Amazon is Opening the Largest Family Shelter in Washington State Right Inside Its Headquarters (inputmag.com) 198
Amazon is building a homeless shelter on its Seattle campus. From a report: The proposed shelter, which is being co-created by nonprofit Mary's Place, will live in Amazon's Seattle headquarters and is set to open sometime in the first quarter of 2020. The new shelter will have the capacity to serve approximately 275 people each night. This is only about two percent of the estimated 12,500 homeless people in King County, where Seattle is located. While this is certainly a minor fix overall, the size of the new space will actually make it the largest family shelter in Washington state. The shelter is also expected to make upwards of 600,000 meals per year.
How noble of them (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How noble of them (Score:4, Informative)
Token gesture that may also make their headquarters a less desirable workplace.
Not trying to be crass, but providing a valuable but limited (250 out of 12k) resource is an invitation for loitering to a population that has a much higher than average incidence of mental and physical health issues, lesser access to sanitation facilities, and higher than average propensity for petty crime.
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Yeah, this is the ghetto solution. Debunked in effectiveness long ago.
Re:How noble of them (Score:5, Interesting)
Not trying to be crass, but providing a valuable but limited (250 out of 12k) resource is an invitation for loitering to a population that has a much higher than average incidence of mental and physical health issues, lesser access to sanitation facilities, and higher than average propensity for petty crime.
This is a family shelter though, so mental illness is likely going to be less of a factor.
But the cynic in me also says great, we're one step closer back to work houses. How long before Amazon offers the residents there "on the job training" or "internships" at a local warehouse?
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The alternative these days is to put them in jail. Statistically, that's what we're doing to minorities in overwhelming numbers.
Once they're in jail, they'll be "incentivized" to work for slave wages (a dollar a day is considered an excellent wage in many institutions in the US) with "good time" off their sentence.
The entire system, from one end to the other, is based on a long-running racial/class war aimed at suppressing minorities and preventing unification of any groups who might achieve political force
Re:How noble of them (Score:4, Insightful)
But the cynic in me also says great, we're one step closer back to work houses. How long before Amazon offers the residents there "on the job training" or "internships" at a local warehouse?
Oh, the horror! We're speculating about something that hasn't happened yet, but the threat that Amazon might offer not just housing for the homeless but job training has to be stopped. Time to have AOC and Jason Momoa protest outside the headquarters.
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But the cynic in me also says great, we're one step closer back to work houses. How long before Amazon offers the residents there "on the job training" or "internships" at a local warehouse?
Oh, the horror! We're speculating about something that hasn't happened yet, but the threat that Amazon might offer not just housing for the homeless but job training has to be stopped. Time to have AOC and Jason Momoa protest outside the headquarters.
I did the quotes around "on the job training" and "internship" in the implication that it would be low, or even non paying, jobs. Hey, instead of using robots, they can just use the younger kids to climb up shelves and knock off the products to the sorter below!
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But the cynic in me also says great, we're one step closer back to work houses. How long before Amazon offers the residents there "on the job training" or "internships" at a local warehouse?
There are no warehouses nearby. Mary's place offers job training, but it's not affiliated with Amazon.
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Since it won't be corporate leadership or Amazon's customers sleeping in these conditions, your anger would seem slightly misplaced. The rank-and-file Amazon workers are getting screwed by scut wages and shit conditions, too.
Re:How noble of them (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't quite understand what you have against the warehouse workers. The "code-monkeys and management" are the ones you ought to be upset with, as it's their system.
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Ah I see what you're saying. Yeah, we agree.
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Mary's Place is already located in a former hotel that Amazon purchased for redevelopment and then gave them to use for no charge. I walk by it every day, there's no "discomfort" involved (unless the very presence of women with children makes you uncomfortable, and then I'd say the problem is you).
