washoe i am not a fan of giving any homeless cash.

I've heard too many stories of guys desperate to break their dependency, and in the worst throws of their withdrawal, broke and with no place to go to get their drugs, which is where many think the corner is often turned if one is to have a chance at sobriety, who then completely regressed with a drug binge session provided by some 'generous' person throwing them a $20.

Sure you may make them smile, in that moment by getting them drugs at the hardest part of that withdrawal but I am more concerned about the set back and how that cycle will now repeat itself.

There was a comedian recently that said something like "If I was sleeping in the freezing cold I'd probably smoke spice and drink all the booze I could get my hands on to get me through the night".

Like I said, I think you can get lost in the decision over what's best when the reality is right now anything positive you do is better than nothing. If you're concerned about doing the best thing for them then it's to try and direct them to whatever resources exist in their area that handle these problems professionally. That's going to vary massively by where you are.

Buying them a meal is great but equally if today's the day they've had three meals then another one today instead of $20 that could feed them tomorrow and the day after isn't what they need either.

Again, it's getting lost in the worry of what's ideal when doing anything positive at least gives the person some attachment to society, some feeling that someone cares, some sense that they're still a person. Those things are incredibly important to getting clean if there's substance abuse issues in play.

When a non-homeless person has substance abuse problems we don't solve it by taking all their money away. We offer support and direct them to professional help (at least, we should). Worrying too much about what this person will do with $20 is a red herring. Yeah, maybe they'll waste it, but maybe they'll get to eat for a week.

If you're truly concerned about an individual, take the time to talk to them. Maybe they desperately want some better shoes, your old ski jacket, a wind up radio, a book. There was some video of an old homeless guy talking about how he saves his pennies so on his birthday he can go see a show, and that's his biggest joy. To that guy, giving him a cinema gift card so he can see a film and get some popcorn means the world. There's a million little creature comforts that we take for granted that leave a homeless person detached from. Drinking booze and doing drugs just happens to be the one of those we all enjoy that they still have some access to.

I'm waffling again, but don't spend too much energy worrying about whether that $20 was the ideal way to help them when anything is very likely to be better than nothing.

Ya, you and I have very different views on this and i understand that there are competing views on this.

I believe in a well funded ground level support system to help the people seeking it a way to identify the resources available to them to escape, but i do not support much of what is called 'harm mitigation' and do not think it achieves that goal.

I have a very cynical view towards bureaucracies and the ones that support Homeless Initiatives do not escape that view in that I think those at the top are not looking to do themselves out of jobs and to end their industry and instead are looking for ways to manage it and grow the bureaucracy and keep the govt money flowing (ever expanding budgets) which I believe many of the "harm mitigation" strategies do.

I was thinking that maybe i should start a new thread for that but I think this thread has run its course so I am fine with "Govt" expanding in this discussion to include NGO's and all "Bureaucracies" in general since I believe they all share the same underlying grift motivation of Managing problems and maximizing department growth and govt yearly cash, and not ending the need for their bureaucracy.

Very different than the people working with them on the streets who would gladly end their own jobs if they fix the problem tomorrow.

Source....? I think this is just the lie they sell. Government's always been a place for the corrupt.



Also- I think you should differentiate between countries & places. The amount of grift possible depends on the place and culture

I'm now thinking of another comedian that something to the effect of "I don't like charity. Charity is a failure of government policy".

This is one of those issues where I think local and government policy are so varying that it's hard to talk about it from our positions across borders. I know someone on the front lines as a social worker for a homeless charity and from what he's said to me there's a window of opportunity where help is available but it's not easily accessed and you need to know where to turn and how to apply etc. Once people cross that line into sleeping on the streets they've already lost most of their access to supportive people, lost their ability to get to the right places, contact the right people, and it's all that much harder.

It's small things that they can do that make a big difference that I never really thought about. Having an address that you can receive letters at, a place you can receive phone calls at, how do you apply for any government assistance without those? How do you apply for a job without those? How do you get through an interview without a shower first? How are you getting paid if you don't have a bank account? And then if you have any kind of disability, lack of education, or mental health issue that makes filling out complicated forms difficult those things are quickly beyond you.

At the same time, those are all things that someone with a bit of know-how at a charity can easily help with a bit of funding. I take that position in the first line that charities like this are indicative of policy failures. The institutions we've set up are supposed to do these jobs, but this is where we are.

