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Comment by kimlelly | Hacker News Reader

It's really nice when people want to do good. They deserve our full respect.

Having said that, we, as a society, need to understand that we must correct the sick systems we've built and have come to accept as "the new normal".

In other words: Homeless people don't need showers. They need to receive a system which prevents them from ending up as homeless people. Homeless people are homeless because we, as a society, have accepted that we create homeless people. Other countries have successfully avoided this (take a very close look at how Switzerland works), why can't we?

To correct that, we need a social security net:

- Mental health care for everybody who needs it

- Sound financial aid for the unemployed

- Put minimum wage above slavery levels: $20/hr AT LEAST

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> Homeless people don't need showers.

Homeless people DO need showers! Been there? Done that?

One sure-fire way to not get a job (and thus get yourself and your family off the street): show up stinking of whatever slept on you last night, under some bridge or cardboard or .. whatever.

Homeless people DO NEED SHOWERS. Showers and self-hygiene during conditions of regular duress are a sure-fire way to feel better about the day, get prepared for the challenges, face the sunshine and Do Something About It.

Government organized "Mental Health Care", in case you weren't paying attention, is exactly how this mess got started, In The First Place. So: Nope to that. Deny the currently-in-power insanity profiteers their budget!

Minimum Wage: TOTALLY! Absolutely with you on this one, buddy! Give someone a way to have a daily shower and a regular job to go to that can pay for a weeks worth of living expenses, and you've got a winning formula .. But thats always the problem when you are "A do-nothin' Bum": One mans Living expenses are another mans pocket-change ..

A higher minimum wage doesn't "give" anyone a decent job, it just outlaws a bunch of non-decent jobs in the hope that employers need those jobs done enough to raise the wage on them. It's obvious that that will be the case for some minimum wage jobs, but it's equally obvious that it won't be the case for others.

So with the drive for higher minimum wage comes the implicit value judgment that having no job is better than having a low paying job.

It's not that easy. Germany's social security system for instance provides all of that yet still there are homeless people in Germany. Probably on average not as many as in San Francisco but still noticeable.

I'm no expert on that matter but I suppose the causes of becoming homeless are too diverse for the problem to be solved easily and not all of these causes can be attributed to society. Debt, drug addiction, mental health issues to name but a few.

All of these other variables you mention can be prevented by having a good mental health.

In a lot of places in Europe, people CAN get a therapy with a shrink (b/c or when it's covered by insurance), but they won't because of retarded cultural stigma.

In the US, it's pretty much the opposite situation.

Germanys social security system is effectively flawed, as it can decide to give people no money at all and thereby produces homeless people. Even without drugs and big debts and mental health issues, if you lose your job and got bad luck with the person working on your case, it is way too easy to become homeless. Even in Germany.

> above slavery levels

Can we rise above punchlines, please? Slavery was not defined by low salaries, it was define by getting caned or worse if you tried to quit.

The most comfortable $100k/yr job in the world is still slavery if you can't choose to quit.

>- Put minimum wage above slavery levels: $20/hr AT LEAST

And put a bunch of people out of work, exclusively lower and lower-middle class folk.

Minimum wage is one of the worst and most counter-productive mechanisms for social welfare. Citizen's salary is better as it doesn't create adverse employment incentives and ensures basic survival/shelter/etc for all without agency or commodity-trade problems.

Empowers the worker class to negotiate knowing their rent is paid regardless too. Not to mention the labor mobility and liquidity it could induce.

If you're going to advocate for social services, you should at least know which programs are known to perform poorly. (There are tons of economic/socio-political reports on this stuff all over the internet. If you care - read.)

Cf. Rent control

> And put a bunch of people out of work

You can always create more jobs by lowering the salary/job.

And this is by the way what has been happening: minimum wage was not even adjusted for inflation, which means it was effectively lowered.

But obviously the people who depend on minimum wage have no clue about how the economy works because they never had access to a good education, which is why they won't speak up, which is why so many rich folks advertize lies like "don't get an education, you can get rich by dropping out of college, just like Zuckerberg".

Now the question is: How often does a society really want to lower minimum wage (in order to boost the number of jobs created)?

The lower you go, the more problems you see "in the streets".

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