SanFran is about to open up an "Injection Zone" where junkies can get free needles and shoot up without fear of prosecution.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/art...n-12553616.php
How much Heroin can you buy every month with 500 bucks?
Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for that dumb bastard.
More germane to another thread, perhaps, but there have been many times when my wife and I could have been eligible for assistance, but we always stuck it out. Most notable was the year right after college, where she and I and two roomates tried to figure out how to heat and eat as we shared a small house in our college town. Right across the street were two other musicians in our roomates band; they were always out on the porch barbecuing and drinking beer. Early on, we found out that they were using food stamps to buy the steak, and their gig income to buy the beer. They actually bragged openly about it, and mocked us for not doing the stamps.
Fortunately, the dog we had at the time—a wonderful rottie/aus shepherd cross—sensed our angst and made it a point to make a beeline for their lawn each and every time we let him out late night for his last dump of the day.
And so it went, this uneasy stalemate; us privately disapproving of their gaming of the system, and them being positive that it was our Rottie doing the stealth bombing, but not being able to prove it conclusively.
There's actually a lot to recommend replacing the current social welfare programs (with the exception of Medicare) with a minimum income. I know, I know, "SOCIALISM!!!!" and what not, but the economy is changing and what we're doing isn't going to work long term. Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano" will eventually be real. Maybe not in my lifetime, but technology isn't slowing down. 10% of jobs in the US are transportation...what's self driving cars going to do to that segment? What's the new segment that's going to expand to replace them? We're not in the Industrial Revolution where agricultural labor shifts to factories. The Information Revolution doesn't produce the number of jobs, especially for blue collar workers, that the Industrial Revolution did. New apps don't take the man-hours new cars do.
https://lifehacker.com/what-you-need...ome-1825172737 is worth a read, and the links contained, before making a decision.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
The article says the national poverty level is $12k, but I'm guessing its probably closer to double that number when you're in commuting distance of San Francisco. I'm not sure what they expect this experiment to show if they're only providing the citizens with half, probably less, of the local poverty level.
Philosophically, IF the would actually replace the "patchwork of entitlements" with a single system, then I wouldn't have much problem with it on a large scale. But they won't. Truth be told, I wouldn't have a problem with government entitlement programs if they were voluntary and I could opt out. Don't pay in, don't get a pay out.
#Taxationistheft
David S.
So how will a minimum income be sustainable? It won't be enough to raise people out of their situation, just enough to keep them alive and dependent. For ever. At no time in history has a country spent itself out of hard times -- a country must produce its way out of hard times. In order for the minimum income idea -- which is most certainly socialism -- to have even a slight chance of success the country must first find a way to pay for it by adapting to the new information age. Greed will become an obstacle to this, of course.