I don't buy into the idea that people are trying to preserve an industry with the homeless. I do buy into the idea that a lot of people are reflexively opposed to any kind of policy that sounds like either free money or the government doing something people should do for themselves. It's the usual "they can haul themselves up by the bootstraps" thinking that misses the obvious reality that some people clearly can't, and people are far more worried that money might go to someone who didn't really need it than that some people will be destitute because the help wasn't there. Better to put studs on the pavement so homeless people will sleep somewhere out of sight and out of mind.

I heard a few theories about this and just stumbled upon this video here from NY projects.

They say in the 80s everything was fine, even great, then came the 90s and with the 90s the crack pandemic and it turned really really bad. So there must be a connection between drugs and homelessness. Of course there is everybody knows. So what I'm trying to tell you is that people might try to preserve an industry of the homeless, if not deliberately than without caring. What happened in the 90s with the crack cocaine was that they very well tried to target a minority group with laws so they would criminalize them. That would make them addicts, outlaws and eventually homeless.





Why do you think powder cocaine users weren't punished nearly as hard as crack consumers? It's chemically identical, we establish that. Powder cocaine users were yuppies, stock brokers, lawyers, doctors etc mostly rich white people in the US. while crack users were mostly black and poor.

So laws were made, completely injust laws. I don't know who exactly targeted them with the crack cocaine. But I would bet that the cia had something to do with it. They were the ones smuggling cocaine from colombia (you can look it up, cia cocaine smuggle) at least they knew what's going on and some crooks profited from it. Then you can imagine some fat prison lobbiest bribing some lawmakers with a f load of money to pass those laws.

I hear ya and I keep hearing this. Maybe you are all correct. It felt wrong kinda everytime I did it, on the other hand it felt great, like I did something good. It empowers you. I should buy food instead I think that is the solution.

These junkees make 10-100 euros an hour begging in out subways. So it's not like I am making a huge difference. Then they go buy drugs and shoot it up or smoke it. That's all they do. Ride the subway to beg, possibly prostitute and buy drugs. Its a vicious circle. I probably will still hand out some money every now and then when i come across a terrible case. When you see them passed out drunk in the middle of the winter. These folks are dying because they can't feel the cold when they are drunk or high. Its crazy.

Look at who's profiting from this industry. Pharmas, cartels, prisons, lawyers. There are several industries living off the homeless industry. They don't want it to be gone. As cruel as it sounds. Its a major conflict of interests.

"They" are fruiter than nutcakes.

Making income tax structures more progressive, would almost certainly have a number of positive social benefits, for all of us.

The tax data from the Internal Revenue Service indicate that wealthier people cheat on their taxes more often than those with lower incomes.
So Cuepees friend might fit right on in that category . LMAO

Lower-income households give a higher percentage of their income to charity than middle-income households.

Aside from the vague "pay their fair share" edict — from whom, to whom and how much?



source: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-t...d-gross-income

Bring back a more progressive tax structure.




New OMB-CEA Report: Billionaires Pay an Average Federal Individual Income Tax Rate of Just 8.2%

...At the center of that system is a tax code that allows the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. And while we have long known that billionaires don’t pay enough in taxes, the lack of transparency in our tax system means that much less is known about the income tax rate that they do pay.

Today, we’re releasing a new analysis that draws on a range of publicly available data to shed light on this question. The analysis from OMB and CEA economists estimates that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in America paid an average of just 8.2 percent of their income—including income from their wealth that goes largely untaxed—in Federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018. That’s a lower rate than many ordinary Americans pay.

This disparity is driven largely by the way our tax code treats income generated from wealth—that is, income from assets like stocks that increase in value over time. When a middle class American earns a dollar of wages, that dollar is taxed immediately. But when a billionaire makes a dollar because their stocks increase in value, that dollar is taxed at a preferred rate—if it’s ever taxed at all. If a wealthy investor never sells an asset that has increased in value, those investment gains are entirely ignored for income tax purposes when the assets are passed on to an heir, thanks to stepped-up basis. And while untaxed capital gains income is dramatically smaller than wage income for most families—for example, about half of all Americans don’t own any stock, including in retirement accounts—it looms large for the wealthiest 400 families, who according to the Forbes 400 had at least $2.1 billion in wealth in 2018, the final year of this analysis. Analyses that ignore this type of income from wealth for billionaires will necessarily overstate their real income tax rates....

ibid:
That works out to $200B/yr. in capital income of which their estimate of 8.2% would have billionaires paying $16B/yr in capital gains tax. Let's bump that 8.2% up to 25% or $50B or 1-2% of our current budget deficit. I really don't see that affecting much of anything.