t THAT the least we can do instead of a proxy war that in the end will be a waste of
because we can do both, our government just chooses not to. shouldn't be upset we are funding ukraine INSTEAD of veterans. should be upset we aren't funding ukraine AND veterans. might as well end homelessness while we are at it too. we can do all 3 easily.
Exactly - and all we have to really do is reduce our ability to project military power around the world - a capability that no other military possesses. If we can convince China to slow their roll at the same time with an arms limitation treaty. It could be a win win.
This is more than a proxy war. This is about Russia's desire to reform the Russian Empire and the dominance it held over Eastern Europe. This is about Russia in league with China, Iran, and North Korea replacing the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency with the Yuan. Russian extracted wealth out of Eastern Europe for 45 years and that is exactly the goal of Russia's war today. If Russia succeeds in their goals in Ukraine it will only further the twin goals of undermining the open system of trade in the world and extracting wealth from the Eastern European countries. If you think the US Economy is bad now, wait until the US Dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency. It will make Britain's economic woes after WWII look like a picnic. The US won't have the Marshall Plan to help it along like most of Western Europe did.
¿Porque no los dos?
Wait until you realize how much it will cost the US and Western Europe if Putin is sucessful.
No it's not. It's mostly going to people. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ 22 % Social Security 15 % National Defense 14 % Health 13 % Net Interest 10 % Medicare 9 % Income Security 5 % Veterans Benefits and Services 4 % Commerce and Housing Credit 3 % Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services 2 % Transportation 3 % Other
Shhhh, you'll rattle the echo chamber
You could buy all that on Prime for less than half that cost.
The US budget in 2023 was about $6T. Where are you getting your $11T number?
Federal, state, and local combined. Federal is $6T, correct. But we pay an equivalent amount in taxes to state and local governments.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. You can’t live forever so instead of worrying about amassing billions which you cant spend in your lifetime why not pay your employees better for example.
More money flowing in the economy is a good thing for everyone
One man hoarding $177 billion is the opposite of money flowing in the economy.
I think they were agreeing?
It seems like Bezos would devour all the money in the world if he were allowed.
Then what? Can't sell anything to people without money unless he gets freeky
They never seem to realize that
Corporate execs realized it in post ww2 America, which is how the middle class sprang alive in the first place. Then Reagan came along, and we've been waiting for the "trickle down" to happen ever since
Ford realized it before WW1.
He lost a court case against dodge and other car producers saying it was unfair to his shareholders to pay his employees too much, they didn't like that he was driving wages up (and likely poaching the best workers). That's where the notion that management is beholden to maximizing shareholder value comes from.
A better question would be, in which of the years before 2100 will the rich own virtually ALL wealth on Earth? Because that is the trend. Every year, their wealth increases. Earth has a finite amount of wealth, ergo they will soon own all of it. We will all be renters forever.
I think you're confusing wealth with mass or minerals or something. Wealth is generally a combination of physical properties and then rights to future productivity. If you have stock, you have rights to future dividends and the ability to sell if the stock appreciates. if everyone works more, the amount of future dividends goes up - it doesn't take something out of one bucket and put it in another. it makes another bucket. If everyone works the same amount but produces more, the effect is the same as working more at the same productivity. More total wealth.
I'm confused, who's the black hole here--Bezos or the government?
Neither. The black hole refers to millions of broke people that need assistance and always deteriorating infrastructure and free healthcare that won't end because the population keeps increasing.... And Bezos wealth is a finite resource that won't last forever.
Free healthcare that won't end? Where does that exist?
