What about the shareholders? … if we deal with homelessness, it will affect the shareholders!
Won’t someone think of the shareholders?!?
Boatless please help
I get your joke, really and truly, but you might be surprised to know a lot of poor people live on boats. I did it. Down at the marina was the shadiest place I’ve ever been.
Now be honest, your pee and poop went into the water, didn’t it?
It’s technically illegal, but we all know everybody out there does it.
We were illegal poopers. However! When you are living so close to nature, you are aware of your “footprint”. And it’s just poop. Chemical cleaners were minimal, which is not something “landlubbers” think about.
You just assume it goes down the drain and the problem is solved. But we knew how often the sanitation plants for civic sewage had “incidents” when they couldn’t operate properly and just dumped it all into the river.
So my poop; just a drop in the bucket; picture it. It isn’t all those chemicals; it’s just poo. Picture my poo, picture my poo, picture my poo.
Anyway, if your local news says something about boaters polluting your water, that is a red flag about civic sanitation because a little bit of poop is a small concern when stacked up to everyone’s poop and chemicals. And don’t even get me started on those macerator things some people have in their sinks; those are the worst.
How often did you have to go back to land to get clean drinking/showering water supply?
I’m fascinated by the boat lifestyle because I live in a van. I think living in a boat would be charming but a little more complicated than van life.
It’s all there at the marina, mostly. Some people keep the water attached to their boat all the time. We didn’t because sometimes the stop filling the boat with water thingy fails and it doesn’t stop filling your boat with water.
Electricity was there.
Cooking was propane, we had 5 of those 5 gallon tanks that some petrol stations refill; there was one nearby.
Heating was diesel which was also the thing that makes the boat go when wind wasn’t hitting the sails right and you just get that refueled from time to time as well. But yeah, when you are poor you aren’t sailing much, you are living at the marina.
I hope I am satisfying your curiosity. It is a lifestyle most will never know but also in a mundane way. If you are desperate and living in a van, maybe? You get to own a place. The marina fees are same-ish to property tax. It’s a walkable community. You will make a lot of friends who will die in the river, either by accident or nefarious reasons.
It’s a sad place and I don’t want to go back there.
I just want to point out that the other commenter’s experience isn’t universal. My mom lived on a boat for years and loved it. I couldn’t do it long term as there’s very little space available, but it doesn’t have to be a negative experience.
This particular marina had bathrooms with showers up on land which the majority of, if not all, residents used. There was also a restaurant on the water with bathrooms. Electricity and tap water were available at each slip. Heat wasn’t necessary, because it was Southern California.
I never knew how much it cost, but I know for a while she lived there while working as a waitress at that same restaurant, so it couldn’t have been too expensive.
Funny that you mentioned the public washroom. I avoided bringing it up because we were told (under no uncertain terms) we weren’t allowed to use it. Back in the day, an openly gay couple was not common, I guess. So, apparently, straight people peeing and pooping and showering nakedly was fine; but me doing it was “pornographic”. I apologize to everyone I accidentally introduced to hot gay porn. Sorry; my bad.
Im residentially impaired and I live in a van when Im not couch surfing. Id choose a van over a boat. There are a lot more parking lots and roads than there are spots on the river. And my van takes 10 seconds to start and drive away when I feel unsafe. Boats take a bit longer, and everything is more expensive.
Does the sink garbage disposal issue depend on your water treatment facility? Mine claims the following:
biosolids and energy are extracted to be reused. We land apply our biosolids across the region, recycling nitrogen and phosphorous back into local soils. The thermal hydrolysis process used in our digesters generates about 10 megawatts of electricity that we reuse to cut our electricity consumption by a third.
Yet again the fish are proven to have more rights than me
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Now hold on. You say “shadiest” but isn’t that a slur on the fact that a lot of those folks are permanently there instead of swanning in on a sunny day to mess around at leisure?
I mean, I was living there. I am not putting myself above the shady. That was just life at the time, and still is for people still living there.
I know why people resort to it. I get why desperate people steal. It was where I had to be at the time and I’m not going back.
