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Comment by newsclues | Hacker News Reader

Poverty is costly, and if your region has a social safety net that includes healthcare, thus resolving poverty will save tax payers in the long run.

But from the mercenary point of view, I think reducing poverty is worth it from a security and quality of life point of view. If public spaces are dangerous that is no good for people and poverty also degrades peoples quality of life, examples like not having to step over homeless people outside your front door don't really have dollar values, but they make people happier.

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This might ignite a fight in the comments, but it’s a genuine question.

(As an American) when I think of places that fight crime primarily with welfare (aka the idea better policing doesn’t work, equality will fix it), I think of San Francisco and Seattle which have crazy homeless and crime problems.

However, it seems to me like in Europe, plenty of places seem to do this and see positive results.

What’s the difference? Why is the welfare city of San Francisco terrible but the welfare city of Amsterdam/Stockholm/etc seem to be fine?

Is the goal of policy profit, or to fix a problem?

I am in Canada, so we have a blend of American, and European society, and it seems that when people want to extract money from the community, the problem isn't resolved. I see this in the homeless/drug space from activist organizations who are extracting lots of money from government, but are not doing a good job of solving problems, as that would end the flood of money.

My guess is it comes from drug related policies, education, culture and enforcement. The USA is the developed country with the highest per-capita rates of alcohol & drug use disorders and drug related deaths. I believe this is due to the geography and high purchasing power of americans, not due to any flaws in character. You're in a place it's easy to get drugs into, and people earn enough to buy them. This then creates a mental health and drug epidemic which are the true cause of most homelessness in the cities you reference, as opposed to purely being lack of money, job or housing, though these problems are obviously not mutually exclusive.

The problem for san Francisco is that they just attract more homeless whenever they try to help them. You can not solve poverty in a single city with open borders, you need to solve it for the whole state/country. Especially if the city has a temperate climate that attracts homeless anyway.

As an aside: The big cities in the Netherlands also have some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. If you pick a random smaller town/city it is likely to have less poverty than Amsterdam, (but also less wealthy residents).

> examples like not having to step over homeless people outside your front door don't really have dollar values

Not trying to be crass but that's literally reflected in the real estate prices. Homes in areas with lots of homelessness and related crime in the area will have lower prices than equivalent homes somewhere else. It does have a dollar value.

Sure, everything has a dollar value if you drill down far enough.

But it's not extra money in your pocket if you don't sell your property.

Sure... You could also reframe it as the cost of building a big gate around your low homelessness neighborhood to keep the homeless out and to have security personelle to boot them out of the neighberhoud if they do get in...

It sort of seems to me (seattle area resident) that our social programs are under attack from concept to execution by people that would rather the disadvantaged just die. The people doing good work get burned out fast, the money dries up, its just bad.

My neighbor was the director of a homeless shelter and the crap he had to deal with was unreal.

I look at it kinda like the anti car movement. The big companies supported whichever side would save them money. They supported getting rid of street parking for bike lanes and making parking under a building part of code.... then sabatoged it by making the parking all permit only or very expensive. Now theres too little parking either way to go shopping and the anti car people get to look bad. But it didnt really affect the average s class driver at all so who cares right?

This is just the impression I got working downtown for 10 years. Probably have some misunderstandings.

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