It might be easier to think of in a context other than the current bailout. So here's another program that I reluctantly approved of (yes, I know, I'm not a real libertarian. Having a workable political philosophy is actually more important to me than hewing rigidly to my label, thanks.):
Culhane then put together a database--the first of its kind--to track who was coming in and out of the shelter system. What he discovered profoundly changed the way homelessness is understood. Homelessness doesn't have a normal distribution, it turned out. It has a power-law distribution. "We found that eighty per cent of the homeless were in and out really quickly," he said. "In Philadelphia, the most common length of time that someone is homeless is one day. And the second most common length is two days. And they never come back. Anyone who ever has to stay in a shelter involuntarily knows that all you think about is how to make sure you never come back."
The next ten per cent were what Culhane calls episodic users. They would come for three weeks at a time, and return periodically, particularly in the winter. They were quite young, and they were often heavy drug users. It was the last ten per cent--the group at the farthest edge of the curve--that interested Culhane the most. They were the chronically homeless, who lived in the shelters, sometimes for years at a time. They were older. Many were mentally ill or physically disabled, and when we think about homelessness as a social problem--the people sleeping on the sidewalk, aggressively panhandling, lying drunk in doorways, huddled on subway grates and under bridges--it's this group that we have in mind. In the early nineteen-nineties, Culhane's database suggested that New York City had a quarter of a million people who were homeless at some point in the previous half decade --which was a surprisingly high number. But only about twenty-five hundred were chronically homeless.
It turns out, furthermore, that this group costs the health-care and social-services systems far more than anyone had ever anticipated. Culhane estimates that in New York at least sixty-two million dollars was being spent annually to shelter just those twenty-five hundred hard-core homeless. "It costs twenty-four thousand dollars a year for one of these shelter beds," Culhane said. "We're talking about a cot eighteen inches away from the next cot." Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, a leading service group for the homeless in Boston, recently tracked the medical expenses of a hundred and nineteen chronically homeless people. In the course of five years, thirty-three people died and seven more were sent to nursing homes, and the group still accounted for 18,834 emergency-room visits--at a minimum cost of a thousand dollars a visit. The University of California, San Diego Medical Center followed fifteen chronically homeless inebriates and found that over eighteen months those fifteen people were treated at the hospital's emergency room four hundred and seventeen times, and ran up bills that averaged a hundred thousand dollars each. One person--San Diego's counterpart to Murray Barr--came to the emergency room eighty-seven times.
"If it's a medical admission, it's likely to be the guys with the really complex pneumonia," James Dunford, the city of San Diego's emergency medical director and the author of the observational study, said. "They are drunk and they aspirate and get vomit in their lungs and develop a lung abscess, and they get hypothermia on top of that, because they're out in the rain. They end up in the intensive-care unit with these very complicated medical infections. These are the guys who typically get hit by cars and buses and trucks. They often have a neurosurgical catastrophe as well. So they are very prone to just falling down and cracking their head and getting a subdural hematoma, which, if not drained, could kill them, and it's the guy who falls down and hits his head who ends up costing you at least fifty thousand dollars. Meanwhile, they are going through alcoholic withdrawal and have devastating liver disease that only adds to their inability to fight infections. There is no end to the issues. We do this huge drill. We run up big lab fees, and the nurses want to quit, because they see the same guys come in over and over, and all we're doing is making them capable of walking down the block."
The homelessness problem is like the L.A.P.D.'s bad-cop problem. It's a matter of a few hard cases, and that's good news, because when a problem is that concentrated you can wrap your arms around it and think about solving it. The bad news is that those few hard cases are hard. They are falling-down drunks with liver disease and complex infections and mental illness. They need time and attention and lots of money. But enormous sums of money are already being spent on the chronically homeless, and Culhane saw that the kind of money it would take to solve the homeless problem could well be less than the kind of money it took to ignore it. Murray Barr used more health-care dollars, after all, than almost anyone in the state of Nevada. It would probably have been cheaper to give him a full-time nurse and his own apartment.
