this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
191 points (100.0% liked)

politics

19089 readers
3862 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 97 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Let’s just get straight to the point and make it illegal to be poor. Maybe then it will get through to people how inhumane this is.

[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 39 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Assuming conservatives would care about that? Bold conclusion

[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 20 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Most conservatives are poor.

[–] ElmerFudd@lemmy.world 22 points 7 months ago

Conservatives will gladly jump into the boiling pot if it means the perceived enemy gets burned by the splash.

[–] fidodo@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago

Doesn't stop them from voting against their interests

[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

but the law is not meant for them. he's hurting the wrong people

[–] iamericandre@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

For real, drive through a trailer park and see how many of them have trump signs out front.

[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 15 points 7 months ago

Conservatives are by no means the only problem here.

Ultimately, people become homeless because they cannot afford a home. Shockingly, housing prices thus have an extremely strong effect on homelessness rates. The great state of West Virginia, despite all its many many flaws and challenges between extreme poverty, addiction, lack of jobs, and everything else, does not have a significant homelessness problem. Why? Because housing in West Virginia is dirt cheap such that even people who are struggling can still maintain housing.

This is a policy choice, not some natural and inevitable state of affairs. While subsidies and other programs can move the needle a little bit, by far the greatest factor affecting housing costs is raw supply v. demand, and the fact of the matter is that voters all over the United States, even in the most progressive zip codes in the country, have decided that they would rather restrict the supply of new housing in order to increase the value of their own property investments instead of allowing new housing to be built, even if the consequence is huge swaths of people can no longer afford housing at all. To make themselves feel a little bit better, progressives might throw some money at broken homeless shelter systems and pretend that that band-aid actually fixes the problem.

West Virginia certainly didn't avoid a homelessness problem by aggressively subsidizing affordable housing, making huge investments in public housing projects, implementing huge restrictions on landlords, or building a massive shelter and support system. They simply maintained an adequate supply of housing relative to the amount of people that want to live there. Until blue cities and states wake up to this fundamental fact, nothing is going to meaningfully change. You cannot simultaneously have your housing be an ever-increasing lucrative investment asset and have housing be affordable, no matter how many progressive sign posts you put in the lawn. It's incredible how quickly people like California progressives who claim to care so much about the poor and the downtrodden show their true colors the moment you suggest building an apartment building in their single-family house suburbia that might actually be affordable by those same people.

[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 20 points 7 months ago

Las Vegas beat you to it.

[–] DBT@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)
[–] captainjaneway@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That rich mofo was born in a manger and had three kings visit him. Plus I don't trust zombies.

[–] TubeTalkerX@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)
[–] BabyYodel@lemmy.ml 19 points 7 months ago (3 children)

The whole system is fucked. Wage stagnation, increasing cost of living, lack of affordable housing, dynastical wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer elite citizens and oligarchies.

Before these issues are improved upon dramatically, there’s simply going to be a growing number of homeless people.

If the solution is to throw homeless individuals in jail, then what? Jails are still funded by tax dollars, so why not be proactive and invest that money in getting people housed by building more affordable housing, providing more jobs with things like infrastructure improvements that are badly needed throughout the country, rather than taking punitive measures? I think this needs to happen at the federal level because it is indeed a broken system of the entire country.

[–] ElmerFudd@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago (1 children)

For-profit prisons are definitely taking advantage of subsidies, but that doesn't matter, because only poors pay taxes, and for-profit prisons are for profit... Profit for rich people who do not pay taxes. The solution is revolutionary action. The only peaceful way is through massive labour pushback, but that can't happen in a nation of docile workers, who are too afraid of becoming the next homeless person themselves, to risk being courageous. This will end with even more suppression of the lower classes followed by an inevitable implosion, because neither of the many forces at play are willing, nor are they even able to throw the brakes at this point. The only way this changes is if human nature suddenly shuts off, and rich people's hearts grow two sizes, or we stop taking their bullshit and do something about it.

[–] BabyYodel@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Excellent points. How could I overlook the dystopian nightmare which is the for profit prison system? In the era of nuclear arms, are pitchforks enough?

[–] ElmerFudd@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Farmers with AK-47s and punji pits beat our army. Not to mention our military members mostly prefer not killing us for oligarchs. But yeah, let's pretend I didn't preface that with the suggestion of utilizing labour movements.

[–] MyOneEyedWilly@real.lemmy.fan 8 points 7 months ago

Unfortunately the people who run the private prison systems have lobbyists that try to ensure the system is constantly fed prisoners, so they can make even more profit. If the quarterly earnings aren’t constantly increasing, the board of investors won’t be happy.

Sure, the entire system will crash like every other system that expects infinite growth, like the housing market bubble, but we have to think of the investors! /s

[–] treefrog@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago

Helping people get on their feet only makes sense if your goal isn't oppression.