[steve_adams_86]

I agree completely. Something so striking about the situation as well is that on balance, we have a staggering amount of wealth to share with the less fortunate.

Yet these are children, specifically, who deserve every opportunity we can afford them by default. Not “hopeless addicts” or some other group deemed not worth saving by so many of us, but people quite literally the epitome of worth saving. These people need every ounce of reassurance that we care and that they can integrate and function in society. That they deserve opportunity as anyone else does.

If we had to be self serving we could look at it like “each one of these people is statistically far more likely to be a burden on my own children in the future, so a small investment now could save a lot later”, but we seem to fail even in being selfish about it. I find this topic heart breaking.

[pessimizer]

For me, state wards are one of the four metrics for judging the quality of a country.

Wards of the state: our responsibility, through no fault of their own.

Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault.

Immigrants: not our responsibility, but an indication of how well we can manage our economy. We should be able to put anybody who comes here to work.

Emigrants: we should let people leave who don't want to be here.

The first three are connected because there's no way to sustain providing anything for prisoners and immigrants that you don't provide for regular citizens. Wards of the state are the nation's children; there's nothing that normal citizens get that they shouldn't get. If they don't get anything, normal citizens are getting less than nothing.

[shric]

> Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault.

What percentage (approximately) of prisoners in the United States would you categorize as "their fault" and not some product of their upbringing/situation?

[phpisthebest]

At the end of the day, and this will be controversial it does not matter.

Prisons should be a place to house people that have been deemed unable to function in society until such time they can (sometimes that is never). This is not necessarily only violence but violent offenders should be the majority, but people that simply refuse to follow the rules of a society also degrade and are a danger to the society over all. We see this today in the way of rampant shoplifting, and car thefts/breakins taking place in some communities.

These are deemed "non-violent" so the offenders are just let go, however once these "non-violent" crimes reach an extreme level businesses close, people stop shopping in the area, insurance companies stop offering insurance, etc etc etc. That is all with out getting into the real psychological effects of having your property stolen and violated in that way.

At the end of the day I am not concerned about their upbringing/situation, I am concerned about their criminality

[superchroma]

We've tried it your way for decades - where prisons are permanent storage for badly made humans - and it doesn't work. They fill up, cost the taxpayer and become yet another thing to exploit. Society looks the other way whilst they get mistreated. Obscenities like rape are constant grim realities of such facilities, and organizations like gangs thrive in them too. Recidivism rates are alarming to boot.

The point of prisons, which Americans consistently fail to grasp, given their penchant for cruelty and selfishness, is reform.

That's what "our responsibility" means. We need to take these broken people and try to rebuild them, because they, their parents and society failed them the first time. Not all of them can be helped, but not to try produces what we have now, which is an abomination.

[phpisthebest]

In reality no one has "tried it my way", you have made the assumption I agree with the current prison system, I dont.

I also do not agree that the "reform" we need is simply letting criminals go who commit property crime, or because of the socio/econimic circumstance, or any of the other "liberal" or "left" visions of reform

Today's system is centered around punishment, not protection of society, or reforming people, etc. It is just punishment. The criminal owes a "debt to society". I disagree with this model.

There is a whole host of reforms I would support both to prisons, and to criminal justice over all. However simply refusing to prosecute shoplifting, or other "minor" property crimes is not one I can support.

[refurb]

Take a look at California if you want to see a failed attempt at reform - namely NOT incarcerating criminals.

The results is worsening crime rates and multiple examples of serial recidivism where the public pays the cost through lower quality of life.

I’m not saying there isn’t room for reform, but some people need to be in prison not for their own good, but for the public’s good.

[superchroma]

You're making non-points. California has not effectively deployed various progressive policies. There exists certain people who are intractably violent or cruel and who cannot be healed or changed with the cutting edge of therapy or medicine. So what?

This knowledge is not a sufficient excuse to give up on the problem. The status quo is unacceptable. That's the key fact.

[bugglebeetle]

Okay, but this logic is explicitly filtered through class in the US context. Some of the most antisocial members of our society are CEOs, politicians, and similar leaders. The damage they inflict on society often far exceeds that by individual acts of violence, fraud, thievery etc. Think about what has been wrought by Sacklers, the people running 3M, or those who led the country into war premised on lies.

Indeed, your example of how urban cores have been affected by wealth inequality and real estate speculation is a great example of this. San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

[seanmcdirmid]

> San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

People were complaining about land speculators in SF in Mark Twain’s time. That was literally when the city started growing. So I’m trying to figure out when you thought SF was a lovely city? Maybe during the property bust of the 1990s?

[phpisthebest]

>>>San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

before I even begin to address your others points, many I probably agree with we need to stop with this gas lighting narrative.

landlords and real estate speculators are not the villains of the San Francisco of the story. The city government (and the larger state government) is.

From the endless zoning regulations, environmental regulations, and building regulations that make it impossible to build affordable housing, and a decades long process to build any housing at all to the activist prosecutors refusing to prosecute crime in the city, to the "de-fund the police" movement that has put the local police dept at a huge understaffed situation.... Those are the root causes of the problems. not landlords and real estate speculators

You want to have an honest conversation about corporatism I am game, but you are starting out with disinformation and lies so....

[bugglebeetle]

> From the endless zoning regulations, environmental regulations, and building regulations that make it impossible to build affordable housing, and a decades long process to build any housing at all

Who do you think it is exactly that demands that politicians enact these laws? The homeless? Renters? No, it’s the landlords and the real estate speculators who are trying to pump up the value of their investments. This is a very simple case of cui bono.

I’m not in anyway spreading “disinformation and lies,” you just seem to have a very distorted understanding of cause and effect. Here’s the order of operations:

Landlords and real estate speculators buy properties -> Landlords and real estate speculators pressure politicians to protect their investments -> New housing doesn’t get built as a result of this pressure -> Cities become unaffordable because of lack of supply -> Crime and homelessness spikes.