The leading exponent for the power-law theory of homelessness is Philip Mangano, who, since he was appointed by President Bush in 2002, has been the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, a group that oversees the programs of twenty federal agencies. Mangano is a slender man, with a mane of white hair and a magnetic presence, who got his start as an advocate for the homeless in Massachusetts. In the past two years, he has crisscrossed the United States, educating local mayors and city councils about the real shape of the homelessness curve. Simply running soup kitchens and shelters, he argues, allows the chronically homeless to remain chronically homeless. You build a shelter and a soup kitchen if you think that homelessness is a problem with a broad and unmanageable middle. But if it's a problem at the fringe it can be solved. So far, Mangano has convinced more than two hundred cities to radically reëvaluate their policy for dealing with the homeless.
"I was in St. Louis recently," Mangano said, back in June, when he dropped by New York on his way to Boise, Idaho. "I spoke with people doing services there. They had a very difficult group of people they couldn't reach no matter what they offered. So I said, Take some of your money and rent some apartments and go out to those people, and literally go out there with the key and say to them, 'This is the key to an apartment. If you come with me right now I am going to give it to you, and you are going to have that apartment.' And so they did. And one by one those people were coming in. Our intent is to take homeless policy from the old idea of funding programs that serve homeless people endlessly and invest in results that actually end homelessness."
Believe it or not, the Bush administration was putting a fair amount of juice into this strategy before they got distracted by the war, and I was in favor of it.
The chronically homeless are not, as fable would have it, people who have had some hard luck. They are people who have repeatedly made bad decisions--mentally ill people who stop taking their medicine, drug addicts and drunks. Those who have merely had a spell of bad luck get in and out of the shelter system pretty quickly. The people on the street are people who can't stay in the shelter system because their behavior is so extreme.
For many people (including me) giving someone an apartment as a reward for refusing to deal with their drug addiction violates our inherent sense of fairness. And for many bleeding hearts (including me) simply giving someone an apartment without forcing them to get help for their underlying conditions violates our inherent sense of mercy. We don't want them to just have a roof over their heads; we want them to stop drinking themselves to death and/or hearing voices.
But people on the street are people who have refused help, or can't, for whatever dark psychological reason, use it. And they are people who cost a phenomenal amount of money when they get one of the many diseases inherent in sleeping on the street. How much money are we willing to pay to maintain our sense of fairness?(Yes, I know, the hardcore libertarians are protesting that we shouldn't pay for their medical care. Leaving aside the morality of this, we are going to pay for their medical care, because a majority of Americans are horrified by the idea of letting someone die outside the hospital door. Assuming this is so, what should we then do?)
Some people are willing to pay quite a lot. Psychologists call them "altruistic punishers". We all have a little bit of this in us, as illustrated by a common experiment. You take a pair of people, and give one of them twenty dollars. You then tell them they can give any amount of that $20 to the other person. But if the other person rejects their offer, both gets nothing.
The perfectly rational amount to offer is $1; after all, it's better than nothing. But experiments repeatedly show that if the offer goes much below 30-40% of the original amount, the other party will almost invariably reject the offer, leaving them both with nothing.
This is a pretty wise evolutionary strategy in small groups; it enforces sharing and reciprocity. But the homeless are already people with extreme disregard of social norms and also, personal suffering. Unless we're actually willing to let them die, and I hope we aren't, we don't have any leverage.
In large groups, I'm not sure these norms work so well. Should we punish stupid bankers by plunging the entire country into recession? Most of the stupidest ones have already been punished; as I understand it, Dick Fuld lost about $100 million in the Lehman collapse, while the head of Bear lost $1 billion. The mortgage bankers have already been fired. We're sending a message to a largely empty room.
