Slashdot Mirror
Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving On Bitcoins
An anonymous reader writes "Wired profiles a homeless man who's supporting himself primarily through Bitcoin. Jesse Angle, a former network engineer, earns small amounts throughout the day by visiting various websites that pay him to look at ads. He then converts it to gift certificates and uses the certificates to buy food. '"It's a lot less embarrassing," he says. "You don't have to put yourself out there." And unlike panhandling in Pensacola, using an app like Bitcoin Tapper won't put him on the wrong side of the law. This past May, Pensacola — where Angle has lived since April — passed an ordinance that bans not only panhandling but camping on city property.' Angle learned about Bitcoin from a charity organization called Sean's Outpost that wanted something better than PayPal for accepting donations over the internet. The organization has even opened an outreach center paid for solely with Bitcoins. Founder Jason King said, 'Bitcoin beats the s#!% out of regular money, We've resonated so well with people because it's direct action. There's no chaff between donation and helping people.'"
eHobo?
Homeless guys drinking Monster energy drinks? That crap is very expensive.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
At some point the city library will want to save money by switching off the external sockets - or charging a nominal amount. This will close him down
They can pass all the laws they want, but until they do something about unemployment, mental illness, and drug abuse, people will continue begging for money and "camping" on city property. You can put them in jail (which, for some, would be a step up in living conditions), but then you'll spend a lot of money while doing nothing to address the actual problem.
Bitcoin has extra marketing value. People can donate Bitcoins rather than dollars, and they feel like they're somehow working outside "the system", as though the US government couldn't see or track what's going on. Really, the government can't track cash, either, but cash is old and familiar, where Bitcoin is new and exciting.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
My sister's husband's nephew is homeless but makes $4,500 a month just looking at Internet ads!!! You can too!!!
For more information go here:
http://www.makemoneywhilelivingunderthebridge.com
A few dollars' worth of free food coupons a day is not the same as rent and car and gas and $4000/year property tax because your heart beats.
If Bitcoin gets too big, expect a clampdown to get taxes from it, though it will be couched in verbiage of For The People they will demand government scrutiny and regulation. But it's about money. It always is.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Probably more of a failure in our mental health system. Also, young men are last on the list when shelters are overcrowded.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
is it a failure of the US social safety net that this man has to do this?
Maybe, or maybe not. If he has to do this, because he's unable to obtain any other employment even with heavy searching, then yes. If he prefers this to any other position or hasn't tried to find such a position, then no.
The biggest problem in charity is telling the difference between the two.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I saw large screen laptops, a smart phone, monster energy drink, bottled water, etc. in the articles photos. However, he was bummed out he lost power while playing a game on said large screen laptop. I guess it does suck being destitute in the US. Imagine your CoD game cut short. I will call BS on the poor homeless pity me routine.
Plus, sending cash doesn't tend to work well over the internet. It keeps clogging up my ethernet ports.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Yet another reason that internet advertising isn't the great value it is said to be. Those of us who are targeted by the ads are using abp and the ads are being watched by people doing so only for the cash.
Lets not forget that second case can be very aggressive at seeking things to enable there choice.
No sir I dont like it.
Surely if he has the computer skills to maintain a BC wallet, he's capable of doing something that pays more than clicking linkfarms.
Have you compared the price of those energy drinks with a bag of apples or coffee?
It's a pretty sad situation in this country when shit food costs less than good food. A lot of that has to do with our fucked up agricultural subsidies that end up in the pockets of Monsanto and Cargill via the farmers. And people wonder why we have an obesity epidemic.
And it's also fucking sad that this guy who's resourceful, creative and talented is on the fucking streets but yet, we have assholes in Silicon Valley bitching about the "lack of talent". I would NEVER have thought of doing what he's doing. I bet if you gave this guy a programming/systems problem, he'd figure it out and come up with a unique solution. Remember that SV asshole when you're working on your next dipshit social networking or push advertising (disguised as showing folks "what they will be interested in") or some other lame-o app that offers no value to society.
Even though this guy is "old" at 42, he's using the cutting edge of not only technology of payment systems, but he is the cutting edge of what is going to happen to most of us. He's the on the edge of our spiral down to the bottom.
Just think of that when you see some CEO getting 60 million dollars just because she's a cute blond who happened to be at the right place at the right time or some asshole who fucked up a company and then talked a bigger one to buy it out.
Those who are paying him are using fradulent methods to inflate view counters, so they want to stay anonymous.
Social safety net? The man is working although in an unconventional way. He should by all rights be excluded from the statistics.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
earns small amounts throughout the day by visiting various websites that pay him to look at ads.
He's not "surviving on bitcoins", he's surviving off ad viewing.
This has been around long before bitcoin, and will be around long after.
What currency he chooses to get paid in really isn't important, but hey, you need people to click your damn story.
He's in Florida. Please pull your head out of your ass, the whole world doesn't revolve around New York.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Surely it would be even less embarrassing for him if he actually did something productive. What kind of homeless person walks around with a laptop and a smartphone anyway?
./ is plagiarizing headlines now. What, editors, can't think up your own?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
expect a clampdown to get taxes from it, though it will be couched in verbiage of For The People they will demand government scrutiny and regulation.
It doesn't need to be. Americans are already legally obligated to report capital gains from trading in Bitcoins, and any income measured in Bitcoins must be reported as income, converted to dollars. If people aren't reporting such details, they're actually engaging in tax evasion, and can be caught just like any other evaders.
Having gone through the investigation process myself, it turns out it's not really that big of a deal. The IRS sends you a letter with a phone number, which you can call and talk to an agent about it. Being willing to correct mistakes is a big factor in resolving the issue quickly. If someone doesn't report Bitcoins because they don't realize they have to, they can just file an amendment to their return that reflects the correct figures, and send in a check to cover the difference. The IRS will check the return again, and determine whether they believe it or not. Repeat as necessary. Again, the key is to not be hostile towards the IRS. Believe it or not, they're people, too.
In my case, I got a notice saying the IRS thought I owed a few thousand dollars. I rechecked my paperwork, found that I owed about $400, and sent in an amendment and a check. They responded saying they didn't accept a certain deduction for which I had no verifiable paperwork. I sent in a signed letter attesting that it was valid. They then sent me a notice saying that they owed me a few hundred dollars, along with a check. The numbers all finally matched, so that was the end of it.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
is it a failure of the US social safety net that this man has to do this?
Of course not. He is earning a living. Why would it be better if he was on the dole? The safety net should be for people that can't work, not those who just don't want to.
