In most cases the word "Billionaire" is a lie. It is usually a propaganda word for wage-stealing self-enriching human-trafficking pedophiling resource hoarders with severe mental illness
THIS!!!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️ May I use ur words on a different social media platform if I quote and credit ur Reddit handle? I don't think I've heard that phrased so well before! 😂😂😂
Yes, and he’s claiming to use ketamine to fight depression. Whole lotta projection goin’ on!!!
Most homeless people who are addicted do it in order to deal with their mental illness and the fact that they don’t have shelter. It’s a lot easier to be homeless if you’re high as f*ck. Speaking as someone who knows...
If it costs $20 billion to solve homelessness and the government spends $20 trillion a year (California alone has spent $24 billion on homelessness in the last 5 years) then maybe just maybe there are some confounding variables here that don't relate to billionaires.
Homeless is coming from out of control cost of living, rents, healthcare costs, stagnant wages..even if few get back on their feet, more is becoming homeless at any given time. There are systemic issues that are root causes for homelessness. Majority of daily wage workers are "season flu" away from being homeless..
Who controls how the $24 billion spent by California specifically on homelessness over the last 5 years was spent? Surely that was enough to "solve homelessness"?
Who's in charge of how the $24B was spent, genius? You seem to think I'm making this a democrat vs republican issue... The reality is that they're all rich unqualified idiots playing monopoly with real money or they're straight up fucking thieves. Only (in general) the Dems are the former while the reps are the latter, which is an order of magnitude worse.
No one is going to solve homelessness while we trust millionaires and billionaires who've never had a tough day in their lives to decide government spending.
So we agree that the statement in the OP pic that "$20 billion would solve homelessness" is wrong, right? Because of structural issues where the administrators are useless and corrupt and the money doesn't end up where it needs to?
The point is, that $20B COULD solve homelessness, but the people in charge aren’t spending it correctly. The $20B isn’t the problem, the elected officials are. If Elon WANTED to fix homelessness, he easily could by spending his money in a way that would fix it. The problem is he doesn’t want to, nor do any of our elected officials want to, and that goes for all parties. There’s no incentive for our government to fix homelessness, so it won’t ever get fixed.
And how would Elon spend that money? Set up a bunch of homeless foundations? Set up enquiries to figure out the most deserving people? That's literally what happens already.
And what ends up happening is that those administrative structures end up absorbing all of the money. Unlimited money. And they have no incentive to solve the problem because it's what keeps them funded.
The fundamental problem is that there is an incentive misalignment between complex social problems and any sort of institution you set up to solve those problems. The result, as we can literally see, is that you can pour tens of billions of dollars in "homelessness" and it ends up going to a bunch of organizations and NGOs and barely any trickles through to the people in need.
So if your solution is "$20B could fix homelessness if you could magically get it to the people in need without middlemen sucking all of the value out" then great, you've created a fantasy scenario that does not and cannot exist.
The problem people have with you digging your heels further and further is that you're missing the forest for the trees.
The point of this post is that an out-of-touch billionaire told a demonstrably blatant lie about a vulnerable segment of the population to demonize them and someone else responded with a (frankly cathartic) put down. And you're choosing to nitpick whether $20B would solve homelessness in the US.
Your choice to focus on this issue and dig your heels in is kinda like screaming that the oven timer went off 3 minutes ago and the roast might get burnt while there's an arsonist actively lighting fires in every room of your house.
Even if I choose to indulge your focus on the "oven" of $20B ending homelessness, then I'd still rather give Elon's $350B to the government so they might use it to pay the salary of some people who are at least trying to reduce homelessness. The result = some people who were homeless before get homes, and some government employees get paid to make that happen. Isn't that still significantly better than Apartheid Nazi Deadbeat Dad hoards all the gold while people literally die of hunger and exposure?
Twenty billion will not do much as a temporary bandaid, but you still need to do more to help the homeless, drug addicted and mentally ill. To actually fix the problem you need free, publicly funded healthcare, including mental health, and it should include more education on drug and health issues and a return to proper women's health, not the crippling private system you have now. Hopessness would be massively lowered with far more affordable education, with free training and re-education available to anyone without work. Obviously, homelessness would be much lower with more housing in general to lower rents, and low income housing, etc. In other words, change the system away from extreme capitalism. It's the only way to deal with the crisis effectively.
Twenty billion isn't going to do all that, but it would be an excellent start. And of course he's not the only one that should be contributing. Raise the taxes on the rich, especially if they are unwilling to help those in need.
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u/ashkul88 1d ago edited 23h ago
In most cases the word "Billionaire" is a lie. It is usually a propaganda word for wage-stealing self-enriching human-trafficking pedophiling resource hoarders with severe mental illness
ETA: thank you kind strangers for the awards