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The more employees that our employers have to choose from; the less they have to pay. Supply and demand.
Yes, it's so simple.
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So, if I wanted to hire cheap labor, there would never be too many workers. It isn't only the pay that suffers; it is also 'respect'. Once you turn into just a number or body filling a position; you, as a person, lost your identity. You are simply a cog in the system with no real worth. You are replaceable.
I don't follow this at all; it's contradictory to your first statement. There are, quite simply, whole classes of work that "Americans" will not do - harvesting, laundry, brute labor, even janitorial and other slightly skilled professions. Won't. Not at any competitive salary. It's not that immigrants are stealing the jobs; they're taking jobs no one else will. In places where immigrant labor was barred, rounded up or chased away... fruit rotted on the trees even when desperation wages were offered to "good Americans." This isn't news.
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Americans will do jobs if we are paid. I have done jobs that many illegal aliens would not do. I just want a fair day's dollar for a fair day's labor.
But no one's going to pay $15/hour with benefits to pick fruit - because they'd go broke with costs far higher than the product value. And no one hires pickers and processors year-round. It's not a matter of hiring cheap; it's a matter of hiring who will take the job at all... and they tend to come cheap.
Immigrants are not one of the US's job problems. Never have been. Sitting around a bar sobbing in your beer because the local Ford plant closed and blaming it on fruit pickers taking all the jobs is just absurd.
Finland has greatly decreased their homeless population by implementing "Housing First". The government believes that first of all, people who are homeless need stable housing. Housing is not based on requirements to tackle addictions and other problems, they approach it the opposite way that having a home can make it easier to solve those problems. Seems to work for them, but in a capitalist society like the US it would likely be a hard sale.
Homelessness is rampant in the PNW. There is more than one cause, I think. One of the worst is the constant rise in rents, and fewer subsidized units being available. Another is of course substance abuse. And, then there is mental illness.
I think building affordable housing would help. Right now, rent is rising faster than wages. There is a disconnect between what people earn, and what rent costs. Ten years ago, there were people existing in subsidized housing, who worked two jobs to make ends meet. The situation is worse now. And people drawing disability or social security have not seen their benefits increased in years.
Substance abuse and mental health are issues which have never been dealt with properly in our country. Both have been historically intractable problems that we as a culture do not want to spend money on fixing.
Finland has greatly decreased their homeless population by implementing "Housing First". The government believes that first of all, people who are homeless need stable housing. Housing is not based on requirements to tackle addictions and other problems, they approach it the opposite way that having a home can make it easier to solve those problems. Seems to work for them, but in a capitalist society like the US it would likely be a hard sale.
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Originally Posted by turkeydance
Finland's government takes 50% of income in taxes.
Finland has 5.5M people in an area about that of New Mexico, with nearly all the population in one third of that. A small population in a small area with enormous homogeneity is easy ground for collective action.
Taxes have nothing much to do with it except that Americans are conditioned to believe their own hard-earned dollars are worth more than lives.
No, we are not going back to the 1940's where people were confined to mental hospitals, received not treatment but were kept there by the courts for decades. It might be nice for you because you wouldn't have to smell them when you walk down the street but it is definitely unconstitutional to forcibly detain someone except under very specific circumstances.
There are other options than the black and white of commitment to mental hospitals that are like the worst ones of the past, and simply abandoning the mentally ill to pace the streets, ranting and raving, living worse than an abandoned dog, and occasionally pushing a commuter into the path of an oncoming train.
The mentally ill homeless need treatment. Some of them, with proper treatment, could be maintained in an assisted living facility for the mentally ill, or in a group home for the mentally ill, as long as they could be compelled to take their medication. Some of them would never be able to live outside a mental hospital. Some of them, with treatment, could live in their own small apartment with VNA services, and monitored medication. But saying that there is no role for commitment to public mental health hospitals, and instead abandoning them to live short, brutal lives of hunger and cold and misery on the streets, and allowing them to endanger the public with occasional deranged attacks, is far more cruel than the alternatives. Of course, it does save taxpayer dollars to just abandon them to the streets.