The Right says No you can't have that (well the government won't pay for it)
The Left says you can have that but you need to jump threw so many hoops to get it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
>he still gets paid in bitcoin, just because it’s easier and safer. He doesn’t have to worry as much about getting robbed.
Unless...someone steals his laptop.
>> Angle used to work as a network engineer and a computer repair technician — as well as a carpenter and a pool cleaning guy, among other jobs — but the work eventually petered out.
...and now I'm buying him food stamps and energy drinks so he can help marketing departments game search engines? Awesome.
So lets put you charity spending in a place where you cannot get tax deductions for it. Smart, way to stick it to the man!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's quite possible that he could get such a job, though I don't know what the job market is like in Pensacola (I believe that's where the article indicated he was). That doesn't mean that he could afford rent somewhere - from the article, the main person being discussed became homeless initially after a multi-roommate apartment fell apart, and has bounced in and out of being able to afford a place since.
The more interesting part of the article is that some homeless are now starting to use Bitcoin as a way to get around not having a bank account (hard to do when you have no fixed address, I believe). This ties in well with many low-income folks having (disproportionally?) good smartphones - they can do it because that's the Internet access they can afford, and if they actually have a contract they may be getting decent phones because they can manage the installments.
fencepost
just a little off
He's homeless, I'd be hard pressed to call that a living.
Nope.
Not buying it.
He might be suplimenting his income by clicking on bitcoin ads all day long (or having a script do it), but he's not panhandling enough in just Bitcoins to do that. Getting paid in uBTC is tedious at best. You couldn't ge a single pack of the cigarette's he's smoking that way.
There's a major difference between being capable of doing a job, and being able to hold the job. Mental illness isn't often evident in a quick interview, but after a few months on the job it may be obvious. He could then be fired for "poor attitude" or similar reason, especially if the employer doesn't understand the illness. After a few such events, his job history is full of short jobs that ended with him being fired, and that effectively ends his career.
IT specifically is a field full of outcasts. We have disproportionately high rates of several mental illnesses, especially on the autism spectrum. The people who never fit in anywhere else? They still don't fit in here, but it's okay because the rest of us don't, either.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Anyone who thinks there is immigrant displacement of US workers is a neo-Nazi sympathizer at best.
Seastead this.
But with a laptop, smartphone and internet access? Seriously?
What this guy needs to do is get the hell out of Florida and into a state with an economy where he can get a job. Probably the only reason he's unemployed is Florida. Maybe he just wants to surf all day rather than spend time in the office. Somehow I'm doubting that a homeless man has all these digital toys, yet, didn't give those up to avoid being "homeless".
Someone's being scammed here, and it's us Slashdot readers for even believing ONE WORD in this story. What's next, this homeless man gets his own reality TV series?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Generally to actually wind up without a place to live, one of those two things come in to play. With mental issues it is fairly easy to understand: The person is crazy, does not perceive reality, and makes choice most find very strange. Also, even if help is available (which it quite often isn't in the US), they don't want it since a sad part of many mental illnesses is to make you not think you are ill. After all they are a problem with the brain and your brain is what you use to tell if you have problems.
Drugs, including alcohol, are the much more common problem. You get addicts who are so deep in to their addiction that nothing else matters to them. Not only can they not hold down a job, but they end up alienating all their family and friends. People give them chances but they keep abusing it and finally they kick them out. Eventually, they are out of people to go to.
I think you over-estimate how difficult it is to use Bitcoin. Here's what they have to do:
1) Install app on phone (perhaps a charity case, or perhaps one they had before they lost their home)
2) Retype Bitcoin address from screen to laptop when receiving money for "microwork tasks" like spamming YouTube
3) There is no step 3.
Alternatively, step 2 can be "show someone the qrcode on your screen to receive money in person". Anyone can do it.
Florida is even worse. There is jack shit down here for the most part.
No... the real left is thinking that a basic income guarantee is becoming very close to feasible. Perhaps not yet, but we are getting close to the point where the labor generated by people who work for either self fulfillment or access to luxury goods and services can produce enough wealth to provide every household with a basic income capable of covering rent, food and basic utilities.
When I was younger - early teens to late teens, my father would volunteer with food banks, homeless shelters and with the handicapped (these would frequently overlap with the same people). This meant that I too would volunteer (whether I wanted to or not). Anyways, I would hear the same story a lot of the time about how through no fault of their own these people would lose their job, their house and cars and would have nowhere to go. They wanted help in the form of food, place to stay, etc..
In my experience maybe 1/10 of these people were genuinely down on their luck and looking for help to start over. They would do what it took to get back on their feet. The other 9 merely paid lip service to this. They actually preferred to live on the street and continue the lifestyle of not being a part of "normal" society. We'd help these people get into a program where they have food/shelter and a step by step system to start managing their lives and getting a job - they'd leave the next day because they cant' handle or don't want structure in their lives. They want to be "free" and "independent" but at the same time don't want to have to make an equal contribution to society to pay back these resources they use.
I look at this guy lounging outside a library with his laptop, drinking monster energy drinks and eating chicken pot pies. He's taking food stamps to support himself and yet he buys shitty unhealthy food that's way too expensive for someone on a restricted income. I got one thing to say to this guy and his friends, "Go fuck yourself!".
need to improve schooling as well. As alot of people with autism spectrum don't do well in a collage setting but do a lot better in a smaller tech / trade school setting or even learning of the job.
Worked in internet advertising between tech jobs.
they may not hire some with even 3 years IT to work min wage and even if they do get the job it may be 5-10-20 hours a week.
We all know he could have a job at Wal-Mart, 7-11, or McDonald's within a few hours.
You obviously don't know anyone who works in that segment of the economy. None of those places are "always hiring," and most have backlogs of resumes to go through. Worse, having a resume with a good job history on it is poison for low-end jobs, where people assume that you'll be jumping ship at first chance for a better job more in line with what you've done. Speaking from experience, no one wants someone with 7 years of development experience and a fresh law degree to deliver their pizzas.
Plus, my friend who does work for Wal-mart? He'd be homeless too if he couldn't live with him Mom based on what they pay him in his eternally part-time position.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A few bitcoin donations helped me make my mortgage payment last month, and I have a little left over. Things are picking up but it's still really tight. I had to have emergency dental surgery (blessed wisdom teeth) too... There is a point that you reach when you're desperate that you still feel the shame of begging, but the need overwhelms it.
I'll just leave this here: 17S6drtGpJXer6qA5V6XhP3snasGWANBjc
For what? To sit at home and watch TV?
