Hacker News Reader

Comment by NetworkPerson | Hacker News Reader

Our economy has taken a hit and made things worse for sure. I’d be in rough shape if I didn’t have my pre inflation house mortgage. But it seems like a decent subset of people simply don’t want help if it means needing to take any responsibility themselves. Mental illness plays a role in some, others I’m not sure. It’s almost a shift of thinking leading towards entitlement. Offered someone a bottle of water around here and he refused it saying he only wanted money or soda. If mental illness was part of that picture, it wasn’t obvious in speaking with the individual. How do you help that kind of attitude?

View on HN

It rarely is - only 1/4th of homeless adults in LA suffer from a severe mental illness [1].

The sad reality is that the difference between the folks you pass by on the street and you is often just a little bit of bad luck and no support system.

Go listen to interviews with the folks that live in the sewers in Vegas, most of them want to work but can't get a government ID because they've had their old Ids and birth certificates stolen a long time ago.

I met a woman in her 60s in Oakland who was homeless and worked three (part-time) jobs. Couldn't afford to rent even the cheapest of apartments, couldn't work her way out of debt, was unmarried and had no living relatives.

Ol' Uncle Sam tends to not take kindly to those that can't pay to play.

1. https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homeles....

To clarify, roughly 46% suffer from mental illness or substance abuse, and 25% from severe mental illness alone.

- SAMHSA, 2019

Listen to people in prison, all of them innocent.

Listen to men who beat their wives, all of them had it coming.

People say what they think you want to hear. Don't take it at face value.

Specifically for this case: Whenever someone tells you how many jobs they work vs how many hours it's because it isn't that many hours.

To reply to your last line: if you believe that "just work hard and you'll be successful", then you have to believe that the opposite is true, "if you are not successful, that must be because you're lazy".

Someone else said, "if hard work correlates to success, there'd be many millionaire African women.". But many successful people discount that they've had luck, e.g. the luck of being born in a rich country/to rich parents.

The physical economy and the gamble economy are almost decoupled. Some Wallstreet scam artist running a cryptoshedd in the Cambodian djungle producing virtual wealth is not helping some unlearned sod living under a bridge in any meaningful way. He might produce some more in the long run though.

Its a miracle anyone of the libertarian priest caste is still alive to discuss this. Back in French king times, when a system failed it's people thoroughly, the mob roughing it in the streets would put the upper echelons on a wagon to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_de_la_Nation. The American citoyens are extremely docile, even going through the proper democratic channels with righteous anger.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com