California is spending 12 billion dollars And the homeless number still went up that’s more than Tilman and Les can afford to pay for nba players and a stadium @Jontro @basso
there is no generalization, money could be helpful if put into rehabilitating people, educating. But to buy people homes etc won't. Don't beleive me, look at Delonte, we don't have to think "oh what if he had millions of dollars" If anything more money helps speed up their demise/end
Well, since he hasn't done that, I assume he doesn't want to, so stealing it would be the only way. I don't know enough about Tesla's operations to know what would happen if he divested himself of all his stock. When the stock crashed, would the people who have a lot of their compensation tied up in stock or stock options stick around? How important are they to the company? You can in fact pay more yourself, though. Democrats make up about half of the people in America and want to raise taxes. If every Democrat paid the rates they say are people's fair share, they could raise as much as they want the government to have. The issue is almost everyone that wants to raise taxes only wants to raise other people's taxes (as I said above, it is always easier to spend other people's money). You don't need to guarantee everyone else will do it, you can get the ball rolling and convince a few other people to follow suit, then they convince a few more people and build momentum for the idea. If no one takes the first step, it will never happen. Look what happened with Buffet and Gates. They both pledged to give most of their wealth to charity, and it really caught on with the mega rich. Be the change you want to see in the world. It was illustrative. You are happy to have Musk spend his money housing the homeless (and not a small amount either, more than a third of his net worth) but you don't think kicking in $1380 is reasonable. The reason I mentioned Biden voters is because this line of thinking is common among them. Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos have a lot of money, and we have all this stuff we want to spend money on. Wouldn't it be great if they spent their money on this stuff. If I had 300 billion dollars, I would spend 200 billion helping people, even though I don't spend nearly such a percentage of my own money helping people now. In answer to your question, no, if I had nearly three hundred billion dollars I wouldn't waste more than a third of it buying $200,000 houses for the homeless, especially when we have seen in California that spending billions fighting homelessness doesn't work. Most of the homeless are not long term homeless. It isn't the same 500,000 people that have been homeless forever. People lose their housing temporarily and then find a new living situation when they stabilize, then other people become homeless. The long term homeless are generally not that way just because they can't afford rent, they have other issues that make keeping a job impossible for them. That is a significantly smaller number, and they are not going to be able to maintain a household, even if you gave it to them for free. So the concept of solving homelessness by buying houses for the homeless is just a basic misunderstanding of the problem(s).
300B is larger than most sovereign wealth funds out there. That's like filthy oil money with 2000ft castles built on sand and harem armies at your beck and call. I think pension funds are the bigger evil as their goal is purely to chase higher yields at the expense of long term stability from their investments. 8% is becoming tad unrealistic but maybe passives came too late in the game. Or maybe it's etfs with their oversaturated desire for "liquid" high volume stocks that will doom the market. Things are getting out of hand....
You can give a person a fish but the return on that is very low. You are going to have to keep doing it and you will eventually run out of your resources. Teaching a person how to fish yields a much higher return. It would be much more effective to fund education and mental programs for the homeless. And sure, you can provide temporary shelters and food while they participate. Some billionaires are willing to give most of their fortune away. MacKenzie Scott, the Amazon billionaire, is giving away $1 billion a month to charity (msn.com)
I doesn't really work that way. If Musk sold his stocks, than then they wouldn't actually be worth that much. If he attempted to buy 200K homes, the homes would cost more. If it were that easy then the trillion dollar stimulus could have housed all the homeless. The big issue with being homeless in the America is that it's a cycle that is hard to escape once you are there for various reasons including mental health or transitioning to get work. Many people that are homeless live in expensive areas where it's hard to even find housing.
550,000 homeless is a pretty small percentage of the total population, isn’t it? Even if he could literally solve the homelessness problem by fully divesting himself from his companies (I really don’t think buying and donating 200,000 extra homes is enough, but we can put that aside), is the net effect a positive or negative? It seems that him selling off all those shares could have a ripple effect that hurts a lot of people world-wide. People’s economic lives are so interconnected.
Or its always easy for those who have more to give more. It has nothing to do with other people's money.
I agree! We need to invest more money into affordable or free education, training, and help for those in dire straights. We need to provide much more money into mental health care, rehabilitation, and social services programs. We need to stop giving the billionaire businesses huge tax breaks and make them pay the same property taxes and school taxes homeowners pay. We need to stop blowing millions on crap that doesn't help solve the problems that get people the help they need to succeed without government assistance the rest of their lives. We need to ensure everyone can afford healthcare in this country. Nobody should have to go without healthcare (mental or physical) simply because they can't afford it without ending up homeless. Guys like Abbott could care less about that stuff. It's all guns, big business, oil companies, and the border. Pour the money into Education, Healthcare, and Mental Health.
This. While I think that the disparity between the ultra rich and those in poverty is entirely too high, it isn't as simple as building every homeless American a new home. The homeless in the USA is an area that I am deeply involved in and have studied, met with and volunteered with over the last decade. Growing up we were constantly scared of becoming homeless because my father burned through money and had no self control at all. First, anyone that thinks that the number of homeless people in the USA is approximately 500K is vastly undercounting the amount of functionally homeless in the USA. There are a lot of Americans that live in their cars, that live in discreet areas outside and rent a hotel/motel once a week to shower and be clean, many of these people work as well. Second, some homeless people do not even want a home. There are people with mental issues (although truth be told we as a nation have done an exceptional job over the last decade of making medication and treatment available to to all functionally homeless people), there are heroin addicts that would simply destroy of sell the home, there are a number of illegal sex slaves as well. The issue of homelessness in the USA is a cultural and economic issue and they are greatly intertwined.
Huge corporations are saving $10 billion on Texas taxes, and you're paying for it (Article excerpts) The gusher of tax incentives is flowing to firms ranging from petrochemical plants on the Gulf Coast to sprawling wind farms in the Panhandle. Companies are saving billions by promising to bring their business to Texas — even if evidence suggests some never would have gone anywhere else. Here’s how it works: An eligible company that promises to spend, say, $200 million on a manufacturing plant can apply for a Chapter 313 incentive and lower the appraised value of its property on a school district’s tax rolls, erasing millions of dollars in property taxes over the course of a decade. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ne...t-1-texas-tax-corporations-covid-16164744.php
I have read the same thing, but as someone that actively interacts with the homeless and works with the homeless, I don't think that this is quite accurate, as it is deceptive and depends on how you define "homeless". First, consider that there are more functionally homeless children that Americans believe, and the vast majority of these people will not be addicted to drugs. Second, there are a lot women in shelters that are victims of domestic abuse, these women are often considered functionally homeless and typically do not have a substance abuse problem but are mothers with children. However, on the other end, almost all of the girls and young women that are sex slaves are drug addicts..... the chronic homeless almost all have some level of drug dependency. The longer that someone is homeless and actually live on the street, the higher the chance they are opiate addicted. The reality is that homelessness is extremely hard mentally, physically and emotionally and almost everyone ultimately turns to something to numb the pain and there are cheap and powerful drugs available in homeless communities. Last, those you see that are under 30 and are usually "couples" that are homeless almost always have a heroin or opiate addiction in my experience. I am not passing judgment on those in the homeless community that are addicted to drugs, life can be miserable and difficult; especially if someone has been abused, has a mental illness or lives in despair.
First, not everyone that voted for Joe Biden has $1,380 to donate to the cause. Second, drop the bullshit about "destroying major American companies", you know damn well it isn't that simplistic....... likewise the "stealing" line is out of line as well. I don't like the simplistic "take from the rich and give to the poor will solve every issue" mentality, but the "stealing" mindset is every bit as insane.
