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When I see things like this it makes me so proud of my parents. They are the few people I know who do foster care because they care. They have actual love for every kid that ever walked through their doors. They have had so far 3 kids that moved back home at one point or another and for all 3 of them the only question They ever asked was “how soon do you want to move in?”
At the same time stuff like this hurts me because I always thought unconditional love was the standard growing up. The knowledge that most people didn’t / don’t have that is so sad.
Anyway on a side note I am going to call my folks and tell them how great they are.
I’m grateful for my parents as well.
No one should judge homeless people. It’s easy to judge being in a privileged position, but without having experienced bad shit yourself you should just shut the fuck up. Maybe help the less privileged, otherwise you will be judged by my.
I don’t think people judge them specifically, around me are a lot of scammers, making it very difficult to know who needs “help”
That shouldn’t be a reason to ensure more money to go to the ultra rich while making the lives of the poor even more miserable.
But you can’t tell if they really need help. Look up the fake violin beggars. It’s very similar, panhandle all day, then go home.
What does that have to do with ultra rich?
Who said we’re making their lives more miserable?
The western world is heading towards the right, destroying social structures in governments. Increasing taxes for the poor, grocery costs, rent and house prices, stripping health care and education systems. While at the same time we ensure the ultra rich get more power and money and can continue not paying any taxes.
But your argument is also wrong. Just because you can’t tell who really needs help you don’t help anyone? Just because a car can have an accident you don’t drive at all? Do you think the street violin players are rich? In my city there’s an east European gang dropping off beggers at certain spots, forcing them to beg. It’s very clear who’s part of this organization and who’s a local homeless person. I always give our local homeless money or food. I volunteer at a venue where the homeless can get free coffee or tea and twice a week a free meal. I vote left, I live in a left city and I speak out for social structures and against nazis. Friends who are struggling financially I financially support, like my past holiday to Cambodia, 2 of my friends and I payed for the entire holiday of one of our friend so he could join us. Every bit helps, even the smaller ones.
I’m struggling in life as well, just not financially (PTSD). I get support from friends and the government. It helps me to live from day to day. There are people judging me, telling me “just have a different mindset”. These are people who never had a struggle in their life. They are completely lost when they ever hit an obstacle in life, but until then they don’t care about others who struggle and they judge them for “not making different choices” etc. “Why don’t you get a job and buy a house”, while this homeless person lives in a constant psychosis and can’t do anything else then play air guitar on the streets. Or because this guy won boxing championships back in the days which got him extreme brain damage, ending his career and putting him on the streets drowning him in alcohol and drugs. These are our most famous homeless persons, who have died in the past 3 years. But everyone has their own story and reasons for why they ended up in the fucked up position no one wants to be in. Even the beggers who are forced to work for this criminal organization. I feel sorry for them, I just don’t know how to help them because everything goes to the criminals who control them and keep their passports.
Yeah, there’s that too. A decade or more ago, our local paper ran an expose on the scammers, but they kept it reasonably constructive, giving equal space to strategies for identifying those in actual need.
For my teens, I kept it simple
- someone actively soliciting you in a high traffic area is likely a scammer
- someone sitting quietly, trying to “shrink” away from attention, whether they have their hand out or not, is more likely in need
my view of homeless people changed forever when I learned that more than half of them were foster kids who aged out of the system and were left with no family or resources.
Jesus, that’s dark.
Sure, it may sound bad when children become homeless. But have you ever thought about how much money it saves? Just think of all the good things we can afford with all that money!
Like anti-homeless park benches. Or those little speakers that emit ultra-high-pitched sounds so that young people don’t … enjoy … existing somewhere or something, idk.
And just because I’m unable to actually satirize reality at the moment, yes, /s
Yep… there’s also a massive overlap with vulnerable groups like LGBT and disabled
LGBT
X to doubt
You doubt that people put their kids on the street when they come out as gay? Lol.
I don’t doubt that, I just forgot that lemmy is like 80% american and you guys don’t have any social security over there lmao.
I’ve been homeless twice. Thankfully I had a car and I could live out of it temporarily while I found some family to save my ass while I got back on my feet.
If I hadn’t had family keep me from rock bottom it’s hard to say if I would have pulled out of those situations on my own.
