Making the news today....

[the village idiot]

13 minutes ago, Chessa said:

A little more... (I'm not tired yet)...

Quote from the above book again: "Lloyd Pendleton, the director of Utah's Homeless Task Force, had his lightbulb moment in the early 2000's. Homelessness in the state was out of control, with thousands oaf people sleeping under bridges, in parks, and on the streets of Utah's cities. Police and social services had their hands full... in 2005, Utah launched its war on homelessness... The goal? To get all the state's homeless off the streets. The strategy? Free apartments. Pendleton started with the seventeen most abject street sleepers he could find. Two years later, after they all had a place to live, he progressively expanded the program. Criminal records, hopeless addictions, towering debts, - none of it mattered. In Utah, having a roof over your head became a right." 

 

"The program was a resounding success. While in neighbouring Wyoming the number of people living on the streets soared by 213%, Utah saw a 74% decline in chronic homelessness. And all this in an ultraconservative state. The Tea Party has had a big following in Utah for years and Lloyd Pendleton isn't exactly a lefty. 'I grew up on a ranch, where you learned to work hard' he remembers. 'I used to tell the homeless to get a job, because that's all I thought they needed'."

 

"The former executive changed his tune when he heard the full financial story at a conference. Giving away free housing, it turned out, was actually a windfall for the state budget. State economists calculated that a drifter living on the street cost the government $16,670 a year (for social services, police, courts, etc). An apartment plus professional counselling, by contrast, cost a modest $11,000."

 

"The numbers are clear. Today, Utah is on course to eliminate chronic homelessness entirely, making it the first state in the US to successfully address this problem. All while saving a fortune".

 

(This has really blown me away, actually).

 

Interesting stuff.

 

I think we grossly underestimate the pivotal role that luck plays in all our lives. 

 

There is a lot of talk of 'bad choices' but it is not at all clear that we understand the mechanics of choices, and as far as I can see there is certainly no evidence of free will being involved.

 

Give some people some 'no strings attached' good luck and the results can be dramatic.

[WesD]

4 hours ago, Mick Dempsey said:

Wes, go to page 1071 and read Timon’s post, that’s exactly what was happening.

Just read, Yep agree, last sentence more so than other parts! Self satisfied should be replaced with ignorance of how to help. 

 

Begs the question though, how do we help? We don’t see what charities do only the girl outside of Sainsbury’s???

 

That Q ain’t aimed at you btw @Mick Dempseybut open to all.  

[difflock]

Chessa, 

I am reasonably certain, that that book you quote, was written to support a particular point of view, in that it, or at least the parts you choose to quote, absolutly fails, or refuse to mention the backsliders, the absolute neerdowells, that simply must exist in any given society.

Also the $11000.00 per year accomodation (Utah example) cost has to be falsely low. i.e. it may reflect the bare rental cost but zero maintenance nor utilities.

Ditto for the African example, though oddly, since most Africans know what actual true poverty is, they might actually better realize the value of the cash hand-out.

As before my opinions are based on my local observations, which definitively reveal that some families from solid family backgrounds will work their way down, some are genuine alcoholics/addicts, some simply feckless with money and some gifted individuals from plainer/rougher backgrounds will refuse to better themselves, and some indeed progress.

Regardless of the "free money" so blythly disembursed. (that someone had worked hard to earn)

While most in the community knuckle down and survive, which is not easy for them, but they make themselves do it.

There are no easy "one size fits all" answers.

And any easy-money solution will attract criminals and con-persons(i.e. the Grenfell fire) , such is life.

But to deny these facts is not a little disingenuous

P.S.

I am aware that "shit happens", however most such shit is caused by poor life choices,(or indeed others poor life choices) some/most(and I worked with quite a few examples) refuse to accept that their poor choices were in any way to blame, ergo their lives will not improve.

And they continue to blame Society instead.

Perhaps that is the basis for the expression "charity begins at home".

P.P.S

Our son works in a Post Office, involved in handing out benefit payments, staggering sums of "free money" are already being disembursed, to individuals, on a weekly basis.

Never mind the equally staggering sums(but always sub £800.00, in each individual transaction) being MoneyGrammed back to Romania

 

Marcus

Edited December 31, 2018 by difflock

[eggsarascal]

23 hours ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

Which bit Mr P?

 

The fake news figures or the duty placed upon all at sea (under international maritime law - UNCLOS) where it is safe to do so, to assist those in distress (imminent peril) where imminent peril is described under the SOLAS convention. 

