Christian Democrats in the United States
Domestic Issues - Social Services No statement yet. Please comment. Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
Friday, September 26, 2008
7:54 AM
Some cities have incurred such high incidental costs from dealing with homeless drunks and the mentally ill that they have reduced their costs by providing free housing, which keeps them in one place, so they can be more easily monitored and given access to drug abuse therapy and lower-cost preventative care.
Los Angeles county has a homeless population of some 80,000 people, wandering the streets, out of their minds, many unable to work even if jobs were available, which are not. If you haven't lived there, it's inconceivable what this means. I stumbled upon an old lady, incontinent, so hurt and distrustful that she wouldn't even talk to me, and I tried to help her how I could, but what could I do? I was broke. And if I could have helped her get off the streets somehow, there were thousands more like her, used up and thrown out into the cold. This was just a few blocks between the Screen Actor's Guild and the headquarters of E Television and Spelling Entertainment. So for all their claims of progressive politics, I happen to agree that Hollywood is full of crap, because they don't do anything to help people like her.
So the next time you count your thirty pieces of silver, tossed to you by the power politics system that you fight to protect, ask yourself, if you lived forever, could you live with your decisions to ignore women like her, and walk on by?
save money - and your soul - by providing free housing
Here is an interesting analysis from UC Davis to suggest that traditional conceptions about "the welfare state" are wrong, that is to say, mistruths about how the economics work out.Some cities have incurred such high incidental costs from dealing with homeless drunks and the mentally ill that they have reduced their costs by providing free housing, which keeps them in one place, so they can be more easily monitored and given access to drug abuse therapy and lower-cost preventative care.
Los Angeles county has a homeless population of some 80,000 people, wandering the streets, out of their minds, many unable to work even if jobs were available, which are not. If you haven't lived there, it's inconceivable what this means. I stumbled upon an old lady, incontinent, so hurt and distrustful that she wouldn't even talk to me, and I tried to help her how I could, but what could I do? I was broke. And if I could have helped her get off the streets somehow, there were thousands more like her, used up and thrown out into the cold. This was just a few blocks between the Screen Actor's Guild and the headquarters of E Television and Spelling Entertainment. So for all their claims of progressive politics, I happen to agree that Hollywood is full of crap, because they don't do anything to help people like her.
So the next time you count your thirty pieces of silver, tossed to you by the power politics system that you fight to protect, ask yourself, if you lived forever, could you live with your decisions to ignore women like her, and walk on by?
> detail, links and comments >>
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
9:51 AM
The impulse is to think, well, if we provided a welfare state, people would just waste away and never work. But other countries that provide a social safety net don't suffer too much from that problem, and they have mechanisms to retrain people and put them back to work.
Sometimes when I have been really broke, I have been so busy working to pay my outrageous rent that I have been unable to take a step back and consider how I would be able to change my life. How am I going to save for retirement if I'm always spending everything on rent? It's a tough question to ask when you've been flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets until 3 in the morning.
Virginia Woolf wrote that all a girl needs to write poetry is 200 quid a month and a room with a view. Her point is, sometimes a person has the potential to contribute something new and beautiful to society, but they are so busy struggling that their vision is lost. Americans ought to consider that their culture will feed on itself and die unless they give poor people a break sometimes to sit back and learn from their experiences.
notes and thoughts
There is always the obvious question of "how are you going to pay for it" that "liberals" don't ask as often as they should. "Conservatives" cry "tax and spend liberals!" and then borrow us into the ground for military contracts that put money in their pockets at our children's expense.The impulse is to think, well, if we provided a welfare state, people would just waste away and never work. But other countries that provide a social safety net don't suffer too much from that problem, and they have mechanisms to retrain people and put them back to work.
Sometimes when I have been really broke, I have been so busy working to pay my outrageous rent that I have been unable to take a step back and consider how I would be able to change my life. How am I going to save for retirement if I'm always spending everything on rent? It's a tough question to ask when you've been flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets until 3 in the morning.
Virginia Woolf wrote that all a girl needs to write poetry is 200 quid a month and a room with a view. Her point is, sometimes a person has the potential to contribute something new and beautiful to society, but they are so busy struggling that their vision is lost. Americans ought to consider that their culture will feed on itself and die unless they give poor people a break sometimes to sit back and learn from their experiences.
> detail, links and comments >>
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
6:21 PM
Social Services
stay tuned.> detail, links and comments >>
Archives May 2007 / September 2008 /