Yes, but if we don't have so many shitheads in the street how can we justify such bloated police budgets? I would rather spend the money on our fine boys and girls in blue then some people who actually need it.
Okay, but we have to be careful what part of the budget the money goes to. If we pay the cops too much, they might send their kids to college or some other liberal bullshit; and if we pay too much for training, we might accidentally get them competent instructors instead of grifters who promise them that killing people will make their pp hard. We have to make sure that we only buy military surplus that no police force could conceivably need, and paint it scawwy black, because military camo isn't oppressive enough.
I view it as a form of capitalism indoctrination. If there's no material compensation it's a bad idea, which is the capitalist idea of "if I don't make a profit I won't do it". I've seen people argue free energy is bad because the excess energy cannot be monetized, which is something you say only if you want to profit from energy.
Like do these people realize that if we give people the means to not just survive, but thrive, in our society which rapidly approaches post-scarcity (I'd argue we'd basically be there if we had better distribution of wealth) then they would have no reason to steal or kill? I mean except for the worst cases, but ya know.. if everyone except for the truly evil has no reason or desire to do crime then....
Just saying imagine a world where police actually fought bad guys and just let social workers handled the wayward sheep, the downtrodden, and the desperate?
Conservatives hate these not because they don't work, but that they shouldn't work. They insist that the only thing that matters is piety and hard work. If those aren't enough, you just aren't pious enough and aren't working hard enough, even if the work literally crippled you that you cannot do as much of it as you did before.
It is entirely about being cruel and evil as a policy.
"Without the threat of being thrown out onto the street, my workers won't put up with as much mistreatment."
If you have kids and aren't rich, you literally can't go into business for yourself in the US...if you fail that means your family becomes homeless and loses their health care.
The cruelty and evil helps the rich control the rest of us.
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is a -- rather long winded -- story, co-authored by Mark Twain, about a family who inherits something like 80,000 acres of [worthless] land in east Tennessee. They spend years trying to scheme their way to wealth by selling the land, only to completely fail and ultimately lose it due to unpaid property taxes. The story is satire but it's a sad one.
It's about poor people who imagine themselves to be rich people in waiting. If not for this one pesky little obstacle, which actually turns out to be a lifetime full of obstacles. Because the easist way to get rich is to be rich and the hardest way to get rich is to not be rich.
On some level, this is how the average Republican sees themselves: a rich person in waiting. And they would finally get there if not for all those OTHER poor people who keep "stealing" all the "wealth".
I can imagine nothing more miserable than having a day out on a massive expensive yacht... on the Baltic Sea.
(Regular rich people might have some fun on the ferries, but billionaires probably don't, because this involves buying a ticket and sharing the ship with the rabble.)
One day, I wish I had a shitty old fishing boat and go slowly puttering through the rain and gloom. Living the real life.
I really don't think anyone can get physically healthier (I think that's a big point) when they are sleeping in the cold and don't have good nutrition. (Multivitamins ftw.)
The "4 out of 5" figure roughly matches what I recall being told by a head of Catholic Charities maybe a decade ago. You certainly have some percentage of people who’ve been given everything they need to be comfortable, and when you leave them alone and come back to check on them, they simply have not been able to look after themselves. But for the vast majority, it does work. People are in a safe space where they can look for work, have an address to put down on applications, and all that.
Quite affordable too; ambulance rides and jail visits aren't cheap.
In the US the cruelty is the point. We will never end homelessness here because its an intended feature of our economic system. It's a constant threat to workers. Coercing them into accepting low wages and long hours in the name of stability.
And if we have to pick in-unit laundry should be top priority. You can do a lot with a sink and a hot plate but ain’t nobody should be washing clothes by hand and having to keep an eye on your clothes, especially for unhoused people who are probably a little justified in being worried about leaving their stuff unattended, takes some energy people may not have.
Yeah here in Finland that is basically achieved by having a laundry-room in apartment buildings that you can reserve. In some of the places I lived, it did cost though, so more of a laundromat in the cellar of your building. But usually free in the buildings that have a lot of government supported people.
Absolutely. I'm currently living in a shelter, and we have 3 washers and dryers, 1 of each has been busted for at least a week. The door locks, and only staff has the code. Sharing a laundry situation has barely any pros, and mostly cons.
Alternatively the government can spend an equal or greater amount to making homelessness illegal, making their lives as painful as possible, reducing every opportunity they have for upward mobility, and simultaneously reducing taxes for the capitalists.
I'd like to point out that "mental health counseling without any preconditions" is definitely bullshit. For free? Sure. Without preconditions? Nah.
Housing though? Available for everyone, sure, and compared to most other countries, the system is good. But it doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws in it and that we couldn't improve.
I'm just here to point out people put Finland on a pedestal.
You shouldn't. It's not terrible in most ways, and pretty good in a lot of ways. But don't idolise. Realism. It's just different, so different problems as well.
And these people are already living on the housing which is the cheapest available. It's basically just a convoluted excuse from the government for austerity to social security. Since none of the social security or the like are being reduced, they've just "indexed the calculation for reasonable living costs" or some shit, send out these letters, which people will reply to with "wtf do you think I can do, because moving would cost and there's literally no cheaper housing available" and then Kela will go "oh well guess then you're voluntarily taking a cut in your social security (so definitely don't blame the government, blame the markets or whatever)?". And that's the point of it.