I would like to permenantly house and feed myself for $16k. I have cash. Tell me how
It's never been about helping people
Submitted 3 weeks ago by VetOfTheSeas@discuss.online to workreform@lemmy.world
https://discuss.online/pictrs/image/a158e993-8ffa-42b1-a161-a8e27e7362bf.png
Comments
Aquila@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
It’s likely a room in a boarding house, and food through a volunteer kitchen - so that $16K is still being subsidised through private charities and/or local + state Government grants.
Don’t mistake me, though - I’m all for these types of programs. They’re a hell of a lot better than a swathe of people being homeless on the streets, or incarcerated in an overcrowded prison.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
But yeah even if it cost double to house them rather than imprison them it would still be the right and rational thing to do
adarza@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
if you take the capitalism out of the housing, and didn’t have a dipshit fucking the global economy and cost to eat. in all but the expensive cities in the u.s., it’s probably not that far off for communities of small flats or tiny homes and community-run kitchens.
13igTyme@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Yeah, those numbers don’t make sense with the word “permanently”.
tyler@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
I’m pretty sure the actual cost is to permanently house and feed them until they can get a job that gets them self sufficient.
Kanda@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Move to one of the poorest countries in the world, live in a hut and do nothing except eating. Don’t get bit by wildlife or bugs.
HieroProtagonist@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Move to Vietnam
Triumph@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
You're not counting the value of the slave labor.
DandomRude@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Nor is the fact mentioned that most prisons in the U.S. are run by and as for-profit private companies.
That is why so many people are incarcerated in the U.S., and unpaid slave labor is part of this multibillion-dollar business.
It is a business that, for entirely obvious reasons, no other democracy in the world allows in this absurd form—only the U.S., the “Land of the Free.”
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Most? I’m gonna need a source for that cause unless that’s changed recently, they’ve been mostly public prisons.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Land of the free labour
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
-$50,000, if the figures presented are to be believed. I guess that’s what happens when your party is led by a certified business genius.
zane@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Hm its almost like slaves aren’t quality labor or something. Weird.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
actually GOP likely uses things like prison pop as part of the census for thier start, this likely another source too.
100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 3 weeks ago
Except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted
Tidesphere@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They don’t care because the breakdown is:
The tax-payer is out 66k in order to imprison the homeless That 66k goes to a prison, the prison makes money The imprisoned person is enslaved to prison labor, which the prison then leases out. The prison makes money.
The prison lobbies politicians to be “tough on crime” and pass laws that criminalize more and more things instead of helping people, that way the prison will make more and more money.
The people would be happier, healthier, and pay less in taxes if we just helped people, but we never will because helping people doesn’t make prisons money. Same thing for policing. Police, as an institution, did not begin as law enforcement. They began as slave catchers. Their attitude and overall goal has remained the same. The police exist to ticket and fine people wherever possible in order to generate revenue, and, when able, arrest and charge people with the goal of filling prisons with slave labor.
If you eliminate the part of the 13th amendment that says ‘except as punishment for convicted crime’ and make slave labor illegal period, and in fact, make it illegal for any entity anywhere to profit off of incarcerated persons, you will eliminate a metric shit ton of problems in the U.S.
Flower@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The prisons sue the states when not enough prisoners come in. That’s the state of things.
Tidesphere@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What on earth could they possibly be suing for??
Not that I doubt you, mind, it just sounds incredulous!
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
One tiny note, with markdown formatting, you gotta put two spaces after a line for a newline. But that’s only if you are absolutely absolutely sure, it’s best to use two newlines for a new paragraph. OR make a list by adding the minus sign to the start of each line.
KulunkelBoom@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
They’ve just renstituted slavery.
lordkuri@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It never went away, they just eliminated private ownership.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
History shows the pendulum swings both ways. The fast and more violently the swing to the right, well, political physics has some incredible lessons to teach.
Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s called slave labour. Here you go again USA.
nonentity@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
A healthy, broadly educated population, which feels safe and secure, is incompatible with, and toxic to, conservative and authoritarian ideologies.
They need you to be sick, stupid, and scared.
HieroProtagonist@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I recently visited family in Vietnam, the people there are reasonable secure, reasonable healthy and quiet educated… but nobody can convince me that this country is NOT very conservative and authoritarian…
baines@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
religion
scared of death, scared of sin, scared of judgement
HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Republicans are a cancer to this world
T00l_shed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Slavery with extra steps
ShotDonkey@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Prison (hell #1) and homelessness (hell #2): the two whips of the capitalist state to lash us into wage labour slavery. “No underpaid job can be too bad to accept, or do you want to risk not be able paying your exorbitant rent, risk to become homeless? Sell your labour for the lowest price so some capitalist can make 2-3 times the profit of what you gain, which is bareley enough to pay another capitalist your rent.” This is what the capitalist state enforces by holding up these two hells. We don’t have a prison system by accident, homelessness is not a natural phenomenon. They exist by design. It’s not about the money that prisons cost in comparison to what housing a homeless person costs. The money for prisons is a fair price to pay for a capitaliat state given the MUCH larger sum of money that its capitalist class can extract of us by making us obedient and doing the even shittest job for the shittest pay to suck the most possible surplus out of our work. Become communist. Sabotage. Seize the means of production. Be a grain of sand in this machine.
manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
In the country with some of the most gruesome history of slavery in human history, it feels pretty disingenuous to call waged labour slavery. This feels like the stock standard yankee settler aspirational landholder bunkum to me
It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
Joseph Stalin, 1936
Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
You’re quoting Stalin (banger quote, btw) and you’ve not heard of the idea of wage slavery?
weeeeum@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They do it so people like you think it’s okay
DudleyMason@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class. For him the matter is unchanged at bottom, and if this semblance of liberty necessarily gives him some real freedom on the one hand, it entails on the other the disadvantage that no one guarantees him a subsistence, he is in danger of being repudiated at any moment by his master, the bourgeoisie, and left to die of starvation, if the bourgeoisie ceases to have an interest in his employment
-Engels
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/…/ch05.htm
The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
-Engels, again
falynns@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The South loves slavery, more at 11. This is why the US should have punished the Confederacy as the treason it was instead of coddling them.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I just wish President Grant had punished the South more during Reconstruction but it wasn’t that popular at the time unfortunately and his corrupt administration certainly did not help.
Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
If a person has a criminal conviction for homelessness, how likely they are to pass the background check with that conviction?
It feels like poor->homeless->convict->unemployable->indentured servant is the expected career transition.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
It’s been known for 50+ years that incarcerating a person is the most criminogenic you could do to them. It increases crime. It solves none of the problems it uses to nominally justify its existence
LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Can I have some sources? I believe what you just said but the studies might actually say something slightly different.
Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
What I wonder about is how long would it take the modern right wingers to embrace mass forced labor for people in distress?
deaconblackhorse@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yea in this case it would only make things bad. But maybe murderers and rapists deserve to be locked away.
btsax@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Important to note this isn’t new or restricted to red parts of the country. Vagrancy laws, laws against loitering, etc are all ways of criminalizing the poor to ensure we are all loyal wage slaves, and to a lesser extent feeding the prison-industrial complex. Many Steinbeck novels touch on this so it was a prevalent cultural touchstone in the 30s
frisbird@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
To be clear, those rules were all ways of criminalizing BLACKNESS in the immediate aftermath of emancipation because the freed people had nowhere to go and nowhere to sleep. And since racism is a system designed to get the working class to do the dirty work of the owning class, it makes sense that laws intended to enforce racism get used against all poor people in relatively short order.
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
a lot of systemic issues in the country have been around for a very long time. I always think of FDR’s secretary or labor, Francis Perkins advocating for universal healthcare and 80-90 years later it’s still an issue too few politicians take seriously.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The forced labour part is relatively new-ish. I think the average American has no idea about the slave labour involved in their daily lives.
frisbird@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Forced labor is not new. When the USA amended the constitution in the aftermath of the civil war they explicitly banned private ownership of slaves but made a specific carve out for prison slavery. Immediately after emancipation the states created laws that freed black folk couldn’t avoid and in 10 years the prison population went from 90% white to 90% black. And those black prisoners were leased to plantation owners to work their fields.
Convict leasing lasted almost 50 years, but not before other modalities of prison slave labor had developed and matured.
It is in no way a relatively new-ish thing
SmileyRiley@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
13th amendment of the united states:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
FluorideMind@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Criminalize existing, to make slaves.
DudeImMacGyver@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
Tax subsidized slavery for anyone who can't afford a home?
What a horrible state.
Lyrac@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
How does 16k permanently house and feed someone? Is that yearly cost? Where?
laz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Mass housing dorms, basic shared facilities and cheapest tasteless grub for a person for 16k yep would work
senorseco@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I have a family member who chooses to live homeless and after many years of being around him and others in the homeless community I can tell you that many would reject this. On a positive note, some would welcome it.
NerdyTimesOrWhatever@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
You mean the crime is punished with enslavement.
Jspelts@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It is the deep south, they’ve been trying to find ways to get slavery back for 200 years now…
Cataath@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Louisiana State Penitentiary, aka Angola, was a state owned and operated plantation with over 600 slaves before the Civil War. It never stopped operation, only changed how the slave labor was acquired.
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
As the thirteenth amendment specifically allows.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
These numbers are going to need context.
$66,000 for how long? A year? Median across all sentences regardless of length?
If $16,000 houses AND feeds a homeless person permanently, how long exactly are we letting them live before euthanasia? There’s no “permanent” when it comes to feeding or even housing, both include ongoing costs. 16 grand is a couple of years’ food costs for me. More than 1, fewer than 10.