This is an easy fix, just cruise craigslist and get a fixer upper. Put some sweat into it and boom boat owner. It wont be anything fancy, but you could get out on the water.
Okay, this bullshit. It’s not shareholders who would be negatively affected by this, and it’s not shareholders who are actively working against doing something about the problem. Shareholders are just an easy acceptable target to point your fingers at, whether it makes sense or not.
What needs to be done to tackle the homelessness problem (not the only thing, but probably the most important one) is to zone much, much more land inside or directly next to cities for affordable mid-rise multi-family homes. Guess who is opposed to that and has the power to do something about it? Existing property owners. Specifically owners of detached single family homes. Because doing that would negatively affect their property values. Personally, I think that shouldn’t matter, because what good is living in home that is worth absurd amounts of money on paper going to do you if society is falling apart because of it? But home owners are always massively concerned about their property values and will torpedo anything that might threaten it. Of course, pointing your fingers at home owners is much dicier than pointing them at shareholders, because even in a bubble like this one, you are bound to point at some people here who will feel personally attacked by that…
“Shareholders”, on the other hand, aside from those that are also home owners at the same time, don’t really have much reason to care one way or another about effective projects to reduce homelessness.
Have you heard of REITs? Rent-seeking capitalists have been working together for decades to speculate on housing. Wealthy people have billions and billions of dollars invested in the status quo, and they are quite interested in maintaining their position of power.
REITs typically own commercial real estate not SFH. The big key is that the government props up real estate companies with low interest rates.
Commercial real estate includes anything over 4-unit complexes. It really is irrelevant if a individual or a reit owns large apartment complexes.
From the article:
Residential REITs can hold virtually any collection of residential rental property, from hundreds of single-family homes to mobile home parks, boutique apartment buildings, or huge multifamily complexes.
All I am saying: I don’t think it’s right to say “REITs typically own commercial real estate not SFH”. Especially when you consider how many SFHs are getting slurped up by private equity. You don’t think they will sell securities based on these new real estate holdings?
Sorry, but its just accurate, its too difficult for a reit to buy SFH because its a bunch of transactions, and they just are not profitable and it becomes a play on interest rates and speculation. Rent on a SFH is much much lower per invested capital to multi families. That is why REITs mainly just do commercial.
The issue with SFH is just how hard and costly it is to build, not competitions with REITs or investors.
Do people hold shares in the private equity firms buying up all the homes and driving up the housing costs? No no it’s all the NIMBYs fault.
Corporations holding residential real estate are a growing part of the problem, but still a small one. The vast majority of single famliy homes are still owned by either their residents or small time, non-incorporated landlords.
Never mind increasing the supply of housing would drive down prices and remove pressure regardless of who owns the existing stock.
Do private homeowners and small-time landlords generally leave their homes vacant?
Vacant homes are patriotic: foreign investors need somewhere to keep all their freedom too
the Chinese are corrupting our youth with these TikToks! buying up all the real estate is fine, but we draw the line at people slandering Israel with short-form vertical video.
Hard agree onnmany of your points. Part of the issue with housing is how investment based home ownership is. We need to start looking at those investments as investments - a risk based choice that can be impacted by outside factors because of a change of needs of society. It certainly sucks to be on the loss of returns side if a risky investment… But a society where no one can have a secure place to live is going to eventually destabilize, crash and burn and that need is greater than the need for a profitable portfolio.
One of the many issues with a liberal free market is that we become accustomed to being very callous about the small fry at the bottom and more or less ambivalent or openly hostile about the sharks at the top but it’s the medium sized fish in the middle that nobody wants to hurt. They just “played the game right” not nessisarily taking more than their perceived due and not doing so astronomically better that their plight cannot be empathized with… But if they are the ones who are somehow crashing the ecosystem - even if its through no fault of their own - they will go down with it when it does and if it comes down to eating the costs of keeping everything afloat or everybody loses - well a choice to take everything down with them isn’t a noble one.
When enough people aren’t hitting the very base needs on the Maslow’s Heirachy of needs you start seeing a lot more widespread disordered ability to function and eventually if the course doesn’t properly correct we could see it do so in an abrupt and violent way. That does mean thinking collectively and realizing that the true ethical choice is the one that might hurt you in particular and sacrificing individual gains for the benefits of a community.
