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Power and Free Broadband To the People
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes Slashdot member and open source developer Ben Kallos @KallosEsq — who is now a NYC Councilman — is pushing to make it a precondition to Comcast's merging with Time Warner that it agree to provide free broadband to all public housing residents in the City (and by free I mean free as in beer). Kallos, along with NY's Public Advocate, Letitia James, is leading a group of state and local politicians calling on Comcast to help bridge the digital divide in NY.
Just look at the loving way in which the residents of "free" public housing maintain their residences out of gratitude to the all-caring government.
Truly, public housing solved poverty to exactly the same degree that free broadband will "solve" the digital divide. I'm sure that the upstanding U.S. citizens who live in public housing will take it upon themselves to learn how to code and contribute Open Source software to the world in complete gratitude for this benevolent entitlement.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Is it just me or does this not look good from any angle? On one hand you have duopolies becoming a monopoly, on the other hand, the city is demanding free shit from said monopoly. Will that city look the other way when the monopoly abuses its position?
Looks like crooks pressuring other crooks, with the rest of us footing the bill.
Merger is anti-market, anti-competitive and will result in shittier and more expensive internet for everyone. Also, there is no such thing as free, costs will be passed to existing paying customers, again making it more expensive.
Here is a solution: don't allow Comcast to merge with Time Warner! Who cares about "free" broadband? That would cost them maybe a $1 million and the rest of us about $20 billion in increased fees to support the TWC/Comcast monopoly. Ben has a small mind.
Yet again my college degrees have done very little for me, but at least I can now subsidize internet services for others. Remember how we are all supposed to be equal? I know I am not special, so why cant others be expected to pay their own way too. We are all worth the same are we not? Or is the dirty little secret that some groups truly are incapable of taking care of themselves?
You don't help the poor by giving them more free handouts. All that will occur is the middle class will pay for it through price hikes and something similiar.
Time and again, history has shown a healthy middle class is the best road to alleviate poverty on a grand scale. Well guess what? It's the middleclass that has to pay for entitlements by and large (especially through fica taxes), taxing them more after decades of no real wage increases (since the 70s iirc) will have the opposite effect.
The best road would be to block the merger, encourage legislatively more competition, prices will drop, and it will help everyone (except Comcast and Warner of course).
Wouldn't it be nice if they can all have free housing, a free car, free gas, and how about free food and clothing?
I hope they qualify what "free" & "broadband" mean. That could mean ad-supported, capped at 40 hours, and dialup speeds. In fact, why don't we just hand out AOL trial disks every month like food stamps and call the problem solved?
...it will be a single 1 Mb/s connection shared by all of them. As a result, more of them will spend the ten to fifteen bucks for a dialup subscription.
...why do I have the sneaky sensation that Google will be the future provider of "free" internet to everyone in the world? Connecting our lives...
Knowledge is indeed power. But who controls Google?
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
If these people are living in poverty, how are they going to have a computer to access the internet with?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The problem is in the US working poor didnt qualify for free housing so basically what happened is you concentrated utter poverty in a small area.
Combine that with inadequate security, poor maintenance and shoddy construction you have a recipe for disaster. So right now
working poor pay well over 30% of their salary for rent. What would they do if they didnt have the heavy rent loads? They would spend it on consumer goods like washers and dryers and cars and perhaps even save for the down payment for a house. So an argument could be made that public housing might
in the long run stabilize home prices and improve the economy.
In Europe mainstream families live in public housing so public housing doesnt have the stigma that it has in the US so economic activity is maintained
near public housing in europe because you have working families who spend money not just welfare recipients. Also because working families
vote political interests have a vested interest in maintaining the quality of public housing.
There's no way Comcast (or any cable company) will ever agree to that. The fact is that cable companies make most of their money off of large apartment buildings. That's where they get access to oodles of customers without having to lay hardly any cable at all. Rich neighborhoods, oddly enough, with their spread out property, tend to cost cable companies more money to service than they pay in.
If other posts here on Slashdot are any indication, "Mr. Councilman" is just as likely to lose political points by supporting the poor.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Or for allowing the merger to go through in any form
XDInd
Be smart, look at your income, calculate if you can afford to have children or not.
Do they know how?
Or even worse decide to have multiple children without a two-parent home with stable income.