 

Bit of a shambles really where well intentioned international conventions are being exploited by those that purposefully, intentionally and often criminally set out to exploit that which was never envisioned as being applied in such a manner so as to short circuit normal immigration processes. 

 

The answer - pick em up and set em back from whence they came. Maybe then the message will get out and the ‘victims’ will stop giving their money to organised crime and international terrorists....

 

 

 

I keep reading this pick em up and set them back to France, why don't we do this, is there an agreement in place to stop us?

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

11 hours ago, Chessa said:

But it gets even stranger. In Liberia, an experiment was conducted to see what would happen if you gave $200 to the shiftiest of the poor. Alcoholics, addicts, and petty criminals were rounded up from the slums. Three years later, what had they spent their money on? Food, clothing, medicine and small businesses. 'If these men didn't throw away free money' one of the researchers wondered, 'who would'."...

There was a much more scientifically reputable social experiment directed by John Landis in early 1980's Philadelphia, USA where the contrasting effects of nature v nurture were explored by fundamentally altering the social circumstances of 2 wholly unrelated individuals living in the recessionary circumstances of post 1970's Federal fiscal incompetence and the after effects Reaganism.

 

Not a new experiment however, the above is often considered a modern representation of the much earlier (100 years earlier) work of Mark Twain - funny old world where fact becomes stranger than fiction! 

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

11 hours ago, Chessa said:

I'm not saying I agree with everything quoted below nor above....

Me neither....

 

This apparent obsession with ‘luck’ rather baffles me.

 

I feel no guilt, nor shame, for the history of the nation I was born into.  Nor do I consider it as particularly ‘lucky’, it just is what it is.

 

I certainly feel no guilt for being born in the Northern hemisphere.

 

I feel no jealousy towards those that enjoy a warmer climate when I’m labouring over the log splitter.

 

I feel no jealousy towards those that have snow when I don’t.

 

I feel no compulsion, nor duty, to self flagellate until the whole world has reached a level of common misery.

 

Even the great Socialist maxim 'to each according to his contribution’ clearly promotes a ‘reward’ based system rather than opening the way to the parasitism and perpetual alienation which is already evident within the perversion of the UK welfare system (as a simple example of how this well intentioned theory of redistribution of wealth might have (entirely predictable) unforeseen circumstances.))

 

Some misplaced belief that all people can be equal (given equal access to opportunity) is shot to pieces by the very basic observation of sibling differences.  People ARE NOT all equal, there is no way to change that.

 

These theories of ‘free money for all’, despite all of the best academic studies and research, cannot remove from history the too many to list examples where such doctrine (and let’s not delude ourselves that it is too far removed from Marxism) has catastrophically failed, often with immeasurable misery, death and desperation as a side order.    

 

As another aside, it seems to be the case that those that proclaim to support the EU (and so often seem to denigrate the Brexiteers as “Little Englanders” or post colonial romanticists seem blithely to gloss over the historic colonial histories of the majority of European Union member states and the current (and future) effects of the EU in perpetuating those colonial exploitations, most notably within the the African sub-continent which directly contributes to the economic suppression and stagnation >90% of thereof.)

 

I don’t mean to be overtly confrontational Chessa, it’s easy to appreciate that you put huge effort (and passion) into research and presentation, and that you truly believe in a utopian society, I just don’t buy it I’m afraid - I do like that your posts tend to encourage TVI to break cover though ?

[difflock]

Ah Ha Sir!

Shrewdly well observed comments, especially the observation re the clear differences between most siblings.

P.S.

I will try and find the link to the triplets, put up for adoption and deliberately separated by the authorities(in the US), one placed in a poor home, one in a working/middle class home and the third in a wealthy home.

To explore the ongoing nature/nurture debate.

 

Marcus

here we go, see link att;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Identical_Strangers

 

Edited December 31, 2018 by difflock

[the village idiot]

1 hour ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

I do like that your posts tend to encourage TVI to break cover though ?

Was getting critically low on spaghetti hoops.

 

It was venture out into society or starve.

 

Was hoping no one would see me.

[Mick Dempsey]

Ok, let’s move on then.

 

I’m aware of this concept of a money free society (I’ll assume that’s what you’re talking about as opposed to not believing in the existence of money) how’s that going to work then? 

[skyhuck]

Money is of corse illusory, its pretty much a religion, which only works if enough people keep the faith, but its  incredibly useful.

 

Barter is great if you and the other party both have what each other need and they are both of equal value, but thats rarely going to be the case, plus its real tricky to save with barter.