Not even then. The federal poverty line for a single person is $11,670, not $20,000. The poverty line for a five-person household is $27,910.

I wont dispute that our health care system is broken, but...$100,000 per year is easily enough for auto insurance and Brone or Silver level subsidized ACA plans. If the five 20-somethings in the example somehow managed to file together, a Bronze plan would cost them ~$250 / mo. This is out of a monthly income of $8333 and includes all five individuals. Actually, if they filed separately, the Bronze plan would be free (estimated cost of $0 for 1 adult making $20,000).

Now, Medicaid (Medi-Cal here) provides free coverage to an individual making 133% of the poverty line or below ($15,521 or $37,120 for five people). At this level, the main barrier to receiving healthcare are knowledge of the process, transit time/cost and the local availability of Medicaid doctors, as opposed to direct health care costs.

Auto insurance is a different story in most places. But in California, the CCLA program provides very low cost insurance to people making less than 250% of the poverty line. For one person in San Francisco County, the annual premium is ~$265.

Wow, dozens. </eyeroll>

No, they aren't. The poverty line for an individual is $11,670, and $27,910 total for a family/household of 5 people.

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.

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.

Can you provide a citation? I can't find any information at all about such a project.

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.

Agree 100%, though I don't think the US is alone worldwide in this regard, even if it stands out among OECD members.

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).

He certainly hasn't been reading San Francisco demographic information.

This technique is a significant contributor to the Bay Area's homelessness problem.

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.

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.