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Sorry, but the rank-and-file Amazonian average wage is $102,000/year. If those are "scut wages" then you really have no clue what normal people earn.
https://www.payscale.com/resea... [payscale.com]
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I'm talking about the Rank and File. You know, the troops in the warehouse. Rank and File has NEVER referred to management or the officers. The term literally means all those standing on the field in formation, not the officers!
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You're talking about contractors, not Amazon employees. If they're being paid poorly it's the fault of their actual employers, who don't value their labor sufficiently to charge enough for it. Take it up with the people writing their paychecks.
Re: How noble of them (Score:2)
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Token gesture that may also make their headquarters a less desirable workplace.
The shelter is in a totally separate space, there are no interconnections with the rest of the building.
Moreover, there has always been a family shelter right next to Amazon's Alexandria building and another one a block away from LowFlyingHawk. Most people don't even know about them.
Perhaps it would be a good thing if fewer snobs will work at Amazon.
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This is a family shelter, not a homeless shelter. Mary's Place is almost entirely women with children, many of them refugees from abusive relationships. Amazon purchased the (run down and very much smaller) building that they used to be located in, and offered them the use of a hotel that had been purchased for redevelopment at no charge. Once they've moved into their new and much larger facility (again offered at no charge) that hotel will be demolished and a new building put up.
Amazon is also donating
Re: How noble of them (Score:2)
Amazon is expected to house all 12,000 homeless in King county, or risk its gesture being dismissed as 'token'? To 275 people/night it's not 'token'.
Amazon paid no FEDERAL income taxes because, and this is hard for many to understand, the tax laws in effect didn't require them to pay any. (The tax burden was actually shifted to individuals that pay higher tax rate, but why let that spoil a foot internet meme?)
How many homeless beds does Seattle's second largest employer provide?
Amazon paid or of state and
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Many homeless don't fit this stereotype anymore. There is a huge recent rise in homelessness, despite glowing reports of economic health. One bad medical bill can leave someone bankrupt, or a divorce, or loss of a job, and so forth. Many of them do have jobs, but you can't make ends meet on minimum wage. Add to that the growing housing costs. These are not the mentally ill, heroin junkies, panhandlers, etc.
Re: How noble of them (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m sure they what the govt demands of them. If you do not like the amount, blame the govt.
Re:How noble of them (Score:5, Insightful)
This token gesture certainly convinces me that they shouldn't have to pay their fair share of taxes or a living wage to their workers.
Yes, let's rush to demonize this action somehow. It doesn't fit The Narrative.
Re:How noble of them (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, let's rush to demonize this action somehow. It doesn't fit The Narrative.
If Amazon really gave two shits, first they'd pay their taxes. Second they be putting pressure on local governments to open up the housing market instead of keeping it bottled up.
Taxes (Score:4, Informative)
If Amazon really gave two shits, first they'd pay their taxes.
Amazon is well known for minimizing their income tax, but Washington State doesn't levy an income tax. Homelessness is a local issue, and in the case of WA, it's not income tax that would be funding solutions anyway. Other government revenue sources (consumption tax, property tax) are harder to avoid, and Amazon pays a boatload of those.
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putting pressure on local governments to open up the housing market instead of keeping it bottled up
What the frack are you babbling about? Seattle has one of the most aggressive residential construction booms in the country right now. I can see three construction cranes working on new apartment buildings from my office window. People are putting up houses in Sultan and Graham and commuting downtown. There isn't a neighborhood in King, Pierce or Snohomish Counties that isn't undergoing a building boom.
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Yes, let's rush to demonize this action somehow. It doesn't fit The Narrative.
It's not demonising the action, it's pointing out correctly that Amazon is a shitty company and this act of philanthropy does not mean they should be given a free pass on being a shitty company in other areas.
We all said exactly the same about Bill Gates when he turned from being a bastard who broke the law repeatedly to put other companies out of business to someone buying a legacy with his ill gotten gains.
But sure turn it into
Re: How noble of them (Score:2)
Tell me about Starbucks homeless shelter in Seattle...