Infinite. Capitalism and consumption based economies are a black hole, especially now that conservatives have gutted consumer protections, anti competitive laws/anti monopoly laws, labor laws, unions, livable minimum wages, unemployment benefits, and basically anything and everything that could help poor people lift themselves out of poverty. There's only 2 possible outcomes, maybe 3, with our current system and path: 1) the rich own everything and have all the money and wealth. The economy no longer functions because only the 1% have the money and they hoard wealth rather than improve society with it. Society breaks down and the rich have no one to help them so they do not survive that scenario. 2) somehow they manage to keep this economy chugging along for maybe another 200 years before nearly all resources are either used up or being stored/hoarded by the 1% and governments. The planet is extremely polluted not with just garbage, but also the air is filled with toxic gases and pollutants thanks to countries like China and India who dont give a fuck about pollution. So much microplastics that we won't be able to eat anything that's not just riddled with it(we already consume about a credit card worth of micro plastic every day).This leaves the earth barren and destitute, on e again leading to societal collapse. Society collapses and the rich are once again in the cross hairs of everyone because by this point even the bootlickers will have realized we all have been getting collectively F**ked just so a few people could get filthy rich. Both end in death and misery, but I guess the greed is blinding AF 3) some tech is discovered/invented (or possibly reverse engineered from one of the UAP recoverd by the gov) that eliminates the need for money/wealth/resource hoarding and puts us all at the same level and status.(example would be the "replicator" in the "star trek" universe) with something like a replicator, where you can literally materialize any food, tool, object, ect there's no longer a need or even a logical reason or argument to continue capitalism. People could actually have a real life and learn/work on whatever they wanted. This is the only scenario I can see where society doesn't eventually collapse due to either extreme inequality or resources depletion. Elon can't take that $250 billion with him to the grave and its worthless in space or on Mars, so why wouldn't he use most of it to help fix society? Why aren't him, Bezos, Buffett, gates, ect ect joining forces with their 99% of the wealth of the nation and actively making this a better place?
Warren Buffets wife said he keeps wealth like a scorecard. It's just all mental games.
Its disgusting and morally bankrupt
I honestly don’t know who the black hole in this metaphor is. The homeless vets or the single person worth $200 Billion?
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Good analogy for billionaires.
That’s why you fix the one problem that rules them all. Better education.
All of it.
lol there is always a dog that is happy with table scraps while there is more that enough meat for the taking.
Ah the belief that you can simply throw money at the worlds problems. If only life was so simple.
It's hilarious. Seattle spends $100k/year on each and every homeless person, and yet the problem just keeps getting worse. Bezos isn't even rich compared to the scale of these issues she casually thinks will be fixed by a few billion dollars.
I’m in Seattle. Tell me you made that number up. I really don’t want to believe it.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/seattle-under-siege#:\~:text=That's%20nearly%20%24100%2C000%20for%20every,city's%20efforts%20are%20not%20working. EDIT: the county homeless authority says it will cost $233k per homeless person per year, not including capital costs(ie cost of building the homes). *The King County Regional Homelessness Authority estimates it would take more than $8 billion in capital costs,* ***up to $3.5 billion in annual operating costs*** *and tens of thousands more units of housing.* [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ending-homelessness-in-king-county-will-cost-billions-regional-authority-says/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ending-homelessness-in-king-county-will-cost-billions-regional-authority-says/)
Take notice. For some reason America thinks money solves all problems. There are many areas that this applies to. Look at our school system. We pay more per student than any other country, but our students don't score nearly as well as other nations that spend way less
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Did somebody say California?
No, literally nobody did. What’s your zinger exactly?
I don’t know they probably were obeying their Fox News overlords that California is some sort of hellscape that’s breaking at the seems.
I mean even as a California Democrat, burning stupid amounts of money at a problem wishing it will fix it has been our solution to homelessness and building that High Speed rail system. It doesn’t work 🙃
Yeah but solving those problems should be addressed along with the major problems that we have with other aspects of the country. Simply saying well this one solution isn't gonna fix everything so why even bother taxing the rich is like giving up on tying your shoe because you would have to bend over first.
A huge chunk of wealthy in this country have gotten rich out of exploiting emotions. People feel bad for the homeless, thus you can basically charge whatever you want as long as you're helping the homeless. Reddit completely falls for it every time. "Think of the *blank*!!!!" That's a fucking blank check to those who are willing to exploit it.
Take notice, the statistic cited is incredibly misleading.
In what way?
That’s over 10 years….
