[equid0x]

Originally Posted by EA

So if I start doing meth and lose my teeth, half my body weight, go insane, and get sores, it's not my fault?

The taxpayers should do everything they can to help me even though I chose to smoke meth?

That's your logic here.

It's rather in the public's best interest to have some programs available to address the underlying issues. It's rather useless to keep sending the homeless methheads back to CCDC again and again so that can get back out and do the same ****.

I've known some people who were at one time normal, productive people who fell into the meth trap, got addicted and a year later ended up dead. If you've not known anyone who's had such an addiction, you might be surprised at just how quickly things can go downhill.

Many of these people actually want to stop but are so addicted, they do not feel that they can.

[EA]

Originally Posted by kttam186290

This is a very shortsighted and simplistic worldview. It's an easy claim to make because it doesn't require evaluation or examination of any kind. There are a lot of things out of an individual's control that have more to do with their societal environment than anything else.

Try as you may, you haven't gotten to where you are, on your own!

You had help in one form or another (a social program, a connection, friends, family, etc.), although I'm sure you won't disclose the source of help you received because it would topple your argument and render it useless.

Dig deep enough with most so-called "successful" people and you'll find "the help" they got that kept them off the streets and out of the unforgiving jaws of society's underbelly.

Help is fine. I'm not saying never help anyone. I am saying the way you're "helping" people is wrong and harmful.
California has spent billions on "helping" the poor and homeless.
The poor and homeless situation has gotten WORSE with each passing year.
An intelligent person would see that and be like "Well damn, this ain't working, let's do something else."

But Californians, and most people in general, aren't intelligent. They say "There's still poor people, let's help more the same way we always do."
But that is literally insanity.


All that "help" costs money. That money has to be raised by stealing it from people's incomes. It takes buying power away from people and makes things more expensive.

Now, I'm not mathmagician or economical mastermind, but when you take more money from people and make things more expensive, things do not get better for people. They get worse.

Want poor people to stop being poor? Giving them stuff is not the way to do it.
STOP giving them stuff. That makes them have to do something else.

I will use myself as an example.
I moved to NC right as I had a kid. I had no skills. No degree. I had no value.
I got a pizza delivery job. It paid the bills but not much else. I got food stamps.
Between the job and the food stamps I could squeak by. And I did.

I found other jobs that were slightly better, but not better enough to cover the difference food stamps made. I would have made another 100 a week, but lost 600 a month in food stamps. So I stayed put.
I had no motivation or incentive to better myself. I spent 8 years delivering pizza.
No savings. No benefits. No retirement. Nothing.

Getting "help" kept me in a bad position.
The only reason I got out of that position was the delivery job changed. The owner changed policy so drivers could only take 1 delivery at a time which cost us more in gas and we made less money.
So the money and food stamps weren't enough.
This forced my hand and made me reevaluate.
I was about to be homeless I couldn't afford rent anymore. I started selling my stuff to pay bills.
I said "Screw it, if I am going to be poor I am going to be somewhere warm."
I liquidated all my crap, packed up the family, and headed to vegas.
I did have a job lined up but when I got here they said they never heard of me. So needless to say I did not get that job.
Here is where the biggest mistake of my life happened.
I went to the dealership and ended up buying a 40,000 dollar truck.
No job. No money. Bought a truck. Like an idiot. BAD CHOICE.
I needed to pay for the truck and life. So I took the first job I could get. Cab driving. It was the worst experience of my life.
But I did it. I made JUST enough to pay my rent and the truck payment. But no insurance on the truck.
I drove without insurance and tags for 6 months, like an idiot. Another bad choice. Had I hit someone all parties would be screwed. Luckily I didn't.