I have no problem with the concept that everyone needs (deserves?) a basic income provided by society. I have a huge problem with the concept that they do not, in turn, owe society for that.
Give them a basic salary and then choose what menial position the Bureau of Suggested (Forced) Labor deems is best for their skills. Maybe that is doing stupid shit on the internet, I don't know, nor care, but they damn well should be doing SOMETHING.
Giving everyone 25k a year (okay, 40k a year in some places) to live, with no expectation that they will do anything other than convert oxygen to CO2 and reproduce is rather short sighted insomuch as it ignores the vast laziness of so very, very many people.
Just another ignorant American.
He's not "making" a living though. According to the article, he's actually living on food stamps and using bitcoin to supplement. Since he's not paying into the system, he's more of a drain than a benefit. I also assume he's doing it by choice and doesn't want to do anything more with his technical knowledge. Maybe he's just waiting for a position in management.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Absolutely. All we have to do is take it from those that are earning the money, and give it to those that aren't. If 50% of the society works really hard and makes a bunch of money, but we just pay 100% of society equally, it'll all work out.
Of course, that 50% number is going to dwindle in both number and quality of output as you remove any and all reward for their work. "Atta boy" will work for some, but I think the math is going to fail on that one in the long term.
To put this differently; I have a cousin who doesn't do shit. At all. She's a worthless drag on society with 5 children. I work my ass off to the tune of 60-70 hours a week, every week, sometimes quite a bit more than that. If she and I are suddenly paid the same, I am staying home and playing XBOX, fuck this work stuff.
Just another ignorant American.
Opening a US bank account generally requires a permanent address and proof of [traditional] employment. Not something the homeless are likely to get. Even an account established pre-homelessness likely had some minimum balance required to keep it open. Keeping that last $100 or so locked up to maintain an account when you’re hungry isn’t a choice I think many would make.
I'm not sure what to think... I'm in Pensacola, and I'm seeing job listings for IT personnel that by all rights should be a minimum of 60K (VMWare Hypervisor and all other IT tasks, including database admin.)... Offering 30.
I had a sucky sig.
Before you crow the victory of frugility with your beans and rice, you might consider that those are "unprepared foods".
Same sort of problem that aid NGOs have: You can hand out 5 pounds of rice to a family to "feed them for a week" (or however long), but unless said family ALSO has the means to prepare that rice, you aren't FEEDING them.
The safety net should be a basic income, giving each of us a choice whether we want to enter the greedy, sociopathic, mendacious, morally hazardous world of perverse incentives that is the free market.
That's called "life".
If you don't want to participate, and just want to collect free money from the gubmint while watching TV and spawning additional leeches, do us all a favor and die.
The safety net is fine but the trapeze and high wire have been in storage for years now.
We tried things with a new clown in office, but it's still the same circus.
For what? To sit at home and watch TV?
I have no problem with the concept that everyone needs (deserves?) a basic income provided by society. I have a huge problem with the concept that they do not, in turn, owe society for that.
Well, if they stay the hell off the roads, my morning and afternoon commutes are that much better. I'd say that's a service to society!
This all goes back to our ridiculous and broken excuse for a health care system in the US. If we had proper, accessible mental health care, we'd have a lot less homeless people and also a better system of determining who is actually unable to work a steady job due to mental health issues, and who is just milking the system.
I work at a public library and we deal with homeless people every day, lots of them. To say that they are simply lazy is completely inaccurate. Sure, there are a few people that just don't want to work but they are in the very small, infinitesimal minority. Then there are the ones who simply fell on hard times, where I've been myself, and those ones never stay homeless for long (however, without what little social assistance they do receive, they would stay homeless a lot longer). The vast majority of homeless people are incapable of functioning in, and dealing with, normal society. Holding down a job is impossible for these people because they can't deal with any sort of schedule, structure or even the smallest amount of stress/pressure.
With proper mental health care, a great deal of those people could be medicated, counseled and otherwise treated to the point where they could become contributing members of society, and the ones that are too far gone for that, could be off the streets and getting proper care somewhere.
A great many problems in this country could be solved with properly accessible health care. However, due to our dog-eat-dog, every man for himself attitude, combined with the out of control corporate greed that maintains our economy, that will probably never happen.
No... the real left is thinking that a basic income guarantee is becoming very close to feasible. Perhaps not yet, but we are getting close to the point where the labor generated by people who work for either self fulfillment or access to luxury goods and services can produce enough wealth to provide every household with a basic income capable of covering rent, food and basic utilities.
Not even we here in Norway which is about commie-red by US standards goes that far, in fact we just took one baby step away from socialism in the last election. The problem is quite simply that if people don't feel it pays off to work they won't. If they put the "basic income" too low, the poor can't actually afford to use it. It'll only become a cheaper way for the middle class to take a year off as many people dream of doing to fulfill some sort of self-realization but find too expensive. If they raise it too close to a low-end job, who really want to struggle eight hours a day in a dead end, physically demanding job when they can bum around and play video games? Because obviously we'd have to tax the shit out of people to pay for all this, so it's not like your pay would become your current pay + your basic income, that'd require us to create tons of money from nothing.
Already we're seeing certain trends in welfare abuse, not directly fraud as such but people who try very hard to get disabilities claims or to keep their unemployment claims by not being very employable. Statistically we know these trends aren't real because we don't have the sickest population in Europe and our working conditions are very gentle compared to many other countries yet we have one of the highest disability ratios in the western world. It just doesn't add up. These are the kind of people who are already looking to get out of the job market, they'd all take basic income and never return. Recently we've had some changes to the pension system where you could elect to retire earlier for lower pensions and lots of people got out at 62 instead of 67. Really, all the signs point to that if people can get a living paycheck without working, damn many would get the hell out.
Of course, the naive say that for each one that takes a year off a position opens up for someone else. That's not how it works, businesses aren't going to hire a dropout who is also now on basic income and probably happy with it just because they lost someone, they're not that desperate to keep the headcount up. If we decrease the talent pool, the jobs are just likely to disappear or move overseas. I think such a system would belly flop miserably but I'd be the first one on it, I'd see it as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to take a year off at a reasonable cost. I'm thinking I'm not alone in that respect, good luck replacing all of us from the ranks of the currently unemployed.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Hey, man, back in the old days with J.C., we used to walk everywhere."
(quote from Dogma, 1999)
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Give them a basic salary and then choose what menial position the Bureau of Suggested (Forced) Labor deems is best for their skills. Maybe that is doing stupid shit on the internet, I don't know, nor care, but they damn well should be doing SOMETHING.