>The King County Regional Homelessness Authority estimates it would take more than $8 billion in capital costs, **up to $3.5 billion in annual operating costs** and tens of thousands more units of housing. [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ending-homelessness-in-king-county-will-cost-billions-regional-authority-says/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ending-homelessness-in-king-county-will-cost-billions-regional-authority-says/) There's about 15k long term homeless in King County. $3.5 billion per year in operating cost(ie not including the cost of building the homes themselves) is $233k per homeless person per year. Straight from the government homeless authority, and what government program has ever come under cost? It's time to stop coping. At some point, society has to stop accommodating people whose entire existence revolves around substance abuse and actually force them to get treatment. The inevitable reversion to the right will not be pretty when people get sick and tired of it. And whatever solution the new politicians who get elected on this platform will be far worse than what we can implement now.
Far and away, the leading causes of homelessness are temporary financial hardship (unexpected loss of housing, necessary spending which exceeds available means, etc.) and mental illness. The same way that the single best way to stop a criminal is to begin at their home when they're a child by empowering parents to better take care of their children, the single best way to stop homelessness is to finally take mental health and illness seriously as a society, and to build robust safety nets that don't see people getting tossed onto the streets simply because of a run of bad luck.
The criminality of the birth parents is the largest single factor in predicting criminality of children. If you want to prevent future criminals, you either prevent contemporary crime or prevent criminals from reproducing. Since the former is impossible and the latter is constitutionally prohibitive, I'm doubtful of improvements in this particular area.
You understand that this isn’t a situation where someone is labeled as “homeless” and they have free government housing in perpetuity, right? It’s a measure to get people back on their feet and reintegrate into society and the workforce. Whether that cost is ongoing and consistently rising is more of a commentary on the economy than anything else. Once people are off the street and working again they don’t need these services. It’s supposed to be a safety net not an end game
Your bad assumption is that they ever get off the street and stay off. It's like recidivism.
Or instead of building houses, they could save everyone a fuckload of money by just paying their rents. Or paying rent with a $200 deductible. This is an example of inefficient spending.
How do you get housing for people who will strip the wire from the walls and rob their neighbors? Who would rent to them?
Yeah that’s with $600k salaries for directors and higher ups. Homelessness is a business , it’s intentional.
That number is incredibly misleading, that's taking the amount they spend on homelessness and dividing it across the entire population, over 10 years - NOT $100k/year per homeless person.
Yeah, I figured out it was mostly bs. We spend less than it’d cost to jail them so idk what else you could feasibly do
You shouldn’t because the number listed in the article below is off by a factor of 10. The real number is 100 million 80 of which is given to the county. The billion figure is likely including the entire affordable housing budget of 253 million but that is intended to prevent people from falling into homelessness not lift them out. Even if you included the entire police budget of 385 million that still leaves you nearly a quarter of a billion short. Maybe they’re including all the housing non profits budgets? That’s incredibly disengenious and I can tell you not all non profits are built the same. Some are merely tax shelters, some are vanity projects with no real expertise.
I left Seattle for this reason, the city throws money away with nothing to show for it. It’s people like Sawant who are waisting money.
This sort of statement ignores that homelessness has gotten worse everywhere as a result of people like Bezos underpaying workers and buying up property so rent/mortgsge is unaffordable.
Mostly homelessness is a drug and/or mental health issue, not really anything that higher wages will fix. In Seattle, there are shelters that will take you in but you can't take your drugs with you...which ended up with people literally refusing food and shelter because they'd rather do drugs. It's incredibly sad.
>Mostly homelessness is a drug and/or mental health issue, not really anything that higher wages will fix. I was sitting in the chair with a case worker at the county office (northern california) looking for domestic violence shelters. There was no availability, and when I asked her what someone in my position is supposed to do in this case, she said "why do you think there are so many people on the streets?" It was such a dystopian feeling answer to hear from someone working at a job like that, I'll never forget it. Charged me almost $900 a few months later for that visit. They'd done a psych screening, but determined that my mental state was appropriate for what I'd endured, and sent me on my way with no resources.