Unfortunately for many people they have little to no empathy for homeless because they have been lied to or attacked by homeless and they then view all homeless that way.
I remember once in my teens I skateboarded over to a sandwich place to get lunch for myself and my brother. On the way there I passed a homeless guy with a sign asking for “anything”. I decided to get him a sandwich while I was there. Just a basic turkey sandwich or something as plain as I could think of. When I tried to give him the sandwich he threw it back at me and told me I should have just given him the money so he could get drunk.
That experience really tainted my view of the homeless from that day onwards. Then later in life I would have two different girlfriends get grabbed by homeless people over the years.
I have a buddy that lived downtown and the homeless people there were always breaking their windows and stealing their stuff. One of them set fire to the side of their house out of boredom. When the police came they just escorted him to the street and then left. He didn’t get tried for arson or anything. The cops don’t care. They have no system in place to deal with those people.
Its easy for people to have empathy for a group that they have never interacted with. Anyone who lives near homeless or regularly interacts with homeless people will tell you that not all of them are good people who just got abandoned by society. Some of them are evil bad people who have refused help or just don’t want it. Most of them need mental support.
It’s a very complicated issue and I dont think it has any easy or cheap solutions.
Same here on a few bad experiences trying to help
- a guy asked for money to get a meal combo from McDonalds. I bought him the meal combo, so he keyed my car for not giving him cash
- I suppose I can see this being taken the wrong way, but I tried emptying my pockets a few times, only for them to throw the counts on the ground. After that I started noticing homeless with coins on the ground around them
Realistically, it doesn’t matter anymore since I almost never have cash. They seem to know that world has gone too, as I’m rarely solicited anymore
Yeah I haven’t carried any cash for years and most of the time I offer to buy them food they decline. Once in awhile they take me up on the offer and are thankful but I am still always a little worried they are gonna throw it in my face after that experience I had as a kid.
It’s a shit situation all around.
I’m gonna need a source on that second claim cause it doesn’t sound right
I think the second guy had it backwards.
Wikipedia (If you don’t like it, use it’s sources):
Nearly half of foster children in the US become homeless when they reach the age of 18
That’s still really bad though
That’s honestly worse.
Backwards as in “less than half” vs “more than half”.
Yeah that’s just the telephone chain effect (or whatever they call it).
1: Source says 45%
2: Guy reads source and says “nearly half”
3: Chap listens to Guy and says “half”
4: Dude listens to Chap and says “more than half”
5: Uni-Grad hears Dude and says “a significant amount of”
6: Media hears Uni-Grad and says “almost all”Backwards as in half of foster kids, not half of homeless people.
Ahh right. I didn’t notice that part.
Guess I should have read the image as carefully as your text.
between 2 and 3 there is a step that goes from “nearly half” to “roughly half” and that is what makes that jump easier you would also likely see that between 3 and 4.
however 2-4 are not needed because 45% is by most metrics a “significant amount”
Forced Homelessness is the policy of many Governments and the DOJ in the United States as a means of punishing those they are after without any due process. Your ability to work or even have ID can be taken from you if they choose to do it. Your money can be taken. Your bank accounts can be frozen.
City, State and Federal Governments have been creating these zones where large numbers of homeless and poor people are forced into with a kind of virtual redlining. Usually, these are downtown areas in major cities, and then the system creates the ability to target them with systemic drug usage, even to the point of the government supplying pipes and needles for people to use. They are given just enough food to stay alive while forced into this position. No employers are going to hire anyone and it isn’t like it used to be where someone can just walk into a factory and make enough money in cash to live for a week.
In many ways it is a public execution system that just operates very slowly and you’ll only occasionally notice the dead body— which even are often not recorded as a death correctly, and it’s nothing you will see in the obituary sections of your newspapers. Imagine a system that lets tons of your former neighbors die slowly on the street while everyone walks by inside their little tech bubbles of safety, confident in the belief that it could never be them.
At some point, it’s really about your view of a human life versus your value of money. At some point along the way, it was decided that the amount of money someone has at that point in time determines their value as a person to even keep existing, or to have basic rights…
If Governments wanted to solve the problem, they could find a building to put people in, they could force drug rehab on some, others probably should be in jail. The ones willing and able to work should be given the opportunity, with a path out of the state imposed public execution systems, and back to a life where they are capable of taking care of themselves.