We have a lot of people that live on the street here in middle Tennessee I have found and getting worse. I know of a mother and her 26 year old son that lives in a car in Florida.
Across some of the biggest U.S. cities, rent prices are continuing to rise for lower-income Americans. Meanwhile, an estimated 553,000 people experienced homelessness in 2018, according to Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) data.
People think it's all bums who don't want a job, or mentally ill people who cannot hold a job, but a lot of these people work. I just had a patient tell me she slept in the Atlantic City bus station for awhile, while she was working full time at one of the casinos.
Homelessness is rampant in the PNW. There is more than one cause, I think. One of the worst is the constant rise in rents, and fewer subsidized units being available. Another is of course substance abuse. And, then there is mental illness.
I think building affordable housing would help. Right now, rent is rising faster than wages. There is a disconnect between what people earn, and what rent costs. Ten years ago, there were people existing in subsidized housing, who worked two jobs to make ends meet. The situation is worse now. And people drawing disability or social security have not seen their benefits increased in years.
Substance abuse and mental health are issues which have never been dealt with properly in our country. Both have been historically intractable problems that we as a culture do not want to spend money on fixing.
I think another reason for homelessness though that no one has mentioned, is the requirement now of credit checks before you can rent, and the increasing number of people with poor credit from having fallen on hard times whether due to illness or job loss. We had a friend who along with his wife made enough to rent an apartment for he and his family, but because his credit was poor he couldn't get approved. They had to live in a cheap motel for awhile with their kids, which makes the situation worse because even a cheap motel is $50 and up for a day. If they hadn't had that money, they'd definitely have been homeless.
I think there are a lot of people now who are in this situation.
I don't follow this at all; it's contradictory to your first statement. There are, quite simply, whole classes of work that "Americans" will not do - harvesting, laundry, brute labor, even janitorial and other slightly skilled professions. Won't. Not at any competitive salary. It's not that immigrants are stealing the jobs; they're taking jobs no one else will. In places where immigrant labor was barred, rounded up or chased away... fruit rotted on the trees even when desperation wages were offered to "good Americans." This isn't news.
But no one's going to pay $15/hour with benefits to pick fruit - because they'd go broke with costs far higher than the product value. And no one hires pickers and processors year-round. It's not a matter of hiring cheap; it's a matter of hiring who will take the job at all... and they tend to come cheap.
Immigrants are not one of the US's job problems. Never have been. Sitting around a bar sobbing in your beer because the local Ford plant closed and blaming it on fruit pickers taking all the jobs is just absurd.
I live in an area with a lot of blueberry farms. The workers work 12-14 hours a day, but it's only for a few months. Then they leave and go to warmer climes, following the crops. That's why they are called migrant workers. I don't know anyone who wants to live like that, packing their family up and moving every few months for a job that pays very little and is extremely tough working conditions in the hot sun.
And if they did suddenly have to pay $15 an hour and benefits, we'd be paying $25 a pint for blueberries. No one would buy them at that price, and the farms would go under. Some people think family farmers are just choosing to be cheap and not give higher wages. Most of the time they barely make it, especially with the crazy weather patterns the last few years. So the farms go under and then we have no choice but to buy imported everything.
I think another reason for homelessness though that no one has mentioned, is the requirement now of credit checks before you can rent, and the increasing number of people with poor credit from having fallen on hard times whether due to illness or job loss. We had a friend who along with his wife made enough to rent an apartment for he and his family, but because his credit was poor he couldn't get approved. They had to live in a cheap motel for awhile with their kids, which makes the situation worse because even a cheap motel is $50 and up for a day. If they hadn't had that money, they'd definitely have been homeless.
I think there are a lot of people now who are in this situation.
Yep. Happened to me after a divorce. Lost a house, and decent rentals were up at ridiculous prices. I had to do the motel thing, as well as rent a room at another point to stay from being homeless.
Homelessness isn't always about drugs and alcohol, or mental illnesses. Not all homeless are bums. Some work professional jobs, but are in unfortunate situations, and in many areas, the rental scenario is absurd.
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