Where did America go wrong?

nicholasIII wrote: »

I just heard that a close friend of mine who lives in New York will be evicted and soon to be homeless. They don't have any close friends at the moment so they are staying in their car thankfully.

I know it's not your core question but homelessness is a global issue. Every time it comes up it's always looked at in a localised way but check out the media in all of Europe, Canada, Australia and anywhere else and you'll find the same question. How can we fix the homeless issue in X city.

It's possible to list the reasons for the problem. Blaming individuals for not working. Being unlucky with health and losing everything.

Blaming governments for not planning for its population. Or how they push property prices because most in society are someway invested in it. And how they're stuck on the merry go round of national loans, bonds and world finance.

It's like global warming, until it's profitable to keep everyone in a house there will always be homelessness.

There's 16,000 to 20,000 empty homes in NYC.

tara2k wrote: »

He didn't pay his rent, so he's going to get evicted. The USA is very straight-forwarded when it comes to things like this. If he pays his rent, he can move back into his apartment. New York is dead at the moment, so he should be able to find a new home quickly. You are not going to get to live in a $500K home rent free in the USA.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but you're basing his eviction on non-payment of rent on literally nothing. So far as I can see, the OP didn't give any reason.

I've quite a few American friends and colleagues who've worked there for years, and I've even considered moving there myself, excluding New York or California simply due to the cost of living, but the US does by and large offer little in the way of protection to renters. It's very possible to simply get home someday and find that you're being evicted, or fired from your job.

Main issue is the constitution. Mericans see it as the gospel and assumes the world hasn't changed in the last 250 years.

It's used to justify FREEDOM, something that no other country in the world has. :pac:

Oh, and the fear of socialism. Helping others is one step away from communism. Can't be having that.

You have what is effectively 52 countries fighting to take from the same pot. It might be a Federal republic but it's nothing like Germany, where each State has it's own sub-government but they are much more integrated for the common good. In Germany, when a road is built, it is seen as being for the common good of the country and the state,whereas in America, they'll argue night and day about who's going to pay for it. The bad weather is Texas recently is a classic example; Texas is not integrated into the national grid, by it's own choice, so they could not import gas or electricity from nearby States. How stupid is that?! Nationally,their electric, road, rail and gas infrastructure is creaking at the seams.
The police are effectively thousands of police forces, from the smallest town to the biggest city and range from forces that have squadrons of helicopters and world-class forensics to impoverished forces that can't afford to replace their patrol cars and often operate on the verge of bankruptcy. When absolutely every civil official of any kind, great or minor in role, has to be re-elected every four years,the ordinary civil service processes that we take for granted can come to a grinding halt. Every school teacher faces the axe every year and it is routine for school teachers to be laid off for summer holidays and be rehired in the new school year.Many don't get rehired,so they have to move to get hired someplace else. It's about on a par with pulling up with a van outside a pub in Kilburn looking for day labourers. The college system is a sinkhole of debt.
Running a country as a business is not right. We don't always get it right, in many ways, buy we do it better.

It’s messed up.

I know a man, lovely fella, bit of a Ned Flanders, worked hard for his family as an educator in Small Town, USA. Poor bastard got cancer, and faced being ruined by the medical bills. He was worried that when he passed away his family would be financially fooked. Anyway, long story short, he started making Nazi Crank and became a big time drug lord, messing with Mexican cartels, dissolving bodies in acid, the lot.

Only in America.

Usual hysteria Im seeing here. Lazy stuff.

Its a mixed bag, like any other country. They actually have less homeless per population than Ireland, way less, and the UK, and Sweden and Australia.....

Most of America looks like this.



Normal boring uneventful people with normal boring uneventful families and normal boring uneventful jobs who are having normal boring uneventful "what do you fancy for dinner?" conversations just like anyone else.

Just because we see things that are newsworthy on telly or social media doesn't mean its the norm. Its not. Its because its newsworthy.

KungPao wrote: »

It’s messed up.

I know a man, lovely fella, bit of a Ned Flanders, worked hard for his family as an educator in Small Town, USA. Poor bastard got cancer, and faced being ruined by the medical bills. He was worried that when he passed away his family would be financially fooked. Anyway, long story short, he started making Nazi Crank and became a big time drug lord, messing with Mexican cartels, dissolving bodies in acid, the lot.

Only in America.

Or Mexico.......

Yurt! wrote: »

You're going to have to be pulled up on this. America doesn't even take care to count its homeless population correctly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/opinion/homeless-america-data.html

You'll have a hard time convincing anyone who has been to Seattle, SF, NY or a myriad of other cities, that the US has a less severe problem than Ireland (which isn't pretty in the first instance) on this front.

If you're going to accuse people of laziness, take the time to fact-check yourself before posting.

One opinion piece thats vague on details and kind of suits your point? Wow!

I've been to New York, San Francisco, LA, and San Diego in a last few years. Horrendous homeless populations. People with literally nothing, lying asleep/unconscious face down on the pavement. SF and San Diego in particular I'm in no rush to go back to. But I have read a lot about it after I was there.

Homeless figures aren't particularly accurate anywhere really and like your article says, can swing wildly even from day to day. But we have an idea.

But even if you take that 568,000 number and double it, they would still have less homeless than the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany...

Just because someone in Seattle saw a load of homeless doesn't mean theres the same proportion of homeless everywhere else.

Deleted User wrote: »

What an obscene statement.

No it doesn't.

Yes it does. The parts where people live anyway.

Suburb, strip mall, highway. Drive to the next town. Repeat.

Elvis appearing on TV in 56

he corrupted the youth he invented the teenager and it all went downhill after that, same for the rest of the western world

I see sheep wrote: »

It starting going wrong with the Mayflower

I reckon it was when they came off the gold standard in 1971.

I be open to moving there.

Despite how much crap we give them Americans still really like the Irish. The US is nowhere near as anti Irish as parts of the UK are.