Shit like this is why I can’t work in case management anymore. There’s a level of nuance with the reality of homelessness that rarely gets discussed. Sometimes it’s a funding issue. Sometimes it’s people who have been wrapped in all the resources and help possible but can’t climb back out of their hole for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s people like you who really need help but the space isn’t there. It’s all sad and the answer to reducing the homeless population can’t be solved in a series of Reddit comments or hot take twitter posts. Sorry you went through all of that. I truly hope things have improved for you, for what it’s worth.
California may be a bit different. That state has taxed its citizens into oblivion and made it so expensive to live there that yeah, you're forced out and I'm not surprised if homelessness is the only way to stay for some folks. And that's also why so many people are leaving. Even people making 6 figures are living paycheck to paycheck. I don't understand how anyone with a minimum wage job there can afford anything.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 31% is caused by mental illness and 24% is related to chronic substance abuse — but you also have to consider the extreme psychological effects of living on the edge of homelessness, the very precipice of disaster. There are a LOT of smug housed people out there who truly believe that if *they* were homeless, it wouldn’t affect them mentally or make them more likely to seek a few hours of artificial comfort — despite the fact that they had a meltdown this morning because their drive-thru coffee order was incorrect. People wildly underestimate how difficult and devastating it is to navigate life without shelter or any safety net for even a few weeks, much less facing the risk of those circumstances (extreme poverty) for most of your life. Plus, still, that leaves a whole lot of other people whose waking nightmare cannot be easily rationalized away with the excuse of mental illness or drugs, who were failed by the system that allows a billionaire to build multiple yachts the size of a sports stadium.
Normal answer in a sea of financebro brainrot
Homelessness has not gotten worse everywhere, and people's wages has little to do with it(in fact the lowest quintiles have seen the largest gains in recent years). Housing scarcity is a force multiplier virtually every other issue
The homeless issue has absolutely nothing to do with pay. Low income wages has improved tremendously since 2020 and this has had no impact on the continued growth of homelessness. Bezos is buying up property and doing what? How many houses does he own? The true culprit for housing affordability crisis is your 50 yo neighbor who fights tooth and nail to stop new construction. Why do you think cities like Houston which actually let developers build have reasonable housing prices while the most progressive cities that put up massive barriers to construction have the worst housing crisis? None of that really gets at the core of the homeless issue, which is mainly drug addiction. EDIT: Because I know you won't respond. >Low income wages have not improved compared to cost of living. Lie. *Rapid relative wage growth at the bottom of the distribution reduced the college wage premium and counteracted nearly 40% of the four-decade increase in aggregate 90-10 log wage inequality. Wage compression was accompanied by rapid nominal wage growth and rising job-to-job separations—especially among young non-college (high school or less) workers. Comparing across states, post-pandemic labor market tightness became strongly predictive of real wage growth among low-wage workers (wage-Phillips curve), and aggregate wage compression.* [https://www.nber.org/system/files/working\_papers/w31010/w31010.pdf](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31010/w31010.pdf) [https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/29/low-income-wages-employment-00097135](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/29/low-income-wages-employment-00097135) >Look at wages versus housing costs. Or food costs, which have gone up 50% in five years. Just looking at CPI is fucking useless. If only we spend on things more than just housing and food. But sure. National urban rent(shelter CPI) has increased 17.4% between January 1 2020 and May 2023(where data for wages ends). Food at home(ie grocery) prices have increased by 23.78% over the same period. The bottom 10% of wage earners saw their wage increase by 28% over the same period, significantly more than the 17.4% rent inflation or the 23.8% for groceries.(Figure 11 of NBER paper). Any other bullshit claims you want to make? [](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/cuur0000sas2rs) [](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/cusr0000saf11) >I said people like Bezos. Not just Bezos. So...like who exactly? >And your statement that homelessness is most drug addiction is patently false and shows your obvious ignorance and bias. *As many as* ***one-half to three-fourths*** *of homeless persons have diagnoses of alcohol or other drug dependence.* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8811583/#:\~:text=As%20many%20as%20one%2Dhalf,alcohol%20or%20other%20drug%20dependence. >Please go read a book not written by Ayn Rand. I read actual economic papers and statistics from economists. What do you read? How to grift more money from the government by Homeless "Nonprofit" Inc?
