"Liberal US cities change course, now clearing homeless camps"

[MetalBryan]

https://apnews.com/article/covid-bu...eler-poverty-edb884d8bf98e45b16372c1c8b7182e7

 

[Parrabola]

Seen this in tacoma, the pendulum of neoliberal "compassion" is gonna swing back and it's just beginning. Seeing so much more local news coverage about campsites, the "crime wave" and pearl cluthery

 

[The Toecutter]

Given that the economy is both a giant pyramid scheme and pump n' dump scheme all in one, and the housing market is no exception to that, the amount of people who are homeless is going to increase precipitously soon. Most of the so-called "middle class" are actually just juggling debt around to pretend they are such, and now that the economy is entering another "dump" cycle, when the game of musical chairs stops, large numbers of people are going to be left standing. The paltry amount of help that does exist for those without ready access to shelter will become increasingly overwhelmed in most of the U.S. as this unfolds over the next few years.

"Liberal" U.S. cities never were that "liberal" to begin with, more neoliberal/neoconservative than anything, run by right-wing, semi-capitalist, highly-authoritarian ideologues pretending to be on the left of center and trying to climb the corpgov ladder, wrapping themselves in the language of the "woke" and of political correctness all for the sake of keeping up appearances.

Personally, I think the homeless should be armed so that they can defend themselves against these psychopaths and their enforcers. The destitute are more often than not the equivalent of refugees, at least in the U.S., and most people who end up in those circumstances are not living this way by choice and were thus never prepared to live that way. Governments deprive refugees of all rights.

My own city is also trying to find ways to clear out the homeless camps that are spreading. It is disgusting to treat these people this way. It's like they're expected to crawl somewhere and die, or to occupy a jail cell. Even in a city where the rent is among the cheapest of the major cities in the U.S., one could work a full-time minimum wage job and still be priced out of shelter. And that is aside from the fact that we live in a crapitalist hellscape that forces people to "voluntarily" work themselves to death so that a ruling class can extract the surplus value which their labor generates and so that the government can extract taxes(which are handed to and abused by said ruling class for their own ends), or be denied access to food/water/shelter. The homeless are often blamed for their circumstances, or dismissed as drug addicts/mentally ill by the general population who believes what they hear from the mainstream "news", when the reality is that most of the homeless are normal people trying to live their best lives.

SMFH for this sordid state of affairs.

If there's any silver lining at all to this, it is that desperate people do desperate things. The harder the authoritarians push people who generally just want to be left alone, the greater the quantity exists for the catalysts that lead to systemic change, or alternatively, the destruction of the so-called "society" that is rife with systemic problems. Every authoritarian that abuses these people is playing a dangerous game and eventually they are going to harm the wrong person. What happens next is simple cause and effect.

 

[Coywolf]

Sweet Satan, I've never seen a site with more ads, lol.

Honestly, Portland is a fucking wreck right now. I legit don't feel safe wandering around alot of places that used to be fine there. Seattle to a point as well.

Cant wait for the coming recession. That should fix everything, right? ....right?

 

[The Toecutter]

Cant wait for the coming recession. That should fix everything, right? ....right?

I don't think there was a real recovery from the last so-called "recession" in 2008. Really more of a depression, IMO, papered over with doctored government statistics. The official unemployment rate and official CPI inflation rate are a complete joke and have been incongruent with the on-the-street reality for decades, understating the real unemployment and inflation rates by a factor of 2x or more.

Some of the students I graduated university with back then are currently or were at one point homeless. These are people with engineering, computer science, physics, and other degrees that are supposedly in-demand and for which a small minority of the population has the intellectual capability to even complete the course material. The so-called "best and brightest". They graduate into an economic environment where corporations commonly refuse to hire Americans at anything but McJob wages and then demand the government allow in foreign VISA applicants when no one is willing to do $50/hr+ work for next to minimum wage, especially when they have hundreds of dollars a month of minimum payments on their student loan, in addition to rapidly rising costs of living. Then when their student loan goes into default and their credit is ruined, they are no longer "qualified" for those jobs, further justifying a company's claims they can't find "qualified" candidates. Hence the "shortage" of engineers and those with similar skillsets. These are people that can perform complex differential equations, design embedded systems, build robots, or even design functioning artificial limbs. Fucking homeless. But work harder, and you'll be able to pay your student loans off and make it, and get a slice of that middle class pie, right? That's what the propaganda tells everyone.

