A third of the homeless people in America are over 50 and I’m one of them

They measure it many ways. They just report it with the lower statistical number so that it doesn't seem that bad. I would prefer all numbers to be given out. If I am the only person working in my family supporting 9 other people so that they can do other things we are not exhibiting 100% employment. 10% of the people are working to support the whole. If that works, great, but on the level of society as a whole you want to know all of the numbers.

>I don't really get it because I've lived here my whole life and you can pretty much 100% guarantee the more a locality taxes their populace the better the quality of life is, at least in the states.

..what? This makes no sense. My quality of life was significantly better when I lived in TX than when I lived in SF, and you already know which one taxed me more. Even a lot of public infrastructure, like roads and highways especially, was just so much better. Plus, even though TX doesn't do much to help the homeless, the likelihood that the author would have ended up homeless in the first place is lower because home ownership is feasible. And the programs the OP is referring to, social safety net type things, aren't local but national in scale.

That said, I do like the idea but the quoted statement just makes no sense to me.

We pay taxes now, it just goes to everything else but local communities. Politicians decide where that money goes. The military gets a lot of it, which could be argued is a socialist plan to employ at risk youth fresh out of high school and give jobs to factory workers making military vehicles they don't need. We spend a lot on military so that most of NATO, etc doesn't have to, so they can have their safety nets.

How much of that thinking really comes from the mindset that believes govt is not doing a good job with the taxes they are already paying them. If our DMVs, EPA, Education systems are all working efficiently and in a modern way, more people will change their mind.

Having escaped from poverty in my 20s (I'm one of those guys who made it in software via dumb luck and no college degree) that's a cozy concept, but I don't think it's at all accurate. The poor people I grew up with have no idea of the life we lead. They live in a world where there's no such thing as air travel, you'll probably never travel outside the US, having your car start in the morning (if you've got one) is a sometimes thing, and you'd be mega-rich if you had 4 figures in your bank account - and that's all most of them have ever experienced. They don't see themselves as embarrassed millionaires, because most of them don't even have the faintest understanding of what that means.

Socialism did take hold. It was brutally repressed.

The battle of blair mountain is a clear example of what happens when workers demand fair treatment in America. They didn't just send the army in to break the strike, they sent the air force.

Though they lost, in the long term it raised awareness enough to actually lead to organized labor victories like the New Deal (which effectively led to the creation of the middle class 'good life' from the 50s).

The thing that really worries me is that another, similar battle would be necessary in order to arrest the current decline of the middle class.

Just because you have some insurance your state isn't a socialist state. Socialism would actually mean poverty for everyone.

I think even in the US people pay taxes and the government buys things from that which are supposed to help everybody (like, say, roads). Ooops - I guess you already live in a socialist state.

Why is it OK to build roads with tax money, but not to provide social insurance?

In the end, society pays either way for people who have fallen on hard times: either they pay for welfare, or they pay indirectly by having to deal with the inconvenience they cause (like, as I have heard, human turds on SF streets).

Since you present this number, then I assume you have read how this have been calculated, and can give some credible answer to e.g. why the low 10% in America are considered better off than the bottom British, Germans, Australians and Swiss.

Having been in several of these countries and knowing people who have lived there it simply does not strike me as believable. Maybe it is true, but I'd like to hear some articulated reason for it.

Here are my counter points. We know that for all these other countries supposedly worse off than America health care access for the bottom is considerably better. Access to education is better. Crime levels are lower. So within what area is it that American's gain the upper hand?

I've seen studies like this before giving poor Americans an upper hand and all to often it is due only focusing on material aspects. E.g. the poor in the US usually have bigger houses, more microwaves, bigger cars etc than the poor elsewhere. This is often given as evidence that they are better of while ignoring the fact that poor Americans have significantly worse access to health care and education than other people. Also Europeans e.g. spend a lot more on travel than on just accumulating stuff at home. So quality of life is difficult to asses exclusively by just adding up stuff.

I've lived in the US and my wife is American. I also have distant relatives in the US. I know what their lives are like and I know the struggles various members of my wife's family has gone through as well as my distant relatives.

I work with a lot of Americans and deal with a lot of American companies.

I'd say in many ways I think see America clearer than a lot of Americans because they have nothing to compare it with. I've lived in several countries and I can compare my experiences. If you have never lived abroad you tend to take too many things for granted and you become blind to so many realities in your own country.

Anyway it isn't like American's are the quite guys in the corner never volunteering their opinions to anybody else about how the rest of the world should be run. Quite the opposite, except American are frequently extremely opinionated about things they know absolutely nothing about.

If you were a Congressman, you would call the American version of this phenomena the Voice of America. (The conclusions that it draws are consistently pro-business, anti-labour, pro-Pax Americana, anti-red, etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America

well it helps them to talk down about American and over exaggerate the issues here so they can ignore what they don't want to see at home.