But even if there were some people there to send that message to, it wouldn't be a good idea. The people protesting and flooding their representatives with phone calls almost certainly do not grasp what a financial collapse implies. But policymakers should. I don't know, however, if they can ignore our altruistic, punishing genes. Since those genes will probably vote them out of office in November if they do.
What if we are helping those who screwed up at a cost to ourselves?
Nobody can predict what will happen with any bailout plan, so it seems to me that the most conservative, in the medical treatment sense, would be the most prudent one to take initially.
I am not sure if Congress and the administration could even figure that out.
So that is the risk. We need some sort of bailout plan, but all are a shot in the dark.
The bailout gets to a critical question at the heart of a lot of political philosophy: do we help others who have screwed up, or punish them at cost to ourselves?
Don't you think there is a bit of a difference between helping a homeless guy(no matter his situation), and helping get millionaries(and billionaries) off the hook so they can make more millions and billions(At expense to you and me)?
It's great to read this, thanks. It's exactly the right kind of analogy to use to think about the reaction that this bailout has been getting.
As a strong Obama suporter, I'd been having fun hanging out in the progressive blogs, but this week has been a revelation.
But even at a personal level, I've talked to people who seem perfectly willing to let us slide into a severe recession. I'm sorry, but I like my job, and I like buy my capuccinos, and I don't want to stop having those things.
"Believe it or not, the Bush administration was putting a fair amount of juice into this strategy before they got distracted by the war, and I was in favor of it."
Actually, they still are putting a lot of juice into it.
I, for one, would like some evidence that you possess a bleeding heart, or any heart, for that matter.
"The chronically homeless are...people who have repeatedly made bad decisions--mentally ill people who stop taking their medicine, drug addicts and drunks."
I never met anyone who repeatedly made the decision to become mentally ill.
The plan is not just wrong because it rewards the guilty. It's not just wrong because it won't solve the transparency problem. It's not just wrong because it might not even solve the liquidity problem. It's not just wrong because we don't have the money to pay for it. It's not just wrong beause it's regressive. It's not just wrong it burdens the prudent to pay for the imprudent. The plan is just wrong.
This plan isn't giving the drunk an apartment, its giving them a liquor store.
I'd just like to say, your comments on this crisis have been infinitely informative and interesting, please keep it up ...
Didn't we used to house the deeply mentally disturbed?
Who's the guy that ended that?
Ronald something err other....
Actually, deinstitutionalization was a 1970s policy, and had more to do with collapsing state budgets and a change in the legal status of the mentally ill that meant you could not institutionalize them unless they were a threat to themselves or others.
Of course there are similarities in the situations you compare. But the differences in the contexts are important. There is a school of though among intelligent minds (not just dogmatic ideologues, mind you), that financial markets correct themselves far better than this bailout ever could, and that this might make the situation worse.
In addition, and beyond the pragmatic, the government has just seized some of the largest concentration of power since the depression, and regardless of your thoughts of its necessity at the time, this incident is far less cataclysmic - power it claims is temporary. When was the last time the government achieved this much authority, and actively gave it up when the so-called threat had passed. I understand that this might sound hysterical, but I think it is legitimate to ask whether we have witnessed a milestone in the expansion of state power - and in the long run, is the precedent in handing authority to nationalizing private industry a wise one to set.
Rick,
Please read a little more closely: "mentally ill people who stop taking their medicine".
It's not that they chose to be psychotic, it's that they chose not to take their lithium.
Warning: pedantic nitpicking incoming!
The perfectly rational amount to offer is $1; after all, it's better than nothing.
Ahh, but "nothing" is not the alternative on offer! I'm buying something for my $1 in refusing the deal, that being the aforementioned punishment. It is "perfectly rational" for me to do so if I value the enjoyment and/or moral satisfaction of depriving you of $19 at more than $1.
All deliberate human action is rational, not just that which chooses the largest pile of cash.
Personally I favor letting individuals give money to homeless shelters rather than the government. Being a libertarian doesn't mean that you don't care about the homeless, just that you don't think that the government is a charity. But that's off topic.