I had scholarships cover most of my tuition and I still had to take out student loans to complete my electrical engineering degree. I lived in a ghetto to pay them off. There was even a time where I was homeless(long story, not due to lack of money). If I had to do it over again knowing what I know now? I might have taken my math/science aptitude and simply dropped out of high school and sold crack, and I say this as someone who is a relative success currently making decent money. I'll never get all of those years back.

What a lot of "normies" don't understand is that close to half of the homeless have jobs. They're simply priced out of shelter, no matter how hard they work. The Federal Reserve system and the U.S. government in conjunction with Wall Street have converted access to housing into a pyramid scheme. The policy has been to pump prices for shelter access as high as possible to drive people into debt(otherwise they don't "deserve" shelter), then to pop the bubble and leave the buyers/debt holders owing more than the asset is worth, only for investment firms and banks to buy the housing at discounted rates with a combination of taxpayer bailout dollars and money printed out of thin air(which drives inflation) after the inevitable wave of foreclosures results. Then these firms create a new artificial housing shortage by leaving large swathes of properties they purchased vacant, only to subsequently "justify" rising prices due to the law of supply and demand. Rinse and repeat. All of the laws, from the federal level, down to the local/municipal building/inspection codes, and everything in-between, are designed to augment and further this scheme.

And "normies" have the audacity to wonder why there are so many homeless people out there and ask why those people can't just go somewhere else? The news said those homeless people are "lazy", "drug addicts", and "mentally ill" and by God these hard working debt slave tax donkeys say they "shouldn't have to put up with it." They blame the homeless for the state of affairs, but not the money-grubbing sociopathic authoritarian shitbags that decided to rule over everyone. The Prussian model for public education has worked exactly as intended.

SMFH.

 

[Coywolf]

The official unemployment rate and official CPI inflation rate are a complete joke and have been incongruent with the on-the-street reality for decades, understating the real unemployment and inflation rates by a factor of 2x or more.

Ya, for real. I've been saying this for years now. It's funny how far people will go to make themselves feel like things are better than they really are. Everytime I get into this conversation with 'normie' people, they simply explain how I just 'don't understand economics'....mothetfucker, economics are a made up human construct. You don't think people can alter it in any way that fits their particular narrative?!

Hence the "shortage" of engineers and those with similar skillsets. These are people that can perform complex differential equations, design embedded systems, build robots, or even design functioning artificial limbs. Fucking homeless. But work harder, and you'll be able to pay your student loans off and make it, and get a slice of that middle class pie, right? That's what the propaganda tells everyone.

Yep. Also been saying that 'worker shortage' is total garbage from the beginning. More like a wage shortage.

What a lot of "normies" don't understand is that close to half of the homeless have jobs

And the ones that do bring up the god damn 'well then you need to get a better job' BS. Especially Boomer-era people, where those were a dime a dozen. Where you could raise a family and buy 2 cars and a house on a single income at a factory, or working at a grocery store FFS.

I didn't graduate college. But I went into trades. I'm an experienced wildland firefighter, EMT, chainsaw operator/arborist trainee, have 100's of hours of emergency management training/experience and have been in land management for a decade now....I make less than $20/hr.

I've been houseless and working for multiple years. If my job doesn't provide housing, I'm living in my van or a tent. I consider myself to be a career professional. Its sickening to see what myself and my coworkers have had to do just to survive, while working 40+ hours a week, for years. So many of us houseless for most of them.

The news said those homeless people are "lazy", "drug addicts", and "mentally ill" and by God these hard working debt slave tax donkeys say they "shouldn't have to put up with it." They blame the homeless for the state of affairs, but not the money-grubbing sociopathic authoritarian shitbags that decided to rule over everyone.

There is a guy who was running against Jay Inslee for a Washington senate seat who actually blamed Climate Change on Houseless people. It was like, winning the World Cup for that ignorant NIMBY arguement.

 

[Dmac]

I agree that there is no worker shortage, just a shortage of people willing to work crappy jobs for even shittier pay.