How many teenagers (or emotionally immature adults) do you know that would decline sex if there wasn't a condom handy?
Having children is not a right but an earned responsibility.
Tell that to your penis or uterus. I'm sure it will stop trying once it realizes you haven't earned it yet.
subsidizing the millions in this country that have excess children
Isn't that the same thing as subsidizing the millions of excess children who have bum parents?
If I'm paying for their housing, clothes, food, and now internet, I want a complete say in how those kids are raised.
Then become a foster parent. Or were you kidding when you volunteered to take on all that responsibility?
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
If other posts here on Slashdot are any indication, "Mr. Councilman" is just as likely to lose political points by supporting the poor.
Actually this particular councilman represents an extremely high-rent district--Manhattan's upper east side. I doubt there are many wealthier neighborhoods in the world. He's not doing this to 'score points', he's doing it to do the right thing.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Self-employed people have no problem with the fact that their employee may not have a college degree. They didn't wait around for someone to hand them a job.
No one said it was easy, and you're spot on with your last statement: many of the people in question are not driven, intelligent or motivated.
If you have no drive or motivation (aren't those the same thing?), even if you are intelligent, you will almost certainly fail. Why should the rest of us bend over backward to compensate for the shortcomings of unmotivated people with no drive to better themselves? Why should we be expected to provide them with a (lower)middle-class lifestyle at our expense?
Seems like every person in line in front of me at the grocery store using foodstamps has two or three kids with them and every one of them has an iPhone, usually two generations newer than my own.
"solving" those sorts of problems.
Before declaring the "War on Poverty" LBJ was warned that if "something isn't done" the poverty rate would skyrocket . After the trillions of dollars and years spent fighting the war of poverty, what's the poverty rate, 15.something percent? Before the war on poverty the rate had dropped dropped over 32% in 1950 to below 20%.
The poverty rate is pretty much flat for the last 45 years. Can we at least consider to prospect that what we've been doing, at close to $1T per year nowadays, is simply not working? Can we at least consider alternatives? Or are we destined to forever throw good money after bad--pouring money into a system that simply does nothing to actually "solve" the poverty problem.
Two things get you and keep you out of poverty:
1. Not having kids that you cannot afford (*)
2. An unquenchable drive to improve oneself: education, trade skills, getting that first or next job, getting that first or next promotion or pay raise, entrepreneurship...the basic theme of every rags-to-riches story
(*) A single person working full-time (40 hours/wk for 50 weeks) and earning minimum wage is not, by Federal standards, living in poverty. In fact, they are at about 125% of the poverty line. Add a kid, and bam, both parent and child are living in poverty. Two minimum wage earners, OTOH, could support themselves and up to 3 children without being below the poverty line.
His district is the third-highest-income in the city (he represents the less classy half of the upper east side, from Lex to the river), although that may have come down a bit, with the redistricting. Also, it's worth noting that, with the proposed redistricting, he's had three sizable public housing projects added to his district (Lexington, Isaacs, and Holmes).
...
1. This makes it harder for anyone to compete with the likes of the cable monopolies because to provide and compete they'll have to first give away their products and services to people for free simply for the privilege of being able to sell them to anyone else. This effectively makes it impossible for anyone to compete with the cable monopolies. And in exchange for protecting and expanding their monopolies the price for them is cheap. The cost of course is paid by everyone.
2. This sort of thing is ultimately vote buying. We've been seeing this sort of thing go on for years. You want to win the election? Use public money or take money/resources/rights from one group of people that doesn't like you and give it to another group that is for sale. Instant win in the election every time. It is a perversion of democracy. Only those that pay should be able to vote on matters that are being funded.
No taxation without representation... remember? Well... why do you get representation without taxation? It is the same thing. Pay like everyone else or you have no right to influence what gets spent on whom.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What about the rest of the country? This is benefiting one group of people in a particular city and screwing the rest of the United States.
Horrible suggestion.
There's nothing wrong with trying to be more independent, should you so choose. But honestly, people are fairly free to live that "pre Industrial Revolution" lifestyle right now. Join an Amish community!
In reality though, most people I know don't WANT that lifestyle, because we've traded a lot of self-sufficiency off in exchange for having an easier life, and one where we're able to focus on specialties of interest. That's done by embracing INTERdependence.