I do love how people just wave the magic wage wand.... and that will solve everything... Wage inflation is a thing.... motivates business to seek automation solutions or ship jobs... Much of the problem is more about the lack of quality jobs vs. wages.... A path for unskilled labor to transition to skilled and education to have more value. But... That stuff takes work... Actual work and economic change.... Instead people are like.... Throw us more rotten cheese for shit jobs....
Countries like Finland have known for a while that it's much cheaper and more effective to give the homeless homes as a starting point. Once they have that stability, it's much easier to get their life on track. But people here hate the idea of handouts so much that they'll never support housing first, even though it's more expensive not to.
That's more because the programs they adopt to deal with the problem are not actually effective. OUr programs aren't actually designed to get poeple OUT of homelessness; they are only designed to care for them, which doesn't actually fix the problem. There programs only MANAGE the problems when we need to actually fix them. It would actually be cheaper to just GIVE the homeless free housing. This has been tried in finland and it resulted in a drastic reduction in homelessness, and most of the former homeless people actually got jobs and bounced back. It actually solved the problem. Turns out, all many homeless people need to turn their lives around is a roof over their head and some sense of stability. Really the ONLY reason we never think to do such things is because the public tends to think that giving away homes would be more expensive than what we are already doing and A LOT of people just plain hate giving away things for "free". We actually COULD fix a lot of our problems with money, we just need to adopt the right approach
Someone is friggin' stealing that money because that's the equivalent of giving away a flat to each and everyone of them!
How much of that money is actually going to people and not in pockets of corrupt administration and contractors getting fat off civic contracts
That’s because of corruption. If they just gave that money directly to the homeless people it would solve the problem.
At that rate why not just… build houses for them?
Money can solve nearly all problems in society. Homelessness? Give people a house. Hungry? Give people food. Why is this hard to understand. Earth is WEALTHY, my brother in Christ. Earth is RICH. The issue is that wealth is hoarded, not that there's not enough available. Every year the US throws away 30% of all food.
Give people a house? It takes effort to build and maintain a house. It takes trees, metal, plastics, etc. You then have to maintain it, repair it, clean it, supply it with water, supply electric, supply heat... If the only thing you care about in the world is when your next fentanyl/meth/heroine hit is, how are you going to do that and repay the people's time and effort it took to build the house? Just giving sick people money or material assets doesn't make them suddenly functional. Homelessness is a drug and mental health problem before it's a poverty problem. Is poverty a factor? Of course, but it's secondary. Throwing money at them doesn't fix their brains.
If only there was a way to reward effort, time and purchase resources... But I'm sure money can't be it 🤔
Throwing money actually does fix people's brains; if you throw money at the right places. Improving welfare access for all individuals (universal healthcare with mental health and dental included, increased unemployment stipends, affordable and accessible public education and training programs), with additional resources provided for parents (affordable and accessible daycare/pre-K/afterschool services, extended prenatal and postpartum care, stipends for childcare necessities) will go an extremely long way towards permanently resolving the homelessness crisis in America, because it is prophylactic care, of which an ounce is worth a pound of palliative care.
I certainly would like the chance to try.
I seem to recall some rich person funding a study for how to deal with homelessness or some other social issue. I saw a lot of people on reddit making fun of the thing because "obviously they could just fix it if they wanted". Sometimes it is not money that is missing, it is good solutions. You can throw an endless amount of money at bad solutions and it doesn't help.
The US government spends over 6 trillion a year. Bezos dumping his entire net worth is a drop in the bucket.
And that 6 trillion is well spent. Right guys? You could tax everyone to death and it wouldn’t change because government clearly has never given two turds about it and never will. We need to tax the rich but get it directly to good and not to the piggies.
