[neilk]

Friend, every person gets benefits from the state. Be thankful that all the help you got was education, policing, infrastructure, community wealth, tax policies that favor asset owners, indirect subsidies, or privatized profits from public research. Or policies that would be obvious redistribution if Russia had done them in 1950 but because America does it it’s capitalism. If you look at where America’s defense spending goes it is rather obviously an employment and welfare program with a side hustle of war profiteering and global power projection. Closer to home, there would be no Stanford or Silicon Valley without massive, sustained defense spending in the Cold War.

Bribed? You seem to think that the homeless actively use their immiseration as some kind of protection racket. Maybe there are social services and non-profits that we can legitimately criticize for that (see OP’s article) but the people themselves? Really?

Alternately, we could say the Americans have decided to make the lives of poor and addicted people as bad as can be achieved without actually killing up them. Perhaps they serve a vital function as an example to others about what can happen.