Why? Are there rational reasons that support this argument, or it is emotional? You may be able to get someone to report to a desk or some other post 5 days a week, but you'll not be able to extract any useful value from that. It will cost more to supervise someone who does not want to work than it will to automate the job or hire someone productive.
young men are last on the list when shelters are overcrowded.
As a single young man I can say that single young men are last on the list for just about everything.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
The problem with that is it encourages weird subcultures and cults to try to overbreed us all and take over the country without needing to support their members. They can grow their rural compounds without limit with the ever-increasing government income based on population growth.
Conservatives have a ton of bad ideas, hysterical beliefs, and problematic behaviors, but I think they're right that if you give people a free ride, many will contribute nothing but mouths to feed and violence, and will be a drain on us all.
I'd love to free up people's time and make having a job stop being a life and death situation, but if you give people the potential for a free ride, you start needing to add all kinds of regulation to stop abuse, and I see it needing to go as far as restricting parenthood to productive people, so maybe we're better off with the current situation.
We've made some progress with the ACA, so jobless people don't have to die in the streets, and I think we should be happy with these small steps. Reforming prisons so they rehabilitate prisoners would be a good next step. We don't need to turn our whole culture and economy upside down with a completely socialist system at this time.
When I lived in Pensacola as a software engineer, I pulled down crap too.
Granted that the cost of living is a lot lower than a big city like SanFran, or New York, but its not low enough that would feel comfortable anywhere near 30k.
>To put this differently; I have a cousin who doesn't do shit. At all. She's a worthless drag on society with 5 children.
>I work my ass off to the tune of 60-70 hours a week, every week, sometimes quite a bit more than that. If she and I are suddenly paid the same,
>I am staying home and playing XBOX, fuck this work stuff.
I don't think anyone is suggesting you'd be paid the same. I haven't seen anyone suggesting that we ban work. In a free basic income system, people would still be able to earn more money, they just wouldn't have a miserable life if they're poorly adapted to our current society. Your "worthless" cousin might have some more money in her pocket, but you can still make widgets to sell to her to improve your situation. A purely communist country would be just as bad as a completely capitalist one. You always need balance between a free market and social services.
Even if everyone was paid the same, which I think is a terrible idea, many of us are smart, capable people who enjoy and take great satisfaction from our work.
Homeless != mentally ill.
Yes but mentally ill becomes homeless quite fast, especially in a third world banana republic where the citizen comes last.
Yes, holding down a job is tough when you are struggling with things like depression or any other mental illness. I compare it juggling with an extra ball added. While we are all juggle with ups and downs in life, I go into severe funks and cut myself off from the world.
I have been fighting it for years and it makes it hard to concentrate. I also take things really hard when I don't know something or can't figure out something right away. So people think I just don't care sometimes when the opposite is actually true.
While I can hold a job and went to a good school...its pretty middling work and I had poor grades. It makes me very frustrated and angry when I look back at this because I lost a good chunk of my youth sitting around waiting for the world to come crashing down on me.
My experience has been that hard work and really investing in therapy has paid the most dividends. While I do take medicines like Prozac, and it does help, being totally honest with a strong group of people (led by a very competent counselor) about my situation and past gets me away from the crushing isolation I feel sometimes. The sad thing is, the whole mental health system in this country (US) puts almost all its stock to treat illness it doesn't really understand with medicines that they don't really seem to understand. Also the US has a rapidly deteriorating safety net and more and more people that could be treated and put back into circulation as productive members of society are just falling through the cracks of this country.
I don't mean to be too political, but I have taken food stamps at one time and I can't believe the politicians are trying to cut it off.
I forgot that we've run out of ditches to dig, trucks to unload and trash to pick up.
Not everyone has the physical acumen to dig ditches, but they can work in the day-care center for the ditch digger's kids.
It will cost more to supervise someone who does not want to work than it will to automate the job or hire someone productive.
No it doesn't. If their job is to do an automated task, the task can have a built in quality control. If they don't meet a minimum standard, then they don't get paid.
Example: My wife runs a educational website where teachers/parents can upload content. But before kids can access the content, it must be reviewed for inappropriate content (porn, profanity, etc). She uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk to hire workers to screen the content. 90% of the content is new, but 10% is randomly inserted content that has already been screened, and is known to be either be either appropriate or inappropriate. If the Turkers don't handle these tests properly, then their work is discarded, and they don't get paid .
The workers she hires are from India, Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, etc. But never from America. I see no reason that welfare recipients shouldn't be put to work on tasks like this instead of munching potato chips in front of the TV.
True, but they are highly correlated. This guy practically screams mental illness. His roommates all moved out? He used to be in IT? No friends or family to stay with? Hmm... Let me ask you: if you had a friend who you knew was sleeping in a carport, wouldn't you offer them a bed - or at least whatever space you do have? If your answer is "it depends on", then many of the things you are about to say tend to be traits common in someone with mental illness.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Addiction is an interesting thing, and it varies with different people. People don't always get addicted because they are unhappy. In fact, the drugs can be a lot of fun to use in the beginning. Initially, it is all good. However as you continue on it becomes more pain, less pleasure, a bigger problem. The thing is, quitting will cause a lot of pain at that point and you may have already messed up your life to a degree, so it is harder to quit.
Drugs with actual, physical, addictions can be real insidious in that way. That's also why you'll hear addicts talk about the need to "hit bottom". What that means is things have to get bad enough that you realize and accept what you need to do to try and recover, to deal with the difficulty of recovery. For some people, that bottom is pretty high. They'll stop the addiction early. For others, even death isn't the bottom.
You just have to shoot a poker chip through there to unclog your personal internet.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Valid point, and I was being overly dramatic in my point.
To better state it, there are 2 issues I see:
1. I think there are a lot of people who work because they must. If they can maintain a living without having to work, they won't work.
2. Giving everyone the money you described is going to cost a lot of... money. That has to come from somewhere, and the only place that can be is the pockets of everyone working. As item 1 becomes worse, the difference in income between me (hard working) and my cousin (lazy ass) is going to become more and more narrow.
Just another ignorant American.
A rather huge side benefit I had failed to consider
Just another ignorant American.
True, but they are highly correlated.
Of course one reason they are correlated is that a previously mentally healthy person can become mentally ill after spending a little time homeless.
I want to be very, very clear about something. I in no way intended to paint everyone without a job as lazy. I do not think that is at all the case. Now, there are a TON of lazy bums (such as my cousin, she's not crazy, just lazy) but there is an at least equally large issue with mental health. The problem is fixing mental health issues, like the rest of our healthcare problems is hard, and no one gets elected (or stays elected) by working on the HARD problems.