Don't confuse legally avoiding federal income taxes with state and local taxes.
Homelessness is a local problem, best served by local solutions.
They say Seattle is enjoying a housing boom, why isn't that boom fueling a similar - court mandated - low-income housing boom? I've seen it tried in NJ and other states, what about Seattle?
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FYFY.
As the saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me... you can't get fooled again...
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Any Special Federal, State or Local tax breaks WERE voted on and approved by your elected officials!
Have an issue, guess you need to see what your local leaders are doing. And take action.
The Urban problems in America HAVE BEEN CREATED by the government policies. Now every politician wants more and more money to fix the problems they caused, Right!
Just m
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On the menu in Amazon's cafeteria . . . (Score:5, Funny)
The shelter is also expected to make upwards of 600,000 meals per year.
. . . Soylent Green!
You miserable fucks (Score:2, Insightful)
How about all you cynical and snide miserable fucks commenting on this article shut the fuck up about how much more Amazon could do. Amazon is providing 275 more beds and 600,000 more meals than any of you are. If it is so important to you, then stop telling Amazon how many more people they should help, and invite a homeless family into your house and buy them food using your money just like Amazon is doing with theirs.
Stop belittling Amazon for doing something when almost everyone else is doing nothing.
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My gripe with Amazon is doing this in a centralized way has been shown, time and again, to actually increase the issues. If you take a whole bunch of poor people and segregate them, they stay poor. If you integrate them and dilute their numbers into a less poor population, they become less poor.
This was tried already in a big way with the housing projects. Now "the projects" is practically dictionary for "hell on earth".
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You apparently don't realize that this is a building in the middle of the corporate campus where the average wage is over a hundred grand. Pretty much the opposite of segregating them.
That's immaterial anyway, this is a family shelter, women and children, most of them fleeing domestic abuse.
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The beggars are separated by the income chasm as surely as by walls.
You don't cross a river by jumping. You build a bridge and work your way over it.
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That doesn't even make any sense.
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Aw c'mon, don't mod OP troll.
I don't agree with the OP, but it's a legit opionion, and I can concede that Amazon are doing some measure of physical good, even if it is just maintaining the status quo.
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Interestingly I agree with you that what is being done in general is not the /best/ thing, but it does alleviate immediate suffering. The whole popular notion of homelessness simply being a lack of a home is silly. Any solution that doesn't include mental health treatment and drug/alcohol treatment will only ever maintain the status quo at best.
However until the laws (especially in CA) are changed to allow for expanded conservatorship and redefinition of "gravely disabled" to include the inability to feed
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Bullshit. I've worked with the Sally Ann for years and they've done more for people then Amazon has and continue to do so, even after the latest leftwing bullshit train trying to demonize them. This is a typical PR move because someone made a bit of noise and some corp welfare officer saw it as something they could put on a placard. It's literally PR tokenism. If you really want to help people find your local sally ann or a good church that operates not only beds, meals but job training and help that wa
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My point is that the reason and intent doesn't really matter anywhere nearly as much as the action does. Even if Amazon wants nothing more than good publicity, they're still giving hungry people food which is doing more than millions of others have done or will ever do.
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My point is that the reason and intent doesn't really matter anywhere nearly as much as the action does. Even if Amazon wants nothing more than good publicity, they're still giving hungry people food which is doing more than millions of others have done or will ever do.
One of the local foodbanks nearby to where I live, in a city of 500k people gives out more meals in a year then Amazon is doing. That's in Canada, Amazon is doing shit when it has massive capital and leverage power.
Re: You miserable fucks (Score:2)
Canada has that many hungry/poor on one city? I thought Canada solves all those pesky social problems years ago, right after giving everyone free healthcare...
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Salvation Army operates as a charity, in turn they pay the absolute lowest. The wages they pay aren't mean to get you out of poverty, they have other things for that if you really need them. It sounds like you might have learned something like learning worthwhile skills while being an inmate. Whatja know, someone gave you a chance to do something good and you still got your dick shoved up your own ass.