For example, my primary skill and interest is with computers and I.T. If I wanted to be a lot more independent, I'd get stuck spending many hours on tasks like farming and food preparation, that I'm not at all interested in doing. Sure, if I *had* to do it, I probably could... but I think our society is pretty well established in such a way where I'm not forced to do so. To me, that's progress... not some inherently bad thing.
Now, if we're talking about people who can't seem to find or keep a job that pays enough for them to survive? Then sure.... we're now talking about folks who might really benefit from investing time and energy in such things as planting their own vegetable gardens. (It beats being stuck unemployed and having nothing constructive to do.)
As far as the whole "going off-grid" thing is concerned though? Right now, I don't know that it makes sense in many cases. I say that as someone who just invested in a solar panel installation for my home, too. The fact is ... this "investment" is only financially sensible if you take a very long term view. Up front, I'm forking out upwards of $30,000 for a system that will only produce 65% or so of our energy needs -- and the math REALLY starts making it look like an unwise expenditure if you don't factor in the $10,000 tax credit I get back for it, plus another state credit of a couple thousand bucks.
The people who do those solar leases with low or no money down are in even worse situations, because they're #1, not recouping the tax credits and #2, are locked into contracts they can't get out of if they decide to move and resell their homes. (They have to convince the new home buyer to assume the lease, which they can't even do unless their credit score is high enough to allow it ... and may not WANT to do, vs. just signing up for a brand new contract and getting the latest and greatest panel tech. installed as part of the new deal.)
Ultimately, I'm betting on electricity prices going up enough that when I project things out 15 or 20 years from today, the power my panels generate for me will theoretically be worth a lot more than it is right now. But who can say if the power companies will continue buying back excess power you generate over what you use? If they stop doing that, or start paying only pennies on the dollar for it -- this could quickly turn into a real loser of a deal too. (Don't forget, your panels generate NOTHING when the sun goes down ... so you want to get repaid for extra power made during the middle of the day, to offset what you use at night.)
The only part of your statement I disagree with is the use of the term "helping the needy", because these programs are never to help the needy. If they do help the needy, it's usually an unwanted side effect that receives no maintenance or scrutiny. There is always a new bureaucratic position to be created for the explicit purpose of consuming those funds.
Anyone doubting this just needs to look at the "Obama Phone" program, where tax payers are getting shafted, just so people vote for a particular party. Americans are paying hundreds of millions in extra "fees" each year as tax on their services (close to 3.00/month report I read). I have no issue with giving 1 emergency phone to someone in need, but there are 2 huge problems with the current program. 1) No accountability so people are being found with dozen(s) of phones, and 2) The phones and services being handed out don't match up to the funds being taken in as a "Tax".
Oh, and there was a report in the last couple weeks that people with phones are still paying the tax, and people are still being found with dozens of phones from the program.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Public housing resulted from economic disparity and poverty, not building standards. It was a cheaper and safer option to make new "cheap" buildings that are tenant controlled than hand out checks every month which may not have gone to rent anyway. Wealth disparity and poverty causes riots and has caused governments to be toppled. A lack of affordable housing is a side effect of poverty, not a stand alone condition (with the rare exception of temporary housing loss due to a natural disaster, which in reality loops back to poverty).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
He used to be able to hire more, but he got sued.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
They're doing the best they can. You have no ever-loving idea what happened with the projects. You just read the nonsense spouted by the right wing press and never take another glance.
/. these days...
The projects brought a whole bunch of really, really poor rural people into the cities to try and better their lives. Then the political winds changed and the funding for the social programs that would have supported them got cut. Suddenly they were stuck in a city with no jobs, no education, and no hope for getting either of them. Meanwhile manufacturing was being outsourced to China just as fast as it could be. Basically, we dumped a bunch of people into a ready made slum and called it a day.
Jesus, the stuff that can up-modded on
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Free cable tv, free phones, free cab service and metro cards. In fact free everything everywhere for everyone at all times forever.
"It just happens". You clearly have little idea how at some evels children occur. This isn't my petit bougie bon mot...it came from a committed social worker in a storefront social services setting. You don't plan. "it just happens". Most people plan where making extras is concerned, but certainly not all.