“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.”
Well said!
fuck.
One in four foster kids will end up homeless.
https://nfyi.org/issues/homelessness/
up to 3 out of 10 homeless people are foster kids who aged out.
what the fuck.
I thought it was bad enough knowing about the veteran rights.
some of the studies show higher rates.
The studies. on the homeless children.
Also black families are over-policed, and their kids more likely to be put into foster care “National estimates suggest that 53% of Black children will experience CPS contact by age 18, as compared to 28% of White children” “We consider that, at their root, these inequities are the consequence of systemic racism: there is no inherent relationship between race and child maltreatment. Rather, race is a proxy for the societal and institutional privileges and oppressions people experience because of their membership in a racialized group” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9325927/
Movement for Family Power is a great advocacy organization if you want to get involved https://www.movementforfamilypower.org/
“National estimates suggest that 53% of Black children will experience CPS contact by age 18, as compared to 28% of White children”
Holy shit both of those are so high, and the the difference is also crazy
To be fair the word contact is kinda sus. I had CPS “contact” when I broke my arm in kindergarten.
I was pushed off the play ground by another kid while at school. My parents were both at work. I had a lot of bruises they also didn’t like. I remember getting questioned about it at the hospital for what felt like forever. They kept pointing out scrapes and bruises and asking how that happened. I had no clue and kept saying from playing.
That sounds like the bare minimum to qualify as contact.
Those contacts can be compared to a broken taillight or stop and frisk—it’s an opportunity to probe deeper and find anything at all to justify further surveillance and actions taken against families who are often impoverished and the hard life that creates.
Also impacts Native Americans. ICWA was put in place to basically stop DHS from kidnapping native kids. (The Right has been waging a war against ICWA for a while too - they tend to be against any form of oversight in child welfare/adoption. They want kids to go to “quiverful” white families)
If you want more statistical horror, look up foster care to prison pipeline
So when conservatives want to ban abortions they are basically trying to increase the flow in this pipeline to get more prison slave labor
Yep, people are only a commodity to be manipulated by the capitalist systems
10000% yes. The easiest people to manipulate are the desperate and manipulators love dangling carrots.
What’s worse is that this is easily recognizable but nothing will ever be done about the nutjobs who enjoy watching others suffer at their hand.
There is no reason to believe we don’t live in hell
But “poors” “ruin” “great American cities”
Make me a billionaire. Say now I’m a super selfish billionaire. I’m OK with having to ride my limo through SF, routing around the Tenderloin, to rub shoulders with those Silicon Valley MAGAs at their fundraisers? Why don’t my buddies and I stop the madness, call it Euthanize The Poors if we have to, but with crime down security costs go down too and any reproductively-derived assets (children) must be safer…
Gated communities are cool but sightseeing is part of life. I’m a selfish billionaire but I can’t visit Honduras safely b/c I haven’t fixed global poverty, now I never get to see it. My yacht is good enough for me I guess fine
Multiple angles really.
Biggest one is that a child is both a financial and mental stress on a parent, and our society overwhelming believes that children are primarily the responsibility of the mother. By attacking abortion, they basically saying that every woman is just one sexual assault away from a lifetime of financial, emotional, mental and social duress.
The second reason is class stratification. The financial stresses impact less wealthy families or individuals disproportionately, and less wealthy people cannot afford to travel to areas where reproductive care is legal, nor can they afford the lawyers required to fight the potential criminal cases or just pay their fines. The rich conservatives bankrolling these anti-abortion groups aren’t threatened or beholden to the policy they create.
The third reason is racism. Black women are more likely to seek abortions, partly because they suffer a higher incidence of sexual assault, but also because they have less access to reproductive resources and education. Republicans have dog whistled this in the past by trying to say that abortions are racist because black women have a disporportionate number of abortions, even going so far as to call it a Democrat genocide on African-Americans. This dog whistle shows their true intentions; force financial, mental, and social stress in ways that are “equal” along racial lines, but not “equitable”.
You could say that religion is a 4th reason, but I don’t consider it a real reason, and they cherry-pick their religious convictions anyway. You see those motherfuckers eating shellfish and wearing blended fibers all the time.
Not trying to defend their position but young kids given up for adoption at or near birth are overwhelmingly adopted. There are lines and a whole grey market.