I'm also 100% behind you on the corporate greed. I'm rather proud to work for a large, not-for-profit hospital that actually 1) pays its employees decently well and 2) actively works to help the community. Not a common thing to find in healthcare today.
Just another ignorant American.
young men are last on the list when shelters are overcrowded.
As a single young man I can say that single young men are last on the list for just about everything.
Wait'll you're a single old man, and we'll talk. Oh yeah, I'll be dead then.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
2) Retype Bitcoin address from screen to laptop when receiving money for "microwork tasks" like spamming YouTube
:)
I think you meant "point the phone's camera at the QR code on the task completion page". Type it in? How... archaic!
So yeah, managing to use BTC doesn't really take a rocket scientist. That said, while the sort of tasks underlying these crappy online less-than-minimum-wage bounties don't actually take much skill, successfully satisfying the payout terms often does. I did a few of those through Amazon's Turk a few years back just for the hell of it, and they had the most absurd terms - Things like "check the following websites to look for pictures containing more than one species of baby animals", with the fine print disclaiming that getting paid required you to log your start and end time for the task, it couldn't take less than 85 seconds or longer than 95 seconds, and any pictures of iguanas invalidated all other results.
I made 18 cents total before I got bored with it. Took me about three hours. I could probably have made more "mining" Bitcoin block hashes by hand.
Give them a basic salary and then choose what menial position the Bureau of Suggested (Forced) Labor deems is best for their skills. Maybe that is doing stupid shit on the internet, I don't know, nor care, but they damn well should be doing SOMETHING.
Finding a job is, itself, a full time job. What you're proposing is a bad idea, because once you get into a workfare system, it's damned near impossible to get out of it because you don't have the time to either upgrade your skills or search for a better job. Meanwhile, every time it's been implemented to date, it works out to paying *significantly* less than minimum wage.
Some people will abuse the system. People will always find a way to abuse the system. But the system should *not* be set up to penalize everybody for the actions of a few, especially not when setting it up that way ends up making it impossible to get out of the system.
Actually, this is more a conseqeunce of the US social safety net and well meaning regulation than a failure. Minimum wage laws, taxes, insurance, and numerous restrictions on hiring and firing mean that you can't just take a chance on this guy and hire him to do something. If you could, he'd probably make more in a couple of days than he is making now in a month. Zoning regulations, health and safety regulations, restrictions on rental housing and hotels, tennants rights, and all that means that there is no cheap housing at the low end. Between homelessness and a middle class apartment used to be a whole range of options, from flophouses to boarding houses, and residential hotels. By outlawing them, you don't magically convert the people living in them into middle class wage earners, you simply put them on the street.
Bitcoin and online work fortunately are doing an end run around all these regulations. There is still no magical solution for the onerous restrictions on housing, though.
With proper mental health care, a great deal of those people could be medicated, counseled and otherwise treated to the point where they could become contributing members of society, and the ones that are too far gone for that, could be off the streets and getting proper care somewhere.
We have free/public health care in Canada, as well as public drug plans like the Trillium plan here in Ontario, which can offer up to 100% drug coverage depending on your income level. We still have homeless people with mental illness. We probably have less than in the US, but you can only help people who want to be helped, and some people will always choose to live on the street. (some people will end up there because they don't realize they have a choice, but that is a different discussion entirely)
No it isnt. A basic living income could only exist by taking from those who do work and giving to those who dont. Thats not a strawman, its the reality of the implementation of the described LaLa land fantasy.
The workers she hires are from India, Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, etc. But never from America. I see no reason that welfare recipients shouldn't be put to work on tasks like this instead of munching potato chips in front of the TV.'équote.
Because if they`re stuck doing menial tasks for less than minimum wage, then the ones who want to do better won`t have the chance because they won`t have the time to look for a job or upgrade their skills?
He's homeless, I'd be hard pressed to call that a living.
He hasn't died yet. I'd be hard pressed to call that not a living.
My concern is that the "few" will be an appreciably significant enough number so as to impact the long term fiscal viability of such a system unless the system could have a positive output appreciable enough to help offset the "few".
Just another ignorant American.
With a basic income, everyone gets the "handout", even if they do work.
So you wouldn't end up slaving away 8 hours a day to make barely more than survival. Instead you could work as much or as little as you want, depending on how much extra you want for luxury goods and services.
Giving everyone 25k a year (okay, 40k a year in some places) to live, with no expectation that they will do anything other than convert oxygen to CO2 and reproduce is rather short sighted insomuch as it ignores the vast laziness of so very, very many people.
If you treat people like cattle and expect them to act like cattle, there's a pretty fair chance that a lot of them are going to end up acting like cattle. A society based on "treat me how I expect to be treated or I'll sue" or "conform to what the authorities claim are norms or go to jail" is not going anywhere anyone needs it to go. Those aren't human conditions.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Not only this, but after a couple of years being unable to keep your jobs, it's easy to become very frustrated, you feel that your life goes nowhere, so you're searching for other ways to get money.
...greedy, sociopathic, mendacious, morally hazardous world of perverse incentives that is the free market.
Good lord, I don't think I've ever heard a better description. :)
It's generally referred to as State of Nature.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
This story is a lie, bitcoin is a fraud, just a ponzi scheme!! There's no way it can be useful for anything!
Are you actually arguing that being homeless is a sensible choice for a person? That this person does not need some sort of help, be it financial or medical (mental health)? I'm sorry, people are not adapted to living outdoors, and they are living on someone's private or public property when homeless anyway. I just do not see any rational argument for letting people remain homeless. The harm to society far outweighs the advantages in my opinion.
It will cost more to supervise someone who does not want to work than it will to automate the job or hire someone productive.
Cool, you've just filled two menial jobs in one go! You've got the right idea, friend! XD
You really need a "why" for this? Okay, purely on a practical basis, if you don't give people a motivation to put down the Cheetos and the remote, get off the couch, and do something - Most of them won't. I mean, I love what I do, but I sure as hell don't like that I need to whore myself out doing it so the corporate execs can get matching A8 W12s this year instead of those crappy ol' "base model" A8s. If I didn't need to work to live, I wouldn't.
And I make pretty good money at a cushy desk job, at that. People killing themselves for minimum wage at McDonalds? Who do you seriously expect would put up with that for similar pay to doing absolutely nothing?
