Ineffective Government, an outcome of our definition of "Freedom"?

True but they aren't having a negative impact on others (to the same degree). They are criminals in way if they are affecting others.

 

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I'm not sure I'm following your point. Negative impact on others meaning what exactly? Sure, homeless make things look untidy. They seem crazy sometimes. They need money and sometimes ask, which can be scary for some folks, but then there's a host of other elements beyond homeless people that have a far greater negative impact on both homeless and our broader communities. Homeless victims being victims of fearful victims of criminals who don't mind making victims of people, namely via paradigms and commerce, both legal and illegal. It's not uncommon. To blame victims for being victimized by people who are tried and trusted, namely authority figures who are able to dupe others into victimizing the victims instead of addressing the real issues.

 

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When there is a homeless camp near a residential neighborhood it's dangerous for that neighborhood. There is more crime, drug use, here in Seattle they constantly have fires that the fire department has to go and put out.

There is no need to have one problem (homelessness) cause even more problems to neighborhoods where there were no problems.

Again, it's kind of a misnomer to refer to this issue as "homelessness". It's a drug and mental illness problem that becomes a crime and sanitary problem as well.

The problem to be addressed isn't really the cost of housing (even where it is high) but rather it's a mental illness and drug addiction treatment facility problem. There is no reason to have one set of problems also cause other problems where there were none (crime and sanitation).

It also seems that the weapon of choice for the mentally ill living on the streets is a hammer or hatchet. They fit into a backpack and are therefore easy to conceal. There are multiple cases of the mentally ill attacking others, who are just walking by, with a hammer.

This isn't just a Seattle thing. Hammer and hatch attacks have been reported around other homeless encampments in other cities.

 

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I've not been to Seattle. Washington's crime rate is sky high anyway isn't it? My issue is with the targeted homeless populations and basketing them all as criminals. You bring up mental illness but then seem to not acknowledge the larger population on prescription drugs for the treatment of. Sanitation and hygiene are issues, obviously. Most people have the luxury of running water and electric, not to mention home privacy and that type of security.

I've listened to social type workers from LA speak about skid row. It was stated that it's not a matter of if a woman will be sexually assaulted out there, but when. I'm not a fan of making bigger victims of victims, nor do I agree with you opinion that all homeless are mentally ill criminal drug addicts.
Ill leave it at that

 

Washington State, not Washington DC. Our crime is not sky high.

 

I heard different. I don't live there, so I'll take your word for it. In any case, homelessness is an issue in America. Homeless populations are rising. Economy is getting worse. Value of us currency on the descend. Jobs are iffy, but are available. Some are able to work, others aren't. How bad is it in Seattle Washington State not DC?

 

My point was that before the fairly recent homeless explosion this was not a high crime area.

 

Poverty tends to increase those rates ... Needs don't end after losing a home and all your things. It's an issue for sure. Crime, poverty, lack of security, etc. The newly found homeless thrust into an unknown element after losing everything wouldn't be easy. Then come the needs for therapy, medications, and hygiene ... Coping isn't easy. I'm sure of that one.

 

The short form:

A new Zillow study says that renters who make minimum wage have two options to keep rent under 30% of their income: either find 3 roommates (with 2 people per bedroom) or work 4 full-time jobs.

(@MorePerfectUS↱)​

The topline and lede, from Zillow↱:

• Nationally, it takes nearly four full-time minimum wage workers to reasonably afford a two-bedroom rental.

• Affordability for minimum wage workers is tightest in Austin. There would need to be over five full-time minimum wage workers to afford a two-bedroom rental in Austin.

• In cities with a $7.25 an hour minimum wage, an average of over 3.5 full-time workers are needed to make the typical two-bedroom rental affordable.In cities with minimum wages set higher than that, an average of 2.5 full-time minimum wage workers are needed to make the typical two-bedroom rental affordable, despite many of these cities having higher-than-average rents.​

Based on the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, it would take nearly four full-time minimum wage workers to afford the typical national two-bedroom rental, spending a maximum of 30% of household wages on their rent payments. Renters have been squeezed by record-fast rent growth while incomes haven’t kept up and the country’s housing shortage has taken a toll.​

Meanwhile, in vaguely-related news, Seattle's special-election housing measure currently leads the ballot count.
____________________

Notes:

@MorePerfectUS. "A new Zillow study says that renters who make minimum wage have two options to keep rent under 30% of their income: either find 3 roommates (with 2 people per bedroom) or work 4 full-time jobs.". Twitter. 9 February 2023. Twitter.com. 15 February 2023. https://bit.ly/3RZRxws

Bachaud, Nicole. "Three Roommates or Four Jobs Needed to Afford a Two-Bedroom Rental on Minimum Wage". Zillow. 31 January 2023. Zillow.com. 15 February 2023. https://bit.ly/40YLrjN