It’s kids with shitty parents that get removed after the toddler phase that tend to end up in the system long term.
Well yeah, obviously.
It can’t possibly be because of religion, because all of them would be damned to hell five times a day for several other reasons.
People can easily justify their own sin because they know exactly what motivates them, which is usually some other bullshit they justified to themselves already.
I have witnessed some serious mental gymnastics in my life regarding such things.
I knew a man so religious that he wouldn’t dream of letting a woman live with him if he wasn’t married to her, but he wasn’t really cheating on their two decade long relationship, because they weren’t married.
And boy oh boy, a personal relationship with god affords you all sorts of leeway. Throughout the history of Christianity, what the church had to say was very important. Not anymore. The religion has evolved so that every man is a priest, and Jesus is just wearing shades and riding shotgun wherever they go.
“I’ve never actually read the bi-buhl, but I have a personal relationship with Christ so… and when I have trouble, I just open a random page and read until I find something I relate to. That’s how he guides me, that and the feelings I have in my heart.”
Amazes me.
The reality if you’re working class in America; we’re all one really bad day and a few less people caring about us from being homeless.
It’s almost like they’re just regular people who simply experienced some bad luck.
it’s not bad luck. saying that is disingenuous.
homelessness of the societal nature and scale that is present in america rn is not the historical norm. it is absolutely despicable how western culture encourages extremist individualism to such a degree as to destroy communities. even today, in the fucking present, people not from the west often think it’s bonkers how callous and unfeeling the west is. it is not some sort of natural condition for society to hatefully cast aside its most vulnerable individuals to the wolves.
the oklahoma state government encouraged on their tourism board website a halloween themed “roadtrip” through all the “sp0oooOky OK ghost towns”… my friends and i saw it that year in high school and decided to go. do you know what we saw in these abandoned towns? a whole separate shadow society. there are millions, yes zero hyperbole, millions of unaccounted for people just here in america alone; having to build a community off the disgusting scraps of industrial civilization. millions of people not included in any sort of statistic or thought about by you or i. they’re forgotten in the most despicably sinful act against the sanctity of life itself. if there is a god, i can only hope he punishes the transgressions of our society that allowed this to come to term, normalized it even.
wake tf up. this is an attack on you, your friends, and your family. this is class warfare and these people are on the front lines. homelessness is a civil dunkirk. the images of the brother dying to overdose alone in the wilderness on the cold hard ground, the mother suffering the birth of her bastard of rape in the arms of only the cold & dark unfeeling city, the father attempting to slash his throat and leaking into a pathetic puddle of pitiful death on the alley floor, the sister wandering the wilds as her body gradually decays in spite of her divine spark of soulful life - these all should inspire a sense of community and pride that are ruthlessly held up by a white-hot rage against the machine. these people are not others. they are you. the beast prefers you not recognize yourself as its prey.
i’d consider myself an atheist. maybe a pantheist at most. but to so brazenly violate the tenet of love thy neighbor will be our greatest downfall. as the walls of modern society crumble down to the ebb of time people will not recognize their mistakes. people will run around, like headless chickens, in fear of consequences that have already came. if it is possible that some cosmic force will relent and save us some which way, i can only pray.
This right here is my biggest fear for my daughter.
She’s lazy. She’s unfocused. She’s isolated.
She is one of the greatest artists I have ever encountered in my life. Bad shit seems to come with that. I am afraid that the world will never know it because she isolates almost completely.
Her mother died from breast cancer when she was 13. I have been so unkind to my body and I’m afraid I won’t be here long enough to help her the way she might end up needing it.
She has her step dad who has remained a big part of her life since her mom passed away. He’s a great man and she and her mother were very lucky that he’s the one she found. She can’t get along with any of her mom’s family. I believe that my wife would always look out for her, but I wish they’d get closer. Her mom made that hard by saying only days before she died, “If you replace me with that woman I will spend eternity rolling in my grave.”
I have survived in this world because of my mother and my uncle. Without them I would have been homeless over and over again. I wish she would get closer with her mom’s family. I can’t make her stay with them though. Her aunt takes her to school if she misses the bus, so maybe she’ll look out for her.
It keeps me awake at night more than anything else.