So, how do you motivate the majority of able-bodied people to actually contribute to society rather than leech off it? "You can take a thankless but dignity-preserving job to make your living, or you can scrape gum off public sidewalks - your choice". Simple as that. Until we can automate every menial job on the planet, we need to have people who would rather do them than put up with some unpleasant alternative. When you make the alternative not all that unpleasant, goodbye food service, goodbye discount retail, goodbye agricultural workers.
Of course, as an alternative, we could pay McSlaves significantly more, so they want to work there... Except, in doing so, you've just tripled the price of a Big Mac, meaning that it now costs more to live, so that base-level government paycheck intended to let everyone survive now doesn't qualify as enough to get by.
Are you actually arguing that being homeless is a sensible choice for a person?
For some people - Yes. Living in a house costs a hell of a lot. Financially, it would make a lot more sense (particularly outside urban areas, where you need a car) to simply live in your car.
That said... No, I don't naively believe the guy from TFA lacks a home for pragmatic reasons. Most likely, he lacks a home because he can't hold down a job because the demons (whether bottled or "real") won't let him. In a less cruel world, the wolves (real actual Canis lupus, not imaginary or metaphorical ones) would eat him and everyone would go their merry way. In our world, we will instead force him to endure his demons, making a living watching ads in the library, for the next 40-60 years. Woo-hoo, go Western civilization!
You know crappy banks. Most of the big banks require you keep $1 in them to keep the account open.
Bitcoin is interesting but at $124 a coin, pretty expensive to get into (IDK, can you buy $5 worth of bitcoin? or just what you need to pay for something?)...
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
"There's always the army!" As any right-thinking, upstanding, hard-working, striving citizen will tell you...
Stick Men
Most banks at the $1 level are hitting you monthly fees for the privilege. Those add up in a hurry, and are actually worse than a larger minimum balance since you don't actually have the (small amount) of money to fall back on. Some credit unions will give you the $1 minimum no-fee option, but they're not always available in any particular place.
You can indeed buy fractional Bitcoins. Works like dollars and cents.
Autism should be considered a permanent congenital illness, like ADHD or a deformity. Like any other illness, it doesn't mean the person is any less of a human worthy of dignity and respect. They're a person with a particular condition, but first and foremost they are a person.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
> Opening a US bank account generally requires a permanent address and proof of [traditional] employment
Why do you say you need proof of employment to open a bank account? Credit Unions don't. None of the major US banks do.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Bitcoin is divisible into 100-millionths, the "satoshi".
Let me ask you: if you had a friend who you knew was sleeping in a carport, wouldn't you offer them a bed - or at least whatever space you do have? If your answer is "it depends on", then many of the things you are about to say tend to be traits common in someone with mental illness.
Is it really that simple, though? Sure if I learned a friend of mine was homeless I would offer them a couch to crash on until they got back on their feet but this is also only possible due to my lifestyle. If I had a family to worry about, this might not be such an easy commitment to make, let alone the added cost of taking care of a homeless person no matter who they are with potentially no foreseeable fix in sight.
Is it really that simple, though?
No, of course not. I was just trying to illustrate a point.
If I had a family to worry about, this might not be such an easy commitment to make, let alone the added cost of taking care of a homeless person no matter who they are with potentially no foreseeable fix in sight.
Agreed. But most functional people have more than one friend to lean on. I mean, it is possible that this guy just had an amazing run of bad luck. And, if you were going to find people with amazing strings of bad luck, checking homeless populations would be a good place to start... but that bit about all of his roommates moving out set off little alarm bells :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Who hit him with microwaves when he's trying to sleep?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And of course, like all other mental illnesses, if being autistic isn't causing you distress or affecting your ability to function then there's no "illness" label or imperative to be treated. On the other hand, if autism (or any other mental illness) is crippling someone's life and can be eased with some kind of treatment, it's not fair to them to deny that their condition is an illness when it clearly is.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
You have basically just described one of the reasons why the US debt is at the level it is.
"Except, in doing so, you've just tripled the price of a Big Mac"
So, you're claiming that a government regulation that significantly raises the costs of doing business (to a point above its current break-even point) might actually result in that business demanding more money for its product? And that that event might itself be used as input to a feedback loop?
Back in the '80s, I talked with a few people who had either lived in East Germany or Poland or who had relatives living there. They described exactly the situation that the AC responding to digitalsolo described. They saw society breaking down because it took no more than three generations for nearly everyone (basically those not working in high end physics or the secret police) to lose any desire to actually work. They had basically two reasons. 1) Why bother working when I don't get paid anymore than the guy down the street who doesn't and 2) it wouldn't matter if I got paid more because there isn't anything to buy anyway.
Another prevalent attitude was that what we would consider theft was considered normal. People would walk into a store and simply walk out with stuff. When questioned, their response was "Why should I pay have to pay for it? We all own everything equally."
So, you're claiming that a government regulation that significantly raises the costs of doing business (to a point above its current break-even point) might actually result in that business demanding more money for its product? And that that event might itself be used as input to a feedback loop?
:)
Erm... Yes? I think you've fairly described the intent of my final point.
and all it takes is robbing someone at gunpoint. Isn't that such a wonderful idea?
We already have 10% of the people making 40% of the income and paying 60%+ of the taxes. Additionally, we have 49% paying no taxes. How much more do you require of the top end before you have achieved "fairness?"
Of course they're right. Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, Detriot, etc. are perfect examples of that.
Having worked for a few retailers and knowing others who do and also who own retail outlets. I can assure you that the individual retailers are not tracking who gave them what bill. So you get a bill from the bank and The Retail Store gives it back to a bank. Did you give it to The Retail Store? Or did you give it to The Sandwich Shop who gave it to Joe who gave it to Sue who gave it to The Gas Station who gave it to Fred who gave it to the Retail Store?
Only a seriously delusional nitwit would believe that the second chain is at all traceable.
If you were to double the burger flipper's salary it does not triple the price of the product. I'd be surprised if there was more than 2 minute's total labor in getting a burger from the chiller to the drive-through window. At minimum wage that's 20 cents or so, doubling the minimum wage for the burger restaurant staff doesn't come close to tripling the cost of a big mac, even less so a full meal. With the cost of oil, land, water etc. I would imagine that the minimum-wage human labor cost component of the raw ingredients was pretty low too, sure there will be labor costs for marketing etc. But those guys aren't on minimum wage.
Nullius in verba
the most absurd terms
The most ingenious terms, you mean. Create some ridiculous hoops to jump through, plenty of suckers try to make book, few make book, you profit from clicks _and_ not paying. Barnum & Bailey would be proud.