I think the real issue here is that no one knows what to do. Maybe having a CAT debt issue at 400 above is what it should have been the entire time. We have politicians trying to figure this out, and that's pretty scary.
Your comments on Cayne's and Fuld's wealth losses don't address the marginal utility of those wealth losses, which is a better measure of their punitive value. If I have 1 billion and am reduced to 50 million how worse off am I really? Reduced to 50 million and a 10 year jail sentence for misrepresenting my book sounds like a better incentive to me.
Actually, deinstitutionalization was a 1970s policy, and had more to do with collapsing state budgets [...]
Yes, and as you might recall Reagan was running a rather large state in the 1970s.
Dick Fuld lost about $100 million in the Lehman collapse, while the head of Bear lost $1 billion.
For Fuld, at least, the shock was cushioned by golden parachutes larger than any amount of money I'll ever see. Tell someone who's living paycheck-to-paycheck that he's been punished.
I'm supportive of the bailout, but I really want to see some of the douchebag bankers--like the one here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0TGpe2KMUs -- reduced to absolute penury. Not going from a billionaire to a millionaire, not having a rough time with another job, I want absolute fucking destitution for them. And I want them to show some fucking shame for what their total lack of prudence is going to cost the rest of us.
An odd thing about the real estate bust, versus the dot-com bust, is that this time the biggest bag holders were on Wall Street.
You don't need to be tragically denied a label; I've got one handy for you: Tory wet. I'm envisioning your study, with a nice portrait of Edward Heath over the mantel.
This is an interesting take. The comparison is intriguing, if it is a given that we are facing financial collapse.
on that note, sorry for being late to the party, but: can anyone point me to where mcardle, or someone else, makes a clear, quantified case for what a "financial collapse" DOES imply, and how we can be fairly certain that if the federal govt. doesn't massively intervene in some way similar to what it is doing right now ($700B etc), that collapse - something mcardle suggests most of us don't fully appreciate (I probably do not) - will come to pass? I've read about the first part (the 'what') but not much convincing stuff about the second (the 'why' in relation to the cause and the 'why' in relation to the proposed solution(s)). Any guidance is appreciated, thanks. -sv
I'm pretty sure Dick Fuld lost a Billion too. But the Maoists here want to destroy some guy to satisfy their class hatred. Newsflash mao boy, you have no idea what kind of products he was involved with. He was 23 and could have been in M&A for all you know. The guys who actually screwed up are older and have job titles like Senator, Congressman, CEO, trader, and mortgage broker.
Asymmetrical Maoism, class hatred central for ignorant leftist commentators with IQs below 30.
When was the last time the government achieved this much authority, and actively gave it up when the so-called threat had passed.
The wage--price controls of the 1970s.
It was a response to a supposedly-unprecedented emergency that threatened to permanently socialize part of the American economy. I recall almost the same rhetoric being used. ("Even our right-wing President has admitted the free market failed!")
Speaking of punishment, what about the dishonest borrowers who are living in McMansions and not paying their mortgages? Will they get to continue to live beyond their means as a result of some Dem "cramdown" provision? Where's the zeal for them to be punished?
Whatever new laws/judicial decisions reduced our desire/ability to institutionalize helpless people rank high on the list of cruel things we've done in the name of seeming kind.
Providing apartments is kinder than leaving folks to wander, but it's still cruel -- for the same reason it would ultimately be cruel to set 6-year-olds up in apartments and let them do as they wished.
Clearly we should give people as much freedom as they can handle, but we've clearly drawn that line in the wrong place.
Darn, now I'm curious how this happened and will have to spend the afternoon looking it up. Did "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest" screw up social services as much as "The China Syndrome" screwed up energy policy?
