![]() Performing actions like cancelling programs instead of improving programs. People "managing" these services receive extra pay for not doing their job. Where the US differs greatly is that our programs are abused at the top as well. That is the portion of risk we consider to be manageable and expected because the percentage is generally very small. Like other countries we have people that camp on welfare because it's easier than working. The problem in the US is that those abuses are on both ends of the spectrum. People _DO_ abuse the system, in fact show me a country with any form of welfare that is not abused. For some reason, people like the idea that it is better to let 9 guilty men go than an innocent man go to prison, so promote the idea of a justice system that makes it harder to get convicted (or at least used to.), but think it is better to let 9 people starve so one person can't scam his way into a small amount of money and crappy way of life. And we need to realize that the moral of hazard of "handouts" is nowhere near as significant as it would be if we were all perfectly rational actors, _especially_ when we're giving handouts to those people at the very bottom.ġ.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism.Īnd reason c: People are worried someone might abuse the system. We need to adjust the way we resolve this conflict and become more comfortable with the idea of _forcing_ people into assistance. ![]() However, the problem with mental illness and disorders (of all varieties, not simply clinical illness) is that it's fundamentally in conflict with our assumptions about free will, as well as with an economic approach (personal incentives, costs, etc) to the problem. From the perspective of a society obsessed with individual liberty, that's an abhorrent state of affairs. Regarding 2.b: it's true that the government once abusively used it's power to commit people to mental institutions without them having committed a crime. ![]() Regarding 2.a, I think it's fair to say that we're losing more wealth thanks to our failure to address these problems. We did that for two reasons, 2.a) money and 2.b) concern with freedom. To admit that self-help isn't very easy is in some sense a denial of the vision of America they hold in their head.Īs for #2, since we've dismantled our mental institutions we've abandoned a huge segment of our population in dire need of state assistance. Because people don't realize this, they think that self-help is easier than it is. They're aspirations rather descriptions of our society. The problem is that too many Americans don't realize that these ideas are just cultural preferences, and are not connected to reality. ![]() As an American I'm aware of and conscious of my own emphasis on these qualities, and I frankly I like that I'm that way. 1.b is problematic not because our ideas of self-help and our belief that America is a meritocratic land of opportunity is fundamentally bad. We have lots of hoops because of two things: 1.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism. those with mental illness or disorders) are the least capable of jumping through those hoops. The problem with homelessness in America is complex, but it mostly comes down to two things: 1) you have to jump through a ridiculous amount of hoops to get assistance, and 2) the people most vulnerable to falling into homelessness (i.e. San Francisco in particular has a more progressive homeless outreach program than almost any other city in the entire world-if the homeless population hadn't doubled in the past 15 years, we'd have already housed every last homeless person in the city. is not much different than any other developed country. If were simply a question of the amount of resources available, then the U.S. ![]()
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