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Comment by woodpanel | Hacker News Reader

As a German I have to say I was impressed by the amount of blight I’ve encountered in inner cities as well as in rural areas of the US. You immediately see that the government provides much less than in Europe, but I also got the feeling that people care a lot more and are more personally engaged in helping the poor than in Germany.

Yes, this may be often motivated by religion - but who cares? No surprise to me that the most progressive state in this sense seems to be Utah (Mormons are encouraged to devour a percentage of their time to social causes, the state switched to provide every homeless with a roof first, ask questions later ...)

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As a Swede, I have to agree that the level of overt poverty in US cities is shocking (specifically, as it is juxtaposed with so much overt wealth). I don’t know if Anericans care more about helping the poor, but clearly enough people don’t care sufficiently to actually fix the problem by voting for effective social policies. This level of poverty, homelessness and poor health is a political choice, not a law of nature.

> clearly enough people don’t care sufficiently to actually fix the problem by voting for effective social policies.

Unfortunately, with money driven election cycles (rather than policy driven election cycles) social welfare never has a good chance to see the light of day in washington. Perhaps this will change soon, but when both parties take money from the same people, the resulting debate will probably avoid important topics.

Money is important, but I think the biggest reason is cultural.

There are a lot of people in the US who believe that the chronically homeless are moral failures who deserve their misery (they "fail at life", to quote an acquaintance); that social welfare to help them constitutes rewarding moral hazard; and that the most effective way to minimize homelessness is to dial up the disincentives and make their lives as painful and humiliating as possible.

I agree on all points.

The role money plays is avoiding discussion of the roots of homelessness, which affects the general population as well—social, cultural, economic, and medical discussions. An easy way to see this is the obsession over the employment rate, despite being very narrow in what it measures (i.e. whether someone who is looking for a job finds one, not the quality of the job they find, nor the number of people who stop looking).

Ultimately, I can’t hold people’s apathy towards homelessness against them. Homelessness is often the product of a system that failed them, and the thought of helping directly is incredibly daunting given how much the deck is stacked against people without money, shelter, ids, or skills. Facing an individual who clearly faced a wrong, people tend to help. When faced with a group of people society chewed up and spat out, the comforting things people tell themselves each day reach their limits. What’s another comforting topic on top of it—that people deserve what they get?

If we accept the underlying problems affect all of us, maybe we won’t have to do mental gymnastics to see how policy could improve lives. This is potentially an electable approach.

I'm not nearly so charitable. In my view, inflicting humiliation on the homeless in the name of helping them is depraved.

We do not live in a just world. Pretending that success and failure are attributable to merit alone is the the self-serving moral vanity of the fortunate.

So what if the homeless "fail at life"? There but for the grace of dog go you.

> We do not live in a just world. Pretending that success and failure are attributable to merit alone is the the self-serving moral vanity of the fortunate.

Again, I agree with you. I also think this viewpoint is depressing to the point that people will reject it and invent some fiction to excuse their relative comfort. How it can be empowering—delivering tangibly improved quality of life for the people around you—is hard to tie to the premise that people are fundamentally subjected to their environment before their character. Rhetorically, anyway.

I think yes, it’s a political choice - but one has to take into account the age of that country and therefor it’s institutions.

Europe with its revolutions, world and cold wars had a lot of „chances“ to wipe the slate clean. Including its welfare systems.

I think you mean "devote" instead of "devour" there, but I feel like the word could still almost work despite making the sentence hilarious.

;-) you’re right - Hehe, I should let google translate do the talking.

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