[jncfhnb]

The city government is controlled by the land owning elite.

[lr4444lr]

You do realize that most people in a "bad upbringing" don't go on to commit crimes?

[nverno]

> Wards of the state: our responsibility

People that really feel this responsibility become foster parents. But saying the state should deal with them isn't taking on that responsibility - at the end of the day actual people need to be their parents. I'm happy to support those people by having taxes directed their way, but the state doesn't get credit for their good deeds.

[Retric]

It’s unreasonable to expect individuals acting on their own to solve social issues. I am perfectly willing to support 1% of the financial needs of a severely disabled child, but in no way willing to step up and provide 100% of the support they need. There are people willing do do so but it’s not 1:1 with the existing need and so it’s simply not an option.

The common US system where foster families receive funds to provide temporary care for kids in the system isn’t parenting it’s a disaster that’s a massive disservice to kids in the system. In many individual cases it works, but overall it also results in unacceptable amounts of mental, physical, and sometimes even sexual abuse.

[CobaltFire]

This is uselessly dismissive and reductionist. I have a special needs child who just hit remission from Leukemia. To feel that the state has a responsibility for those kids I'm now supposed to also take in a foster child?

Your statement reeks of someone who lives in an ivory tower somewhere.

[edmundsauto]

IMO, the state bears the responsibility to structure the laws and regulations to make it easier for regular people to be heroes. Servant leadership is generally not a characteristic of democracies, as politicians need to take credit in order to win votes.

[nverno]

I agree, but this is also a problem with heavy reliance on government - people can just punt responsibility, and the wrong people get the credit.

[edmundsauto]

Is it because of a heavy reliance on government, or a general issue that we face when dealing with hard problems?

Put another way, when we don't rely on governments to help with things like this - does that incentivize people to take on responsibility? I suspect not...

[jewayne]

> we have a staggering amount of wealth to share with the less fortunate

Many Americans will stop you at that first word. Who is this we you speak of?

If the pandemic taught me anything, it's that to all too many Americans the most important freedom is freedom from strangers' problems. They don't want to see them, they don't want to hear them, and they sure as hell don't want to pay for them.

Now, if THEY happen to have that problem, that's a different story...after all THEY are real people, unlike...checks notes..."foster kids".

[coffeemug]

America is the most charitable country in the world[1]. But, as evidenced by the parent's comment, there is no shortage of people willing to spend other people's money, and Americans are justifiably cautious of that.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-char...

[magicalist]

> America is the most charitable country in the world

Maybe double check your link next time?

> The most noticeable change was arguably the United States, which ranked first in the world in giving for the years 2009-2018 but fell to 19th in the world in 2020.

(I also seriously doubt the methodology of this confident ranking of the world's charity based on self reported charitable behavior in surveys, but this was more humorous)

[coffeemug]

And the next few sentences from the link:

> However, the U.S. was not the only high-level giver to drop. In fact, many countries that landed in the top 10 most charitable countries in previous years slid completely out of the top 20. According to Charities Aid Foundation Chief Executive Neil Heslop, these changes are not a sign that people's willingness to donate decreased, but that their opportunity to donate diminished, largely as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns. Charity-based retail stores were forced to close, fundraising events were canceled, and many elderly charity volunteers had to shelter themselves instead of volunteering.

[jewayne]

I think what you will find is that a stunning amount of that "charity" falls within the giver's social circle. My understanding is it includes donations to the giver's own religious organization. Or even donating to a cause once it's touched you personally -- your mother dies of cancer so you donate to a cancer charity. Giving within your own monkeysphere, and being willfully ignorant of everything outside it, is what I am talking about.

[coffeemug]

As a spot check I googled "turkey earthquate donations by country". The result is a table with US on top donating $185M, followed by UAE donating $100M, Kuwait $68M, and finally the UN $50M.

[rayiner]

I’m convinced this is a structural characteristic of America, resulting from the immigration patterns that built the population.

If you look at polls worldwide, most people wouldn’t leave their home country even if they had the choice to emigrate somewhere else: https://news.gallup.com/poll/468218/nearly-900-million-world.... In South Asia, where I’m from, it’s just 11%. Even in sub-Saharan Africa it’s under 40%. Immigrants are the outliers who are willing to leave everything they know behind.

Of course over time there’s regression to the mean, and new communities form here in the US. But most of the US population traces their ancestry only back to the late 19th century or early 20th century. This constant population turnover means there’s a very limited ability to develop the kind of solidarity required to make sacrifices on behalf of strangers in your community.

[steve_adams_86]

You're correct, and I don't think this has to be true indefinitely but it's certainly in the DNA of most of North America.

I could go on at length about this. I'm deeply convinced this component of North American culture has contributed significantly to many aspects of decline and general loss of well-being. I won't go on at length of course, I just wanted to say I think you're on point and this feature of a lot of our cultures here is quite harmful.

[stcroixx]

Not sure who we is, but I have 4 kids and live paycheck to paycheck and nobody helps me or my kids. We can’t spare what we don’t have.

[steve_adams_86]

"We" is North America collectively. I don't think it's on you to fix this at all; rather that our nations have the wealth to do a better job.

[remote_phone]

I think you deserve help as well. This is why I suppose universal basic income, because for someone like you, an extra $1000/month would help tremendously.

[subsaharancoder]

Who pays for this magical UBI? Pretty sure you'd have to at some point increase taxes for the very people you're trying to "help" in order to give them back that $1000

[l33t233372]

Taxing mega corporations more aggressively is one often cited approach, but I agree this doesn’t really provide enough for UBI. 1000 a month to each household would be about 1/20th of our GDP.