A Department of Energy Survey [www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2009/#undefined], includes a part of which breaks down appliance use in US homes by household Income.
For example it states that 16.9M households are below the poverty line, and of those 15.6M have microwaves, 8.6M have coffee makers, 10.6M have top-door (top freezer) refrigerators, 1.8M have a 2nd refrigerator, 3,9M have a separate freezer, 4.8M have a dishwasher, 10.9M have a clothes washer in their home.
For TVs, of the 16.9M households below the poverty line, only 0.3M had no TV, while 4.8M had one TV, 5.9M had two TVs, 3.5M had three TVs, 1.6M had four TVs, and 0.7M had five or more TVs. Some 8.9M had TVs between 21 and 36 inches in screen size, and 4.4M had “big screen TVs” of 37 inches or more, with 5.7M being LCD or plasma TVs. Some 6.1M had cable TV boxes connected to their primary TV, and 3.9M had a video game console, and 7.1M had a DVD player.
In addition 5.8M of the 16.9M households below the poverty line had computers, while 1.8M more had two computers (and nearly1M had three or more). Some 7.2M had internet access, of those 2.7M had cable broadband, 3.1 had DSL or fiber. And 5.2M had at least one printer.
8.0M (of 16.9M poverty-level) households have cordless phones, 5.2M have answering machines, 0.8M have fax machines, and 0.8M have photocopiers. 5.8M have stereo equipment.
"Living in poverty": in the US is hardly the same as being destitute. Considering how prevalent the trappings of modern-day middle-class lifestyles are in the households living below the poverty line, one may find themselves wondering "Wait, they have a big-screen TV with cable, but I've gotta fork over taxes to give them foodstamps that they can spend at McDonalds?"
In my mind the notion that I am being forced to pay welfare benefits even one household that chooses to squander their real income on Playstations and big screen TVs is too many. If they can afford to buy a TV, they can afford to buy their own food. If they’ve got a big TV from before they were poor (they lost a job perhaps), then sell the TV first to buy food, then when you’ve truly got nothing left, we can talk about your “needs”.
So we should be paying benefits so that more people can have a dishwasher, cordless phone, and computer? Progressives seem to support the notion that everyone should be able to live a lower middle-class lifestyle, one that includes all those things, and that our welfare state should provide it without question of other lifestyle choices that may have been made, without requiring work on their part.
No one needs a dishwasher. It is a luxury, work-saving device. No one needs a TV. It is an entertainment device. No one needs a Playstation, it is a game. No one needs a tattoo. It is a personal choice. No one needs Big Macs, Coke, beer, booze, or cigarettes. If you're on welfare and spend money on those things, you can afford to meet your basic needs, but are choosing not to and expecting others to subsidize your decisions.
My definition of “need” vs "want" comes in much lower than progressive find tolerable, and includes minimal support–I don’t want anyone to starve in this country, and want to provide a helping hand. But if you want more than the most basic subsistence level of support, get it yourself. And I mean *basic*, like here's you sack of rice and beans. Of course, though, people who simply lack the basic mental or physical ability to support themselves cannot be excluded from a reasonable level of support.
I guess the question for progressives boils down to "How rich do you want the poor people in this country to be?" The onus should be on them,since they want to forcibly take money from me and others to redistribute it to those they feel do not have enough. They never have defined “enough” but the level of expectation on the word “need” seems much higher than mine.
The population of people born with all those advantages but who still end up on the dole is pretty damn large. What's the difference between them and their whitebread suburban brats who *don't*?
And we've seen plenty of the inverse (or is it the contrapositive?) of "put one of those pampered, designer-coiffed, $400 shoe-wearing wall street masters of the universe who GOT AWAY with wrecking the economy so they could have those stupid $400 shoes, in the same starting place as virtually any poor person, and they will turn to shit, too..." Lots of stories of poor people winning the lottery and being broke again in a few years.
Certainly there is a difference in starting position for everyone. Paris Hilton exists, and it sucks ass that someone like her gets everything. But there are many many people who have succeeded on their own. Not everyone succeeds like Oprah, either, but Oprah's story is certainly compelling.
