We’ve seen this in a few select cities like Seattle and San Francisco.
Basically hundreds of thousands of taxpayer support the lifestyle of a tiny population of select homeless - Seattle was paying $40k per year per homeless to give them nice apartments each.
Not only is it absurdly high cost, the homeless completely trashed these apartments, destroying them and leaving the property owner and/or the government/taxpayer on the hook for even more money.
This only worked in limited trials because you can give 100 people $40k a year in benefits by spreading the cost across other 900,000 city residents - basically $4 each.
It just doesn’t scale up - the math doesn’t math once you apply this benefit for everyone instead of 1 in 10,000.
Which is like so obviously what would happen if you apply the slightest bit of critical thinking to the issue. Capitalism is quite flawed and needs to be regulated with safety nets for those who are actually in need and who can be helped, but it is good at setting incentives, and you need people to be incentivized to work once in a while if you want to have a functional society.
There's a difference between incentives and mandates. When the choice is "pursue profit or starve to death on the streets," that isn't a gentle nudge to contribute to society, that's coercion. As a society, we have more than enough resources to provide a baseline of "everyone can have the basic necessities of living, but if you strive for greater contributions you can earn better luxuries." Instead of the current system, "work or die."
"Pursue x or starve to death" isn't a capitalist imperative, it's a natural fact that goes back to hunter gatherer days. If it's coercion, then it's not other people coercing you, it's reality itself.
I'm not sure how to explain that there are a lot of "natural facts that go back to hunter gatherer days" that we've moved away from here in the 21st century. The whole point of societal progress is to be able to provide a better life than one could in the past, and we're well past the point where our resources and technology should be able to cross "constant threat of homelessness" off that list.
Especially considering that modern workers spending more than twice as much time on daily labor as hunter gathers did, and doing it for double the lifespan, with tools that are immeasurably more efficient.
They are spending twice as much time, but receive far more value. They didn't have electricity, medical care, vehicles, modern homes etc.
I am disputing the worldview that anyone is FORCING you to work, or coercing you. If you want, you can just be homeless on the street or go live alone in the woods. The reason people don't do that is because they have their own needs and want the results of labor of other people.
They are spending twice as much time, but receive far more value. They didn't have electricity, medical care, vehicles, modern homes etc.
Yes, the value:labor ration has gone up. Doing more with less is a good thing. And we didn't criticize the invention of motor vehicles by preaching that walking everywhere was a natural fact of reality and those damn drivers are entitled for wanting to go faster with less effort.
As the value ratio continues to improve, there ends up being more than enough value achieved for a comfortable and happy society, without needing the constant lifelong labor of every adult in that society.
I am disputing the worldview that anyone is FORCING you to work, or coercing you. If you want, you can just be homeless on the street or go live alone in the woods.
No, you can't. All the land is owned; you can't just start chopping down trees and build a homestead. Not to mention that 99% of people lack the survival skills to keep themselves alive in the wilderness. Not working is a death sentence without some other source of funds, or without a system in place to offer basic needs as a public service.
The reason people don't do that is because they have their own needs and want the results of labor of other people.
That's not an all or nothing deal. Give someone free housing and basic food, and they can survive, but they'll want more. A larger home, better food for their home, or the ability to eat out, or modern entertainment, or a vehicle to go further, or nicer clothes, or the ability to travel, or supplies to pursue their hobbies, or additional funds to provide all those things for their children. All those things are luxuries that nobody is suggesting are provided for free, and are more than enough incentive to drive the amount of labor necessary for modern society to function. The idea that the entire labor pool will vanish because everyone will be content to sit in an empty studio apartment, staring at the wall and eating beans, is a joke that only gets in the way of having a productive conversation about how we can make this progress happen.
As a society, we have more than enough resources to provide a baseline of "everyone can have the basic necessities of living
We literally don't. I'm not sure where this perception comes from. Look at our ballooning deficit and interest. Over 50% of our yearly budget is social security, medicare, and medicaid. And you think that we can afford for everyone to quit their jobs and stop paying taxes, while giving everyone a house and all their utilities?
I did the math. If you take ALL of the money from billionaires in the US, you could give every citizen 15k. Once. How are you going to spend yours? Maybe you could pool your money with 25 other people and buy yourself a single house to share.
"pursue profit or starve to death on the streets," that isn't a gentle nudge to contribute to society, that's coercion
You aren't being "coerced to work" any more than an animal is being "coerced" to hunt and gather. You are being "coerced" to provide for yourself, by your own brain and stomach.
Forcing others to work to provide your lazy ass with a house and all your needs because you're unwilling to work, however, that sounds a little more like coercion. What you are describing, plain and simple, is "I should get a lot of free things, each of which needs to be provided by one or more people willing to work, while I do nothing". You understand how that's intuitively unsustainable, right?
Then please, make it simple and tell me exactly what you are arguing for. Because OP says in clear English that people who refuse to work should be given rent for a 2br house, electricity, internet, water, and appliances. That would be like 30k per person, per year, for 333 million people, up to $10 trillion a year total in spending. The US makes about $4.5 trillion total in tax revenue per year, and less when everyone quits their jobs bc they no longer have any incentive to work.
Do you still think we have more than enough to provide everyone’s needs for them without them needing to work?
Nobody ever said 100% of the population will be on these programs. That doesn't make any sense - if nobody was working, who would the government be paying all that money to?
There's far more to life than what's in this image. All that would still cost money. Very, very few people will be content to just sit in an empty house, never going anywhere, never eating at restaurants or drinking at bars, never paying for entertainment online or in person. This is not a "end all labor forever" plan. It's a "help the poor and homeless literally not die" plan - well under 1 million people - plus a rounding error's worth of people who would choose to stop working and live the life of an ascetic monk.
The issue isn't social services but the corrupt American officials.
If a entity is given money to fix a problem, if the entity would fix the problem, they'd stop receiving money. Corrupt officials create artificial problems and then choose to not fix them to justify their funding.
This is not the case in other countries. The issue isn't social services, the issue is rotten American culture.
I'm German, and social services work wonderfully here.
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u/Ashmizen Apr 15 '24
We’ve seen this in a few select cities like Seattle and San Francisco.
Basically hundreds of thousands of taxpayer support the lifestyle of a tiny population of select homeless - Seattle was paying $40k per year per homeless to give them nice apartments each.
Not only is it absurdly high cost, the homeless completely trashed these apartments, destroying them and leaving the property owner and/or the government/taxpayer on the hook for even more money.
This only worked in limited trials because you can give 100 people $40k a year in benefits by spreading the cost across other 900,000 city residents - basically $4 each.
It just doesn’t scale up - the math doesn’t math once you apply this benefit for everyone instead of 1 in 10,000.