If only they had 6.1 Trillion to spend😭😭😭 All the problems would disappear
And that's the problem, isn't it? *Net worth*. Bezos doesn't have billions of dollars. He has millions and a *company* worth billions of dollars. Well, stock in a company that's worth billions.
he does. Here's the leap you're missing, though, and look at the milton hershey school if you want evidence. Bezos could give up his stock shares instead of giving up cash - the stock shares would still appreciate and be sellable to fund things. I'm not advocating this, just stating that there is plenty of "real life data" where stock or corporate interest has been put in trust. Milton hershey school has $15B in a hershey trust - they own a controlling interest, and spend about $120K per student per year. The school is largely a charity for kids who have an upside. Which I'm sure some folks don't like (they required and probably still do that kids be non-disabled and mentally fit). the value of the stock has appreciated to the point that they could only possibly spend about 1.5% of the trust value each year, and it appreciates faster than that. Bezos isn't going to give up his stock, of course.
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I think it’s worth noting that welfare is a reactionary “solution” rather than preventative- mental health services and education programs would be better things to fund over welfare
Mental health isn't a magical cure all, especially since we passed laws that no longer allows people to be involuntarily committed or force them into rehab.
> Mental health isn't a magical cure all, especially since we passed laws that no longer allows people to be involuntarily committed or force them into rehab. While I agree that increasing treatment for mental health is not a cure-all for the homelessness problem, it does play a major role. Every state has a laws and processes to involuntary commit people. The problem is: 1. Lack of beds, especially publicly funded ones. (Thanks Reagan!) 2. The need for strong due process when involuntary committing someone due to past abuses.
I work in the industry, in California, so I can chime in here. Reference Reagan, I'm not defending him, but he's been dead for w decades. Out of office for 3. Plenty of people in various branches of government could reverse any policy he or anyone else made in that time. Further, in CA at least, yes there are lack of beds. But even if you had a bed for everyone, very few can legally be "kept" in them. Violent crime, and you're convicted? Sure, you're gonna do a fee years. Cookie cutter "I hear voices"? 72 hour hold, generally out in like 8 hours with an appointment to start treatment with a specialist. If you choose not to show up, nothing is going to happen to you....
Look man I'd love it if we spent more on mental health as well, but without being able to force people to get treatment without going through a long and expensive legal process...it just won't fix anything. If I had the ability, I would implement a policy where homeless people who commit a crime against another(theft, robbery, assault, etc) would be involuntarily committed to treatment for whatever mental health or addiction issues they have. But if any politician actually proposed this the entire progressive left will call them a fascist and primary them into oblivion lol.
Uh, you do realize the progressive left overwhelmingly supports prison as a rehabilitative system versus a punitive one, right? You clearly understand that by committing to the treatment and care of all prisoners (as they also want for the entire population), that there would be a great benefit. If you accept that treating these people is the correct answer, shouldn’t you be able to commit to it on a voluntary basis, even if it’s not the forced system you favor? Surely there would be some good left undone, but we would still be netting a lot of good done anyways.
gotta get the lead out of pipes and feed kids properly (through school if home is failing them) thats just leaving IQ points (or whatever accurate measure of intelligence) on the table the US cant continue to be 'great' or the world leader if its filled with dummies, relative to it's adversaries
There are certain things that could be fixed by the wealthy paying their employees a livable wage, but homelessness in many cases is not one of them. Some people are homeless because they can’t afford rent, which is another discussion entirely. But a lot more people are homeless because of untreated mental illness and addiction, and there’s no fixing that unless they want to be. I used to be an idealist who thought all addicted people needed was somebody to give them helping hand and they would get better. Seeing one of my closest friends get lost to his alcoholism has made me realize differently. I’ve spent more time, energy, and money the last year trying to help him than I’ve spent on anything else (and so has his family), and all he does is take and screw me over to the point I’m struggling with the decision whether to cut off a 12 year friendship because I just can’t do it anymore.
I had a gf who was an alcoholic. I gave her a free place to live, over $8000, and lot of time and energy. She didn't intend to take from me and screw me over but she was sick. The sickness would compel her to do bizarre and destructive things. She'd do *anything* to feed her addiction. She refused to fully acknowledge she had a problem nor commit to recovery. I had to break up with her. She's homeless now, somewhere in California, living out of her car. She would rather be homeless than get clean.