Has ADHD ever been ruled out? Cause being treated, this immensely increases the chances of a healthy and successfull adulthood…
We’ve been trying to get a diagnosis for a few years. Everyone seems to agree she has it, but they’re scared to medicate her because of my issues with addiction I guess.
We’re pushing the issue next week actually.
A someone who became middle aged with it (ADHD), not knowing what it really was or how it was affecting me, it is worth the effort.
They didn’t really prepare me for how much being medicated would change my life. Not that it cures everything, but I had to deal with a profound sense of loss for a few weeks after getting setup.
I found it really hard when I started to remember all of the missed opportunities and experiences that this condition had taken from me over the years. If ADHD is the cause or a factor, she will thank you later.
I wish my parents had got me help. The poor things couldn’t help themselves though.
I waited too late with my daughter really, but we had a lot going on for a long time. Her mom lost her mind and totally threw everything in the wind and then got diagnosed with cancer and suffered horribly before dying.
I’m hoping I can get her turned around now.
My doctor won’t treat me (I definitely have adhd)because I’ve been on suboxone for a decade and they’re afraid I’ll abuse it I guess. I could go somewhere else but starting over on this is a nightmare. He says if I tested positive he’d have to put me in rehab.
When I began I had to dose in front of a doctor every morning. That went on for several months, then I went once a week. That went on for several more months, then once every two. Several more months of that and finally once a month.
On top of that, I had to go to group three times a week and one group with an actual psychologist once a month.
I’d love to be able to use my brain. It has taken me over an hour to type this comment haha. I keep forgetting and then coming back by accident when I look at my phone.
I’m sorry you are going through that.
I didn’t think the meds for adhd were addictive to people who have it?
My limited understanding is that whereas they would make a non-divergent person “high”, they make me more calm, collected and able to sort my thoughts. Just like Caffine and sugar often makes me sleepy. It’s kinda opposite.
My Dr. Told me that if I had ADHD, I would know pretty quickly when I took my first, very small, dose because if I didn’t have the condition, I would feel like I suddenly had too much energy, or like my body was vibrating.
The only thing I noticed first was that I could recall what I had to do later that day, which would not be the case otherwise.
It’s still a worry in the world of recovery.
I know this about myself for sure. I used to do coke once a year. I’d buy a weekend supply and have a ball. Can’t do that today because of fentanyl.
Anyway. I was the only person in my group that could do a bunch of coke and sleep like a baby. I’d sit up and play shooters with more focus than I’d ever had and then I’d go to bed and get up and do it again the next day.
Probably related.
That certainly sounds like it. There is basically just a big ole list of indicators of having it and if you tick enough boxes, then welcome aboard.
On the bright side. I’ve also noticed that other neuro-divergent people seem to be my favourite to hang around with. Something about being halfway through describing a thought and the other person already gets it makes me happy.
Two time boomeranging failson here.
I tried Lord how I tried. I fell flat on my face trying to make it on my own. Actually did wind up homeless for a stint. If I didn’t have the option to crawl back home to lick my wounds, I’m not sure I would have made it.
FYi readers, I don’t know the actual statistics on foster children who grow out of the system and how prevalent that is in the homeless population, but from what I know at least, particularly in my own time homeless, is that most homeless people are actually small families who live in their car or in someone’s garage.
I think we need to do a lot better to show what poverty really looks like in the USA, because we picture the media-spun image of America that we have a huge middle-class in nice suburban homes, and then there’s the “the poors” who are like, generic homeless dudes who are grizzled old bums warming their fingerless-gloved hands over a burning metal drum down in skid-row.
The reality of the distribution is the “middle class” in America is much, much smaller and more poor than most people realize. Most people who seem to “have it all” are in immense debt, and the larger percentage of families in the US are working poor, people who live in shared homes and apartments with too many other people, people who live in their car and go to work and school every day, people who live in motels and abandoned homes or who “Stay after work” to take advantage of the company showers before sleeping under the desk. These are not jokes or tropes or memes, this is really how many, many Americans live… in the wealthiest country in the world.
There are an incredible number of people with gym memberships for access to the showers.
Besides every van lifer on YouTube.
Liberals are also to blame for gaslighting and selling workers out to the capital class for 50+ years. The last Democrat President that actually fought for the proletariat was FDR with his New Deal programs.