 

[The Toecutter]

What is frightening is that you still make more money than most people. When my parents were teenagers, an inexperienced burger flipper, grocery store shelf stocker, cashier, or even a newspaper deliverer, could afford a house and a car and to actually save for those things over a period of a few years. Your current wage as an experienced career professional in a difficult/dangerous field doesn't even afford that in the present day(even though productivity per worker has more than doubled since my parents were teenagers), unless you "voluntarily" go $XXX,XXX+ into debt until you reach the age of the "retirement" that is in all probability going to be pulled out from under you before you ever see anything from it that you put into it, and with it, everything you spent your life working for, before even getting to enjoy any of it. Then they can throw you in an abusive nursing home or even onto the street until you die as a reward for an entire life spent working to make rich people even richer. What a lovely way to "live", right?

Is it any wonder why so many people are giving up? I certainly don't blame them. The "losers" are built into the system we live under, and social mobility is a lot more restricted than most people think it is.

I didn't graduate college. But I went into trades. I'm an experienced wildland firefighter, EMT, chainsaw operator/arborist trainee, have 100's of hours of emergency management training/experience and have been in land management for a decade now....I make less than $20/hr.

I've been houseless and working for multiple years. If my job doesn't provide housing, I'm living in my van or a tent. I consider myself to be a career professional. Its sickening to see what myself and my coworkers have had to do just to survive, while working 40+ hours a week, for years. So many of us houseless for most of them.

 

[heathbar]

Seen this in tacoma, the pendulum of neoliberal "compassion" is gonna swing back and it's just beginning. Seeing so much more local news coverage about campsites, the "crime wave" and pearl cluthery

they are called fake liberals. theres nothing liberal about these people. its like fake christians. they wouldnt know god if he slapped them in the face.

 

[Coywolf]

they are called fake liberals. theres nothing liberal about these people. its like fake christians. they wouldnt know god if he slapped them in the face.

Neoliberalism \= Leftism or the left side of the political spectrum in general. Centrist Right as the VERY best.

 

[The Toecutter]

Neoliberalism is an authoritarian ideology similar to fascism and totalitarianism. In fact, the entire Overton window in U.S. politics at the Federal level spans from Neoliberalism at the furthest left, to Neoconservatism on the right, and debate outside of this narrow spectrum is generally screened out of any policy decisions and media discussions. The actual composite center of politics among the American people is well outside of this narrow window, to the left of it and greatly less authoritarian than it, but the intelligence agencies and government label everyone whose personal ideology doesn't fit within this narrow Overton window between Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism as "domestic extremists".

Funny how that is. The "mainstream" ideology in U.S. politics is far from mainstream within the general population.

Meanwhile, every month tens of thousands more Americans join the ranks of the homeless, many of them still employed. I've seen estimates that suggest as many as 7 million Americans are homeless when you include those that couch surf, those who live in their cars, those who go from national park to national park to camp, those who rent out single rooms of apartments by friends or family subletting them, ect., and not strictly those who live on the urban streets or homeless shelters. That would be a higher percentage of the population than most other countries including 3rd world ones.

 

[sevedemanos]

its been in the works for a long time now. you get a pretty close look at the motion of things in between. but thats not even saying much.. i think everybody saw it coming a long time ago

 

[ali]

Sorry, but this doomer rhetoric focusing in on how hard well-educated, highly-skilled middle class people have it is really out of touch, imo. There are still loads of jobs for engineers, software developers and so on. After healthcare, it's probably one of the easiest sectors to find employment in - all over the world! It cuts real close to xenophobia when well-educated Americans start complaining about foreigners stealing their jobs. Give me a break.

There is a lot to dislike about the H-1B program, in particular that workers who come in on that visa are essentially owned by the employer who sponsored them - they don't have the freedom and flexibility to change jobs that ordinary American permanent residents do - but the solution to that injustice is not to ban foreigners from coming to America altogether, it's to actually open the doors to skilled workers in the same way that countries with digital nomad visas do. People with in-demand skills should be allowed to freely travel and seek employment wherever they like, with the same protections and guarantees around their freedom to work as any local resident. (Arguably even people without in-demand skills should enjoy the same rights too, but for the purpose of this post, let's focus on the skilled sector.)