Not an easy thing when we have as a society been trained to be fairly misanthopic.
NIMBYs basically.
The good news is, homelessness is illegal in many places now which solves the “unhoused” part of being homeless.
We plan to cut all homeless people in half by 2025!
Carl, that’s killing people!
Caaaaaaarl
Caaaaaaarl what have you done?
Man, that doesn’t sound like a sentiment made with brand conscientiousness in mind.
Dewey, I’m halved!
“You’re not allowed to not have a home!”
“Oh so you’re gonna give me a home?”
“No!”
“I’m not being broke to fuck with you. My life is just shitty…”
-Louis CK
Kentucky wants it to be legal to just fucking shoot them.
Marvellous. What a Christian solution.
What?
yup it just makes you unemployable with a felony YAAAYY!!!
Well, look at it from the bright side: the person in this picture does have a roof over their head.
Do I need to slap an /s on it?
Somebody somewhere will eventually downvote it either way:-P.
Although there’s also some truth to it, in being one of the reasons that people end up behind bars.
Well maybe that’s a Mexican behind the border wall, so just bars and no roof!
Mexicans have it pretty good actually - most immigrants these days are people just passing through it from further south.
Land of the fee, home of the slave
Fwiw, it wasn’t always - the government used to have a top marginal tax rate of 90 fucking percent, and money was just handed out by outright socialist policies. Maybe that wasn’t good either, especially when distributed
primarilyexclusively to white families, but dayum the pendulum sure has swung the other direction now that people learned that minorities might get some ever so small slice of that pie. Yeah, surely better to turn us all into slaves than for that to happen. (To be clear, I am joking, and actually unfortunately so bc with globalization and automation, the ultra wealthy don’t really even need slaves at all, so better for the population to just fall to levels that they can more easily control.)
I feel like the bars should be the white stripes
What did Jack and Meg ever do to you??
you just have to put a house around that and you’ll be accurate.
Too late - large corporations bought them all up and now there are none left:-(.
To represent a rental property.
I used to work in a country club while I was homeless and living out of my beat-up car. It was pretty difficult to go to work and see all these other young people my age living the good life, pulling up in brand new Corvettes and BMWs that their parents gave them, spending as much money as I made for an entire two weeks on breakfast, and then heading out to play golf all day, while I was working harder than any of them to have none of the luxuries. The only thing they did better than me was be born to rich parents, yet they were set for life, and I was homeless while serving them gourmet food. Thankfully I managed to eventually fight my way up the ladder, but motherfucker is it hard!
I grew up not seeing my mom or dad at 8pm. We were never hungry, but food wasnt always available and they’d open up a can of spaghetti or make soy sauce/rice and we’d share that as a family meal of 4. I was the first one to go to college, and mostly lived in the college library and slept in a closet or friend’s couch. I busted my ass to become a software engineer and happy that I made it.
But honestly, my life wasn’t so bad, compared to the many other immigrants, broken homes, and other struggles people have.
I realized when I joined the Army and finally had enough food that I had basically been starving my entire life.
I’m too European to get it. What is the message?
Edit: I do get it now. I was lost in translation.
In Germany, we got two terms that translate to homelessness in English: Obdachlosigkeit (literally “shelterlessness”), defined as living on the street, and Wohnungslosigkeit (literally “appartmentlessness”), defined as lacking a living space rented or owned. “Wohnungslose” people live mostly in communal owned homes or with friends/acquaintances.
So, for me, understanding “homelessness” as “Obdachlosigkeit”, this cartoon was hard to grasp.
People think of the top left as homeless, and ignore the other three. Homeless people can have jobs and go to school, but can’t afford a home or might be homeless due to other circumstances like being kicked out of their home.
But people only think of the top left when someone says homeless.
To be clear, it’s the landlord’s that are kicking the most people out in 2024. Fuck all landlords.
Kicking more people out than other groups, or than other years?
