I think this is ultimately the difference between now and 2020. The fox isn't guarding the hen house.
The most mediocre dining experience (for the money) I've ever had was at a restaurant called "Smallwares." Emphasis on small, it turns out. Case in point, we ordered duck breast, which cost a fair bit. I was picturing at least a fair amount, but it was the smallest smidgen slivered up with a dollop of sauce. It was the same with every dish, high prices for not much food.
Sure there were other places that had worse food. One remote dinner lacked any fresh food, but you can't really help that when you're in the middle of nowhere. But never have I felt like I was being fed by Famine from Good Omens.
It's not, but it's something that should be accounted for when analyzing statistics.
There's a "yes but" in here. Not saying the wealth accumulation we've seen lately is good, it's absurd and horrible on multiple levels. But a comparison with the Gilded Age is going to be apples-to-oranges and it's not nearly as bad. The difference is the modern government uses far more transfer payments. That increases the income of lower income households, even if wealth is more disparate. The rich also tend to tie most income up in investments, while the poor spend their income more quickly.
The upshot is that if you compare wealth alone, the wealth difference can be deceptively large. Many poor people have a negative net worth. For that matter, many high income people have a negative net worth, like a newly graduated doctor with student loans. It is instructive to look at the wealth gap, the income gap, and income plus transfer payments.
I think that might just be the limit for campaign contributions. Not sure.
There aren't enough resources, at least not yet. The Portland metro area passed a levy in 2020 that is collecting hundreds of millions of dollars per year to fund services for homeless people. This includes build outs of various types of short term housing, preventative measures like rent assistance, and mental health services. There are resources and people do get out of homelessness.
There are also related efforts like just building more affordable housing, such as the large hollywoodHub project near a light rail station. A stabilization of housing prices should help people avoid becoming homeless to begin with. Just avoiding homelessness can be huge because a period of homelessness can a lasting impact. For example, one person in an article was discussing developing an addiction to sleep medication that she was using because sleeping in a tent is absurdly stressful.
My beef isn't with someone where they tried and the system failed them. My beef is when the system is actively trying to help them, like when there are people specifically for helping them access housing and services, and they refuse help. It's the whole "your fist ends where my nose begins" principle, having freedoms doesn't mean being an unlimited license to acquire common spaces that people need to use.
Damn it, now I have to get the vomit off my keyboard.
Among us bicyclists, they're called niceholes. They're just trying to be nice to the bicyclist, but we would rather they just follow the traffic law so that they're predictable.
Okay, but I feel like you're still dismissing it as merely an inconvenience as opposed to an actual problem. Obviously it sucks far more to be in the position of being homeless, but if there are solutions available then I don't think a person should be making sidewalks dangerous to able bodied pedestrians and potentially impassable to physically disabled pedestrians just because they don't feel like using a tiny home. I'm all for trying to do something to help, I voted in favor of taxing myself for homeless services, I've volunteered, but I'm getting compassion fatigue after many years of this. If someone outright is making Portland a worse place to live in while rejecting the smorgasbord of services, I just don't have much patience left. But a person who is accepting services and working to get out of homelessness, that I am more than fine with.
This doesn't really have anything to do with the Supreme Court. Oregon law now effectively echos the Martin v. Boise 9th circuit decision that the Supreme Court overturned. Martin v. Boise is more narrow than people here seem to think. It only applied to situations where there were not enough shelter beds to accommodate the number of homeless people in a city. It was always the case that if there was room and a person would not accept, an anti-camping ordinance could be enforced.
I'm also from Portland. This is quite accurately describes the reality here. Homeless encampments cause a lot of problems, and it's gotten out of control. I'm not blaming homeless people, it's a systemic problem, but denying the reality of the situation doesn't help anyone. Tents on sidewalks get in the way of pedestrians (especially physically disabled people), fires get out of control and spread, and hazardous waste gets left behind.
For the record, Portland's water supply comes from the Bull Run Watershed. The sewer system is a combined sewer system, so if someone does poop down a storm sewer inlet, it goes to the same water treatment system as everyone else's poop.
That said, people pooping on the sidewalk is a legit problem. I've had to report a couple of poops that were pretty clearly human.
In the case of Portland's tiny homes, the units look to be spartan but much better than a tent. They provide a locked door, heating/AC, grid electricity, showers, shared kitchenettes, laundry, nearby transit, and various social and medical services. Of course, I'm going off a web site, so I could always be getting a rosier picture than reality.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing for some people. Sometimes people get stuck somewhere away from support networks without enough money to get back. As long as there is due diligence to ensure that there's someone suitable on the other end of the bus ride, it can be a win-win for everyone involved. Where it gets problematic is when communities harass homeless people into taking the bus tickets and make them someone else's problem.
Homelessness is a complex problem. There is never going to be just one solution. It needs to be addressed with a variety of solutions that can address individual needs.
But that's been retconned to have nothing to do with Trump now that it turns out to be so unpopular. Come on, keep up with the reeducation plan. Oceania was at war with Eastasia.
I'm just migrating from lemmy.ml. A couple of downvotes is a nice upgrade from the atmosphere over there.
Alas, no. She did do an interview with Between Two Ferns, though.
Who knows, maybe if you had a chance to chat with her over a nice meal of spicy food, you could find some common ground (besides the food). Or if nothing else, she has some interesting stories. Like, when she was starting out she worked as a civil rights activist in Alabama proving that "segregation academies" were discriminating against Black applicants in violation of the law. They openly assured her that they would not let Black students in. More broadly, this proved that the Nixon administration was not enforcing the law.
Health care, I'm sure she has plenty to say that is far more nuanced than the sound bites that get posted to social media. Social mobility, educational opportunity, racial justice, the justice system, foreign policy. I would love to hear her thoughts, even if I don't agree with everything.