Maybe you'd be happier sucking the dick for the American Red Cross and the board, CEO, and middle and up
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I don't know, the Soylent Green comment above was pretty funny!
He doesn't seem too miserable.
Like a mugger with good manners. (Score:2)
So, it's like being mugged systematically by mobsters demanding protection money from you...then they turn around and give 5% of your money back in a grand public gesture to a charity.
I don't like being at the mercy
Doesn't seem right (Score:2)
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Then the cost of housing will increase when you increase the salary .. so it won't help. The issue is that there are a fixed number of housing units and the city and homeowners don't want to allow more housing development. Think about it for a second, if there are a fixed number of housing units only a certain number of people can live there at any given time. If they are given higher salaries they can bid more for those housing units so the rent will go up accordingly.
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Yep, and what you'll see is similar to what we already see. Wages go up, housing prices spike, people who live there get priced out, flee to other nearby cities, which in turn cause housing prices to climb through the roof.
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Actually I can see three construction cranes working on new apartment buildings from my office window right now. People are putting up brand new houses in Sultan and Graham if they want property and to pay less. There are a lot of options, an awful lot of the homeless in the Seattle area are people who simply refuse not to live in the downtown area for whatever reason even though their jobs don't provide enough money for housing now that the flophouses are gone.
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Increase it above $102,000 per year? I was able to afford proper housing in the Seattle area when I was still making a third of that, if you can't then you're doing something wrong.
https://www.payscale.com/resea... [payscale.com]
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Since when is the AVERAGE Amazon worker on salary? Most are slaving for a pittance hourly in the warehouses.
You're a disingenuous fuck, you know that?
16 Tons (Score:5, Funny)
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Good Samaritan Rescue been doing this for 64 years (Score:3)
https://www.facebook.com/Texas... [facebook.com]
They use trailers on donated 51 acres in Austin. It's a person first design that puts community interaction and community jobs at the center. It also has zero government involvement.
Finally a place for their employees to live. (Score:3)
Good for Amazon (Score:2)
But providing homeless shelter and services is sort of like adding road capacity. The traffic will just increase to fill it. And then you are right back where you started.
Shiny PR, not much actual change or help (Score:2)
For those seeing this as a noble act, this doesn’t even restore the amount of homeless services and shelters that have been closed to make room for Amazon in Seattle. Nor does it come close to making up for how many Amazon has driven to homelessness due to their massive contribution to income inequality in the area.
Amazon also fought hard against a tiny (to them) head tax to fund homeless resources in the area. They got the tax struck down, and turned around to dump millions into the recent city counc
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Fuck. You. Hater.
Bandaid on a sucking chest wound (Score:2)
If we really wanted a permanent solution to homelessness, I think we'll have to change the way our society is structured, perhaps even go so far as change the way our entire civilization is structured, and so far as I can tell our species in general just isn't interested in doing that.
Add to that the fact that not only are the vast majority of people
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But to reiterate: if we actually want a permanent solution to this problem, I think our society, and perhaps our entire civilization, needs to change, so that people don't fall between the cracks like this. When we treat our pets and other animals better than we treat some members of our own species, what does that say about us, as allegedly intelligent, sentient, civilized beings? What does it say about our entire civilization, really?
It says the system is set so that people are allowed to succeed or fail on their own, usually based on their own merits or agency. An imperfect system that evolved where resources are limited and not evenly distributed, and there is no absolute power with an interest in guaranteeing outcomes for every single individual. Our society has also reached the point where population centers now sprawl for hundreds of miles, and total population is measured in the hundreds of millions.
When taken in that context, it'
Bravo Amazon (Score:2, Insightful)
Doing more than anyone else, and so many are jumping on the hate train?
Bravo to Amazon
Shame on the haters.
Re: State of welfare (Score:3, Insightful)
I already lose about 50% of my income to taxes, when you add them all up. For each dollar I earn, half of it goes to someone else.