Ed, Mike. Fuld, since Lehman went bankrupt saw all of his Lehman stock turn into pretty pieces of paper. ( Not that he held actual pieces of paper ) I assume he took his own advice and diversified his holdings. Now some of those holding may have been diversified into Bear Stearns but not all of it. I'm sure Mr. Fuld isn't going to have to worry about making the rent on a two bedroom in Astoria anytime soon. May have to sell off the third vacation house in Aspen but he isn't going to be hurting. Mr Cayne on the other hand who "lost a billion", well it was all paper losses. To have lost that much also means he held that much. Price of Bear Stearns stock sold to J.P. Morgan was ten dollars a share. I'm sure Mr. Cayne still has plenty of money. Even at two dollars a share he has plenty of money.
... ten million dollars stuffed into a very conservative annuity gives you a very comfortable income. Ten million dollars stuffed into the mattress lets you take out 250 thousand a year for 40 years... They ain't gonna be hurting.
How about the Indian immigrant who works his butt off in Bear Stearns IT and who is struggling to make rent on a 2 bedroom in Astoria because he sends money to his mother in Bombay. You know, most people in investment banks aren't a bunch of hot-shot traders with Hermes cufflinks. Some people get so foamy in the mouth at the comeuppance those evil bankers are going to see that they don't care what collateral damage it might cause to the vast majority of people who were not taking in $5 million bonuses.
And even then, the people trading interest rate swaps who made huge bonus didn't cause this problem. As Megan said, all the mortgage guys have been fired anyway. The CEO's who oversaw these problems have been ousted. Ever heard of guys like Chuck Prince, Stan O'Neill and Marcel Ospel? There's no more heads to roll. The people on the street now aren't the ones who caused this crisis. You guys just really want to stick it to anyone making more money than you. Yeah, that makes you moral.
This is just too stupidly facile to be anything but mischievous. Here's the deal: for many, many years, middle Americans were told to rely on themselves, that to accept 'handouts' is Unamerican, that if their incomes weren't keeping up with living expenses, well, maybe they should retrain, or get a second job, or do without insurance. Government intervention is bad, and will sap our vital fluids. The big money boyz are worth every penny of their compensation, which is just the result of blind market forces and their superior skillz, augmented by superior intelligence(which doubtless has a strong genetic component.) The poor will always be with us, so let's let private charity ease their lot, rather than frittering away valuable public resources on them.
On and on and On . . . Okay. Fair enough. Americans may grumble, but they don't complain too much about the good fortune of others.
_Then_ when trouble comes a 'knockin on the doors of these genius entrepreneurs, when they're losing assets and income - like everybody else has been for years - _Now_ is the time when these scammers turn right around and insist that we're all in this together. That government intervention is the only prudent thing to do.
And it's not just the hypocrisy that's galling; it's the speed and alacrity with which these free-market boosters so expediently abandon their values and their 'scientific' captitalism, the 'science' that proved that the decline in median income was just the inevitable working-out of the consequences of the Laws of Economics (I've had libertarian types say with a straight face that they're every bit as fundamental as the laws of physics.)
So yeah, the little guys are pretty het up about the carryings-on of their betters.
But that's not the problem, here.
The problem is equating lack of help for these wights with punishment.
That's a profound misuse of the language, given that the lack of aid to smaller, less well connected groups was in no way supposed to be considered punishment.
Further, I strongly suspect that this misuse of terminology was deliberate; it's a move, both cynical and pathetic, to paint any opposition to a bailout as some sort of mean-spirited payback. No, it's not 'payback', mean-spirited or otherwise. Payback would be something more along the lines of tarring and feathering, or the bastinado, or being run out of town on a rail. Or pouring molten gold into these lying theives' mouths (survivable).
Government intervention is bad, and will sap our vital fluids.
The phrase you're looking for is "precious bodily fluids."
I've had libertarian types say with a straight face that they're every bit as fundamental as the laws of physics
I've had economists tell me their profession suffers from "physics envy." And hey, they do use Hamiltonians for something or other!