After a little while I couldn't take the cab job anymore. it was 6 12 hour days a week with a sadistic scheduled designed to minimize my time off. I hated every second of it. I found a job selling cars and promptly quit the cab job. Another choice.
I am horrible at sales. I sold 5 cars the whole time I was there and ended up fired for getting into it with the boss. Another choice. I went a week or 2 without a job until I got in at a cable installation company.
The boss promised 800 a week minimum. I needed 700 a week minimum to pay my bills. Great.
What he didn't say was it was a couple months of minimum wage training before I'd get to go out on my own.
So I lived off 330 a week for 2 months or so. The trainer was kind enough to buy my lunches so that helped out.
I sold off a few more things to get by.
Eventually I got to go out on my own. However, the company went from A rating to C rating the week before and instead of getting the good paying installs, they only got trouble calls and a few small installs.
Trouble calls pay the least and usually take the longest. Working 6 14 hour days I was making 600 a week.
100 shy of what I needed.
600 a week was also too much for food stamps. So that pushed me to try other things and better myself.
I tried to learn more and work faster to make more money. Didn't work. But I did end up meeting the VP of a union drywall company. He followed me around the house and watched me work.
By the time I was done he asked me if I wanted to come work for him. It was 16 something an hour and only 40 hours a week. I said hell yeah. This was a Sunday. By Wed I was in the union and on a jobsite.
It was a month of 16 an hour then I bumped up to 18 something.
By this time I had missed a few truck payments. I was on borrowed time.
I was also frequently late with my rent. BUT the apartment complex had a policy where you paid a late fee and it was fine. Well they changed that policy to a daily fee. And the daily fee was almost as much as the previous late fee. I couldn't swing that and got evicted.
Ended up in a weekly rental.
But on the bright side I was learning a skill and making decent money.

I posted on here about my plight and a member saw it and messaged me. Said he had a house for rent and let me move in and even gave me time on the deposits. He is also one of the people that gave me really good financial advice.
Now I had a home and a garage to store my truck where the repo man couldn't find it.

Income tax time rolled around and I had enough to put a down payment on a buy here pay here car. I called the repo man and told him to come get the truck. I also got a welder at this time.
Carpenter welders got an extra dollar an hour and companies tended to keep the welders busier than the other workers. I wanted to be more valuable to the company so I taught myself to weld.

I figured things would go ok from there on out. Nope. With the 30 day tag still on, and no insurance, I got hit by a teenage girl driving someone else' car with bare minimum insurance.
I lost my down payment and my car. It was totaled. Crank shaft was pushed into the block.
I had to fight with her insurance to get them to finally pay off the car. I owed 6900 they paid 5700 or so I forget the exact amounts. Luckily the dealer let it go.
A couple weeks later the job I was on was done and I got laid off.
No car. No job. AWESOME.
I was late on rent a couple times and the landlord was very forgiving. That helped me tremendously.
A few weeks of unemployment later I got word of the next job. finagled my way into another new car. A kia soul. It was 14 grand. Affordable and good on gas. I had it for 13 days and got tboned.
Girl with no license hit me. Owner of the car had minimum insurance again.
My insurance paid it off but I lost out on 2500 down payment and 400 registration.
I got a rental for a week and found a buy here pay here and got a 3,000 car for 9,000 dollars.
Another bad choice.
But it was what I could do at the time.

But things started to level off again. I was paying bills and even putting away money. I picked up side work welding.
I got laid off again.
All that put away money down the drain.
Another member that I had been talking to for a while had just bought a property and wanted a new house built on it. He hired me, because I now had experience with construction and heavy equipment, to tear down the old house and clean the lot.
they kept me going. But then I went shopping one day and hear my name over the loud speaker telling me to go outside. I am greeted by the fire department putting out my car.
Luckily it was on camera so the insurance couldn't say it was fraud AND if it happened at my house it may very well have burned down the house.
The guy who I was doing work for suggested doing the lyft rental program. That gave me more income and a car. It was rough at first. But once I learned it I started making really good money. I soon had enough to go buy a van. That opened me up to more expensive lyft rides. I was doing 1000-1500 a week in 40 hours. I was happy as can be. But that advice I was given was eating at me. Lyft wasn't a long term thing. I needed savings and investments. I needed financial security.
So I decided to go into business. I picked up a customer who wanted a ground up car built.
That kept me busy and paid for several months.
While I was still working on that I ended up picking up another ground up build. I also met a local fabricator, the one from the video I posted. He gave me side work and I ended up teaching some welding and fabrication classes with him. Learning more and more skills as I went.

However, I have BAD lungs. I have 20% of my lung capacity. Not exaggerating. It was measured 2 years ago. It had been 25% for a long time. It dropped. Likely due to all the construction dust and welding fumes.

