So according to your definition, a single-income family with a spouse and 3 kids with an income of over $100,000 is still living in poverty. I don't think so.
Actually, they wouldn't be even then. The federal poverty line is $11,670 for an individual. Of course, there's actually a nonlinear dependence on the household size - the line for a household of 5 is $27,910. I guess (like most) the parent doesn't really understand poverty.
And I encounter someone who is mentally ill on the street, I'm not sure what you think I could do for them that the social workers and the police couldn't.
It's hard not to take this as a troll. The police are not generally inclined to help homeless people - although I see police harassing them almost every day. Social workers for the most part would help the homeless - but they're underpaid, understaffed and institutionally handicapped. Maybe you don't live in the United States?
I personally don't expect you to personally spend time / effort / money helping an individual homeless person in some way, but if you're unhappy with how local, state and federal governments are handling the problem at large, then the same recourse exists as for any other social problem.
Here in Dallas it was tried over 10 years ago... million of dollars were spent to refurbish several old hotels and make them liveable, rooms were offered free of charge to homeless people to give them a place to get back on their feet, to give them a place to have a hot shower, give them a mailing address so they could look for work (you might find it hard to get work without an address), etc.
Can you provide a citation? I can't find any information at all about such a project.
Like other countries we have people that camp on welfare because it's easier than working.
I do agree with the substance of your post, but what do you mean by welfare? The United States doesn't really have any unconditional cash transfer programs, which is what most people think of when they hear the term "welfare." TANF for example is restricted to families with children, has a lifetime limit of 60 months of benefits for any individual and recipients must have a job within 24 months of joining the program. After doing a bunch of research on our means-tested social programs, I just don't see how it would be possible for a single, able-bodied, working-age individual to satisfy all their needs using federal transfers alone.
I also don't think it's far to call social insurance programs "welfare." They're insurance policies operated by government, with mandatory premiums garnished from wages. You have to have paid the premiums to get the benefits.
Where the US differs greatly is that our programs are abused at the top as well.
Agree 100%, though I don't think the US is alone worldwide in this regard, even if it stands out among OECD members.
Ever lived in San Francisco? Sounds pretty close to reality to me.
I can understand why someone who didn't grow up in the Bay and who hasn't spend much time outside of certain districts would have that impression.
About 25% of San Franciscan households have incomes above $100,000 and about 13% are poverty-level or below. For comparison, those numbers for Alameda County are ~17% and ~13%, respectively. Yeah, SF has more inequality, but not to the extremes sometimes imagined.
(Numbers from demographia.com and US census data).
I think he's been playing games too long.
He certainly hasn't been reading San Francisco demographic information.
Basically you just entice them to move to another city.
This technique is a significant contributor to the Bay Area's homelessness problem.
the cliche'd "Shouting 'fire!' in a crowded room" example
A cliche first cited in law in order to uphold a criminal conviction for arguing against US entry to the first world war - in other words, a euphemism for what you call unacceptable censorship.
in something like a phone you automatically move it to the sweet spot
That's definitely true - for a phone. The parallax barrier approach clearly wouldn't work as well for e.g. television, but there are other forms of autostereoscopy.
I'm still using that phone - at the time I bought it, it was Virgin Mobile's only "4G" phone. WiMAX hasn't been switched off yet, so I get to use it on the odd day I'm in Mountain View or one of the other very few places it ever worked.
The 3D camera (aka two regular cameras) is nothing special, but the autostereoscopic display is pretty cool. Still a gimmick though.
That is a very difficult one to explain to someone with no coding experience.
I disagree. The try-catch block just performs an action while listening for special return values indicative of failure. Take establishing a connection, which may succeed or fail. If the failure code (or exception) is found, the program reacts differently than if it is not. I think most people would catch on quickly, especially if with some pseudocode to point to.
How can you ask a computer to "try" something, really?
I think "try" is a lot like "do," with uncertainty. Take a look at the definitions of "try". Def. 1 seems circular, but Defs. 2 - 4 and 7 seem to apply pretty well to the program. Of course, if we use Def. 8 instead, then few of us ever "try."
Ahh, semantics (being the study of meaning, I actually think semantics is pretty important).
That reminds me of a story from my philosophy of science professor (I studied biochemistry but branched out in college).
After giving lectures/presentations, scientists would ask about practices in their work which resembled induction, to try to understand how these practices should be approached philosophically, but Popper would just respond with "it's not science" or "it's not my fault you're a bad scientist."
"Why can't we ever attempt to solve a problem in this country without having a 'War' on it?" -- Rich Thomson, talk.politics.misc
