[ToucanLoucan]

Sure. But speaking as an American, our housing market is plenty inflated and absolutely ridiculous, and we do everything just about short of shooting the homeless on sight here. So giving people places to live I don't think is the direct correlation to an inflated market that you think it is.

And like, to be totally honest and pinko commie scum of me, I am completely fine with being slightly less well off if it means people in my area get taken care of. That doesn't bother me.

[romafirst3]

I totally agree on principle but for those who are stuck in a transactional mindset (conservative/libertarian etc) I would argue that paying for housing and welfare for poor people is just good business sense. Crime is incredibly expensive and when pushed to the edge people disconnected from society are more likely to both need to perform crime to survive but also have nothing to lose from performing criminal acts. If you take care of people's basic needs with a safety net you actually enable them to contribute to society (economically and culturally) and it is a couple of order of magnitudes cheaper than criminalizing them. And guess what, people still desire to earn more money, so they still have plenty of drive to better themselves, they just aren't completely fucked if they fall on hard times.

[ToucanLoucan]

Oh yeah, this has been understood logic for like... ever. I felt this way even back when I self-identified as a libertarian. Now as a lefty I feel similarly.

But people in the states especially and even in parts of Europe are so hard up on this notion that the criminals are just criminals from birth, barely even human, just waiting for some way to exploit larger society or worse, them personally, somehow to "steal" their way to "the easy life" and it's just so detached from reality. Are there people who are just remorseless psychopaths ready to harm anyone at a moments notice for their own gain? Yeah, sure are, most of them end up being cops. The rest are people who are given few if any options to get by, and if crime is your only option to getting a meal, of course you're going to commit a fucking crime. It's like these people expect the homeless to just lie down and await death instead of stealing food.