Note that I’m not arguing against housing the homeless obviously. Besides the obvious “what the fuck” factor of making homelessness a crime, incarceration by definition can’t be cheaper because it involves housing, feeding AND guarding them. I just would prefer there to be more context when numbers are thrown around like that.
Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Per year, per year. These are the yearly outlays for each.
Jiral@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Cool, state run slavery.
BillCheddar@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
All of America’s laws are based on what puritanical, religious losers want.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Yeah, like the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act, or the right to remain silent, or title 9. Those are all what the religious losers want.
Formfiller@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They’re literally teaching the Bible in schools now
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 3 weeks ago
I vibe with it but let’s be accurate here:
Based on FY 2023 data, the average annual COIF for a Federal inmate housed in a Bureau or non-Bureau facility in FY 2023 was $44,090 ($120.80 per day). The average annual COIF for a Federal inmate housed in a Residential Reentry Center for FY 2023 was $41,437 ($113.53 per day).
(Please note: There were 365 days in FY 2023.)
James Wills,
Assistant Director/General Counsel,
Federal Bureau of Prisons.
[FR Doc. 2024-28743 Filed: 12/5/2024 8:45 am; Publication Date: 12/6/2024]And the low end is closer to $20,000 while the high end (higher security) was near $75,000 and most interesting of all is that the food and healthcare combined is less than $8,000 but the cost of the institution itself (beds and housing) varies wildly dependent on location as would the amount needed to house people outside of prison, and almost half the cost is paying wages to prison staff including records keeping, attorneys, management, and a metric butt-load of guards.
So, the system is broken and they’re trying to abuse prison labor to the extreme, especially private sector and this specific administration, but in theory some federal prisons are already approaching the efficiency of the 16k number.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
You’d also have to put a number on the value of prison labor - it’s unethical, but that never stopped the suits.
kamen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, why don’t these guys just stop being poor and homeless?
/s
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Just sell some stock and buy a house, duh. Oh, hey, I’ve just been offered a Cabinet position. Why would a Head-Up Display need a secretary though?
story@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Louisiana was the only state that didn’t secede because of the issue of slavery per se.
they were afraid that their human breeding programs and slave market/futures market would collapse
if you go to Walmart, Kroger, or Publix and look up the company that produces those big Dora balloons and other cartoon characters, that’s all Louisiana slave labor.
the overton window in Louisiana is firmly in the territory of “well you gotta have slaves though” and probably will be like that forever
Etterra@discuss.online 3 weeks ago
The post-Civil War south is why we have the prison labor system we have. Abraham Lincoln was too busy being dead to stop defacto slavery being implemented to the benefit of the loosing side.
buzz86us@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How do they even tell if you’re homeless? It seems like a pretty fallible conviction to ruin someone’s life… Like what if your bus got delayed?
veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
… have you not seen/been around homeless? It’s pretty clear, hygiene has taken a nose dive is probably the biggest indicator.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
So you want cops to base things off of profiling?
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Permanently house and feed someone? $16,000 seems quite a bit too low. That might cover food alone I would imagine, depending on the person’s age. More so if it’s like a 30 year old less so if they are 60.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Not disagreeing, but can I get a source for those figures?
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Im sorry but i read that as “incinerate” and i was like wat
end_stage_ligma@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Kenshi vibes
brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Stop upvoting twitter/x posts you idiots, write the thing yourself
areakode@riskeratspizza.com 3 weeks ago
Elon Musk said he’d end world hunger if that were something that could be done. The United Nations World Food Programme did the math: $6.6 billion per year. That’s it! You can guess how much the world’s richest man has donated toward this cause…
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 3 weeks ago
Last I heard he NEGATED $43.8 Billion dollars of aid by cutting USAID, causing the deaths of 4.5 Million Children around the world.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
How Much Would It Cost to End World Hunger?
kettuli@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
But you see the billionaires don’t have any money, just a number they keep pumping up.
Mirshe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s still only $360b. We could do that with only a portion of the wealth of ONE MAN.
BillyClark@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Just for perspective, a person who invested in the stock market recently and got a 5% return would be said to be investing poorly.
5% may not seem like much, but just for comparison, 5% of a trillion dollars is 50 billion dollars. I think you can see the point. Musk could solve world hunger, and it would be like chump change to him, even if he did fairly poorly with his investments. He wouldn’t even have to touch his savings.
He’s refusing to help people whose lives are being ruined without that help, or who are dying, even though the only penalty for Musk is that he would be getting inconceivably richer at a slightly slower rate.
frunch@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s like he’s sitting on a mountain of life preservers amid an ocean of drowning people
OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Its not merely about money. Ending food scarcity in remote locations is big part of the problem. It’s a transportation issue of goods economically. We need to centralize humanity and not try to deliver food to example tribes in deep Africa. We have the food production and waste a good portion of food that we throw out.