But interestingly, one gets much more attention than the other.
The right mostly doesn't give a shit about the dispossessed, at least as far as potential government intervention goes. They're more social darwinist; if some men are really suffering, maybe they should stop being such losers, goes the thinking.
I think another motive here may be that if you provide "the dispossessed" and benefits, you create the incentive to become dispossessed.
This problem is relatively easy to solve on a small community level (all family knows that aunt Rosa isn't actually as sick as she likes to pretend), but becomes extremely complicated when scaled to the whole country.
It makes me a little skeptical that "the left"[1] care that much about the homeless.
[1] I'll be honest I think "the left" and "liberal" are kind of useless catch all term at this point and lumps too many people into one group together. For instance, for this conversation I mean middle class college educated men and women living in coastal american cities that had at least semi-stable childhoods.
This means there's a financial incentive for any given city to treat the homeless like shit. Classic free rider problem; why not let other cities deal with helping them?
If you look at the countries where they do a better job, what you largely see is not a handful of metros doing their part, while other cities and the national government completely shunt the responsibility. The whole country contributes, is at least sort of on the same page. At least, that's been my experience living in Germany and reading about other places.
So in my opinion, what we'd need to see is a federal mandate that doesn't let some cities mooch off of others' charity. But short of Bernie storming the white House and the Dems getting an overwhelming majority in both halves of Congress, it's hard to see that happening.
Anyway, I don't disagree that more liberal cities could do more, but at the same time I don't think the problem is solvable without national involvement.
As for the Dems in congress - You'd need the right kind of democrat also. I think Hillary clinton did a real number to that parties reputation during her time in power. The american democrats desperately need smart, ethical and above all honest new faces that will fight the rampant corruption in american politics.
Why would a smart, ethical and honest person ever get within a gunshot of politics?
And should by any accident that happen, how such a person would survive?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...
Well yeah, being against government intervention is sort of the classic definition of the American political right. People on the right believe that when possible you should choose private charity over government programs. They also donate more to private charities.
It's an odd fact, isn't it? It doesn't mesh well with the portrayal of them as stingy people who don't care about others.
We all know the answer is that the homeless are radically better off in those interventionist countries. Ergo, if we care about results, ours are rather abysmal.
> Well yeah, being against government intervention is sort of the classic definition of the American political right.
To a certain extent, but it also depends on the domain. The right is very much in favor of government intervention for some things, like who you're allowed to marry, or how you can have sex.
For example, if someone doesn't know how to find a girlfriend, then PUAs are the only game in town.
Until viable alternatives are presented I suspect that men will keep going with what's available.