Yes, liberals were less evil than Republicans, but when Obama tried to give us universal healthcare they stabbed him in the back and when Bernie set multiple grassroot funding records, they conspired against him and stabbed the entire nation in the back. So if we factor in the opportunities for real leftist leadership that liberals stole from us than that opportunity cost is nearly as damaging as what Republicans are doing.
nearly as damaging
really? More BS false equivalence. The liberals where never in control enough to make any of that happen. They may not be perfect by any means but to say they’re “nearly as damaging” as the right is just ridiculous.
In the past the Democrats did good things for regular people.
Today’s Democrat party is incapable of doing good things for regular people. Literally no better than Republicans these days tho.
There’s no false equivalence in comparing two arms of the same Duopoly.
Literally no better than Republicans?
You’re either a troll or completely brainrotted
Yea… dems aren’t great and I’d love to see a new party. But, I do not understand people saying “the party that is bad at governing is basically as bad as the party taking over the nation through brute force.” Insane logic.
So when do the Dems step up and do something to fight back instead of shrugging while voting for fascism?
All Dems are voting for fascism?
The votes wouldn’t be passing if they didn’t vote for it.
So if I looked up how Republicans and Democrats vote, they’d be the same? The Democratic voting history would be literally no better?
Convenient that when the GOP has a razor thin edge they get everything they want with almost no issue, but when DNC has a super majority they can barely get watered down health insurance reform.
It’s a lot easier to get things done when you get to cheat while the other side has to play by the rules.
That’s the difference between ethical governing and the unethical abuse of power.
If you want liberals to “get everything they want”, and ignore democracy, they’d have to do it unethically.
Wouldn’t it be better if everyone played by the rules, and governed like they are actually working in the best interests of voters?
The real problem is most of the DNC don’t want the things they say they do to get elected. They get the same conservative money the GOP does to be sure those things don’t happen.
Then let’s apply the same reasoning we did in November. Some unethical abuse of power is going to happen. Wouldn’t you rather it be less?
Never had a bad view of homeless people, even as a child, you gotta lack empathy to be in the position where you are adult and realise that they’re not bad.
It’s the people who pretend to be homeless and collect money that are the real scum and ruin it for the actual homeless
Recently found a pretty interesting video about China and how they combat homelessness (sorry on reddit). You can buy a 1 room apartment for $15.000 and the monthly costs are minimal. Of course I don’t truly know if there really isn’t any homelessness in China, but we absolutely have the technology to solve this problem lol
In China if you are homeless the cops pick you up and say if you work as a street cleaner you will get a home in excange.
If you don’t like that arrangement you dissappear.
In case your source for that is serpentza, then you should check this reply with more links debunking this guy and his racist views.
Obviously China is not a utopia and with a billion people things will be bad at some place or another. But cherry picked examples and wild accusations like “they will dissappear” is just anti-China propaganda.
I got a weird vibe with serpentza.
One one hand, yes he does tell the truth about China sometimes. But he also have this weird vibe like putting “My Chinese Wife” in youtube titles (like imagine a white guy in America putting “My Black Wife” in the youtube title) or even a video title designed to clickbait people like “Are Chinese Men Cowards” which its just like WTF is that title, he did answer “No” in the video, but this guy clearly doesn’t care about Political Correctness (aka: Politeness).
But he literally made a video recently proclaiming the USA is “the best” country in the world. Not “one of the best”, he said “the best”. The Video was made after trump won the election for the second time.
You can’t take this guy seriously.
The homeless thing is real tho. They exist. But my point is: serpenza is a joke.
Edit: This is the video where serpentza said the “America is Best” thing: https://youtu.be/1hePvgiYyhU?t=1029 (Starts at 17:09)
“America is the best country I’ve ever lived in” Which is because he have lived in 3 countries, South Africa, PRC, USA, of course the US seems the best, because he haven’t lived (as in long-tern) in EU countries, but then he doubled down in the next sentence:
“America is the best country in the world” LOL nope. Dude forgot the EU Exists. 🤣
Video was published in December 30, 2024, like… bruh… forgot the LGBT people? Minorities? Immigrants? 🤔 This is white privilage in action. Maybe he isn’t malicious, but this is peak ignorance and being totally out of touch, even if he has good intents.
Serpentza is compelling and interesting on a cursory glance. And I don’t know if he is consciously racist or how far his biases go. The bigger problem is that there are “algorithmic forces” shaping content and content creators.
