Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackable_sand | Hacker News Reader

You are wildly out of touch

"Catch a greyhound out of town" is the "Let them eat cake" for the poor and homeless (sorry "unhoused") of New Orleans. Empathy is for the weak, said the oppressor.

Billions have been spent rebuilding New Orleans once. Per the article, there's no realistic way to save New Orleans going forward. It's sad, it's unfortunate, it's reality.

The poor and homeless of Louisiana are already receiving massive benefits: 4th in the country for the share of households on welfare, 18% of the population on food stamps, $14B+ in FY23 of federal dollars went to welfare/TANF/Medicaid/etc.

Damn, those poor and homeless are really living it up.

Is the solution to further mortgage working and contributing citizens' futures via our exploding national debt, just to throw more cash at them? California spends $40K+ a year, per homeless person, but saw the homeless population grow and the problem get worse.

For welfare, consider that a single parent with two school-age children who earns $11,000 annually from part-time work ends up qualifying for $64,128 in cash, aid, and benefits.

The same family earning $64,128 by actually working wouldn’t be eligible for any of these welfare benefits in four-fifths of the states.

For $14B+ we could have solved poverty and homelessness for all of New Orleans. Where did the money go? Not to the poor, obviously. The system is broken by design.

California clearly demonstrates that spending ever-more money on the homeless doesn't solve the issue for 90% of them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com