 

The evidence does not tend to support that. A recent study in Seattle looked at just that. The author determined that "on average, an increase in the number of tents and structures in an area is not associated with any increases in property crime — very close to zero. . . . there is such a strong association between encampments and crime, that it’s leading people to assume that any change in property crime is attributable to the tents and structures in their neighborhood."

https://downtownseattle.org/2022/01/on-homeless-camps-and-the-connection-to-crime/

 

$7.25 minimum wage? That's like... just over £6/hr. That's... low. How does the US get away with keeping it so low?
And does the US only have 580k homeless (0.18%)? I mean, according to this site, the UK supposedly has c.360k (0.54%) which seems an awful lot if it's a like-for-like comparison.

 

Democracy.

 

Thanks.

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Let me rephrase: what are the drivers that keep it so low, such that the "democratic" system in the US feels that level to be adequate for a minimum wage?

 

It's the federal minimum wage. States do their own things, but if we think, for instance, of the last however many decades of a bad joke called, "Jobs, jobs, jobs, j'abortion!" that's how it happens.

Even if Democrats hold the House, they need sixty votes in the Senate. This is why the culture wars: Who really thinks conservative working class voters are going to say, "We're voting for Republicans so they can wreck us!" For these voters, there is always a woman, or a gay person, or a transgender student, or a Black person, or a Jew, "Mexican", Muslim, or Native American to blame. There is always something wrong.

And there are some object lessons in Democratic Party history: It's one thing to suggest it's never been a truly liberal party, but if you recall Sen. Zell Miller (D-GA) pandering to the 2004 Republican National Convention, or Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) in the current Democratic caucus, we see what it takes to for Democrats to satisfy voters in those states; it's also why Blue Dogs exist. Think of the idea that in conservative states, workers hear the argument against unions, see the data showing union wages and workers fare better over time, and then vote against unions in favor of a slogan called, "right to work", which results in lower wages; the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie are not sufficient to carry the vote without significant support from the working class.

An extraordinary anecdote: Once upon a time, I had a strange conversation in which the question of how to win over voters who are so determined that they will vote against their own best interests fell away to a somewhat predictable dispute about the elitism of presuming to know someone else's best interest, but on this occasion it really was so clear. Suffering to death is, by definition, an antithesis of one's best interests. What do you do about voters who will literally hurt themselves in order to not vote for you? The examples at hand were Bevin in Kentucky, 2015, and Trump, 2016, and voters who would lose healthcare access if Republicans wrecked or repealed the ACA. And, sure, that one conversation is an outlier with particular contributing factors, but what makes it extraordinary is that it's usually not so straightforward. It's not like these attitudes, either about liberal elitism or, as we heard in the 2012 Republican primary, letting them die, are new.

Say what we will about the federal minimum wage, but voters in conservative states are far too worried about registries and search warrants for menstrual cycles, censoring education, and fiddling with election laws.

They've been voting for these politicians for years. Generations, even.

 

Part of the answer to that has been the vilification of the poor. "Well if you don't like it get a better job!" "The poor are lazy, why should the price of my decaf latte go up just because they don't want to work hard?" Etc. Thus there is no strong reason to increase the minimum wage; it only helps people who are lazy and slothful, and why should we help them?

 

Those are the U.S. figures that I've seen (regarding the homeless). This is probably a subset of the people who, statistically, are going to need help in a society. Statistically about 10 million people, in the U.S., will have an IQ lower than 70. That's a level where they are likely to need a lot of help.

An answer to the minimum wage question, based on economics, would be that one isn't needed or desirable. You could also argue that effectively what we have here is no minimum wage, not literally of course.

There is the Federal minimum wage and it's slow to increase. The actual minimum wage for a worker is local minimum wage, which may be a lot higher. In Seattle it's over 18 dollars an hour.

That's how regular wages work as well. If you are in finance and you have in job in Des Moines and find a similar job in NYC, it will pay a lot more.

The minimum wage has many exceptions (farm workers, baby sitters, certain other exceptions) and once you get beyond certain jobs everyone makes more than the minimum wage anyway. So in that sense, we don't effectively have a minimum wage.

From an economics point of view, that's good. A minimum wage disadvantages the least skilled/experienced workers. Politically that's supposed to be who it helps but that's not the actual case.

A minimum wage is inflationary (paying more for the same work) and it isn't based on the market. That also gets us to the concept of a "living wage". That depends on the person and not on the job.

As a kid with my first job, I wasn't really even worth the minimum wage. By the next summer, I got another job and made a lot more than the minimum wage.

The argument against the minimum wage is that the market determines wages and there is no need for an artificial "minimum". If you are a retail employer (for example) and you can pay a lower wage, maybe you give a high school kid an opportunity with his first job. If you make the minimum wage much higher than what the market would have been, you don't hire that kid.