It's absolutely true that globalization has meant a lot of jobs in the US went overseas. But it also means that literally hundreds of millions of people whose communities used to live in poverty unimaginable to most Americans can now afford lifestyles that seem impossibly luxurious compared to just one or two generations ago. Like, maybe they now have electric lights and heating in their village. Maybe their children can now wear shoes instead of walking barefoot in the mud. Maybe they get to eat something besides rice and lard every night. And - most importantly - they can send their own kids to school, and to university, and all of those kids can now dream of travel and freedom and a life that isn't dictated by subsistence.

And meanwhile, most of these countries still have a worse social welfare system than the US does, which is saying something. There is still far greater poverty in even middle income countries than there is the US. Which isn't to say that there is no poverty or hardship in the US. Of course there is. But it's important to keep some sense of perspective when declaring the world to be in a state of utter collapse.

If the problem is that Americans can't afford to buy large houses, instead of blaming it on foreigners or the companies who employ them, maybe it's better to think about what kind of house most Americans prefer to live in. How big is the house? What features go into it? Where do they want to put it? Why is it so expensive to build? It's worth considering that many houses in America are built by exactly the immigrants you might want to denigrate for accepting a wage many Americans consider to be beneath them. Speaking of which - why, if Americans are so concerned about how poorly their blue-collar workers are paid, do they continue to buy products at rock-bottom prices that have been imported from countries whose blue-collar workers work for less? Do they really care about fair wages, or do they just want lots of cheap stuff?

Like, i get that Americans are having a tough time of things. At least white, middle-class Americans enjoyed a brief period of history where they could go through life in autopilot, expecting that they'd get everything handed to them on a plate. It's a bummer for them that that time is over. There are a lot of things that undeniably suck right now. America - like Canada, and the UK, and Australia, and several other of the world's wealthiest countries - has a real problem of affordable housing, and in particular affordable housing in exactly the places where most people want to live. All of these countries have issues (in different degrees) with providing healthcare to the people. And the US on top of that has issues with gun violence and various other forms of homegrown extremism. Life for a certain class of people in rich countries ain't as great as it used to be. So work on changing it. Don't point the finger at other people who are just trying to build better lives for themselves and their families.

Or, you know, don't work on changing it. It's hard to go up against the machine when there's still a sizable chunk of society for whom surrounding themselves in cheap luxuries beats any kind of ideological purity. So the other option - especially if you are a skilled worker - is to go to another country and work there instead. Choose to take adventage of exactly the same freedoms that other migrant workers have chosen in coming to the US. Find a place where the money you earn can afford you the kind of lifestyle you find acceptable. I wouldn't give this advice to a person living in absolute poverty, since that's some pull yourself up by the bootstraps shit. But to Americans with an engineering degree, come on. There's degrees of hardship and this is a low one. There is work all over. Not only are American STEM grads already privileged enough to have an education in an in-demand field, they are overwhelmingly likely to also have male privilege as well, plus the privilege of being native English speakers and owners of one of the best passports in the world... All of which make it especially easy for these folks to travel and apply their trade.

Either way, there's better ways to criticize the capitalist system than to advocate for protectionism or to suggest the US is somehow worse than a "third world country".

 

[The Toecutter]

No one here is pointing the finger at foreigners, nor is anyone here advocating for protectionism. Personally, I'm an anarchist. I don't believe borders should exist, nor do I believe passports(which now require mandatory biometric enrollment) should be required for travel between these borders. My objection to these borders is that they are used to keep labor bound to an area, while capital is free to flow wherever with greatly less restriction or scrutiny, and THAT is something I have a massive problem with. It is a power disparity that shouldn't be allowed to exist, yet is enabled by the existence of government, to the benefit of the corporations government works in conjunction with.

There are loads of jobs for engineers, at least advertised jobs. I applied to more than 7,000 of them from 2018 to 2021, which I kept on a spreadsheet. I ended up washing dishes at a restaurant for over a year with my engineering degree and at the time 9 years engineering experience, applying to better jobs every day, and rarely hearing anything back. Getting so much as a phone interview was about a 1 in 300 event. There were companies that offered me an engineering position here in the U.S. for as little as $12 per hour. Another company offered me not much more above that, and when I explained that the wage wasn't close to the amount advertised, that it wasn't even enough to move out of my parent's basement, that the bottom market rate for that pay for someone inexperienced was said to be at least twice what they were offering and that I had 9 years experience, and then explained I could make that same amount they were offering me on the phone as a cashier at a big box store, I was called a "typical entitled millennial" and then the man with the foreign accent on the other side of the phone explained how poor the people in his country were and that I was "ungrateful" for not jumping at that opportunity. I then asked him how much money he made, and he became irate, because in all likelihood he made six-figures and didn't like being called out for his greed. Obviously, I didn't get that job, nor would I have taken it at a wage so low that I would have remained just as well off washing dishes at the local COVID den. Not even worth the risks/liabilities that the job entails, at such poor wages.