Further, I strongly suspect that this misuse of terminology was deliberate; it's a move, both cynical and pathetic, to paint any opposition to a bailout as some sort of mean-spirited payback. No, it's not 'payback', mean-spirited or otherwise. Payback would be something more along the lines of tarring and feathering, or the bastinado, or being run out of town on a rail. Or pouring molten gold into these lying theives' mouths (survivable).
Why not both? Bailouts to save the economy, while some reasonable percentage of the douchebags who got us into this mess get tarred and feathered?
Half of the story can be really, really misleading. Yes, REagan was governor of California when we "deinstitutionalized." But it wasn't his idea. Rather it was a change which was pushed (very vigorously) by liberals who were of the vocal opinion that the mentally ill were being ill done by, and would be much better off with "community care."
Unfortunately, as we have seen, there wasn't much community care provided. And certainly not much mental health help for those dumped out into their communities. Hence the most visible parts of the homeless problem. If you think that Reagan (and thus conservatives) are responsible, just try suggesting a return to institutional care for the mentally ill. Bring up that idea in California, and you can count of being roundly denounced by every liberal in the state.
Sorry, but you'll have to find something else to blame Reagan for. This one won't fly with anyone who was actually in California at the time.
You're right, Rob. My apologies. And Matt, I don't particularly care to punish anyone, nor do I think that most of the electorate want to punish those who they believe to be of the responsible class.
I'm merely pointing out that with-holding goodies that they themselves would in other circumstances would be the first to denounce as 'will-sapping' or some such twaddle for the lower orders, the rude mechanicals and the street sweepers and shop girls can in no way shape or form be construed as 'punishment'.
My daughter tried that line out on me when she was ten, claiming that not giving her that pink razor phone she wanted was, like, abuse. I gave no more weight to her theory then than I do that same theory issuing from the mouths of supposed grown-ups now. Though I will admit that she got her pretty pink phone on her eleventh birthday (This Christmans it'll probably be the G3 and a nice but low-end laptop.)
"Here's the deal: for many, many years, middle Americans were told to rely on themselves, that to accept 'handouts' is Unamerican"
Certainly they weren't told this by President Bush, he of compassionate conservatism. And for "many, many years" most Americans have been effectively on the government dole, with the bottom 50% of earners paying all of 3% of the income taxes. Bush made the tax code even more progressive, and was happy to hand out checks to average Americans, like he did this year. Bush thought there was nothing wrong with the government giving you a "hand up".
So spare us the mythology that Ayn Rand was running the country for the last 7 years and change.
In regards to the tale of the homeless, how would you keep the "free apartment" offer from drawing in the non-hardcore homeless-- or a lot of other people who might like a rent-free life?
Sigh. Fred, closing your eyes and wishing reality just doesn't work. What we're seeing right now are the results of people who think like you being put in charge of running the affairs of the country. Further, you've already been told why your 'accounting' by taking ratios is so much bunkum. And that's not partisanship by any stretch of the imagination; that's simple arithmetic.
If you want to look like the crazy man on the corner yelling that math has a liberal bias, by all means, be my guest.
Fuld owned Lehman stock worth $774,965,082 (10,519,412 shares at $73.67 each) according to the SCHEDULE 14A from April 2007. By 2008's 14ahe owned even more shares, so he lost closer to a billion bucks than a $100 million.
"What we're seeing right now are the results of people who think like you being put in charge of running the affairs of the country."
No we're not. People like me think that if you can't afford a down payment and you don't have good credit, you shouldn't get a loan. People like George Bush, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (and perhaps you) think otherwise.
"Further, you've already been told why your 'accounting' by taking ratios is so much bunkum."
If I've already been told that, it must not have been a compelling tale, because I don't remember it. If you'd like to explain how someone in, say, the bottom 40% of income earners is paying his 'fair share' of the overhead of this country, I'd be happy to read what you have to say.
Would a contraction in the credit economy really hurt everyone equally? Would some people benefit? Perhaps people who understood how unsustainable the current situation was?
