I've never known more homeless people before in my life in America, seems like its only the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and less healthy.
>seems like its only the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and less healthy.
At least in the past decade, the opposite has been happening.
>[...] Even after taxes and transfers, the average real income of households like his grew by 110% from 1990 to 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). But most of that growth took place early in the time period: in 2019 he was probably doing worse than his equivalent in 2007, before the global financial crisis.
>By contrast incomes in the lowest 20% of households, in which the fast-food worker resides, surged in the tight labour market of the late-2010s. By 2019 she was enjoying after-tax-and-transfer household income 25% higher than those like her in 2007, in part thanks to “Obamacare”. Even over the full period since 1990, the bottom quintile’s after-tax-and-transfer income growth was 77%, the same as for the highest quintile—thus, excluding the highest-earning 1% from the top 20% would show the poor enjoying faster income growth than the upper-middle-class. [...]
Percentages are not enough to get a full picture. If I make 100k a year, the person making 50k will need to see a 2x increase in their percentage gain to see the same amount gained in currency. I would take a small bump of a large number over a large bump of a small number any day. And the reality is that the disparity is much higher when you’re talking about the bottom 20 and top 20, and just gets exponentially worse from there.
Here’s a nice visual to put that into context (spoiler alert, while the bottom has seen gains, they’re laughable in the overall context and are not rising at the rate the top is seeing)
the chart shows an absolute surge? Are you we looking at the same chart? also, if we are thinking from first principles here... there's no way to actually count that... Maybe you can give a sample area, and go around counting that specific area? and just do that for every major city? still pretty shaky data at best... so in this case i think anecdotal evidence is better evidence. There is obviously WAY, WAY, WAY more homeless, and they are WAY, WAY, WAY more cracked out.
From my perspective all that chart shows is that it’s been pervasive issue for at least the last 2 decades. I don’t think that homelessness is any more or less visible now than it has been, at least in my lifetime.
Makes me wonder about the ratio to empty hotel rooms and the homelessness cost to society (opportunity loss, reinstatement, relocation, maintenance, health)
That really depends where you go. Many places you will see zero homeless. Other places you can't throw a dirty syringe without hitting a homeless person.
Unnecessary demonization of the unhoused as only drug addicts. Have some empathy.
Many places simply ship their unhoused elsewhere (I'm Canadian and I remember reading about Calgary paying for one-way bus tickets to Vancouver). In other places, the winters are literally unsurvivable outside.
> Boulder County’s July 2024 Point in Time survey found nearly 40% of those interviewed said they abused “substances.” Another 30% said alcohol was their drug of choice.
And I wonder what percent of people didn't want to admit to abusing substances. And what percent of people viewed themselves as "using" substances, and not "abusing" them?
It's still unnecessary. You are lucky if you have not experienced addiction.
Besides, I think it's stretching to just add the 40% alcohol substance abusers to the 30% and say "well that's 70% -- a majority". My father, as an example, is a high-functioning alcoholic. He's held C-Suite positions for the last 30 years of his life all while going through vodka like it was going out of style.
But that's all to say it's still unnecessary. These are people and they are struggling with substance abuse. Like I said, have some empathy.
And I know zero homeless people. Anecdotal observations are meaningless with respect to a multi-trillion dollar economy with hundreds of millions of participants.
Anecdotal evidence alone is worthless, but paired with statistical evidence it isn't. And we have that evidence.
Also: you "not knowing" a homeless person is itself anecdotal and not only that: it is actually worse than the evidence you attacked.
The critiqued evidence is about how many of X a person sees. That isn't perfect, as it depends and how observant that person is and how much they go out (and where). Your counter of "not knowing" is by magnitudes worse, since on top of the previous flaws your number now also depends on how sociable you are towards homeless people (given the sentiment displayed I guess: not at all).
So not only is your criticism wrong, you are actually at fault of the very method you critizised — only to a much higher degree.
I'm talking about how an individual experience is irrelevant when talking about the entire US economy.
> Anecdotal evidence alone is worthless, but paired with statistical evidence it isn't. And we have that evidence.
I guess? But only because you've paired something worthless with something that isn't and then focused only on the portion that isn't worthless.
> Also: you "not knowing" a homeless person is itself anecdotal and not only that: it is actually worse than the evidence you attacked.
Whoosh.
> The critiqued evidence is about how many of X a person sees. That isn't perfect, as it depends and how observant that person is and how much they go out (and where). Your counter of "not knowing" is by magnitudes worse, since on top of the previous flaws your number now also depends on how sociable you are towards homeless people (given the sentiment displayed I guess: not at all).
Again, whoosh.
> So not only is your criticism wrong, you are actually at fault of the very method you critizised — only to a much higher degree.
Would have been considerably more favorable for you not to respond, you didn't add any new thought here.
Note that on this site we like to write comments that other people can take something away from, ideally something of substance. So if you feel the emotions taking over consider asking yourself if the comment is adding something that is worth to read for people who aren't the person you're arguing against. If the answer is "No", not posting is the better option.
Think about considering online discussions on this site not as a fight, but as a shared search for the truth. As such I am happy if you can prove me wrong, because I can learn something new then. But for that you have to go beyond "whooshing" arguments away, it doesn't work in a shared search of truth and it certainly doesn't work in a debate.
> Would have been considerably more favorable for you not to respond, you didn't add any new thought here.
You could have applied this to your original comment IMO
> Note that on this site we like to write comments that other people can take something away from, ideally something of substance. So if you feel the emotions taking over consider asking yourself if the comment is adding something that is worth to read for people who aren't the person you're arguing against. If the answer is "No", not posting is the better option.
See above
> Think about considering online discussions on this site not as a fight, but as a shared search for the truth. As such I am happy if you can prove me wrong, because I can learn something new then. But for that you have to go beyond "whooshing" arguments away, it doesn't work in a shared search of truth and it certainly doesn't work in a debate.
Following up your first unsolicited and completely misguided lecture with a second long-winded, condescending comment just validates that "proving you wrong" is a terrible waste of my time, which is the feeling I indicated with my previous comment and is another thing you completely failed to grasp.
> You could have applied this to your original comment IMO
You made a point about anecdotal evidence and introduced a new thought in your original comment. I responded with two lines of thought.
1. Questioning the value of anecdotal evidence doesn't work well when there is actual data on the subject of said evidence. And the statistics display a rise during the last years.
2. Questioning the value of anecdotal evidence by using worse anecdotal evidence is not a good strategy.
Thar was nothing against you (I don't know you, I just enjoy discussing truthfully). This was a disagreement on the topic of homelessness and your apparent questioning of it. So as a truthful response you could've either clarified your position and told me how I am wrong or admitted you got it wrong yourself. But you did neither of those things.
As you correctly recognized, my second comment ignored the child-like sentiment on display as well as I could and instead adressed that you didn't talk about either of the ideas at hand — the debate equivalent of sticking your fingers into your ears and going "La-La-La". What you failed to recognize is that this second comment wasn't really written for you, but for the bystanders.
The waste of time aspect is entirely on you, as you could have told me how I am wrong and give us your take on US homelessness statistics or explained how you not knowing a single homeless person is actually better evidence than the other person observing more over the past years, or whatnot. Or you could have simply said: "My bad, I took a wrong turn there, but I still believe homelessness didn't rise because [SOURCE]".
Instead you decided to make this meta and I explained why that kind of meta doesn't add value here, nothing more. You took us here.
Also: If I were you, I would probably not have seen this as a waste of time, every debate exchange that puts you into a bad spot is a valuable lesson. But that would require to admit to yourself why you went meta.