People think of the top left as homeless, and ignore the other three
That’s because for most people, the question of “what to do about homelessness” is a question of what to do about people who are asking them for money on the street.
Homelessness doesn’t just mean looking like a bum on the streets. Shocked a European wouldn’t be aware that all homelessness is not having a steady place to live, that includes people in hostels that are addicts or victims of various abuse. That includes 18 year olds told to leave the nest and stand on their own two feet when they’ve nothing actually lined up. That includes people who are couch surfing because they have an unsafe family home.
Homelessness is incredibly easy to fall into when situations spiral out of control. I’m long term unemployed (looking for employment though) with no savings but I live with my dad and if my dad kicked the bucket today then I would lose the home I grew up in and would have to get in touch with relevant authorities to be put on a waiting list that lasts years for somewhere to live.
Thank you for your explanation. It is legal to tell 18 year olds to leave home without providing for them? Wow. We have to provide for our relatives for life (parents for kids, but kids for parents as well. Well, at least legally – does not work in all cases.)
I’m aware that homelessness is not restricted to people like the man in the first panel. I’m working in a psychiatric hospital, and finding a place to live for our patients who are no longer capable of looking after themselves is not easy, but usually possible. I wasn’t aware people are forced to live in hostels.
I wish you good luck finding a job, long lasting health for your father and a way to keep your home on your own.
How does the “kids support parents” thing work? As someone who doesn’t make a lot of money, and who has a shitty relationship with my dad, that sounds like a nightmare. It’s not my fault those bastards made me.
AFAIK this only applies for the cost for nursing homes, not alimony. It is possible to reject paying for nursing homes if you can proove that the parents did not fulfill their obligations in raising you, like mistreated you or told you to leave when you were 18. I’m no expert on this matter. Of course, the income of people is taken into regard, so nobody has to pay more than they are able to. In theory at least.
If you enjoy podcasts, check out a limited-run show by 99% Invisible, called According to Need. It’s investigation takes place in my backyard (Bay Area, California) and interviews a number of people who are unhoused and attempting to scrape by as the system fails them.
People who are unhoused / homeless show up to work or school and then go sleep in cars or in shelters (if they can get a bed). You might know someone who is in a similar situation but hides it well.
A telling moment: my brother said he’d never give money to a panhandler because they can get a job at McDonalds. I put to him that McD’s wouldn’t hire someone who was so dirty. That the first check wouldn’t come for at least two weeks. That at the end of the day, he’d be absent the change that allowed him to buy a meal. I pretty much said, how would that help him right now? My brother seemed to understand because he just thought about it and didn’t respond.
One more! I tried to found a website with a friend, it failed. I fucked around learning new technologies while living off of savings. I was unemployed for several years. When I tried to rejoin the market, no one would talk to me. I had too much of a gap. I struggled to get a job. I was picking fruit from trees to augment my survival. I was spending a dollar a day on food. I tried dumpster diving at grocery stores and restaurants to no avail. I applied to work at grocery stores and veterinary clinics and the like for any job they’d give me. My background is in tech and they knew I’d drop them the minute I had an offer, so they wouldn’t hire me. Getting a temp job in my field opened the door to other jobs and I cracked the nut. I’m gainfully employed today, but I was nearly out on my ass. Loans from family members helped me avoid eviction. I’m lucky that I had no dependents.
There is no social safety net in the USA. There should be one. There should be multiple nets in the most prosperous nation in history.
This sounds terrible! I’m glad you survived.
I’m curious about a bunch of things here.
- What country are you from?
- What does it mean for parents to be required to support their children for life?
- What does it mean for kids to be required to support their parents for life? Support in what way?
- What happens if the family doesn’t get along with one another? Support in what way?
- What repercussions are there if someone chooses not to fulfill their familial obligations?
- What happens if someone is financially unable to fulfill their familial obligations?
- Germany
- Paying alimony till the first vocational qualification/college degree and contribute to the cost of nursing.
- Contribute to the cost of nursing.
- Kids – or Youth Welfare on their behalve may sue the parents. Nursing insurance will sue the kids.
