By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Politics Discussion - A modest proposal to solve the homeless problem in America....

Kasz216 on 08 December 2011
Mr Khan said:
Kasz216 said:

Did you totally not read my long extensive comments about the homeless in the other thread?

There isn't really a homeless problem that can be solved by anyone without revoking someones right to refuse treatment.

The problem with what your suggesting is, of course the problem that's already happening now.

Mass crime, sexual assaults and the like.

In general there is plenty in place to help the homeless, it's just a matter of getting the chronic homeless to use the services.  Everyone else is homeless for less then 2 months, 80% less then 3 weeks.

Truth is, it's extremly hard to be homeless in the US, which is why chronic homless people tend to moslty tend to have some sort of mental problem. (See HUD reports on homelessness).

Exactly. Those who have the wherewithal to seek help can find it in not necessarily ample, but at least adequate supply from private, public, or semi-private institutions. The rest are just diseased, though my argument would be that the mentally unfit lack the right to refuse treatment even if they do not pose any sort of threat to themselves or others, because they are by their nature legally unfit to make these decisions.

Yeah, personally i'm not sure where I feel on the matter.

On the one hand I agree with you,

but on the otherhand I think back to things like homosexuality being considered a disease, and why the law was made that way to begin with.  (Unfit, unsafe places that could treat you like crap because you had no choice and no right to check yourself out.)

And that's not even getting to the deeper philosophical issues.



Around the Network
Dr.Grass on 08 December 2011
richardhutnik said:
snakenobi said:
and who pays for maintenance of the park?

the tax payers

You have the homeless in the park be trained to take care of the park, or appoint one of the homeless a head janitor and hire some kids after school to take care of the park.  Have the place for the tents be on concrete and you don't have to worry about taking care of the grass.  You would have one elss union job this way to, which taps into what Newt wanted.  This job role, which is unpaid will teach the lazy homeless a work ethic to.  It is a win-win.

There are workarounds to avoid having the tax payers pay for things.


Firstly, you probably think I'm against you or something. Not true. I'm against these 'proposals for the betterment of humanity' your making because they are not well thought out, and display a clear lack of thinking.

Just consider your 'answer' above. In the end, the taxpayers will have to pay for:

- training

- management (this involves a lot)

- facility

- those kids your hiring

- etc. ETC.

''There are workarounds to avoid having the tax payers pay for things.''

No there isn't.

''This job role, which is unpaid will teach the lazy homeless a work ethic to.  It is a win-win.''

Lazy homeless? Poverty comes of its own accord. No-one wants to be poor. There are things like drugs, gangs, violence, poor-educational-infrastructure, depression, economic instabilty etc. ETC. to blame too you know.

 

This thread is at least better than the other one. If it were implemented then it would make a difference. Problem is you'd never get it implemented on a nationwide scale and you'd NEVER be able to sustain it long enough to make a marked difference. Not to mention that there are better ways to solve this problem.



Mr Khan on 08 December 2011
theprof00 said:
Mr Khan said:
theprof00 said:
There must be a way to capitalize off of these vagrants.
Some kind of factory, or tv show, or self sustaining commune...man sometimes our laws suck. Why can't we pay people in alcohol?

Have them pull rickshaws

Homeless people are more used to sitting on the floor getting drunk, not being productive.

It was a Seinfeld reference



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

theprof00 on 08 December 2011

The answer is simple really.
And a good economic solution during times of crisis.

You pay people to do jobs they really don't want to do, like digging holes.
You pay people to dig holes for minimum wage, or prepare lanes for national railway, etc etc.
The vagrants sleep on a railroad card anyway, so you just put the railcart on the rails and have the homeless somewhere in the mid-US building railroads at minimum wage or something like that.



theprof00 on 08 December 2011
Mr Khan said:
theprof00 said:
Mr Khan said:
theprof00 said:
There must be a way to capitalize off of these vagrants.
Some kind of factory, or tv show, or self sustaining commune...man sometimes our laws suck. Why can't we pay people in alcohol?

Have them pull rickshaws

Homeless people are more used to sitting on the floor getting drunk, not being productive.

It was a Seinfeld reference

Ah, I remember it well.

But man, what a throwback lol



Around the Network
richardhutnik on 09 December 2011
Dr.Grass said:
badgenome said:
I have modest proposal to increase the quality of the average VGChartz thread: stop making threads, Richard.


harsh but true

Feel free to have a modest proposal to start a campaign to have me permanently suspended on here, if you feel that way.



lordmandeep on 09 December 2011

I saw in New York City, homeless people doing some work like cleaning a street.

Is the city like paying them to clean the street?



Kasz216 on 09 December 2011

Also in general, the modest proposal thing is used in Strawman satire.

Like the original by Jonathan Swift in which he argued that england should get rid of all social programs and fix the problem of the poor population from growing by offering their children as a delicacy to the rich.

Curtailing the poor problem in two ways, keeping the poor population down by infantcide and earning the poor a hefty sum for their babies.

Which is a ridiculous idea, there were no where near enough rich people to eat a large percentage of the poor's babies.

So the price for babies would be really cheap unless you had government price fixing, but even that would just cause a baby selling underground market.



SamuelRSmith on 09 December 2011
theprof00 said:
The answer is simple really.
And a good economic solution during times of crisis.

You pay people to do jobs they really don't want to do, like digging holes.
You pay people to dig holes for minimum wage, or prepare lanes for national railway, etc etc.
The vagrants sleep on a railroad card anyway, so you just put the railcart on the rails and have the homeless somewhere in the mid-US building railroads at minimum wage or something like that.


We have people who are digging holes in Iraq and Afghanistan... spending trillions doing so.



Mr Khan on 09 December 2011
SamuelRSmith said:
theprof00 said:
The answer is simple really.
And a good economic solution during times of crisis.

You pay people to do jobs they really don't want to do, like digging holes.
You pay people to dig holes for minimum wage, or prepare lanes for national railway, etc etc.
The vagrants sleep on a railroad card anyway, so you just put the railcart on the rails and have the homeless somewhere in the mid-US building railroads at minimum wage or something like that.


We have people who are digging holes in Iraq and Afghanistan... spending trillions doing so.

Granted in Afghanistan this could be productive in the long run, if by "digging holes" we are referring to broader infrastructural development programs. Afghanistan sits on a fortune of rare earth metals, last i heard.



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.