Fortunately, in 2021, after thousands of applications, about a score of phone interviews, and 3 years, I did land my current position and am currently being paid what I am worth. But it was NOT easy to get this job, and my current employer sat on my resume for the better part of a year.

Just my personal experience.

One gentleman I graduated college with has 2 patents to his name, designed from scratch a one-wheeled self-balancing electric unicycle including having done the embedded system programming himself, and was homeless for four years. He eventually was able to rent out a warehouse to get off the street, and was priced out of shelter for years because the deadend retail jobs he worked didn't pay enough for rent once the student loans were garnished from his check.

One time, Boeing put an ad for a job that he was qualified for, which he applied to. He was ignored, and Boeing claimed to the government they couldn't find qualified applicants for the position. Some VISA applicants were hired for the position for $9/hour, when in 1990, that position would have paid closer to $90/hour. They didn't know how to do the coding correctly, resulting in multiple plane crashes for the 737MAX planes and hundreds of deaths. My friend remained homeless, but the CEO kept his golden parachute and Boeing got another taxpayer-funded bailout to avoid taking any responsibility for the series of event leading up to this, with the workers receiving more of the blame! The foreigner isn't the problem here.

The official government statistics on unemployment in this country are a laughable joke, and a massive gaslight to everyone who is struggling to find work in their field, even in a field of high demand.

My complaint is not levied towards the foreigners. It is levied towards the economic system we are living under, the ruling class who manipulated the conditions to where they are, and to the entities we are forced to work for in exchange for money in order to have access to the necessities of life.

Globalization, more than benefitting the poor, is being used to funnel money to the ruling class and to consolidate their power over humanity. If the majority of the money generated via labor were to actually go to workers in poor countries, they'd be living much closer to how Americans live in terms of living standard than they currently are. Most of the rest of the world may be doing better than it has 1-2 generations ago, but the so-called first world nations are in a state of incipient collapse, and the world's natural resources are rapidly being squandered(especially on military adventures, excessive living standards of the rich, and mass surveillance) in an economic system that promotes planned obsolescence, filling up land fills. Living standards that were common in the 1st world decades ago are now only sustained by most living in those countries with debt, because the prevailing wages in the 1st world no longer can afford the lifestyles people had become accustomed to, and debt has been used for people to pretend that they can afford things they really can't. That game of musical chairs can't continue forever. The U.S. in particular is beset by a series of major bubbles that are eventually going to pop as soon as the gravy train of endless taxpayer dollars and endless Federal Reserve money printing comes to an end(the bubbles being housing, stock market, 401Ks, pensions, bond markets, ect.). Most working Americans are currently primed to have whatever wealth they've managed to build up for themselves through decades of labor ripped away from them, and it won't be enriching the world's poor in the process.

The problem isn't that Americans can't afford to buy large houses. The problem is that Americans can't afford to buy a modest home, even a fixer-upper in the hood, without being driven into debt for decades of their lives. All of the permits, fees, taxes, materials, just to fix up even a cheap home, is an amount that is beyond the ability for people in the bottom 80% to save for. The bottom 80% of Americans currently live paycheck to paycheck, and are trapped in a cycle of spending all of their money on rent/mortgage, utilities, and servicing any debt(medical debt, student loan debt, used car debt, credit cards, ect). Roughly 3/4 of Americans don't even have $1,000 in savings, and roughly 2/3 don't even have $500 in savings. Then in most of the U.S., due to greedy local governments seeking to extort home owners for property tax revenue, there are now even minimum square footage requirements for new home construction. There are large swathes of the U.S. where the minimum new home size is over 2,000 sq ft, and where trailers, RVs, tiny homes, are zoned out of existence. Then there's the issue of developers building the biggest homes they can, in order to pad their profit margins. Government at various levels wants you paying property tax revenue on oversized/overbuilt/expensive homes, and they make you pay fees for inspections/permits on every little thing you would do to that property, all of which quickly gets into the tens of thousands of dollars in the case you're trying to fix up an old home to live in. If you buy a fixer-upper property, you're generally not just allowed to move into it. You have to get it up to code before the municipal government will even consider granting you an occupancy permit on property that you supposedly own, after you paid for it, and then they demand you pay a recurring fee to them to live in it. In all, it's a totally crap system designed to make you work longer than should be necessary, just to have access to shelter, under the guise of "public safety" and other similar excuses that government uses to justify the expensive burdens it places on people in effort to maximize the amount of money extracted from them.