There are enough horror stories everywhere that people fail to acknowledge, first world problems pale in comparison what people suffer in the non Western worlds. From complete lack of some basics we considering necessary to every day threats to their lives and property, should they even have the ability own anything.

This has been proven, I can't find the link but there was a study done with statistics for New York and they found that the homeless cost on average about $30k a year to keep homeless, between interactions with the police/jails, ER visits because they can't get medical care any other way, reduction in property values, etc. On the flip side putting them in cheap housing with a shower, food, and a TV would cost s fraction of that but there's no way in hell you're going to sell that to the American culture as long as the bootstraps narrative holds.

There is never a way to fully control everything in your life. And the poorer you get, the less you can control.

Poor do not get to shop for jobs, move to healthier or cheaper places (especially faraway), spend money or time on exercise. (if they attempt to make ends meet) Older people are much less wanted on the job market too.

Nobody is God. Nobody can fix everything.

So it implies that age is not a factor?

Also in the storm it's easy to forget to ask for every possible aid. And probably avoid asking for more if you're already given some, to actually avoid being seen as more of a leech that you feel being.

If you get married, and the marriage falls apart, it's because of your personal failings. If you don't get married, and your life falls apart, it's because you didn't get married.

Either way, if you want to be successful, clearly you should get married!

Is encouraging people who wouldn't otherwise get married to get married going to produce stable marriages? I would imagine that it would produce more of the other kind.

Team vi or Team Emacs.

Getting children?

Which PokemonGo team to be on. /s They probably mean having children if I had to guess.

Career choice I suppose.

I'm guessing whether to end their life or not.

Eat out for cook in for dinner.

People do live off of ~600$/month in the south west. No need for heating and you can get away without cooling. An acre of land is as low as ~1,000$ or so to buy. Add some minimal shelter, water, and minimal electricity plus some very minimal taxes..

It's not what I would call pleasant, their are few jobs, and transportation is an issue. However, basic food and shelter can be really cheap.

I can easily afford it. I object.

Without over leveraging Norways housing market can continue its appreciation for decades more.

> She would probably have to get rid of her dog.

> Dexterdog

Is this a coincidence?

Do people go to a cremation?

Aight but preventing "forever parked" spots isn't the same as forbidding sleeping in a car for a homeless person. If a police officer realizes that person has no home, will they direct them toward another spot or give them a fine, or take them into a precinct ?

Very nice example of thought policing on HN. Original comment is somehow on-topic but this one isn't.

About as interesting as watching train accidents. After the first few, they all start to look the same with minor variants.

> What does cultural homogeneity have anything to do with the way a country treats its homeless?

It's easier to be generous to people who are more like oneself, and who are physically closer to oneself.

Consider all the people in Europe right now who may be perfectly happy to support generous welfare for homeless people who happen to have been born on the same side of their borders, but who are hostile to homeless people who just fled Syria.

Or consider the difficulty of scrapping every national welfare system in Europe and uniting them under a single EU government. I contend that would be very difficult. America is more like the EU than it is like Norway. Norway is much more like Massachusetts, which has very Norway-like quality-of-life metrics.

Intense variations in local resources and culture heavily impair nationwide consensus on healthcare.

Families in rural areas can thrive with a knife, saw and shotgun, drinking from clean lakes, growing food and living healthy, aerobic lifestyles. They see little need for government intervention. They barter and travel on unimproved roads with horses and all-terrain vehicles, even making their own fuel. Even in the event of a fire disaster, they can quickly rebuild on their own vast property.

In denser urban areas, housing codes and other cultural laws, like riding horses, drying clothes on a line, noise and land use restrictions and sleeping in public spaces make living close to the land impractical and/or illegal. Collusion with the developed world and its government is mandatory. People in these areas are happy to invest in personal radios transmitting their consumption habits and private conversations in exchange for access to the benefits of mass production, including remedies for their own sacrificed health. In these areas, those with the ability to generate for the system do just fine or excellent.

Families with cultural lag, such as the poor, badly educated and immigrants - voluntary and involuntary - have to get up to pace, learning the unintuitive ways of the modern, urban jungle. It's hard work, yet with all the access to information, it remains largely possible. The bottom layers who can't keep up get minimal assistance from the government to figure out how to get back into the system or move out to the rural areas.

America is all about navigating the 1,000 shades between these two extremes.

American Exceptionalism is the card being played here.

It effectively means: "Our country is fundamentally different from your country, so what works for you won't necessarily work for us. Your success or failure is no reason for us to follow your example."

Often this card is played despite the "fundamental differences" not necessarily being all that pronounced, or all that relevant. No two countries on this planet are identical, yet an astounding number of policies translate generally well despite that.