Are you more idealistic or practical?

[pondwater]

I'm fairly certain that if you gave poor/homeless people free houses, the majority of them wouldn't take care of their free homes. Most people who get free shit and don't have anything invested don't usually appreciate or take care of said free shit. Add to that a lack of personal accountability and then you have a bunch of rundown shacks that will need more money to fix, condemn, or demolish. I encourage you to go look at any poor people government housing that's been around for more than a few years.

[Tenshot13]

^And that's why you give them the one year timeline.  It's either a failure and you cut your losses or they succeed which is good for society.

[pondwater]

^And that's why you give them the one year timeline.  It's either a failure and you cut your losses or they succeed which is good for society.

Who's gonna pay to fix the houses at the end of the one year timeline? Then after that, are you going to put another bum in that house for a year? And on, and on, and on. There is no cutting losses, it's just a money pit.

[Tenshot13]

There is usually a trial period with things like this, collect the data and see what the results are.  Make a decision on that.

[Cathal]

That's the thing, pondwater, what you think will happen doesn't actually jive with what is really going on. It's working in several cities and states in the US right now. Of course, not everyone is going to go with the program, but that isn't the trend. States are saving thousands of dollars per person they house.

[Spider-Dan]

We've come across homeless camps which looked like a military unit including tents and cars. These people would drive out and drop off each other to collect money for a few hours. They would then gather back up and split up their collections.  The rest of the time they were playing and partying around camp. They were typically younger hippie types who were perfectly comfortable living as they were. They would typically speak with us since we weren't police and they could determine how long they had to find a new location.  As well ... we used to find reasons to watch them bathe in hidden stormwater ponds.

The way you describe it, if these folks could live in an apartment complex or a filthy tent shanty town, the apartment complex is the unimaginable hellscape that we must avoid at all costs.  Imagine if they were bathing in actual bathtubs instead of pooled stormwater!  I guess that would be the real outrage.

There will always be hippies.  That doesn't mean that we need to make sure poor people have a sufficient amount of suffering as a deterrent.  Being poor is not a moral failing.

But on a related note, I wonder: for those who oppose free housing on grounds of personal accountability, what do you think of the proposals for the federal government to guarantee  a job making at least $15/hr (with health coverage) to anyone that wants one?

[CF DolFan]

Being poor is not a moral failing.

It is if you are choosing to live that way and expecting someone else to pony up for you to make ends meet.

But on a related note, I wonder: for those who oppose free housing on grounds of personal accountability, what do you think of the proposals for the federal government to guarantee  a job making at least $15/hr (with health coverage) to anyone that wants one?

That's stupid. McDonalds and WalMart has already shown that people are expendable. Put the smaller businesses all the way out and it will get worse. There is a reason salaries are low. If a high schooler can do it then the salary is always going to reflect that. I don't want to pay $20 for a hamburger just so my high schooler can have a job. Besides ... every time we take away a business' right to do business as they see fit we are closer to loosing the free enterprise system and move closer to a socialist world.

[Fau Teixeira]

Besides ... every time we take away a business' right to do business as they see fit we are closer to loosing the free enterprise system and move closer to a socialist world.

that's not how any of this works .. at all

[CF DolFan]

that's not how any of this works .. at all

It absolutely is. If you think a sandwich maker should make the same as bricklayer who should make as much and have the same benefits as the IT guy then that's a socialist program. If each makes what the job actually pays then it is free market. All shirts don't cost the same and neither do jobs. If you bump up all jobs and give full benefits for jobs that teenagers are doing then the price of everything will rise to reflect that and many will lose their jobs.

When the insurance mandate went into effect places like Subway made everyone part time so they would be exempt. This made people have to work two jobs instead of doing it all in one place. It didn't solve anything for these people but actually created more headaches.

[SCFinfan]

I was more idealistic in the way I proceeded with my life. “Things must be done in this way”, so on and so forth.