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I already lose about 50% of my income to taxes, when you add them all up. For each dollar I earn, half of it goes to someone else.
Yes. Right now that is probably true. When you were young the society you lived in shouldered the burden. There will come a time as you age when again society will shoulder the burden. For now, you are doing your part - carrying those that carried you when you were young and those that will one day carry you when you are old.
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Where do you live? I dispute your figures because I live in a relatively high-tax state, make a fairly high income, and haven't paid more than ~35% or so since the mid-80's when I once got hit with AMT in a high-income year. I think you might be doing it wrong.
Visible income taxes is only half of it (Score:3)
The income taxes you fill out at the end the year is only half the taxes you pay. A large chunk of your mortgage / rent is taxes. When you buy gas, for each gallon you pay about 58 cents tax, so maybe $7 I tax to fill your tank. FICA tax is over 15% on your gross, etc
200% tax on my trailer (Score:3)
Just for fun, here is one more example. Four years ago I bought a trailer at Harbor Freight for $270. Taxes on it are $130/year. So I've paid $520 taxes, plus whatever tax when I bought it, on a $270 trailer. Income tax isn't the only tax.
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Sales taxes tend to be a bit more regressive so people with lower income end up paying a higher percentage in taxes. At least the money is going to a bunch of things that benefit you
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Come to Canada, you can pay closer to 60% of your income in taxes. Also the cost of living is going up by about 25% in the next two years from a carbon tax, and the price of food is expected to go up 20% next year.
Enjoy the shit show.
Re: State of welfare (Score:2)
No you don't.
To pay 50% in taxes, you have to banking serious 7 figures (As a salary, not stock options) and living in a high-tax location AND have a really shitty tax accountant/financial advisor.
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Are you trying to say paying employees is welfare? Is it welfare if a company pays its employees too?
And the "right" is no better in that regard. They just want to funnel all the money to military contracts. It's not like the deficit has gone down during Republican administrations
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"To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of 'accrued property rights' would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever changing conditions which it demands." The Court went on to say, "It is apparent that the non-contractual interest of an employee covered by the [Social Security] Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits is bottomed on his contractual premium payments."
There is literally zero contract there, you have no right to gain anything from Social Security. Per the Supreme Court. Now, Al Gore and others like to TALK about a "lock box", but it doesn't exist. Social Security is not guaranteed to anyone, it is not a contract at all.
Social Security was a way to buy votes, by taking money from everyone today and giving it to others. And continuing to
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Social Security is a bail out of the elite class. Without it people were dying in the streets, and the public was not going to put up with it for much longer. They really are afraid of the image of 'peasants with torches and pitchforks', which is the primary reason why the program is as long-lasting and stable as it is. Say what you will about the financial elite, but as a group they're smarter than you think. They're not going to destroy one of the primary bulwark between them and the great unwashed ma
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"The proceeds of both the employee and employer taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like any other internal revenue generally, and are not earmarked in any way."
There is not earmarking, no promise at all. It is general taxation, and the payouts are general welfare payments. The original Act, and every Court decision since then, have been extremely clear about this. It's welfare, and a genera
Re:State of welfare (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one event that possibly shows the character of the US-american society, as a prototypical capitalist society, better than anything else – if the rich don't have enough decently paid jobs to offer, and they don't, there will be the poor, and even just a few of the poor will get fed if and only if some of the rich are "generous" to offer it to them. Instead of taxing all of them to the amount that poverty could be eliminated altogether.
There are a vast number of overlapping food programs, provided by governments (at all levels), churches, and companies such as Amazon.
About the only way you don't get "fed" is if you shoot up right in front of somebody trying to hand you food. And even then, you usually do.
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Fed, yes, You have to be really far down the ladder of mental health issues to starve to death in the US these days. Between soup kitchens, food pantries, outreach programs, panhandling, and dumpster diving all the perfectly good food that gets thrown away, you'd almost have to make an effort to starve to death.