All the more reason I'm all for people squatting in places. Starve the beast. I haven't bought into the "American Dream" and don't want it.

There are also large swathes of the U.S. where big box stores selling cheap crap are the only places to buy goods from for a radius of tens of miles. I live in an urban area where there are a lot more choices than that, but trying to find American-made or other quality products available inside of a physical store is a fools errand. I'd gladly pay the premium if the product were available. Most of my tools are cheaply-made Chinese crap because that is all that was available after making visits to multiple stores, and I'm not going to support Amazon with my money if I can avoid doing so.

In light of all this, it is no wonder why there are so many homeless people in the USA, and why their numbers are increasing. It was a series of deliberate policy decisions that led to the current state of affairs, and the losers are built into the system, no matter how hard they work. When someone gives up, I can't fault them for it. I was almost there myself.

Since I finally got a decent opportunity, I'm running with it. I'm saving up my money so I can go off grid. I'd like to get a home base established in a rural area with as few taxes/zoning restrictions/building codes as possible to put my belongings, maybe build up a tinyhome and a small workshop, and then I'm going to use my custom electric "bicycle" car to travel all over the place for as cheaply as possible with as little environmental footprint as possible. Even though it now has more than 70k miles on it, I've done surprisingly little touring with it. That mileage was racked up with lots of mundane A to B driving in my local area since building it in 2016, and it has literally saved me tens of thousands of dollars over that period versus using a conventional car. This "bicycle" is a car that theoretically everyone on Earth could have and use on a daily basis without it causing an environmental nightmare, as its resource footprint is about 1/50th that of a conventional car. My electricity usage for this thing gives me the energy efficiency equivalent of 4,000 miles per gallon! Long distance travel in this thing is also a good way to test the platform, so that I can refine it, and maybe even build/sell them someday. My shelter needs are basic. A tent, and/or some abandoned buildings, will serve me nicely, and my vehicle is small enough that I can take it indoors with me for safe keeping. If I were rich, I'd love to build one for every gutterpunk I come across and give it away to them for free, as they could definitely use such a thing.

I'll eventually be homeless by choice, with money in the bank and lots of options/things to do. That's a LOT nicer of a situation than being homeless and destitute due to circumstances out of one's control, and I'm fortunate I've never been the latter, even if I've had close calls and even though I've been homeless with savings. Not having any money is a totally different world.

Sorry, but this doomer rhetoric focusing in on how hard well-educated, highly-skilled middle class people have it is really out of touch, imo. There are still loads of jobs for engineers, software developers and so on. After healthcare, it's probably one of the easiest sectors to find employment in - all over the world! It cuts real close to xenophobia when well-educated Americans start complaining about foreigners stealing their jobs. Give me a break.

There is a lot to dislike about the H-1B program, in particular that workers who come in on that visa are essentially owned by the employer who sponsored them - they don't have the freedom and flexibility to change jobs that ordinary American permanent residents do - but the solution to that injustice is not to ban foreigners from coming to America altogether, it's to actually open the doors to skilled workers in the same way that countries with digital nomad visas do. People with in-demand skills should be allowed to freely travel and seek employment wherever they like, with the same protections and guarantees around their freedom to work as any local resident. (Arguably even people without in-demand skills should enjoy the same rights too, but for the purpose of this post, let's focus on the skilled sector.)

