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Well one of the LARGEST issues is that it's not giving 40k to each homeless person, it's putting together a system where various "groups" will vie for funding, and much like other charitable organizations a LOT of that money goes to running the system, which includes of course the cost of the land/building/whatever for building "help", and being in one of the most expensive cities in the world does not make that cheap. I agree, simply throwing money at the problem is not the solution, it requires money to be certain, but my view on homelessness is that it can not be fixed in this city, the only thing you can do is help people get a step up more often than not in other cities where the cost of living is a fraction of what it costs here.
Yeah, well one thing that a lot of people don't realize when getting into these arguments is that larger cities are where the largest homeless problems are simply because they are the only ones who throw budget money of any extent at them. There's a reason why there's a lot of homeless in San Francisco, because there are areas that they can get "help" (handouts), NYC, easily has 10x the homelessness as SF, but they also have 10x the population as well, LA has so many more homeless than SF it's not funny... but again larger populations. Seattle has more, San Diego has more, all of these areas are rather large population centers. Meanwhile little suburb doesn't have much, as a result the church having food and temporary housing is more than enough.
Maybe not as much as you think, Canada has a sliding scale too, and while sure you can get up to 50% of your paycheck, same can be said in some parts of the US. Looking at your California.
I don't disagree. Perhaps steps could be taken to make the cities where homeless seem to flock to a bit less attractive. It would be ideal if they could be taken care of by their local communities instead of clustering in certain locales. This was also touched on in the video. Homeless folks are in general transient and will go to wherever it suits them the best. I don't think the sole reason that some cities have more homeless people is simply because they're larger cities. There are other benefits to going to certain cities. Without looking into the numbers, I can almost promise you that cities controlled by democrats have more homeless people, probably by a wide margin.
Well the only way you're going to make things less attractive is to completely cut off care, much of which isn't actually run by the city, and/or run them out, but good look doing the later. Make a rule about sitting on the sidewalk some judge comes around says its unconstitutional, make a rule about not being able to camp on the street some judge comes around and says if there's no room in shelters it's unconstitutional. Other than that lots of homeless on the west coast is less to do with democrats, and more to do with the factor that it's temperate there, no one is freezing to death in San Francisco, LA or San Diego. That said New York and DC are two other big hot beds of homelessness, and their weather is most definitely not west coast weather, and to throw a monkey wrench in the plans, hasn't NYC been run by a republican for 20 years? Guiliani was like 8 years, Bloomberg was 12. Please don't fireback with RINO either. Now what isn't there more homeless in say Houston? Well probably because many might die from exposure there, but homelessness is growing there.
While that would make it less attractive, I really don't think the chronically homeless are that concerned with that. It's anecdotal since I've only had one long conversation with a homeless guy (granted I've worked with the people who run two of the major homeless shelters in my area - and they've come to the same conclusion) - but the people who aren't just down on their luck and in need of some help are pretty resistant to help. The guy I chatted with wasn't un-educated, he just didn't want to keep going. Give that man a shower and clean clothes and he could have gotten (at the very least) an entry level job at any company I've ever worked for. He was well aware of all the safety nets he could take advantage of, but wasn't interested since it wasn't cold enough yet that he really "needed" a place to stay at night (and they'd make him go to a church service to spend the night.) I'm not sure what drove him to give up, but I do know he had a family before he chose that life, so I'm kind of assuming that fell through for some reason and caused him to give up. According to him (and backed up by personal experience) the homeless in my area tend to panhandle for enough change to spend most of the next day or so in the casino playing penny slots and drinking free soda. When they run out of money they head back out and do it again. Less hassle than dealing with the rescue missions which forced them to attend church services or try to "better" themselves. That's not to say the only people in the casino are homeless, since the people running the casino were more than willing to point out that their biggest days were when the social security checks and EBT money came in. Apparently those were their big days each month. It's been at least a decade since that job, so I'm hoping they've at least closed off the EBT loophole.
I will fire back with RINO because you know you're being disingenuous by mentioning Bloomberg. It's not a secret that New York is strongly controlled by Democrats. Going back to the 30's you'll find only one Mayor (LaGuardia) of NYC besides Guiliani who was a Republican their entire time in office.
Yeah, not sure why your name was there, I didn't intend to reply to you. I hit a wrong button or three somewhere.
Well like any industry it also depends upon your skill level too, if you are classified as "dumb labor" where you need zero skills other than "cut here, not here, you only get paid for good ones" then yeah you're not making much money. Now my father in law, when he was buying a new farm and there was a period of financial instability between new and old farm he actually worked as a farm manager for another person at I want to say $65k a year, but he knows how to run a farm, which is good salary for central valley California. Another issue is weather, in the huge hot bed of growing that is the central valley that also translates to very hot temperatures which makes working in those conditions down right hellish. So yeah making $15-20/hr you can usually do better with less strain on your body, that includes any potential chemicals and crap you ingest from simply being right in the middle of where they're sprayed.
The thing most government subsidies go towards big agribusiness farms, and usually those that grow food that has less nutrition but stores/ships well, your grains like corn, wheat, soy, etc. Not saying nothing goes to fruit & vegetable farmers that produce food that actually has more than just calories in it, but by and large that's where most of the money goes, and these big business have the lobbying clout to make sure that well doesn't dry up. Also another factor to combine with why farm labor is so cheap, is that it has to be cheap, you talk about the $15 tomato, who's going to pay $15 when you can get them from south of the border (America's "China" for food production) for a fraction of the cost? Sure they're picked green, artificially ripened with ethylene gas, and have no flavor but I wouldn't be surprised if most people haven't eaten a truly ripe tomato in their lifetimes. So how do you combat cheap South/Central American labor ... that's actually in another country? You need to try to go cheap too, and unfortunately that's where it stands today. You pay a premium for "farm fresh" stuff at a farmer's market*, or you go to the supermarket like Safeway and end up seeing all the perfectly shaped and colored fruits and vegetables that taste like crap but hey that's what you grew up with so you don't know any better.
Nice strawman response. The Point is that its not free. And its fine for you to be charitable. Nothing stopping you from donating as much money as you can afford out of your own pocket. But when you advocate for high taxes, for the most part, you are being charitable with other people's money. There's a name for that.