You find a college kid with a bit more maturity and experience. Move the minimum wage high enough and you would only hire adults with plenty of experience. You would also tend to need to hire fewer of them and you also may automate more where possible.

That's not to say that in other countries they don't have a situation where all jobs are mandated to be higher paying but those countries also pay a price (higher costs of living). There is no right or wrong as to which way a country decides to go but those are the choices.

 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/764...of criminal,higher in the homeless population.

Here's another:
San Diego

From The Crime Report: New numbers released by the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office show homeless people in San Diego are far more likely to commit crimes and be the victims of ones compared to the rest of the local population, reports CBS8.

According to the DAs office, based on two years of county data compiled from November of 2019 until October of 2021, those experiencing homelessness have been involved with crime “at dramatically higher rates than the rest of the population,” whether as victims or offenders.

Recidivism rates among the homeless population were also high, with 83 percent of defendants having two to four new cases filed against them by local prosecutors and 15 percent having five to nine new cases filed.

 

Right, it seems that the UK, bless us, report "homeless" as being somewhat different than in the US. In the UK it is the number who have applied to be on the housing register. So they may be staying in temporary accommodation, or in a house too small (i.e. not enough bedrooms) for their needs. So they could be living with family or friends, for example. Most are not on the street, or living in places unfit for human habitation. I think this differs to how the US estimate their number. If we look at the number "living rough / on the streets": one source suggests that on one night in Aug 2021 there were 2,440 sleeping rough in the UK. The figure of 560k or so for the US is, from what I can tell from my Google-fu, the equivalent number of people actually sleeping rough on a given night. So a big difference, and goes to show just how misleading stats can be if the definitions used are different in each territory being compared.

Anyhoo - as you were.

 

If you start a company, and it cannot be successful without violating labor laws, that doesn't take away from anyone else, right? Or perhaps we might wonder passes↑ for success↑. And like I said, there are lots of companies like this, all throughout these United States:

A federal investigation has found the franchise operator of seven McDonald's locations in Erie and Warren illegally allowed 154 minors, ages 14- and 15-years-old, to work at times not permitted by child labor laws and for more hours per week than allowed. The employer also assigned nine workers under age 16 to operate deep fryers in violation of federal law.

U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigators determined that the Erie-based DuCharme Organization – operating as TBLN LLC – violated the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The DuCharme Organization and owner Thomas DuCharme Jr. paid $92,107 in civil money penalties for the violations.

Specifically, the division found the employer permitted the minors to work illegally as follows:

• Before 7 a.m., more than 3 hours per day and after 7 p.m. on school days.
• Later than 9 p.m. on days between June 1 and Labor Day, when they may legally work until 9 p.m.
• More than 8 hours on a non-school day, and more than 18 hours a week during a regular school week.​

Investigators also learned nine minors under the age of 16 were allowed to operate deep fryers at two of the employers' locations in violation of federal regulations for occupational standards for 14- and 15-year-olds. Workers under the age of 16 are prohibited from using manual deep fryers not equipped with automatic fry baskets that move food into and out of cooking oil or grease.

“Since 2018, we have seen an alarming increase in the number of young workers employed in violation of federal child labor laws,” explained Wage and Hour District Director John DuMont in Pittsburgh. “Every employer who hires young workers must know when they can and cannot work, the types of jobs they can do and what tasks they can be safely assigned.”

(U.S. Department of Labor↱)​

So, fill in the blank↑: Employers "aren't responsible for [_____]. That's the employee's responsibility."
____________________

Notes:

United States Department of Labor. "US Department of Labor finds McDonald’s franchise operator violated child labor hours, safety regulations at seven locations in Erie, Warren". 22 February 2023. DoL.gov. 23 February 2023. http://bit.ly/3ksST6v

 

This is supposed to be an argument against what I said? That's silly.

Someone who owns a McDonald's franchise (and was caught) is your response to my general statement that someone who starts a company and gets wealthy because the stock appreciated , isn't taking away from others?

That guy didn't start McDonald's, probably doesn't have any stock and probably owns franchises in the inner city (otherwise what parent let's their 14 year old go to work).

Even in this guys case what he is doing isn't taking any money out of anyone else's pocket. We're down in the weeds here worrying about whether he has the correct french fry equipment and surely you aren't arguing that "you" have less because he has under age kids working there?

Most businesses don't have underage kids working there and that has nothing to do with whether the "wealthy" are taking money from the poor. It sounds like he is actually hiring the poor (illegally).

My point was that when someone creates a new business the "pie" expands. It isn't a zero-sum game and your response is about a guy hiring underage kids and not having the right frying equipment?

At least try to fit your boiler plate rant to what you quote from me.