It's absolutely true that globalization has meant a lot of jobs in the US went overseas. But it also means that literally hundreds of millions of people whose communities used to live in poverty unimaginable to most Americans can now afford lifestyles that seem impossibly luxurious compared to just one or two generations ago. Like, maybe they now have electric lights and heating in their village. Maybe their children can now wear shoes instead of walking barefoot in the mud. Maybe they get to eat something besides rice and lard every night. And - most importantly - they can send their own kids to school, and to university, and all of those kids can now dream of travel and freedom and a life that isn't dictated by subsistence.

And meanwhile, most of these countries still have a worse social welfare system than the US does, which is saying something. There is still far greater poverty in even middle income countries than there is the US. Which isn't to say that there is no poverty or hardship in the US. Of course there is. But it's important to keep some sense of perspective when declaring the world to be in a state of utter collapse.

If the problem is that Americans can't afford to buy large houses, instead of blaming it on foreigners or the companies who employ them, maybe it's better to think about what kind of house most Americans prefer to live in. How big is the house? What features go into it? Where do they want to put it? Why is it so expensive to build? It's worth considering that many houses in America are built by exactly the immigrants you might want to denigrate for accepting a wage many Americans consider to be beneath them. Speaking of which - why, if Americans are so concerned about how poorly their blue-collar workers are paid, do they continue to buy products at rock-bottom prices that have been imported from countries whose blue-collar workers work for less? Do they really care about fair wages, or do they just want lots of cheap stuff?

Like, i get that Americans are having a tough time of things. At least white, middle-class Americans enjoyed a brief period of history where they could go through life in autopilot, expecting that they'd get everything handed to them on a plate. It's a bummer for them that that time is over. There are a lot of things that undeniably suck right now. America - like Canada, and the UK, and Australia, and several other of the world's wealthiest countries - has a real problem of affordable housing, and in particular affordable housing in exactly the places where most people want to live. All of these countries have issues (in different degrees) with providing healthcare to the people. And the US on top of that has issues with gun violence and various other forms of homegrown extremism. Life for a certain class of people in rich countries ain't as great as it used to be. So work on changing it. Don't point the finger at other people who are just trying to build better lives for themselves and their families.

Or, you know, don't work on changing it. It's hard to go up against the machine when there's still a sizable chunk of society for whom surrounding themselves in cheap luxuries beats any kind of ideological purity. So the other option - especially if you are a skilled worker - is to go to another country and work there instead. Choose to take adventage of exactly the same freedoms that other migrant workers have chosen in coming to the US. Find a place where the money you earn can afford you the kind of lifestyle you find acceptable. I wouldn't give this advice to a person living in absolute poverty, since that's some pull yourself up by the bootstraps shit. But to Americans with an engineering degree, come on. There's degrees of hardship and this is a low one. There is work all over. Not only are American STEM grads already privileged enough to have an education in an in-demand field, they are overwhelmingly likely to also have male privilege as well, plus the privilege of being native English speakers and owners of one of the best passports in the world... All of which make it especially easy for these folks to travel and apply their trade.

Either way, there's better ways to criticize the capitalist system than to advocate for protectionism or to suggest the US is somehow worse than a "third world country".

 

[The Toecutter]

Back to the original subject of this topic(I apologize if I brought it too far off course with my ranting and raving), here is what my city is doing to crack down on homelessness:










No real solutions. Ban them from putting up tents in public right-of-ways. Ban them from sleeping or camping on state land. Ban them from asking strangers for monetary help. All backed up with the threat of violence. Comply or be locked in a cage and get shot if one refuses to be locked in the cage. Overworked debt slave tax donkeys who vote want to pretend the problem doesn't exist, and every time they have to see it it is a reminder that they too could be there someday, with just one or two missed paychecks/a medical emergency/a car breakdown/an arrest/an unexpected major life event, and the thought disturbs them.

It's also interesting how the media repeatedly uses footage of the same camps, when there is a such wide array of camps to get footage of around here. It's as if none of the newsies actually went to the sites to see with their own eyes what was actually going on there. So as with everything that comes from the mouths of newsies, take the above videos with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Every time I go on a ride, I pass multiple homeless camps. They are popping up everywhere, albeit mostly hidden in alleyways and wooded areas away from the view of main thoroughfares, as well as abandoned industrial buildings. You have to explore to find them, but they are there and they are numerous. At almost every city park or library, you can find homeless people congregating during the day. My city isn't nearly as bad as say, Los Angeles, not even 1/10th as bad in this metric, but the issue is nonetheless present. Of the major metropolitan areas in the U.S., my city has among the cheapest homes and rent. It says a lot that there are increasing numbers of homeless every day and that a full-time minimum wage job will still leave one priced out of access to shelter, even here.