- Law suits and seizure? attachement? (Pfändung – I’m lost in translation) of the money owned. Kids can be released from their obligation to support their parents if they proove that their parents did not fulfill their parental obligations, e.g if they were abused or the parents did not pay due alimony.
- Income is taken into account, so technically nobody should be unable to fulfill these financial obligations. In practice you might get into trouble, especially when the nursing insurance surprises you with a notification of your financial contribution to your parents nursing home.
Homelessness looks different depending on your country. In Japan for instance it’s not hostels but internet cafes that host the majority of the homeless population. Basically those cafes were designed to give young people places to play games, surf the web and so on outside of the family home but because a lot of them had complimentary drinks, showers and whatnot they basically became nightly accommodation where a single night cost about the same as a decent meal you ended up with a place for a transient population of casual under employed workers to stay.
A lot of people in that situation face massive precarity. They live day to day keeping with very few personal possessions and tend to work jobs that are exploitative or dangerous because employers basically know they are in trouble and use that as leverage. An injury or illness can quickly cause you to fall into sleeping rough and become quickly life threatening because safety nets are few and far in between and if you can’t look clean your ability to self support becomes less likely.
That particular death spiral exists all over just in different forms. In the US it’s more likely to involve living out of a car. In Europe hostels intended on paper for backpackers but the basics are that once you start legitimately looking shabby and unclean to other people the empathy dries up so you need to do whatever you can to keep your head above that water because recovery past that point gets very very hard.
That includes 18 year olds told to leave the nest and stand on their own
I’m sorry to inform you that’s a very American thing. Especially for South Europeans and their ex-colonies, it’s not uncommon to stay with your parents to your late 20s or even early 30s.
This is my current situation. He passed a month ago and I am scrambling.
The message is that it’s not only the unwashed pan handlers that are homeless. There are a lot of people that are or have been productive members of society that still become homeless. In the US a lot of the obvious homeless have major mental health conditions so many just assume that’s the main issue behind the majority of homless. When in reality it’s low wages that don’t keep up with inflation let alone inceases in cost of living
I’ve been all those kinds of homeless and let me tell you the ones sleeping on the street are also experiencing a totally different category of hardship than those who are homeless but sheltered.
Basically that the cost of living here in the US is out of control.
While this is true, it’s missing the point. See @VaultBoyNewVegas’s answer.
I didn’t understand it either.
Seems like the message is just anyone can be homeless, which is pretty obvious. I guess if people’s awareness is that low then it’s good for these sorts of messages to get out but also suggests that many people are just morons.
This is also a problem in the EU. Maybe not as big.
There’s a pretty interesting movie called Rosie that illustrates this.
You don’t have homeless people in Europe? The message is that not all homeless look like the guy in the first panel. There are all of these “invisible” homeless that go unseen because they don’t fit the stereotype.
We do have homeless people in Europe/Germany.
Thank you for your explanation. My problems understanding these panels were
- The kids in the panels. TIL, it is possible for kids to be homeless in the US. It’s hard for me to imagine that a society would let there kids be homeless. We got kids who fled from home and do not accept any help, thus being homeless in Germany as well, but these kids are on the run, not in schools or in cars with their mother.
- The idea that a woman having a car and a kid might be homeless is totally alien to me, as well. The only possibility I can think of how this could happen is if she just ran away spontaneously neglecting all help she could get – that does happen, of course, and probably I’m just too naive.
For the woman having a car, the issue stems from the US not having stellar public transport, so she had to have a car so that she can work and send her kids to school, even at the expense of not having enough money to afford a home.
It’s hard for me to imagine that a society would let there kids be homeless.
The kids are homeless because their parent is homeless. In Europe, are you guaranteed a home as long as you have children?
The idea that a woman having a car and a kid might be homeless is totally alien to me, as well.
It’s actually more likely if you have a car. Cars are a money sink.
The only possibility I can think of how this could happen is if she just ran away spontaneously neglecting all help she could get
The US does not guarantee you a home if you have a child. If countries in Europe do that, that’s awesome, but the US definitely does not.
Sure, there are charities, but there aren’t enough resources to help everybody.
