August 30, 2019

Historically Low Unemployment?

I keep hearing that the homeless issue is purely a drug problem.

There's not a single easy answer. But what we all need to keep in our minds is that homelessness, yes and drugs, are symptoms. We have a far larger set of problems that are the cause.

Our government boasts about historically low unemployment, but at the same time homeless camps and people reduced to sleeping on the streets or in their cars. That just doesn't jibe with low unemployment. The government calculates unemployment by definition, not by realithy. The definition refers to "People looking for work." Obviously this doesn't apply to the majority living on the street. It's pretty hard to look for work when you don't have an address, let alone a phone number. Or a place to take a shower. The official unemployment rate is nothing but smoke & mirrors.

There are many things that could end with a person, or family finding themselves without a home. When people feel like they've played by the rules, but due to health issues, or rising housing costs, or job loss, or just stagnant wages, they lose their place to live. When one is forced to live like this, and see no way back, they lose hope. When people have no hope, they turn to drugs or alcohol to get them through their miserable days. If I had to sleep on the street, I believe I'd try to medicate myself into painless stupor as well!

Far from trying to deal with the real issues, it seems to be easier to just lock them away. But that can't work as our jails are full to bursting already. If the cops issue a ticket for vagrancy or whatever the offense will be called, the offender will not be able to pay whatever fines, so warrants are issued. But that brings us back to the part where there's no place to warehouse them.

Without addressing the problems at the top, there will be more on the way.

Outsourcing & automation, not so much illegals, are taking people's jobs. As time goes on, more and more jobs will go this route. Even jobs that once seemed secure are no longer immune. Watched a presentation not long ago where a combination of robotry & 5G data would allow a surgeon to operate on a patient on the other side of the world. Autonomous vehicles will put truckers & other drivers out of work soon. Toss the mentally ill into the mix and explode the nightmare! Since Saint Ronnie shut down care for mental patients in the 80s we've decided that the police are the way to handle them. Back we go to the overcrowded jails.

So-called 'Conservatives' say we need to do something about mental illness rather than do anything about guns. They don't see the need for the infrastructure to care for other illnesses, but we're going to take care of people with a mental illness somehow. Like that isn't going to create a host of other issues, not least of which the inevitable legal challenges when someone feels they have been declared incompetent or the nightmare when someone is declared 'sane' and shoots up a kindergarten with his legal firearm!

Okay, rant over. Mine's the nice white jacket with the sleeves that buckle in the back. I'll just leave the soapbox over here in case someone else needs to use it. Perhaps for firewood.

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