What this convinces me of is that the middle classes, and particularly the upper-middle classes, in the US would happily back a complete dictatorship and a police state in order to protect their comfortable standards of living. Which makes all their lip service about freedom and human dignity completely empty. A contraction might actually get people back into the business of providing for human needs, rather than gaming markets. That's what economies are supposed to do, after all, right? Provide for human needs?
People like me think that if you can't afford a down payment and you don't have good credit, you shouldn't get a loan. People like George Bush, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (and perhaps you) think otherwise.
What happened, unfortunately, was that even if you knew better, housing prices (and thus, rental prices) were getting inflated nationally by the ballooning credit. If you didn't play along, you might not get housing at all.
The fact that housing costs are excluded from the consumer price index only made things worse.
Hey Megan's Intern,
Feel free to delete the comment by Hey at September 25, 2008 6:19 PM. I think he's on my side in this debate, but calling random people Maoists and making derogatory comments about IQ is not in the spirit of the comments policy.
Carry on!
Fred: "Further, you've already been told why your 'accounting' by taking ratios is so much bunkum."
If I've already been told that, it must not have been a compelling tale, because I don't remember it. If you'd like to explain how someone in, say, the bottom 40% of income earners is paying his 'fair share' of the overhead of this country, I'd be happy to read what you have to say.
I know I shouldn't bite but-
It's the margin, dude.
Income can be divided into expenses and discretionary income.
If you're in the bottom 40%, your discretionary income will be -oh, let me make something up- say 1 to 20% of your total income. If you pay 5% of your income in taxes, you are paying from a quarter to four times your discretionary income in taxes. If 80% of your income is discretionary, you would have to be taxed at 20% to 320% of your gross income to have the same impact on your discretionary income.
A flatter tax rate curve produces a much bigger bite of discretionary income for the poor than for the rich. Thus, a progressive tax system may tax, say, 20% of what each earner has "to give"- which seems like a perfectly fair share to me.
Well, according to the $20 story, no one really knows what the workable price is that will work, so why not this:
Put each security on eBay with enough information about the underlying holdings so that bidders can decide what they want to bid.
Not government bidders, private bidders.
Sell this excess junk on eBay. There's your price discovery.
I am a responsible renter without mental problems who is not getting a mortgage cramdown or a free apartment but certainly paying for everyone else's. Makes me want to study the DSM-IV-R to figure out how to fake mental illness to get a free apartment. Honestly, why try any more? It's like swimming upstream in mud. Might as well just relax into poverty.
Gene2: "How about the Indian immigrant who works his butt off in Bear Stearns IT and who is struggling to make rent on a 2 bedroom in Astoria because he sends money to his mother in Bombay."
Yeah, people doing IT on wall street are really "struggling to make rent." (Actually a few are, but only because they stupidly insist on living in midtown/the village.) The Bear people who weren't hired by JP typically got 1-2 years of severance, on condition that they stayed on during an orderly transition period.
I think that qualifies as "laughing all the way to the bank".
This math clearly does has a liberal basis. My discretionary income hasn't changed for the worse, and I'm unemployed.
Admittedly, I have had to move to Puerto Ricans for my relief, as they are generally cheaper.
They're a little too brown for my liking, but lovely boys all the same.
Ironically, 'help or punish' is the name one of the games we often play.
You guys just really want to stick it to anyone making more money than you. Yeah, that makes you moral.
No, I want to stick it to these guys who made money because now, when their reckless investment strategies totally failed, they have the gall to show up saying "bail us out, or the whole economy is going under" and have managed to make those liabilities so great that they're right. These guys are no heroes of the free market--it was only free for them when they were making money.
And in general, I'm fine with them making money, as long as they don't manage to socialize their losses. Since that's going to happen one way or another ("minor" socialization if we do the bailout, massive socialization if the economy stops), I'd at least like to get the satisfaction of some schadenfreude for my $700 billion.