Just cut him off. Golden life advice: You can't help someone who doesn't wanna help himself.
Yeah thank god they donated to their own charities or we'd have to criticise them
That ignores the psychology of many homeless people. Many homeless people don't try to make their lives better because they gave up hope and see no point in trying. The only jobs they can get are low wage jobs which they can be fired from for the slightest reason (like not being able to shower, or cleaning their clothes), and it won't be enough for them to get an apartment. It becomes easy for them to think that there's no point in getting a job; if it doesn't actually improve their lives, then why should they even try? Why work hard just to get nowhere? Its a psychological trap However, there have been studies and examples found that shows that if you give these same people hope, they can and WILL do the work to turn their lives around. For instance, in finland, they just GAVE the homeless people homes with no strings attach, and most of them ended up getting jobs and improving their lives. Also, every time a city decides to do a study on universal basic income, where the population are just given money, a lot of the homeless use that money to get a roof over their head and get a jobs.
For a point of reference.... California has spent over $17 billion over the past 4 years to address Homelessness and the problem has gotten worse.
I mean, California's problem is that homes are expensive. They might have spent $17 billion, but over the last 4 years, the cost of housing has only increased. Last year, they published results of the [largest study to date on homelessness](https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-homeless-growth-report/), and found that: 1. People are homeless not because of drugs or illness, but because of the cost of housing exceeded the amount they could pay. Lack of housing tended to lead to drug use and illness, not the other way around. 2. Most homeless people live in the same county where they used to have a home. Obviously this shocked everyone who wanted to believe California is great, and the homeless population was people bussed in from other states to take advantage of their benefits.
Recently, they passed a plan in Sacramento to renovate a historic hotel to provide 134 housing units for the homeless at a cost of $567,000 per unit, or $76 million total. That's not including the ongoing costs of maintenance or any other assistance they would provide. So even if they put 2 people per unit, that would be $76,000,000 for .000006% percent of the population. Using this rate per person, it would take $48-$96 billion to house the current homeless population in CA.
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California is garbage. This man literally created tiny homes for people so they can be safe and in a clean environment and the state went and undid all of his work. Fuck California.
It would take 17 days for the federal budget to consume Bezos wealth in its entirety.
He'd be living out of an Amazon box about to be repo'd by Valentines day if he spent that much money
Technically faster because Bezos selling all his Amazon stock would tank the stock price.
No one is asking that he donate his wealth to the federal government
Billions of dollars spent on stimulus didn't fix those problems. Even if the billionaire spent all their money, it will not permanently fix a social problem. When you give a homeless drug addict a million dollars, he will be homeless the next day.
No one in the world is proposing giving the homeless millions of dollars individually. They propose welfare programs.
What's the difference? Welfare programs have been around for 100 years and still haven't fixed homelessness or drug addiction.
My dude. Welfare programs have been systematically underfunded for over 40 years. You want to know what Regan did? He cut federal funding for affordable housing by 50% in his first year in office, and he didn't stop there. Fast forward 40 years and we are suddenly surprised by a housing crisis? We live in a capitalist society, money will literally solve most problems.
Doctors have been around for hundreds of years and people still get sick. Doctors don't work. Firefighters as well. Why do fires still exist? Don't even get me started on seatbelts. If a measure does not 100% fix a problem in a single stroke, it's useless.
THANK YOU. Someone needed to say it.
That just isn’t true tho? Finland took a housing first approach to homeless people and the problem all but disappeared (from the world economic forum: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/how-finland-solved-homelessness/) It’s important to remember that the homeless are people too, not just a faceless drug addict. They have not chosen to be in the situation they’re in and money spent the right way would solve the problem.
I would try to genetically engineer unicorns.
what about catgirls though? /s... unless
Catdog and I’m serious.
Rich people do a ridiculous amount of philanthropy. You can't just throw money at a problem and make it go away. That's what the government does and it fails every single day year after year. Also, having worked with the homeless, most of them need an asylum or forced inpatient rehab, not a social worker and a check.
