YES. Anyone reposting Kyle’s daily eviscerations on Lemmy is fine by me. Kyle’s consistency through my years of watching Secular Talk has always been admirable, especially in this age of soulless online grifters
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Zero is also the amount of mental health therapy Musk probably had, unfortunately.
Yeah, I’m addicted.
Addicted to the good old outdoors.
It would cost significantly more than $20b to end homelessness in the US.
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Housing homeless people won’t end homelessness. You have to also invest heavily in mental health care and addiction counseling. You’d also have to commit thousands against their will.
The homelessness issue is multifaceted, and throwing housing at the problem won’t end it.
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I meant they would need to be committed to a mental health facility and forced to take meds their entire lives.
You’d also have to commit thousands against their will
Or you could just offer them help rather than force them. Nobody should be forced to be anyones prisoner when they haven’t committed any crime.
The people I’m talking about are severely mentally ill. Many people choose not to take their meds (for good reason, antipsychotics have super shitty side effects), and many of those people choose to self medicate with drugs and alcohol. They still need help, but just providing housing won’t solve the issue.
When the topic of homelessness is brought up, people forget that there’s two types of homeless people. Those who just need some help to get back on their feet, and those who are chronically homeless because they literally can’t participate in society without violating their rights.
I’m not saying they don’t deserve help, quite the opposite. I’m saying that spending $30b on housing won’t end an issue that’s not based on housing costs or availability.
“Worth” = “cash”
When it comes to the homeless, some are forced into that situation (see: tent cities coming up around metros during COVID, 2020-2023 ish, some are ongoing), while others, mostly long term homeless, are either there because of mental illness or drugs, or stay there because of mental issues/drugs.
It can be both cause and effect.
Dehumanizing the homeless as all drug addicts and mentally ill people is unnecessarily cruel. A lot of them simply need help and support, whether that support is stable and affordable (cheap/free) housing, and food banks, or more broad social services like drug rehab, and mental health assistance.
Some mental health conditions are difficult to treat, like those with paranoid schizophrenia, who are constantly fighting with voices telling them that any medication to alleviate the symptoms is poison or something like that. This is just one example of many; but the majority of mental health conditions are very easily treatable.
However, with the US healthcare system in such a wretched condition as it is, though it has improved somewhat, it is not built for the people who need the most help, or need help more significantly or urgently, such as those who are homeless.
IMO, the watermark of how “good” a society is, in no small part, is demonstrated by how we regard and “deal with” homelessness. Needless to say, America ranks pretty low on that list.
Compared to something like the National defense budget, making even the smallest move towards helping the homeless would be a massive help, for a relatively small cost. In no small part because everyone would ask where the money is coming from.
Where does any money come from? When a society issues bonds for more currency from the “global banks”, and gets, say $100M to spend, then in a year, they owe $103M on that debt, but only have $100M in total currency, what then? This “debt” will never be paid. Also, for an international superpower, who do they owe this money to? Who are you in debt to?
The Fiat money system is a sham and the currency has no value at all. It’s simply the worthless material we use as a middle man for the barter system. I trade my effort/labor for this worthless paper, and this worthless paper grants me the ability to feed and house myself. Rather than my labor being paid for in… I dunno, coal? Wheat? Coffee beans? Then me having to trade that for something the grocer wants, and something my landlord wants. It’s stupid.
So I’ll bite …let’s say he’s right and they’re “not” homeless they’re suffering from mental illness, drug addiction or a combination of both WHILE being homess.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to actually fucking help those in need especially now we know they’re struggling with homeless AND other incapacitating issues.
Society should be judged on how they treat the weak, struggling members of society. They are not a burden but real people hurting, and we are all closer to homeless than we think.
There is also a cynical neoliberal argument that one could make. By helping those homeless people, they are reintroduced to the economy. They will produce value, consume products, and not dedicate on the sidewalk. In other words it’s a good investment.
I hate that I’d even have to entertain that as a reason, or spew it at those who just won’t care about any other argument.
So if I’m being honest, after reading Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, I see absolutely no need to ever embrace anything from the Chicago School of Economics or any bullshit Neoliberal ideology, it only serves to transfer wealth to private hands.
Even when my objective and a Neoliberal objective inadvertently line up, they are not the good guys.
