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BillBrasky Memorial Political Chat Thread

I mean, UBI should definitely be permanent, not temporary. The conservative (insulting, demeaning) line that if you give people money they will work less and spend it on booze/whatever has been disproven time and time again. People use it to buy housing, and food, and to take care of their kids. They invest and are more likely to be upwardly mobile. Just give people money.
 
Shooshmoo said:
I was very, very clearly contrasting the study with the rise in homelessness that was contemporaneous with the end of COVID payments. I'm not sure why that was so hard for you to understand, but the point I was devil's advocating for was a conservative argument that these benefits/payments would have to be permanent to be effective, given the rise in homelessness attributable to the temporary COVID benefits stopping. Since you know the study, maybe you can share if the conclusion is that such payments need to be permanent to be permanently effective.

I never said anything about homeless people not having jobs.
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the larger point is that this takes the view that homelessness is a systemic issue, not a collection of individual moral failings

our country's fiscal and monetary policy moved away from full employment in favor of curbing inflation and maintaining an underclass for low wage work during the Volcker years, followed by Regan austerity, crack and opioid crises (i.e. criminalization instead of public health emergency), and so on -- prioritizing the the larger capital-e Economy over the economic impacts of society's most vulnerable

so the need for ongoing payment is a structural response to a structural issue -- unless there is a reversal in many other policies then homelessness will pervade without such interventions
 
I also think in addition to cash payments, there is a subset of the population for whom permanent supportive housing in the Housing First model is the right setting

these are the highest acuity folks with significant behavioral and mental health challenges, substance abuse disorders, etc. that would benefit from colocating housing with services -- for many of these folks, they may never leave such an environment
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
the larger point is that this takes the view that homelessness is a systemic issue, not a collection of individual moral failings
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I totally agree with your post, but I did want to comment on this part - most often in these economic debates between conservative Darwinism and liberal interventionism, we pit these perspectives - of structural neglect vs individual failure, as separate and opposing, but I don’t think that’s accurate.

IMO, it’s very important to highlight the importance of structure in decision making (social determinants). The presence of structure directs people to make healthy decisions, and it’s often the lack of structure that encourages or even forces people to make bad decisions. Family,
community, housing, education, employment, transportation, all provide structure that encourages healthy decision making.

I think it’s putting the cart before the horse to regard stable living conditions as earned with good decision making, rather than stable living conditions being necessary for good decision making. This idea bears out in the topic of drug and alcohol abuse among the homeless - if you see a homeless person doing drugs, do you assume that drug addiction caused them to be homeless, or that their drug addiction is a response to being homeless?

www.latimes.com

Opinion: People think drug use causes homelessness. It’s usually the other way around

Drug use in the unhoused population is highly criminalized and stigmatized. Research debunks myths of homelessness and substance abuse.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Good for you. You can wave your brown bag around in frustration when Trump gets re-elected for obvious reasons that people like you refuse to recognize and just call the people who voted for him raciost instead.
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What obvious reasons are you alleging that I’m refusing to recognize?
 
Conservatives purposefully frame these topics of unhealthy choices as hedonistic, immoral, over-indulgent behavior of the failures vs morally righteous self disciplined behavior of the successful, and in that frame they can portray their structural neglect as a method of discouraging poor choices. It’s absolutely necessary to deny this conservative framing, and maintain the truth - which is that structural neglect directly causes these unhealthy choices. Structural neglect causes addiction, it causes crime, it causes abortion.
 
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I feel like 97/98 missed the mark on true acceptance of things. Cancelling of people for being overall shitty human beings appears to be completely independent of what is happening in office, so good luck to anyone returning to open office racism and sexism.
 
ConnorEl said:
What obvious reasons are you alleging that I’m refusing to recognize?
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That a good number of people don't brownbag every meal, eat a decent amount of fast food, and will use the rapidly rising cost thereof as a determining factor in their voting practices. Otherwise, what the hell is the point of mentioning where you get your lunch?
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Conservatives purposefully frame these topics of unhealthy choices as hedonistic, immoral, over-indulgent behavior of the failures vs morally righteous self disciplined behavior of the succesful, and in that frame they can portray their systemic neglect as a method of discouraging poor choices. It’s absolutely necessary to deny this conservative framing, and maintain the truth - which is that structural neglect directly causes these unhealthy choices. Structural neglect causes addiction, it causes crime, it causes abortion.
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But does it cause Chic-Fil-A?
 
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