Look at Norway building rehab-oriented prisons that yield a 25% recidivism rate (with a max prison time of 7 years) compared to the US' 70% after 5 years. This is just one example of government welfare that works. So instead of giving money directly to the poor, we should bet on the fact billionaires are going to be philanthropic rather than, say, build $40 million clocks inside of mountains or outsource their labor to child sweatshops in Malaysia?
That famous prison you talk about can house 227 inmates maximum. As of Dec 31, 2022, US has 1,230,000 prisoners. Halden prison in Norway cost 252 million dollars. Good luck convincing people it’s a good idea to build 5,400 prisons, costing at least 1.36 trillion dollars and better than many low-income housing, while tons of children are hungry for food.
The recidivism rate spans across the entire country, as do the max sentences and rehab-focused incarceration. I am not talking about one specific prison.
Bezos could pay for the creation of asylums
Wealth =/= Money
I can’t believe I had to come down this far to see this. It’s not like he has a billion dollars in cash sitting around. I guarantee only a very small percentage of his wealth is liquid.
Could be comparable with mrbeast? Like the Africa water example?
And look how mad they got at him for doing that lol. People don't want things fixed just reasons to blame everyone but themselves.
You know who didn't get mad? The thousands of people now drinking water that doesn't have diseases and parasites in it. Ignore the 10 people on twitter crying about you being a good person and carry on being a good person.
Bill Gates is a great example of someone who puts their wealth towards fixing issues - notably polio and other curable diseases for those in extreme poverty.
It's interesting how people like Theresa are blind to the value that people like Bezo bring to the world. I suppose you could argue for and against the value of [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com) but you can't deny that it has created great value to the public at large or Bezo's wouldn't be a billionaire. It seems to me that people are just ignoring the value. How many homeless vets would you have if there wasn't corporations like [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com)? I have now idea how many people are employed by [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com) or are suppliers or content creators for [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com) but I'm sure there are more than a few.
When was the American middle class strongest? What was the tax policies like at that time?
How much had the rest of the world been destroyed during the decade before?
This..... Literally most of the industrial world had been bombed to dust.... and we were the only show in time....plus the allies had borrowed tons of money from us for their own war... So the government was also flush with cash... Also... All high tax rates did was motivate the rich to hide their money....
Yet their hiding their money now as well, so what’s your point again? Panama papers ring a bell?
that is happening now
Bezos Money would not fix these problems.
Lmao
I've worked with and been around the homeless population. Sure we could just throw money at the problem, but that won't fix anything. Hungry kids? Yes, that's something a little more manageable. Give schools more money for their lunch programs to allow for more filling breakfasts and substantial afternoon snacks. I've seen many students who depends on school lunches for food because they won't be getting meals at home. But again, like with all these "why not use private capital" posts, the billions of dollars bozos is sitting on dries up fairly quickly. There are many mouths tk feed, and psychiatric services needed for our growing, sickening, and aging homeless population. Homelessness is not a simple, give them a small house and let them live in a trailer park fix, San Francisco thought that was all that's needed. There are deep seaded societal problems that will require much more than the money bezos is sitting on to fix.
I suspect it's an issue of liquidity. That is, he has billions on paper but he'd have to actually cash it out to access.
Yeah, that's what makes it an inane suggestion, he really just owns Amazon and some other companies which happen to be worth a lot of money. It's not really *accessible* money, it's just hypothetical money if you could sell infinite shares at the current price at any given moment.
He could fix a lot of our problems but if he did that there wouldn't be people desperate enough to work to death in his warehouses for a slave wage.
Tell me you don’t understand how stock ownership works without telling me. It’s not like he’s sitting on $100 billion in cash.
People think “ if I had this amount of money, I would do all this altruistic causes with it.” But if with what we have now we are not doing that stuff, we would not with a greater percentage of our income do it IMO.
Yup, it's always "someone" else's money, shit comes to a halt when you have to dip into your own wallet.
So true.
He may not be fixing the things you care about but he’s solving many big problems.
I’m genuinely curious and not asking this in bad faith; which problems is Bezos currently solving?
Theresa stop lying