Poverty, on the other hand, is much harder to escape. Just because you can survive doesn't mean you can get out of the cycle where you spend all your time and energy trying to meet the basics at the
Yep, and if it's one thing we know (Score:2)
So now that that's out of the way let's all get back to sucking each other's dicks.
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The average Amazonian makes $102,000 a year. I have difficulty thinking of a place where that wouldn't be considered a living wage.
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I'm going to say that the mode is much more important than the median or mean in such a skewed distribution.
By the modal average, Amazonians do NOT make six figures.
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Re: State of welfare (Score:2)
Right, Amazon needs 10K warehouse workers in Seattle city limits - are they going to start delivering packages on foot?
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Justify the existence of billionaires.
They didn’t earn that wealth in a legal, nor a moral way. Period. None of them. Not sure why folks defend them and attack the poor, beyond the temporarily embarrassed millionaire attitude so many folks seem to have.
Re: State of welfare (Score:2)
Yet, they are never charged with a crime... odd.
Living up to that coward part (Score:2)
I know many people who work at Amazon and I almost accepted a job offer as a software engineer (before a better one came along). Amazon is causing disruptions that are contributing to US and global poverty. They are investing as much as they can into automation and violating labor laws to exploit their warehouse workers. They are ruthless...to an admirable degree.
However, if Jeff Bezos wasn't a piece of shit, he'd let go of the world's wealthiest ma
Re: State of welfare (Score:2)
Nobody in the US is not getting fed. In fact, much of the homeless and poor population is overweight.
If people were starving, they wouldn't remain hungry for years. People are considered homeless these days if they merely live paycheck to paycheck. People are considered poor if they don't have $1,000 in a bank account for an emergency. People are considered hungry if they don't have easy access to healthy fruit and vegetables.
Every crisis has been inflated by moving the yardstick.
The vast majority of America's poor, hungry and homeless live in apartments with cable TV, A/C, running water, heat, an Xbox att
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True, urban homelessness is more a byproduct of substance abuse and mental health issues. If it were a lack of housing the streets would be filled with illegal immigrants.
https://drdrew.com/2019/homele... [drdrew.com]
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Lack of affordable housing is the problem in this case. Amazon growth here in Seattle caused a dramatic rise in rent over this past decade. Homelessness is a byproduct of crony capitalism, period. The mental health and substance issues are made worse from homelessness, but are not the cause of it.
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Yes, and no. Lack of affordable housing where certain people want to live is the issue. There used to be plenty of cheap, shitty flophouses and squats in the downtown area. Yep, those are gone, and the warehouse district of South Lake Union, where after dark there were only hookers and crack dealers, has been completely renovated. The hookers and crack dealers have managed to move to other areas, most people who can only do low wage jobs have moved to places like Federal Way and Lakewood, but that segme
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Mary's Place is a family shelter, not a regular homeless shelter. Women with children, many if not most fleeing domestic abuse. That situation isn't going to "fizzle out" until we implement summary executions of abusive husbands/boyfriends.
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Wow, the utter cluelessness of that post is truly astounding. I really don't know how to reply to such stupidity.
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What's clueless about it? It's correct on pretty much every point made.
That doesn't mean that shelters shouldn't be provided, but does encourage a level of caution and discourse and how many, and how easily they should be accessed.
Meanwhile, men in abusive relationships don't get shelters, don't get to take the children if they walk away, often get arrested due to false allegations of abuse or purely because the police are trained to always arrest the man.
I don't hear you speaking up for them.
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Here is one example of one of those types of cabin-in-a-box units .. in addition to the cabin .. basic household supplies can be provided.
https://www.designboom.com/arc... [designboom.com]
Put up thousands of these 50 miles from the city, space them out fairly decently, and make it free to stay at. Provide basic food by having soup kitchens and some mental health services on site. Same way these are available in the city.
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You mean housing projects? Because that worked so well every other time it's been done?