What, pray tell, has 50 years of the war on poverty and all its social welfare programs costing $22T and counting (and adding about $1T annually now) done to *actually* change the life of the inner-city urban poor, the rural poor, the homeless drunks and addicts? Maybe you're right, and we just need to keep spending that money to placate the masses. If that's the case, though, can we do it more efficiently? Can we do anything about women like this "I got 15 kids & 3 baby daddy's" ... "Someone's gotta pay for me and my kids"?
"The staffing company ManpowerGroup, for instance, reports that 52% of U.S. employers surveyed say they have difficulty filling positions because of talent..."
What a coincidence! I have trouble filling my garage because I'm having trouble finding Lamborghinis. It couldn't have ANYTHING to do with the fact that I'm only willing to offer $20,000 for each car.
If you're having trouble filling positions, MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY OFFERING A COMPETITIVE WAGE, instead of continuing to leave them flat.
Still waiting for THAT story to appear in the WSJ.
The population of people born with all those advantages but who still end up on the dole is pretty damn large.
Sure. Being born with advantages doesn't mean you'll succeed, or have the drive to succeed even if it would have been relatively easy for you.
But that really has no bearing on the fact that once your at the bottom, it is that many times harder to get out.
More importantly, its a generational cycle -- if you remove the supports the children of those at the bottom will have virtually no upward mobility either.
We want class mobility to have a healthy society.
What, pray tell, has 50 years of the war on poverty and all its social welfare programs costing $22T and counting (and adding about $1T annually now) done to *actually* change the life of the inner-city urban poor, the rural poor, the homeless drunks and addicts?
Take a look at the poor in an actual 3rd world country. Consider the relative standards of life. Consider the relative class mobility. Then tell me our "poor" aren't doing a LOT better than they are. A good reason why is precisely because the support we provide, small as it is, is enough to give those with drive the opportunity to succeed.
Lots of stories of poor people winning the lottery and being broke again in a few years.
Managing money is a skill itself. Putting a lot of water in a leaking bucket isn't going to fix the bucket.
But there are many many people who have succeeded on their own.
Sure there are. But we aren't all Oprah.
Can we do anything about women like this "I got 15 kids & 3 baby daddy's"
The Idiocracy phenomena, right? :)
I agree with you, I'd like to see that fixed. I'm not sure what the solution is... but a good start of it would be free birth control. Obamacare got that RIGHT, but its not good enough yet. Free birth control should be universally available. It won't eliminate the problem entirely but its a huge step. And I'm not talking just free condoms... I'm talking the pill, IUDs, for women, RISUG type tech for men, no co-pays, no exceptions for the church.
As a society we should be making that available to everyone. I'm not going to force men and women not to have children -- the slippery slope once you start deciding who can and who can't have kids is just too great. But unwanted pregnancy should be eliminated from the first world.
the homeless drunks and addicts?
That's another difficult problem. But more those people are more than just poor ... they're 'broken'. Its not merely lack of education and money. They aren't Eddie Murphy from Trading Places... and just need the opportunity. You give them a job and they wouldn't show up. You give them a home and they'd shit in the bedroom and sell the lightbulbs. They're mentally handicapped, autistic, obsessive compulsive, and then toss alcohol and drugs on top of that. Then add in various further health issues, complications from their lifestyle, etc.
I don't know what the solution is, but blaming them for it is just silly.
So, let me get this straight: he's willing to let Comcast get even bigger - and almost certainly even worse as a service, much less as a company - and effectively cement Comcast's monopoly on cable internet service throughout much of the nation, as long as poor New Yorkers benefit? How is that even remotely ethical in any sense? For that matter why would people make the effort to educate themselves and gain useful new skills necessary to get better jobs when you just give them luxuries that would otherwise serve as an incentive for improvement and mobility?
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
"The Idiocracy phenomena, right? :)
No, real life. Search for that phrase an you'll find the news reports with video and everything.
"And I'm not talking just free condoms... I'm talking the pill, IUDs, for women, RISUG type tech for men, no co-pays, no exceptions for the church. As a society we should be making that available to everyone. I'm not going to force men and women not to have children -- the slippery slope once you start deciding who can and who can't have kids is just too great. But unwanted pregnancy should be eliminated from the first world."