The content creators wants to make money, needs to make money. They will experiment with various things. They make compelling content, don’t have time to deeply study history or sociology or economics, only enough to project an image. Psychological needs from narcissism might make them unable to resist rationalizations in exchanges for clicks.
There have been quite a few cases with supposedly liberal or leftist icons suddenly turning to reactionary rhetoric. It’s hard to understand and somewhat traumatizing. Recently TYT. I think the moral of the story is that much of it is subconsciously performative and not well thought out beliefs. And economic reality makes ideology a lie.
I think Serpentza fits in there somewhere, if he’s not outright paid indirectly by the state department to spread propaganda.
outright paid indirectly by the state
I think he realized the US’s turn towards fascism and amp up the right-wing rhetoic to secure his adjustment of status. AFIAK, he is still a citizen of South Africa, and I’m not even sure if he has permanent residency in the US, or just some visa. I think he’s bootlicking to make sure he doesn’t get deported to South Africa.
And he’s a cishet white man, so this spiral into fascism doesn’t affect him, which is why he’s too blind to see the shit that’s been happening.
And its also the fact that he criticized South Africa and China too much, he just has to keep his mouth shut about the US to stay out of trouble, kinda similar to how Snowden went against the US, and now he is in a situation where he can’t criticize the Russian government.
I don’t know who that is.
I read news articles.
The news articles I read said they offer homeless people housing for work, if they refuse they are “reeducated” which is one of the many ways people dissapear in the China meat grinder.
I went to Shanghai last year and there were, in fact, homeless people around. Not many at all, but I was surprised to see any.
It’s probably mostly accurate, most other developed nations DO prioritize housing and caring for their homeless because it just makes sense that if you don’t want decay in your population, you do SOMETHING to take care of them.
Now that said, I am far more concerned/curious how China is handling one of the leading causes of homelessness which is mental and physical health problems, and how much access the average person starting to slip through the cracks can get to proper healthcare.
I am not well versed on China’s healthcare situation though, and it’s been almost 17 years since I’ve been there last, when I was there people seemed kind of… miserable. Overworked, unable to afford more than the most basic amenities and living conditions. At least the working-class drivers and clerks. Honestly, China 17 years ago feels a lot like many places in the US right now.
Well, for 2022 I found that the average wage is 2600¥ or 330€ per month (with enormous differencs between the regions). That means a flat is 4 annual salaries on average, assuming ithe 15000$ or 14000€. That’s not that much off a difference to Germany, where I am from.
So one could argue that this is just the advise “get a job and buy a house!!!” To a homeless person.
But absolute scale makes a difference, especially if you compare having a job or not, and how expensive it is to give a home to a homeless person. My impression was that they just give you an apartment for free.
The proper comparison would be complicated, when building and maintaining an apartment block, how much money is siphoned off as profit to the capitalists?
Also e.g. Germany has a lot of regulations which is sometimes nice, but also lead to higher costs. Like converting your car to electric isn’t done in Germany, because regulations demand you make an EMF test which costs something 5-10 thousand euro. So there are practically none. That held back private innovation for EVs. There are countless regulations for building too which might sound good on paper but have been tweaked to only benefit the capitalists and make costs go up and projects take forever.
Then in Germany you wouldn’t give an apartment as a homeless person for free, you’d have to show that you’re jobless and that has to be verified then they give you money then you can pay rent to someone. Although I’m not quite sure how the situation in Germany is overall.
4x the annual median salary for a house sounds amazing to me. In the US, low cost of living areas can have a median income of $40k and houses will still cost $320k (8x your annual salary). In areas like San Francisco, median income is around $140k while median house prices are $1.2M (8x the annual income).
So it seems that housing is twice as affordable in China and Germany.
I think there are more factors at play than you’re giving credit. For example, Germany has an average cost of 3000-5000 euro per m^3 which translates to ~$320-540/sqft. In the US the average cost of a house is ~$146/sqft in the south, ~$156/sqft in the midwest, ~$220/sqft in the north, and ~$195/sqft in the west. So while the 8x vs 4x comparison is accurate, you’re probably also getting 50% less house in Germany.
But keep in mind that here you compare a house (!) in the US, to a single bedroom apartment in china. That is quite a difference.