You're a doctor, aren't you? All those intimate medical details of the medical woes of the downtrodden.
Then you really don't care what happens, just so long as this segment of your market, the homeless, gets served by your cruddy monopoly. And your monopoly always gets its money - the government's paycheck never bounces. Safe, easy money and everybody feels so good, don't you know. Never enough, but safe.
Let's strip away all this altruism, help - your - fellow man, Gee mommy and daddy, I'm a blessed Doctor like you dreamed of, BS. Your 'profession' is just running another scam like the rest of us, DOCTOR, your saintly majesty.
Darn, now I'm curious how this happened and will have to spend the afternoon looking it up. Did "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest" screw up social services as much as "The China Syndrome" screwed up energy policy?
Yes. For example, electroshock therapy now is seen as a form of torture, when it is in reality an effective, safe, and painless way to treat severe depression, esp. in populations that are unable to take some of the drugs now used, or if you can't wait for the drugs to kick in. It also made everyone think that the mentally ill are cute and fun instead of (in many cases) scary and dangerous. And that there were thousands of Nurse Ratcheds running mental hospitals like concentration camps.
I've volunteered at a local "day center" for the homeless run by my church. Open Friday to Sunday, we provide a hot meal (over 500/day) to all comers and offer laundry service and use of a private bathroom with shower on a first-come basis. No preaching, though a priest is available to talk to.
I'd guess that 80% of the people we serve are drug or alcohol abusers, based on their behvior and physical signs. Some are new to town and out of money. Some are poor, living in flop houses. Some live on the street.
There are also programs available to help with addiction, including a program to get those living on the street a job and an apartment. The apartments aren't free, though they are subsidized, because free stuff isn't valued as much as something you have to pay for.
"I'm not a real libertarian. Having a workable political philosophy is actually more important to me than hewing rigidly to my label, thanks."
Minor quibble. A patchwork of beliefs vaguely joined by how much it will impact your ability to attend dinner parties, and definitely devoid of attention to fundamental principles, is not a political philosophy.
The portion about the homeless being addicts, drunks or mentally disturbed people off their medications is repugnant. I made a mess of my life and marriage before age 38--when I was diagnosed bipolar and everything changed. BTW, assuming these people have access to psychiatrists, where do they get the money to pay for their meds? Their employer provided health insurance? My prescriptions alone cost about $800/month!
Group housing with supervision and treatment is the best solution. Of course the libertarians don't want to pay for this, and the insurance companies sure won't.
A patchwork of beliefs vaguely joined by how much it will impact your ability to attend dinner parties, and definitely devoid of attention to fundamental principles, is not a political philosophy.
Translation: Unless you share my imprudent fetish for a handful of principles (let the devil take the rest) you are unprincipled and shallow.
I find that people who use terms like compassion, moralit5y, and decent, use them in terms of other people's money. When confronted with the street person they give a disguisted snort and move on quickly wondering how this individual dared to invade their space.
Charity always seems to be a government affair where personal sacrifice and concern is never at question.
It is so much easier and cheaper to use other people's money. What a wonderful progressive attitude.
Megan, I'm curious: where do you stand on the sometimes-debated ban of A People's History of the United States from public libraries?
On the plus side of the equation, it must be taken into account how many lives we might we be able to save. How many unformed, impressionable minds stumble across "history" like this that is meant to goad them into doubting the value of such things as traditional American virtues? Deprived of the confidence that each one of us the blessed derives from the underlying rectitude of this Greatest Experiment, what else might they lose? Their will to persevere and remain obedient and faithful when life is not as perfect as they wish it would be? Their will to stay away from the drugs, disaster and homelessness that characterize the lives of those who do not believe in the benevolence of humble Christian authority?
On the other side, however, we must understand that banning a book like Howard Zinn's would only provide a focus point for the anger of those who want to hand out pitchforks, Otis Redding records and Molotov cocktails to anyone who is willing to bleed a little for the chance to destroy something priceless from the estate.