I agree with you all the way. However, this is a very good talking point if you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t care about human decency or empathy
Then that person shouldn’t be allowed to make any decisions regarding other people
And yet people like that do. Every single day. People like that are the dominant political force in this country.
Musk is a moron, but if you think $20 billion could end homelessness, so are you
He isn’t a moron, he’s just a narcissistic sociopath. Musk is no different than you at the yolk of a WWII bomber. He has no idea what he’s doing.
But in his element, he’s dangerous and does very well know what he’s doing.
Musk doesn’t care about the homeless. He cares about their labor and how much he and his buddies can get it for free. If being homeless and sleeping in your car is suddenly illegal nationwide, then many of us will be forced into rents we don’t want to pay or end up in Musk’s labor camp with the rest of their undesirables.
It was never about helping anyone.
You’re a moron if you don’t think $20,000,000,000.00 wouldn’t raise millions of people out of homelessness and poverty.
Sure it would help significantly. It would most likely be the most successful initiative in human history. But it won’t “end homelessness”.
How would you know ?
My wife is a tenured professor of macro social work for a major university, specializing in underserved populations. She studies these things.
You don’t think ~$31,000 spent productively per every single homeless person in the US could effectively reset the homeless crisis?
Sure it would help significantly. It would most likely be the most successful initiative in human history. But it won’t “end homelessness”.
I feel like that’s pedantry on whether the definition of “end homelessness” means, 0 homeless forever vs, homelessness is a small, manageable problem again.
And if say, half of that 20 billion were put in a perpetual trust it could give a perpetual budget of 100s of millions of dollars to fund maintenance and social work staff to continue to better manage the problem.
Possibly, but the text already specifically says “in America”. I feel like if you add qualifiers like that, you have already partitioned the problem as far down as you intended.
I guess but then you have to stop expanding what they mean by the solution. You’re not partitioning the statement of the problem any further but you’re seemingly appending “forever” to the end of the solution as well as other problems that go along with homelessness. $30,000 each is enough to get every currently homeless person in the US some form of legal shelter, by definition ending homelessness in the US, however briefly.
Funny. So less public health would do what exactly to benefit the homeless/insane?
So-called genius can’t fathom that in many cases the mental illness and drug addiction came from the homelessness.
I know someone with moderate substance abuse issues and diagnosed severe mental illness - basically as bad as it gets if left untreated. But she also lives independently and holds down a solid middle class desk job. How? She has rich parents who pay for treatment (individualized psychiatry) and care (housekeeping mostly), as well as an array of friends who help oversee her.
Homelessness is not necessary, even in the most desperate cases. It’s just a question of what we’re willing to pay and how much we’re willing to care.
I have anxiety and likely some deep seated depression that would rise up with a vengeance if I didn’t have a warm home and access to food. I also love drinking wine, and while I do have access to said home and fridge, this wine hobby is cute and socially acceptable.
Make me homeless and I’d very much represent a mentally ill substance abusing human like Elmo is describing there. They’re not ‘them’; they’re just us in a different reality.
If Elon suddenly became “homeless” he would have a sign begging for ketamine & screaming “put I never went to therapy on my tombstone”.
Elmo Husk. A puppet and a shell of a man.
They are drug addicts and mentally ill because usa has no safety nets for such people
We were supposed to take care of these people after de-institutionalization. We didn’t.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html
We broke the promise and now it is their fault. What a bizarre world we live in.
Republican playbook. Cheat, be an asshole and don’t ever care for anyone else than yourself. Classy and on Brand
Somehow I actually yearn for the days of robber barons. At least they found socially productive ways to build monuments to their own vanity. If Musk wants to spend $20 billion to build social housing in cities across the US, I’m not going to complain if he slaps his name on the buildings. At least Carnegie built libraries.
At least Carnegie built libraries.
Who pays for these libraries now?
These owners also build idiotic mansions then taxpayer has to figure how to maintain them.
These are not a win for working class.
It’s because the modern day wealth disparity has no equivalent in human history, at least to my knowledge. Maybe slavery - but they were at least valuable enough to shelter and feed.
Elon Musk shows in this just how much worse he is than robber barons.
I came to say something like this. wow that is it to have the musk centers for american dignity or something.