Technically there are plenty enough resources to help, we just don’t adequately distribute them. Jeff bezos has like 4 condos in NYC alone iirc, (or maybe that’s musk) but he definitely also has a mansion with 24 fucking bathrooms.
There are way more resources than necessary. Capitalists fabricate scarcity to hoard wealth
My guess is that your society has the same problem to a much smaller degree and you just don’t know about it.
What is the message?
That you should get out more (or stop ignoring homeless people when you are out). The idea that homelessness isn’t a problem in Europe is absurd.
I never said homelessness is not a problem in Europe. On the contrary – working in a psychiatric hospital I am pretty aware of homelessness in our area. I just didn’t get the message of this cartoon, and I am shocked about what I learned today.
Wish I was able to get out more, though, your analysis is spot on.
Here in Denver, people just ask whether a person “is outside”. That refers to sleeping unsheltered.
I can’t imagine seeing this and immediately turning it into a international dick measuring contest. Maybe have some compassion instead of just making a “Sucks to be you” comment.
I think this reply makes clear it was an honest question.
Being “too European” is clearly meant to be a slight (ie “My life is too good to understand this”), and honestly a naive one since it’s not like European countries have no homeless people.
Or maybe they thought it was referring to something more specific in American politics that they weren’t knowledgeable about and didn’t realize it was a more general message?
Sorry.
What a trainwreck!
Arm the homeless.
Honestly this cartoon fucking sucks. Something like 80% of homeless people are adult men like the first panel. The three other panels essentially serve the message “Did you know some homeless people are women and children??? Do you care NOW?”
I was homeless in 2012 for about half a year. It was quite the eye openening experience. Most of us hid that we were homeless the best we could so the cops wouldn’t falsely arrest us for being “drunk in public”. Lot’s of people had cars but couldn’t afford gas. Roughly 80% of us never pan handled, and were as clean as we could be. I learned to sleep in the park during the day and keep moving at night.
Hey man, what a weird take.
Just what you to know that not everything is a personal attack directly at you.
Just what you to know that not everything is a personal attack directly at you.
Surely you can find a way to communicate this without being patronizing…
What if being patronizing is the point? What if that was meant to send a message? What if it’s more important to protect the 20% than to worry about the “80%” that might be taking advantage of the system?
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not sure what your point is. Can you rephrase and/or elaborate please?
Your first comment was toxic as fuck. The other user was saying that while being patronizing, because toxic comments don’t deserve respect.
I meant your actual point. I’m skipping the dumb internet fight bits. The third sentence in your message. Who said anything about “taking advantage of the system” because I surely did not.
My point is that your point of why you don’t like the comic is dumb. Unless myself, and everyone else, is completely misunderstanding your grievance against it.
People should care about homelessness, and their argument is often “it’s 80% men” (your point) but that’s a short-sighted perspective on top of lacking compassion. And that’s the whole point of the comic. It shouldn’t have to come down to explaining to people that there’s more to homelessness than the statistics.
Gotta call a spade a spade. Based on your later responses, you come off as a person who really needs this directness because reading between the lines is not something you’re good at.
Christ, you actually can’t find a way to communicate without patronizing. I literally do not care what you have to say about my character or personality or whatever, it’s got very little to do with the actual substance of my comment.
I don’t think that the comic is about the age/gender. I think it’s about the different situations that people find themselves, and to remind people that they probably interact with homeless people more often than they realize.
I was “panel 4” (had a job, but not a bed) as an adult male working at a hardware store.
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If you think the solution to the homeless is the government, then let me point to the government letting in millions of people (in america), and almost none of them dont have homes. The government doesnt give a shit about you, they are not the solution.
Viewing things as zero-sum is convenient. Simple, understandable, it makes us feel smart. Aware. So it makes sense why you would think in this manner.
But anyone who is a fan of freakanomics or other academic economics focused podcasts, the types of podcasts that find where the science meets the real world would know that viewing the world this way leads to much more wrong answers than right answers. Economics is a machine of indirect consequences.
There are not X number of limited housing slots. Houses can be built.
Or can they? Is someone stopping the building of homes? Or are there any events that reduce the supply of homes? Is anyone purchasing a large supply of them?
