Permanent housing is the ultimate goal for all the unsheltered homeless. And in some places, it may be possible to quickly provide very cheap housing for all unsheltered homeless in the area. But these are places that don’t have much of an unsheltered homeless population in the first place, because very cheap housing is already available, such as trailer or RV parks in rural areas. Unsheltered homelessness is mostly a problem in coastal cities where it is expensive to build and live. The unsheltered still need a safe place to stay while they wait for permanent housing to open up. Which can take quite a while, because…
Guaranteed shelter would pay for itself because it would greatly reduce the costs associated with unsheltered living, e.g., costs related to medical emergencies, criminal justice involvement, law enforcement, security, clean up, property repair, public health, etc.
Per the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Bell v. Boise, public camping cannot be banned unless shelter is available - which means public camping can be banned when shelter is available. According to an ACLU legal primer, “It is possible that a city could have enough shelter resources that the homeless population truly has a choice to sleep elsewhere. When reasonable alternatives to outdoor camping exist, enforcement of anti-camping ordinances may not be unconstitutional.” [My italics]
For the record, there is nothing in the UN Report about “mass extinctions” or large parts of the planet becoming “uninhabitable” unless we abide by the Paris Agreement (check for yourself, here). And despite the scary introduction, the UN report’s specific recommendations are quite doable without “fundamental structural changes”. Here are the main recommendations:
While the top personal income tax rate is quite high in many of these rich European countries (e.g., 57% in Sweden), the top rate kicks in at relatively low levels of income. For instance: under $100,000 for all the Nordic countries….
The private sector can’t do everything – we need government, regulations, and taxes. But why are government agencies so encumbered by bureaucratic inefficiency? Here are some possible reasons:
The Promise of Science: “…truth [will emerge] as a large number of flawed and limited minds battle it out.” (Jonathan Haidt).
… It all depends on what else is happening in a country, especially related to other indicators of well-being. For example, if high inequality is coupled with high poverty and low social mobility, then we have three problems. If high inequality is coupled with low poverty and high social mobility, it’s not clear to me that we have a problem.
As if the example of other countries’ healthcare systems weren’t enough for ideas on how to fix the US system, the Urban Institute recently released a report comparing six multi-payer health reforms with two single-payer reform options, including Medicare for All. Care of the Commonwealth Fund, here is a nice summary of the eight possible reforms…
According to the researchers, these emotional reactions are understandable in the context of human evolution. Human emotions evolved to help our ancestors survive and reproduce during a time when conditions were brutal. Emotional reactions served to reinforce behaviors necessary for individual and group survival: warm fuzzies for individuals who demonstrated a willingness to put in the effort, reciprocate, and cooperate; and anger for individuals deemed lazy, selfish or uncooperative.
The most common hate crime bias motivations are, in order: anti-African American, anti-sexual orientation, anti-Jewish, anti-white, anti-Latino, and anti-Islamic. Per the following table, the bias mix shifted in 2018…
Cross-cultural studies have found that most people agree with the following: 1) Distribute resources equally, when need and merit are equal and the rules allow it; 2) Give more to the needy at some threshold of neediness, regardless of merit; 3) If there are agreed upon rules, and resources are allocated unequally based on these rules, that’s okay; and, 4) Merit is partly based on considerations of effort, both quantity and quality.
Why is it taking longer for today’s under-40 set (aka millennials) to accumulate significant wealth? Mostly because they’re delaying marriage and home ownership, which is partly a result of financial constraints and partly a matter of social change. Compared to previous generations of young adults, millennials are staying in college longer, have higher levels of student debt, and face tighter mortgage lending standards. They also tend to live in cities with nonoptimal housing markets.
According to the just released Responding to Rising Seas: OECD Country Approaches to Tackling Coastal Risks, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and United Kingdom all have coastal adaptation plans in place.
… income and life expectancy have more to do with how we evaluate our lives and less to do with how we feel on a day-to-day basis…freedom to make life choices and a sense of community make us feel good…corruption, lack of social support, and lack of freedom make us feel lousy.
Lecturing, guilt-tripping, or trying to scare farmers into sustainable practices will not work and is likely to invite resistance - especially in the US, where there’s already a lot of bad blood between the farming community and environmental activists. Forcing farmers to change their ways with new laws and regulations could very well backfire come the next election cycle. Nope, advancing the cause of sustainable agriculture requires an attitude of respect and a solid understanding of farmer priorities, constraints, and concerns. And that requires getting answers to a bunch of questions, such as…
Why is self-efficacy so important to how we approach the challenge of climate change? Because self-efficacy is associated with persistence, tolerance of uncertainty and risk, creativity, resourcefulness, and resilience. Qualities we all could use in the coming decades.
The study authors applied a new model to calculate the global land area below high tide lines this century. Based on this model, they estimated 110 million people already occupy land lower than current high tide lines and that somewhere between 150 - 630 million people currently occupy land that would be lower than the high tide lines in 2100, depending on the emissions scenario.
Wasteful spending on health care is not a trivial problem. It represents resources that could be redirected to, say, higher wages, R & D budgets, affordable housing, or climate change adaptation. Yet it is a problem the political class has pretty much downplayed or ignored, probably because serious spending reform would anger a lot of voters, especially the healthcare workers who lose their jobs or get their pay cut as a result of reform. Luckily, the media and some politicians are finally beginning to grapple with the issue
…global beef consumption will continue to rise due to increasing demand outside the US. Beef consumption destroys carbon-storing habitats and contributes to climate change. However, much of the damage done by beef consumption happens outside the US. If Americans ate less beef, there would be more beef available to export. If the US exported more beef, fewer forests and wetlands abroad would be cleared for cattle.