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by xhrpost
1923 days ago
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This seems to be a common theme, that these problems are easily solved with just a few extra dollars. I used to subscribe to this conclusion thinking government/people just didn't care. Then I found out NYC spends $3billion on the homeless problem every year! Yes you read that right, billion with a B [1]. Granted our numbers are a bit bigger, around 80k [2]. But if you think 10k could easily be solved in SF, then 80k with a 10 figure budget should do the trick no? Yet walk the streets and you'd have no idea. I still can't figure it out. You could build a massive sky scraper every year for $1B and house several thousand of them. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-citys-spending-on-home...
[2] https://www.bowery.org/homelessness/#:~:text=people%20are%20.... |
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There are two problems: (1) I can't guarantee I can deliver on this promise, and evidence would suggest that it's not a promise any person or group of people can make and (2) well, there's a variety of reasons a lot of us wouldn't accept that but it almost always falls into the category of "I worked for that money, I should get to choose what's done with it"[0]
Sadly, a lot of government programs designed to solve this problem become "ways for the government to employ people". The motivation to solve the problem is missing -- even stabilizing the problem would reduce the (yearly increase to the) budget for the program, which will bring the unions out. After a while, we'll start fighting "in public" about the destruction of this "valuable program" but behind closed doors the argument is about not pissing off a special interest/lobbiest of some kind.
[0] Yeah, some of us don't want to admit it but if you can't put your money where your mouth is, it's a really good idea to find out exactly why that is. If you feel it's wrong to feel entitled to the paycheck you worked for, and feel badly giving it away to something claimed a "life or death" cause, there's a moral contradiction taking place.