Immigrants are always used as a racist dog whistle to avoid having people ask such questions as I mention. And it worked well, on you.
But not me. I’m not so simple.
Let me end by congratulating you, you have found your simple answer. And I suspect you don’t focus too hard on scrutinizing your own ideas. Do you? You can feel they are true, you don’t need to examine them.
My only critique, you seem angry, perhaps you should modify your world view and give yourself a better life. The only person stopping you from seeing things differently is yourself. Good luck.
I dont claim its a zero sum game, that is obviously not true. And sure you can build houses, but you can only build houses so fast, and the government makes it harder to build houses. I dont kow the number, but if we are able to build 1.5 million units per year, and we have more people coming in legally and illegally and are being born, then that will obviously have a pressure on housing availability. The issue is that people like you dont understand what goes into building housing, and jsut think “Houses can be built”. Tell that to anyone in housing and they will laugh at you.
Immigrants are always used as a racist dog whistle to avoid having people ask such questions as I mention. And it worked well, on you.
Oh gotcha, you are one of those NPCs that calls everyone racist.
And you call people NPCs.
I do, see above!
Sealioning again.
Do you know where that term comes from?
If you meet one asshole.
You met an asshole.
If everyone you meet is an asshole.
Who is the common denominator?Same idea for racism.
If you get called a racist once.
Maybe you met an unhinged person.
If you are constantly called a racist.
Well…?I don’t live in a world where myself or anyone around me gets called racist, ever.
Do you?
Finally, I never called you a racist. I called your comment a racist dog whistle, which it is. In my view, a non-racist person can say a racist thing and remain non-racist as long as they are willing to learn from it and grow. I judge actions, not people. However if such actions continuously are sourced from an individual, what is the rational conclusion to reach in that matter besides that the person shares the beliefs that generated those ideas?
To provide a bridging analogy, I don’t assume everyone holding a baseball bat is going to hit me with it, but if I go to a park and see a guy swinging his baseball bat at people. Is the correct conclusion to assume, “He’s not a person that hits people with baseball bats.”? You’re swinging the bat, if you want people to assume you aren’t going to hit them, stop doing that.
Okay here it comes. I think you’re racist because the only opposition you can conceive of to immigration is race-based.
You see racism everywhere, because race is the lens through which you view the world.
But I’m sure this is your first one, so it’s not yet a pattern and you don’t have to address it.
Why do people like you see immigration as bad? Taking in immigrants is exactly how this country became great in the first place. It’s emphatically un-American, and unethical to blame our problems on immigrants.
I can only imagine you’re brainwashed by the GOP. Take it from someone who lives on the border, these people aren’t a problem. You’re being lied to.
You can take examples of any group and easily villify the whole. For example, 82% of all serial killers are white. “Are white people RUINING our country? More at 11!”
I have not made a comment on immigration, that is a separate question. I will directly comment on illegal immigration, its really bad and should not be done.
And then you repeat bullshit left side talking points about how if people possible disagree with you its because they are a republican, I am not, and everyone (including democrats from 10 years ago) agree that illegal immigration is bad, you should to if you were being honest.
The point of my comment was that its bullshit to claim the left side care about peoples housing sitiation when they are greatly increases pressure on housing by letting millions more people into the US.
There’s more vacant homes than homeless people.
Homelessness is a policy issue and is a symptom of how we treat homes as a commodity, for the generation of infinite profit, rather than as a human necessity.
That is not how housing or homeless work. You cant just put homeless people in houses and expect that to do anything.
The government is the cause of and solution to most problems in society. Better governments are possible, but it’s a hard fought struggle.
I agree in that the government causes problems that they solve,or at least try to solve and just make a differnt problem. I guess i have never seen a government that truly solves problems, but you could be right.
What are you talking about? If we limit this discussion to somewhat democracies, the government is a net benefit. Without it there would be anarchy.
A government is a net benefit, but we have more than just a government, america has the largest government in the history of the world.
Have you ever seen a place with no government?
Who said I want no government?
The government also constantly suppresses new housing construction. Everywhere.