With as many abandoned homes around here as there are, homelessness shouldn't even exist in this city. The number of abandoned homes greatly outnumbers the homeless population. Yet, here we are. Most of it is the result of government.

When you consider that the origin of the problem is a result of policy at the Federal and even global level, and not the local level, it's no surprise that the local government just tries to pretend banning camps and telling people to "go anywhere but here" is a "solution". Endless money printing on a planet of finite physical resources has consequences. So too does converting access to shelter into a debt-based pyramid scheme. In such circumstances, there will always be large numbers of people who are denied access to shelter, and not by their own choice.

And contrary to what most voting people think, more government won't solve the issue, either. If you're fortunate enough to have your own home and decide to do something to help these people by letting them stay, local government will prevent you from doing so should they find out. Local government will demand you get occupancy permits, limit the occupancy based upon the square footage of your home and/or what facilities are present within the home, force you to pay them for an inspection to get said occupancy permits, force you to get your property "up to code" going over every minute detail of the place, forcing you to spend thousands of dollars you probably don't have to replace items that may still be perfectly functional, and can even kick you out of your own home or even condemn the property if it fails the inspection. Even if you've kept the property taxes paid. Local government won't even let you offer the homeless a chance to camp out in your back yard or park their car in your driveway as a kind gesture, without fining you. Pay the fine, or government will take your shit, and maybe even send men with guns to throw you in a cage, or shoot you if you refuse to be locked in the cage. That is what government does. We won't be getting a real solution from it, no matter how hard anyone votes.

Nearly every facet of Western civilization is some kind of grift, designed to pit everyone against each other in competition for money/resources, money/resources of which access by the common person is limited through deliberate top-down government/corporate policy decisions that impose artificial scarcity of basic human needs upon humanity.

Even in a country as wasteful as the U.S., people are starving. Corporations put locks on their dumpsters to prevent people from getting free food. They'd rather it occupy a landfill, than for some desperate person to get it for free. Only those with money are "deserving" of access to basic necessities in today's clown world.

SMFH.

 

[Coywolf]

With as many abandoned homes around here as there are, homelessness shouldn't even exist in this city. The number of abandoned homes greatly outnumbers the homeless population. Yet, here we are. Most of it is the result of government.

And contrary to what most voting people think, more government won't solve the issue, either. If you're fortunate enough to have your own home and decide to do something to help these people by letting them stay, local government will prevent you from doing so should they find out.

I mean, honestly, the wealthy private sector (who is pretty much already in charge of the government in this country) would (and is) do(ing) the same thing via 'private property', housing prices, loans and HOAs.

Alot of the blame for the current state of affairs falls on the private sector. Mortgage lenders, short term rental companies, insurance companies, lobbyists, real estate investors. It isint all on government regulation.

But I do agree the government does have its fair share of the blame here.

 

[The Toecutter]

I mean, honestly, the wealthy private sector (who is pretty much already in charge of the government in this country) would (and is) do(ing) the same thing via 'private property', housing prices, loans and HOAs.

Alot of the blame for the current state of affairs falls on the private sector. Mortgage lenders, short term rental companies, insurance companies, lobbyists, real estate investors. It isint all on government regulation.

But I do agree the government does have its fair share of the blame here.

At this point, government and private sector are indistinguishable from each other in everything but title. Wall Street is government and government is Wall Street. The laws we are forced to live under were not written by us, but by moneyed interests. The policies enacted were generally not policies anyone voted for, but decreed by special interests for their own benefit, and to everyone else's expense.

 

[sevedemanos]

yeh

 

[superphoenix]

"Liberal" U.S. cities never were that "liberal" to begin with, more neoliberal/neoconservative than anything, run by right-wing, semi-capitalist, highly-authoritarian ideologues pretending to be on the left of center and trying to climb the corpgov ladder, wrapping themselves in the language of the "woke" and of political correctness all for the sake of keeping up appearances.

You have expressed a sentiment I've held for a long time but haven't quite been able to articulate

 

[Dmac]

They will change back, just before the next election .