I'm just glad that I don't live in California right now.
What is happening?
Our governor is a moron that contradicts himself at every turn.
Virus cases keep fluctuating since the state has no actual plan.
Wildfires are getting worse and no one is doing anything to address it.
Smelt, a species of fish that is commonly used to indicate overall environmental health in the Delta (and California as a whole), continue to spiral towards functional extinction.
Homeless people. Everywhere.
yeah pretty much
OOF
Wait I remember I watched a Youtube Vid from a German living in California talking about how shit the state has become.
Is there a particular Reason why your politicians dont do shit against those issues?
Homelessness? I don’t know the answer to that one. We’ve thrown billions at the issue and most of it goes unspent or towards pork barrel projects that do nothing but provide positive PR for its respective figurehead. I suppose a good first step would be to stop treating them like parasites and props for gubernatorial ads.
I've been thinking about this issue quite often considering the fact that I live in an area with a high amount of homelessness. I think that one of the main problems we have when trying to tackle this issue is how the general public views homeless people. Rather than trying to elevate the financial status of our fellow Americans, we, as a nation, would rather look at these people with contempt. I think I noticed this the most when driving through a "poorish" neighborhood and my wife expressed some negative feelings. I know other people are like this as well. Based on what I've seen personally, I believe that there is a serious class issue within the U.S. I understand that a lot of homeless people are not good people, or are homeless because of reasons within their control. However, I do believe that the majority of these people can be useful for something, and should at least, have the opportunity to fix or change their life.
Anyways, I'm not a socialist necessarily, but I believe this issue stems from the fact that our country is obsessed with profits and consumerism, rather than comradery and community. This is a late stage capitalism issue and imo, is solved by a cultural change, rather than some sort of change by legislature initially. However, when the time comes, I would personally implement some sort of large-scale "homeless employment" that would consist of small or large scale public projects. Of course, this has been done pretty often. So I would try to implement measures to make this semi-permanent. Providing employees a place to eat and sleep, in range within their work site. I've toyed around with the idea of tiny house villages (lol) or perhaps reclaiming abandoned buildings and repurposing them into housing for homeless employees. However, this could only be achieved if freed up some of our budget from other agencies. The first one that comes to mind is the military, but I would be weary of removing too much from the defense budget. As a good 60% of it is actually useful and not beaurucratic junk.
I'm drunk while writing this so I'm not too sure if my post made sense but i'll post the main point down here.
I believe that Americans have a serious cultural problem that can only be solved by becoming more collectivist. More beneficial and semi-permanent social programs need to be implemented to to give the economically disadvantaged a serious chance to reclaim their role in society. However, measures also need to be implemented to make sure that this system isn't abused/used by people that do not deserve it.
ok thanks