Those times are over now. I am as practical as it gets. I tend to find if I’m practical I can make life more ideal. And that tends to work out for everyone.

[Spider-Dan]

First of all, this isn't the 1960s, and "but that's socialism!" is not a self-sustaining argument.  The interstate highway system, public schools, and the fire department are also socialism.

Now, then:

If you think a sandwich maker should make the same as bricklayer who should make as much and have the same benefits as the IT guy then that's a socialist program. If each makes what the job actually pays then it is free market. All shirts don't cost the same and neither do jobs. If you bump up all jobs and give full benefits for jobs that teenagers are doing then the price of everything will rise to reflect that and many will lose their jobs.

If your job is only paying $15 an hour, then it's probably not a job that involves skilled labor.  But regardless of whether or not "teenagers" can do it, it doesn't make sense to have people working full-time jobs that pay them so little that they still qualify for federal safety net benefits.

For employers that do not provide medical benefits, Seattle has had a $15 minimum wage since Jan. 2017 (if you have over 500 employees) or Jan. 2019 (if you have less than 500).  You will certainly be pleased to hear that hamburgers do not cost $20 there.

When the insurance mandate went into effect places like Subway made everyone part time so they would be exempt. This made people have to work two jobs instead of doing it all in one place.

And this is exactly why we need something like a federal job guarantee.

The corporate class in America has shown that they have no concern for the well-being of their employees.  Their only function is to extract wealth from our society.  Trump gave them billions in corporate tax cuts and what did they do with it?  Stock buybacks to further enrich the plutocrats, followed by more employee layoffs.

We already learned this lesson in the '20s and '30s, but nearly all those people have died off, so we need to learn it again.  The ultra-wealthy continue to deny that their overt greed is going to cause the same kind of social backlash that led to the New Deal.  And the recent behavior of people like Michael Dell and Howard Schultz is like pouring an accelerant on the fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sl7yVVaKl4

[CF DolFan]

The good thing is you liberals are allowed to give all you want. If liberal hamburger restaurant owners wanted to pay higher they certainly can.  

You just seem to blow right by the fact you are ok with grown adults doing kids jobs and we are supposed to subsidize them because they lack ambition. That will never be ok to most of us. Plenty of jobs on assembly lines and in construction for those who lack education.

[Spider-Dan]

I don't even accept your premise that they are "kids' jobs."  20 years ago, delivering newspapers was a kid's job.  Now, if you see any newspaper being delivered, it's by a grown adult out of a car.

And no, there aren't "plenty of jobs" on assembly lines and in construction.  What were formerly good union jobs on a factory floor have been hollowed out and destroyed by Republicans over the last 40 years.  I posted a link earlier to a video describing a "good factory job" at a meat processing plant where the women on the line have to wear diapers because they aren't allowed to take bathroom breaks.

The answers to these problems are always the same: if you don't like it, there's the door.  Get a better job.   Take out more student loans for degrees that leave you hopelessly in debt.  Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.

In the '50s, '60s, and '70s (you know, when the top marginal income tax rate was over 70%), a high school graduate could get a union job and comfortably provide for his family, with just one income.  The particularly ambitious could go to college while working part time and graduate with no school debt.  But now that the Baby Boomers have reaped the benefits of the society that their parents set up for them, and destroyed all of the pillars that held it up, pulling the ladder up behind them... now it's time to talk about lack of ambition on the part of people trying to get by today, and scream socialism! at attempts to balance the scales?  No thank you.

The leaders of the next decade will set up an America that is as generous and productive as the one that was left to the Baby Boomers; one where everyone benefits from the record productivity of American workers, not just the privileged few.

edit:  I'd like to point out that the clear and obvious condescension towards hard-working people who have insufficiently ambitious jobs indicates that the earlier talk about "personal responsibility" may not exactly have been in good faith.  (A labor-intensive job is not "easy" just because it is low-paying.)  The common thread here is punishing the poor, and there are many different roads to arrive at that destination.