A big news story in finland now is how mall of tripla in helsinki is having problems with homeless people because the current center right/far-right coalition is causing homelesness to rise
Even John Kasich, who is super conservative (but not MAGA), implemented similar homeless assistance plans when governor of Ohio.
He straight up said that helping homeless people and the mentally ill is not only more humane, but also cheaper, than dealing with the problem after the fact.
You don't need to be a bleeding heart liberal to implement these sorts of social safety net programs. You just need to not be an idiot who dogmatically follows preconceptions.
The modern GOP has largely lost their way because they no longer actually think about solving problems.
Help or punish.
America is mostly a punishing society, where aid and help is seen as waste or weakness. Or it is a deal, aid is given for something in return.
yes we all have much of the same social problems. but Finland has a border with a terrorist state and are responding in a brave and admirable manner. bravo to the good people of Finland.
And people will say, “That won’t work in America,” and they’re right because our whole “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mindset and “American Exceptionalism” that takes away people’s empathy and sense of communal responsibiltiy.
Solving societal problems is the function of government.
Unfortunately, money in US politics has meant serving only capital interests of those who exploit those problems so we have just neoliberal enabling and pure fascism now that capital has concentrated to such extremes it demands total control.
Ah yes, but the USA has religious personal responsibility baked into our society.
"Bad things happen to people because they didn't work hard enough"
"God doesn't give more hardship than you can handle"
Or a la 'The Secret' "People aren't successful because they don't actually want it bad enough"
I'm pretty sure someone out there is going to say this is easy for Finland because it's cold in there so ice cream basically makes itself, but it would never work in Florida.
Some pointers. The article is old and current Finnish trend is due to (populist) right government upwards. It's still 3 times better than the US. And now a "wow signal" level news. Homeless in US is not that bad! It's massiv because US is large. Per capita US does better than Germany or France
Not free lol! But the people who scoop your ice cream or check you out at the store are either students who have free university or working people paid a living wage.
In the states, so much of this falls to underfunded charity organizations. My mom is a now-former pastor who converted part of her church parking lot into a neighborhood of small houses and that took a lot of fighting to do, with neighbors and the government.
Lived in shithole Arizona for 8 years now and I have seen it all. Child Prisons for Mexicans. Bulldozing ancient native burial grounds for that stupid wall that doesn't even work. And all those cultish Trumpies. I never felt so Oppressed in my life. And I am a fucking Native from Canada.
Yep! It turns out simply giving people housing with no strings is the cheapest way to end homelessness. "But what if everyone does that?" There's no reason to think people will; people like being productive and doing stuff. Most people would rather earn their housing, but some people can't.
US government is too corrupt to ever do something that benefits the little people. Our politicians focus on how much they can enrich themselves. We can’t even get decent healthcare.
Spoken as if you did not even bother to read the article. By doing this, they SAVED MORE than if they had done nothing. When this has been done, the areas that do it find things get a lot better.
I understand. I meant this as ironic reaction to recent suggestions, that EU must change from welfare state to warfare state for becoming military autonomous. With which I strongly disagree.
I thought that the irony was obvious. But obviously, it was not.
You sounded just like a Trump supporter with those words, so no, the irony was lost in the typing onto the page. But as I said, since they saved money, that makes them have it for defense instead.......
Imagine if America did it. We'd see an instant jump in the economy.
Didn't some city in the US take a housing-first approach to their homeless a few years back, and they found similar results to Finland? SLC maybe? I wonder if the program is still ongoing.
I've lived in Sweden, Finland, France, Canada and the USA and I cannot stress how weird I find it that Americans never seem to vote for nice things that make their life easier.
Well, you see, education isn't the best. Kids learn early on to skip school leading to them making worse decisions as adults. Those are now the majority.
The prevailing feeling seems to be that "I'd like a nice thing, but not if THAT PERSON also gets it." And THAT PERSON, you guessed it, is often black, or poor, or gay, or or or.
A conservative is a person who'd shit their pants if they thought a liberal would have to smell it.
There is no more stark of an example of this than public pools after desegregation. They used to be extremely common during Jim Crow. But instead of sharing them, white people simply chose to close them all.
“I want you not to have it” is a stronger motivator for people than “I want it”.
I feel they go in on taxes more. At least that’s what they complain about.
Idk how much of a hole it would be to the budget, but if you made the first 100K of income tax free I wonder how many of them would just take it and leave everyone else alone.
I find these people are the worst of the worst because being that anti-progressive means they really just want no change just to be spiteful. It’s a level of lack of empathy for literally everyone but themselves that is staggering to me.
It's particularly weird with respect to parenting - the USA is really insistent that you have kids even if you don't want them. And it's your own damn fault if you get pregnant because you "didn't keep your legs closed." But then they make it insanely expensive and difficult to raise kids.
It's pretty funny that the fix to homelessness has been essentially proven thru extensive study, and it's to just give people a home. It's also proven to be cheaper than leaving people on the street, but America is like, "fuck that I'll pay more to make people suffer because... socialism bad"
arguing with a finnish person "how do you afford all that?" ve have high taxes and zat creates zis vonderful life full of joy even zo everyone has mannerisms zat seem grumpy
and then he's like "stop making me sound German, I am Finnish!"
I live in Helsinki;I live in NYC. Ditto work.So have paid taxes and use social systems in both. My tax rate overall is abt the same.The bang for my buck is higher over there.And targeted to things that make people’s lives better.There are lots of reason. A major one is that they think we.We think I.
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He straight up said that helping homeless people and the mentally ill is not only more humane, but also cheaper, than dealing with the problem after the fact.
The modern GOP has largely lost their way because they no longer actually think about solving problems.
America is mostly a punishing society, where aid and help is seen as waste or weakness. Or it is a deal, aid is given for something in return.
Unfortunately, money in US politics has meant serving only capital interests of those who exploit those problems so we have just neoliberal enabling and pure fascism now that capital has concentrated to such extremes it demands total control.
"Bad things happen to people because they didn't work hard enough"
"God doesn't give more hardship than you can handle"
Or a la 'The Secret' "People aren't successful because they don't actually want it bad enough"
“Don’t be an asshole. Just don’t.”
Hell, you could even put that in schools, idc. I think JC would be down.
Lifting up people at the bottom lifts us all up.
https://bsky.app/profile/volberg.bsky.social/post/3ldlsoovqss26
I thought that the irony was obvious. But obviously, it was not.
Imagine if America did it. We'd see an instant jump in the economy.
A conservative is a person who'd shit their pants if they thought a liberal would have to smell it.
“I want you not to have it” is a stronger motivator for people than “I want it”.
Idk how much of a hole it would be to the budget, but if you made the first 100K of income tax free I wonder how many of them would just take it and leave everyone else alone.
Bootstraps etc etc
I find these people are the worst of the worst because being that anti-progressive means they really just want no change just to be spiteful. It’s a level of lack of empathy for literally everyone but themselves that is staggering to me.
and then he's like "stop making me sound German, I am Finnish!"
and I'm like "oh you're just getting started"