And that is why I transitioned into mechanic work. I love welding and fabrication but I can't do that if I'm dead. There's much less danger to my lungs with mechanic work.


Now, from the delivery days to the construction days, I was hardcore blaming the rich, and republicans, and boomers, and anyone I could for my issues. "If those damn rich people paid more taxes I could live better." even though that makes absolutely no sense.
"if the damn republicans hadn't kept minimum wage low I'd be rich." even thought I've only made minimum wage 6 months of my entire life.

But once I started taking responsibility for my own choices, I started making better ones.
Now I have a fabrication business, online store, and mechanic business. I am folding the fabrication business when I finish this last car, but I am expanding the store and mechanic business.


If I can go from being broke on food stamps, to buying things way beyond what I can afford, to getting fired and laid off, to getting evicted, to multiple totaled cars, to business owner, there's no excuse for so many others to not make it.

And yes, I got some help along the way, but do you think the VP would have offered me a job if I wasn't busting ass to fix his cable?
Do you think the landlord would have offered me his house if he didn't see that I was making an effort?

Most likely not.

I'm sorry but holding a sign on an overpass is not making an effort. No one expects a homeless person to put on a suit and go land a CEO position. But there are jobs out there for people willing to work. Go get them. Make an effort. It's better to try and fail than to do nothing at all.

All those bad things that happened to me are MY FAULT. They are consequences of my choices. I could either let it ruin the rest of my life or I can learn from them and avoid making those bad choices.
Being homeless is a result of bad choices 99 times out of 100.
Staying homeless is a choice for 99% of them.

I do feel that we need to do something for the truly mentally ill even though it should be on the parents.
If my kid was mentally ill and needed life long care I would be doing everything I can to ensure they are taken care of til they die.
But the mentally ill didn't choose to be defective. They can't make good choices and since we're too weak to weed them out like animals do, we ought to provide for them.

If you made yourself mentally ill through drugs or bad choices, *********. Deal with it on your own.
Make an effort to change and I'll be glad to help.

[tijlover]

Originally Posted by EA

So if I start doing meth and lose my teeth, half my body weight, go insane, and get sores, it's not my fault?

The taxpayers should do everything they can to help me even though I chose to smoke meth?

That's your logic here.

If I fell into homelessness (2/3rds of Americans are 2 paychecks away from it) and tried every which way to get a job and was turned down, I'd turn to meth, cheap wine, as well.

Can I be the ?5,032rd? person to compliment you one being so compassionate and having a heart of Gold?

[obiwon]

OP here. I am angry and sad to report that my house was broken into today. I’m not saying I know it was the squatters, but I have a strong suspicion. The city of henderson and NDOT need to get their ***** together.

[EA]

Originally Posted by tijlover

If I fell into homelessness (2/3rds of Americans are 2 paychecks away from it) and tried every which way to get a job and was turned down, I'd turn to meth, cheap wine, as well.

Can I be the ?5,032rd? person to compliment you one being so compassionate and having a heart of Gold?

Well, is that not a consequence of choices?
Median wage is 60k a year. Why do so few people have savings?
Is it because there's some sinister plan to keep millenials poor or is it the spending habits and lack of financial responsibility people have?

Occam's razor says it's spending habits and lack of responsibility.

I know in my case it was spending habits and lack of responsibility.

When I delivered pizzas I got a good amount of income tax refund. Did I save it? Did I pay off debt? Did I make investments?

Nope. I bought a big tv, car stuff, and blew it on worthless crap. Every year.
I'll say I averaged 7,000 back per year. Over 8 years that's 56,000 dollars.
Had I used it wisely I'd be a whole lot better off than I am today.

I'm sure the same goes for you. Maybe not squandering income tax refunds, but I am willing to bet you spend more than you realize on stuff you don't need.

I started asking myself, about 3 years ago, "does this add value to my life." before I buy anything.
And I stopped buying a whole lot of stuff.
Now I only buy food, essentials for the house, and tools to make me more money.


When I drove lyft I would constantly pick up poor people. They have nikes, name brand clothes, expensive energy drinks, and would be on their way to waste money. Then they wonder why they're so poor.
This one dude called his bank in my backseat to discuss upping his overdraft limit so he could go drink at the club.