I come here for the love
As someone who lives in one of the most liberal states in the Union, I imagine that our social security here is one of the more abused ones in the nation, and still you can't get more than 933 a month from SSI. That's a far cry from 25k a year. Heck 25k a year is a livable wage for someone with no dependents, 11k from SSI? Not really.
Of course I agree with your idea of 'Suggested Labor' for their SSI, unless they're physically disabled they should work for their living.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
That's not entirely fair. Single young men are first on the list for military conscription.
Log in or piss off.
A fraction of a cent a day?
The worst religious country - whose religion preaches love thy neighbor - actually has the worst social care? Color me surprised. Or maybe not.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Exactly.
Of course the system is helpful in helping you comply with the tax laws. They have no reason to be unreasonable and detain you at the first hint of foul play or lying. It's like a farmer killing his cow the morning after it didn't yield any milk for the first time. The farmer will give the cow a break, send it to a greener pasture for a few days rest, and then voila, it's back to producing quality A-grade pure lactic money milk for the farmer again!! Oh, and did I mention that the cow is now super-happy and motivated to give the farmer even more money-milk?
It's been hours now I'm trying websites that give free bitcoins for watching videos and visiting websites. So far, I made 3 cents, USD. I think begging is more rentable.
Let's not forget that these sorts of things bypass mandatory minimum wage laws. He'd be out of work entirely if the government decided to enforce mandatory minimums for workers that work part time watching ads.
Sure, he may be unable quite yet to get off the dole, but this is a step in the right direction. It's unfortunate that people have to live in such situations, but that is the way to true and meaningful change. Showing others that alternatives exist, and that they are valid examples despite a coercive and immoral system imposing restrictions around them.
If I was rich, I would be homeless. Traveling all around the country and sleeping in hotels, eating at restaurants, etc... Are you saying that if I don't have a home address, in Florida, it is illegal for a restaurant to serve a meal to me or someone to cook for me ?
Stupid laws are stupid.
Probably more of a failure in our mental health system. Also, young men are last on the list when shelters are overcrowded.
Sounds like discrimination to me... how about you use some of those bitcoins to file a lawsuit over prejudicial witholding charity based on age, sex, and gender?
Moo?
A society based on "treat me how I expect to be treated or I'll sue" or "conform to what the authorities claim are norms or go to jail" is not going anywhere anyone needs it to go. Those aren't human conditions.
And living as a homeless person is a human[sic] condition? A lot of those individuals would be far better off in a controlled, managed environment where they are taken care of. Getting labour out of it means that they're are doing "their fair share" for the benefits they receive.
Don't get me wrong, people should be allowed to be as free as possible. But when government has turned half the environment that we inhabit every day into a fictional concept called "public property", then we have to accept that society in general has some sort of say as to who is allowed to do what on that private property. They can be free to be homeless, destitute, and crazy for all I care. Either they accept the "workfare" system as a way for them to pay back society for the benefits, or they live in freedom and leave the rest of us alone. That includes them not guilting us at every traffic stop and street-corner.
Obviously the work camps would have a point system that allows people to get back out after accumulating enough capital. If they decide to then spend/waste all that accumulated capital when they get released, then they get worse off. Whatever the implementation, the point is to make it feasible for the homeless willing to work to rejoin society.
Hit the nail on the head right there, AC. The irony in that statement you quoted is astronomical. He wants to force everyone to enable his decision to not work. In actuality, completely avoiding the question of whether or not people deserve the choice to not participate in such a system.
He did choose the wrong word, definitely. But it points to a much larger issue that I see so rampant in our society. I know a lot of people like to bemoan the "entitlement" culture, but there is no other way to put it succinctly. When you feel that society owes you something, that society will take care of you when you lag behind, then you really have a perverse incentive to not take responsibility for your own actions. I'm not saying people are to blame for the situations they get into out of no fault of their own. But you have to add the caveat that people are not learning from others' mistakes. Why are individual people not taking steps to prevent scenarios that could cause them, a functioning member of society, to fall down and become destitute? There are larger forces at play here.
You have to think of it in relative terms, because that is how people will perceive the resulting system. Let's say that "basic income" is $1000 a month for every individual out there. Now, let's assume that a local mechanic works as an employee, full-time, and his salary is $1700 a month. The difference between working and not working now becomes $700 a month. That is the benefit the mechanic will get by working full time, as opposed to the individual that does not work at all. The value he gains from working is diluted.
Granted, that $700 difference may be quite significant to the mechanic. But the spectrum of salaries is quite diverse. How long do you think it'll take for all garbage collectors to switch over to not working? Let's assume they get paid a lot less than the mechanic because they possess less technical skill. Perhaps their salary is only $1200. Now, let's try to imagine the cost/benefit scenario playing out in the garbage collector's head. For 160 hours of manual labour, he will get $200 more than the guy next door that doesn't work. I don't know about you, but I will gladly take a 1/5th or 1/6th pay cut so that I could stay at home and play around with my hobbies.
So now that the majority of the garbage collectors are starting to quit and go stay at home to party/watch tv, who do you suppose will start collecting the trash? Let's assume that garbage collectors possess a skill that enables them to do that work. Well, in that case, the salaries for garbage collectors will rise as the companies try to fill the vacancies. Imagine this scenario happening across the board in all low-paid, skilled, perhaps even unskilled jobs. You'll quickly realize that the cost of living will generally go up as now business increase their prices to cover the increased cost of employees. Either that, or the jobs get automated/worked around entirely. It's a very similar effect to what minimum wage does to the market.
People do routinely dig ditches, pick up trash and unload trucks (though it's more accurate to say ditches are dug by machines). There are already people doing those jobs, that's the general workforce you dumbnut! And you won't find such a kind of job all that easily in a country with mass unemployment.
So you're advising that the homeless guy start walking to someplace he's not familiar with but where the employment prospects are better, right? Or are you offering to front him the money? I'm sure you can track this guy down and get him some money for travel - after all, all it requires is that you be able to send him some Bitcoins which you can do from wherever you happen to be.
If he's willing to relocate and can get some help paying for it, he might be able to do quite well up in Montana/Wyoming where energy extraction is booming and unemployment is low, and his homelessness experience might stand him in good stead since there's a major shortage of housing. Of course, I'm not so sure September is the right time to move to the northern plains to live outside.
fencepost
just a little off
Suing charities is rarely a successful tactic.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I've apparently been lucky to avoid banks with higher minimum balances or ones with fees for the account.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
If you think being poor and homeless is such a riot, why don't you try it yourself first before looking down your nose at other people. Like 9 out of 10 people choose to sleep under bridges, choose to carry shivs in case someone tries to beat/rob them, choose to deal with harassment from cops, and so on and so on.