Why involve employers, churches, etc. at all? That's where Obamacare went wrong. If that's what you want, then put together a government program that provides these directly. It is 100% a mistake to try to force employers and churches to be proxy social workers. I'm also not going to tell people not to have kids. But I would be pretty willing to tell people who come to me with their hand extended for benefits: "No more kids while on benefits. Birth control will be provided to you free of charge. If you have a kid while on benefits, you can chose to either put the kid up for adoption where it will be raised outside the cycle of poverty or leave the program." Draconian and unworkable maybe, but so was Swift's idea for dealing with children.
"the homeless drunks and addicts? I don't know what the solution is, but blaming them for it is just silly."
I don't blame them, but clearly what we're doing hasn't done jack to fix the problem either and it is naive to think if we just do more of the same (and I mean more $$$ thrown down the same programs) it will get better.
I authored the previous comment; I didn't realize that I was logged out when I did, so it showed up as AC. But it's me.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Kudos to you for doing a solar panel installation. I've been thinking of my own, but feel that it is still too expensive. I think it is still "big dumb engineering", though I understand solar has gotten much better in recent years. A 30 year or longer payback period is just too long for me. There is so much that can happen in 30 years: technological improvements and price drops, and you may move or die, or your house may be destroyed by fire, tornado, earthquake, flood, or termites.
What I mean by big dumb engineering is exemplified by the double pane windows. Save up to 50% on your heating and cooling costs, they say. How much to replace all the windows and glass doors? Why, only $10,000! I spend about $700 per year on heating and cooling, so the windows only save me $350 per year at best, which makes for about a 30 year payback period right there. I very much doubt I'd see a 50% cut in my heating and cooling costs anyway. A better solution is to put curtains on all the windows. Way, way cheaper, and looks nice too.
Anyway, I've read the first use of solar should be for hot water. There too, I've had no luck. One business quoted me an incredible price tag of $17,000 for their solar water heating system. They quickly rolled out discounts and tax rebates and the like, and got it down to $6000. Nope, still too expensive. I replaced the tank water heater with another tank water heater for $350 (it's nearly the lowest quality available, warrantied for only 6 years), hoping to buy more time for solar water heating to come down in price.
I've gone for much more modest improvements. Replaced incandescent lights with CFLs, and now LEDs. The 4 ft fluorescent tube has been improved from 40 watts to 32 watts and the diameter shrunk a little, and I upgraded to 2 of those when an old ballast went bad. There was this 80plus program to improve the efficiency of computer power supplies. My newest computers are small footprint and low energy, using only 30 watts maximum, and I set them up to sleep after 10 to 15 minutes of inactivity. Tube monitors and TVs are all gone, replaced with flat screens. Most of all, I've let the temperature swing more with the seasons, living with 83F in the summer, and 70F in the winter. I'd go even colder, but the rest of the family whines too much. All that has cut energy use by about 50%. Was using around 10,000 kWh per year, and now I'm at 5200 kWh.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
No, real life.
Idiocracy IS real life.
Why involve employers, churches, etc. at all? That's where Obamacare went wrong.
I agree with you there... but it would NEVER have passed otherwise. Its a step forward from where we were, but its not a destination.
"No more kids while on benefits. Birth control will be provided to you free of charge. If you have a kid while on benefits, you can chose to either put the kid up for adoption where it will be raised outside the cycle of poverty or leave the program."
Meh. Just giving them the free birth control might be enough to make a big different, and doesn't open that can of worms. Confiscating children from unwilling parents so you can put them up for adoption is pretty unworkable.
, but so was Swift's idea for dealing with children.
Nobody took Swift's idea seriously either. We need solutions that are actually workable.
I don't blame them, but clearly what we're doing hasn't done jack to fix the problem either and it is naive to think if we just do more of the same (and I mean more $$$ thrown down the same programs) it will get better.
That the programs haven't fixed the problem is true. But to argue the programs have had no effect is something else entirely. Cut the programs and the homeless people don't go away, they just get more desperate and crime goes up and you pay for it that way. Yay, I get to keep $1000 more in taxes so I can pay $1500 more for policing and prisons.
And worse the police and prisons aren't a solution either. They don't fix the problem, and they would cost more than the programs you don't like.
So, I'm with you... things need improvement... but you are just handwaving that we should do something else / something better. But what? That's the hard question.
Cancelling the programs isn't a good option. It won't make things better, and won't even save any money in the big picture -- where if anything it will cost more.