And that brings me to another point.
It is mind blowing how much people drink. That's about all people talk about.
People aren't poor because of a major conspiracy. They're broke because they spend all their money on drugs and alcohol.

[equid0x]

Poor people don't know how to handle money because they never had any money to handle. If a child grows up to live in poverty, chances are they also grew up in poverty. The parents don't have any money handling skills to pass down to the children, so the children continue the same bad habits they grew up with.

Alcohol & drugs are cheap entertainment for the poor. By the time they realize they're hooked, it's already too late.

Lots of poor people get their clothing second hand. They may also have been gifted some of the items by others who are more well off.

If they work in casinos cleaning rooms, they may have tons of free energy drinks because the jetsetters buy cases of the things, can't take them on the plane, and leave them in the room when they checkout.

I grew up dirt poor but never had money for big TVs or anything. We didn't have a TV until I bought a b&w 13" from a garage sale when I got my first job at 12 years old. Big TVs are dirt cheap now, dude. You can pick them up for $10/pc at the Goodwill clearance center.

Now wasting money at the rent-a-rim? Eh... Ok but $20/mth on rims isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Just because a person is poor doesn't mean they have to live in a dirt hut with no possessions, and no fun or activities while remaining in pennance praying for the better life they wish to have.

[WisconsinVegasHeights]

Originally Posted by kttam186290

The longer a person is homeless, the more likely mental illness will set in. This is a proven fact. After a long period of homelessness, they feel discarded. They become anxious and depressed and they know that they have to survive any way possible. Depression is anxiety's evil twin and they feed into one another.

Once the anxiety and depression sets in, it's hard to undo. Anxiety leads to "fight or flight" mode and then violence becomes common. They realize the situation they're in and illegal drug use becomes a way of medicating themselves out of anxiety and depression.

As someone who claims to have "special insight" into homelessness, I'd think you'd have known that?

It really makes me question your credentials.

If all you're worried about is Medicaid billing, then you need to get out of the profession because you aren't qualified to deal with the homeless!

I never said I was a social worker or a Psychiatrist. I don't "deal" with them at all. You assumed way too much. I read their charts all day and the common denominator seems to be drug use.

They keep coming back to the hospital for detox when they inevitably relapse and routinely run up 20K medical bills per stay of which their portion is zero. Some get SSI and are still homeless even though they get enough to theoretically rent a room somewhere.

[bayview6]

I’m hooked on 10 year old single malt Scotch whiskey.

[s1alker]

I am seeing some discussion regarding IT and would like to give my two-cents.

Many kids go into IT expecting an easy 40 hour job and a massive paycheck. What they don't realize is the long hours on salary that will be worked, and the outside of work studying, projects, and constant learning that you need to do to remain relevant in that field. This is where the asian and Indian immigrants excel at. They were the ones at my university who sat in the library with a math book in front of them from sunrise to sunset.

It's not a field to go into if you're just a clock-puncher.

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by s1alker

I am seeing some discussion regarding IT and would like to give my two-cents.

Many kids go into IT expecting an easy 40 hour job and a massive paycheck. What they don't realize is the long hours on salary that will be worked, and the outside of work studying, projects, and constant learning that you need to do to remain relevant in that field. This is where the asian and Indian immigrants excel at. They were the ones at my university who sat in the library with a math book in front of them from sunrise to sunset.

It's not a field to go into if you're just a clock-puncher.

As someone who worked in IT for some 17 years, it's my opinion that IT workers are expected to go way, way beyond what workers in other fields do. The things you say about the work environment are true. IT workers are also routinely on-call and often are not paid for this. Worse yet, even when on-call for emergencies only people will still call you at 2am for the stupidest **** like password resets. 60 hour weeks on 40 hours pay are typical. The environment can also be very dynamic and is nearly always stressful.

IT can be physical as well... Lifting 75 or 100lb servers to put into racks... Crawling around under raised floors or up inside drop ceilings pulling cables... Pushing large carts full of equipment around... Loading and unloading vehicles, etc.

Mentally, after a busy day, it can be completely exhausting. Some nights I would come home and turn into a vegetable on the couch because my brain was so toasted I literally couldn't even think anymore nearly to the point of being incoherent... Under this type of stress your mind and body basically switch to autopilot.