Why there's a perfectly good reason for homeless people to have smartphones: job hunting. Especially in a shitty economy, having access to a phone and internet can be vital when searching for jobs. If Wal-Mart can't call you back for a second interview, they'll just shrug their shoulders and hire one of the other 200 applicants from that week. That decent paying job that fits in with your education and work experience that you just found out about? Filled last week by an applicant that responded the same day it was posted.
But aside from all that, it's truly disgusting how conservatives demand a certain level of misery of the poor before giving them an iota of "respect".
In BC the mental health services have been cut way back, at that just this week the municipalities got together to beg the Provincial government to re-open the main mental health facility as there are so many homeless and otherwise mentally ill people who's only recourse is the police who know that they're not equipped to deal with them. The government turned them down, the heartless bastards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
single young men are last on the list for just about everything
I'm sorry, what? Is this a joke?
Today's job market is way too unpredictable. These unpredictable elements include things like employers hiring people only temporarily, laying them off at the end of their trial periods, hiring only part time while assigning practically full time hours (e.g. full time may qualify at 38 hours, but the employer may only want the worker to work 36-37) to dodge paying full time wages or benefits, extremely small contracts or nitpicking about job performance so they don't have to keep workers on.
This is worsened by the fact the job market is divided between a "public" and "hidden" job market. All of the jobs on the "public" side are very unstable for the above reasons. The "hidden" market is only accessible if you know people pretty high up AND are pretty much already within the industry — which I guarantee most "ground floor" do not and are not.
One significant aspect about the "public" job market is that it is one of service and manual jobs that are really only designed to be temporary, but many "uncertified" people are duped by the job market into ending up working these permanently.
Now, I know many who have stable office/skilled jobs with job security may be of the belief that all one needs is hard work and determination to get a good job — this may have been true 20+ years ago, but not today. One needs contacts (if you're in a skilled industry, you likely already have 30+ contacts at a minimum outside of your company) in today's day and age, those already "in the system" to "bring you in" essentially.
Now to talk on the whole element of education for a moment (which always tends to come up as an alleged silver bullet to solve any employment problem), given the state of the job market in how it has become a circle-jerk of self-gratification by those already in various industries, education is not a guarantee, in fact it is a truly unstable investment as there's far too many variables. Thinking of education in terms of a business deal, would you invest in something that 1) plunges you into debt; 2) you cannot guarantee that the product will be relevant any more by the time it is complete and 3) you cannot withdraw your funding and support from the project once it is committed and in progress to invest elsewhere... it is something that is a disaster waiting to happen from a business perspective. This doesn't even start to include the job market nonsense.
I do not blame people for seeking methods to create their own systems to sustain themselves, as frankly until these barriers are lowered (and they won't as long as that self-gratification is going on by industries and businessmen alike internally), nothing will ever change. The HR expectation of "experience" is code for "we only want someone already deep in the industry". Though of course eventually industry will see these new systems as threats to the status-quo and demand them shut down or made prohibitive (look at the financial industry's aversion to bitcoins).
Finally, look at how employment has shifted away from having managers having control over employment over to an HR model where HR has control over job postings, where hiring managers can only "suggest" people be hired. Often times HR doesn't even understand the jobs they are hiring for and as such just gets a list of keywords and if those keywords aren't in someone's resume, it is overlooked even if that person is the best in the industry. As such even application for most jobs is onerous and prohibitive.
To summarize, the job market and current system is way too unstable for people to have faith in it anymore, thus people have stopped trying to have faith in it. I speak to homeless and unemployed on a regular basis and most of them want jobs, but many have lost faith in employers to give them one that won't be taken away in less than a year due to "economics" and the aforementioned instabilities.
You are reminding me of the time a bit over decade ago when there were plenty of people with computer skills looking for a job, myself included, and those that couldn't work out how to get around clueless HR clowns and didn't have other stuff they could do as a stopgap ended up waiting for a very long time.
Apparently the job market sucks even more now than after the tech crash.
Skills don't matter so much if you can't show them to anyone that appreciates them, and doing an end run around HR is not something that's so easy to work out cold.
When did the USA hit an unemployment rate of zero? Oh, obviously it didn't but the above poster seems to think it has.
I think I've just seen a good example above of why technical jobs are being shipped to places where education levels are improving instead of slipping such as India. There's not so many jobs where smug ignorance and hatred of those less fortunate is a criteria, but if there is then posters like the above or similar ones that have come through an education system with little evidence of it providing them with any benefit have a good chance of getting one.
Make the shit jobs graveyard. Everybodies happy.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And how many of those are filled by either fresh-out-of-school, too-young-to-know-their-value graduates, or by people imported through the "high tech visa"s?
"We can't fill this job, so there must not be a supply in the US, so we have to import" -- that's what people say to washington.
Not: "We're not willing to pay what this is worth, and actually train people who are skilled in how to use our system, so give us cheap people from overseas instead".
Except that with a lot of hard work it isn't permanent. To think so is stupidity, it's like saying no one in the whole world can change their point of view.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I'm sorry, people are not adapted to living outdoors
Seriously?? You have heard of this thing called evolution right?
There is a whole lot of freedom that comes with being homeless. Get educated, go talk to some homeless people.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
If you gave everyone 25k a year, your prisons would probably be empty and you'd have a surplus.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Unfortunately, mental illness is a direct product of the society that produces it. Which is why different societies have different classifications. Want to eliminate mental illness, create the perfect society. At the very least, create a society that's responsible enough to handle it's byproducts.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Some people don't believe in the society we've created, even less so in the past decades. There are other reasons for being homeless than mental illness and no job.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
We've reached peak hipster.
is it a failure of the US social safety net that this man has to do this?
More likee failure of the ARC Net ;-) Remember his prior occupation!
Whatever the implementation, the point is to make it feasible for the homeless willing to work to rejoin society.
Your point is. They likely have a far more expansive view of what they would consider life. Was Thoreau homeless, or charting another course?
There are *a lot* of things that the rest of you do that I'd never consider if I had multiple lives. Your idea of what life entails could be mirror opposite to how I live.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
"There's always the army!" As any right-thinking, upstanding, hard-working, striving citizen will tell you...
Not so much. High-frequency hearing and orthopedic issues said no to that for me, when I was young enough to be eligible. That was three branches of service, and excellent ASVAB score.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.