The amount of money that actually goes to homeless people is extremely low, and most of those meager funds are used to give them food and temporary shelter so they don't literally die outside. And even then, the amount of taxes that "low wage laborers" earn is slim. Why can't those with vast excessive wealth give some of it to services that can rehabilitate the homeless, or create unskilled or low skill jobs that pay enough to keep people indoors?
If a homeless addict is smoking crack outside, what he needs is a shelter that can rehabilitate him, get him off drugs and get him employed somewhere where he can make meaningful contributions and connections to his society. Services like these barely exist, and are in desperate need of the money that we for some reason insist on giving to the wealthiest mega billionaires who keep it in offshore accounts and refuse to give to the people they are directly responsible for putting on the streets via critically unsustainable low wages.
To assume that the homeless are homeless because of "responsibility and consequence" is to totally ignore any systemic circumstance outside of their control that may have led them to become homeless or jobless in the first place.
In a sense the vast majority of us are a drain on society at small and large. The people doing the work of growing food, maintaining and building infrastructure, providing medical care, pursuing scientific advancement are a small number. My sense is that most people living in developed countries are doing so on the backs of others. It's easy to point at homeless and say they need to "earn their way," but did we really "earn" that car or earn that house. Did you "earn" your vaccinations. In the sense that you purchased it, did you earn it. How much did sitting in an office or stacking bricks or breaking concrete go towards actually earning the invention of that piston engine or the discovery of the measles vaccine? How much does the effort of sitting in a cubicle translate to the effort of constructing a house or growing a garden.
Very little anyone possesses is individually earned. We're all profitting from centuries of technology and advancement we had no part in. The humane thing to do is share what we did not reap with people less advantaged.
So as long as there are societies there will always be people living on the fringes of those societies. There will always be elderly, babies, children, criminals, mentally ill, physically handicapped, low income earners, etc. Nonetheless those people are also apart of society. Supporting people on the fringe is an act society does to support itself.
There will still be aid to the poor, but it will be in the form of charity, which is more sensitive to those abusing the aid.
Ending all unconditional government safety nets will undoubtedly cause more suffering for the poor in the short run. But in the long run, it means fewer single women having childen that they need government aid to support (welfare is a major contributor to increasing rates of single parenthood), and who are far more likely to end up in poverty as adults.
It also means fewer people who are able-bodied becoming a drain on society from a life of irresponsibility (partying with their friends while living on welfare). Forcing a structure and discipline on these people's lives is in the interest of society, because it means they become contributors to the economy instead of a drain.
The long term effect of a more efficient economy is a substantially higher standard of living for all classes, including the poor.
There are countries in the world that have much lower levels of homelessness and drug-abuse, and much higher rates of economic growth, than the US. You're pretending there is no alternative to the current path except genocide (which you accuse me of supporting), and that's very disingenuous.
> "Seeing the homeless gather with their buddies to smoke crack, and loiter all day on some street corner, while living and buying drugs at the taxpayers' expense, while people I know work back-breaking jobs at low wages, strikes me as a total injustice, brought about by people who manipulatively employ the victim narrative to perpetuate the current paradigm."
I think you're painting all homeless people with the same brush which is grossly unfair. The person that you're replying to said she was a military wife, I doubt she is one of these people you're describing that have crack smoking friends or loitering in the street. I assume you live in SF and have generalized all homelessness to what you see in certain parts of SF? The movie Pursuit of Happyness was based on a real-life homeless person based in SF. Sounds like you should watch that ;)
The fact that you're trying to compare disjointed people within a nation to a family where parents support their own children really shows the amount of non-voluntary collectivism you want to impose on society.
>>I assume you live in SF and have generalized all homelessness to what you see in certain parts of SF?
I realize that not all homeless are loitering drug addicts, but they form a significant percentage of the chronically homeless, and a situation where no-strings-attached aid is provided to them at the expense of the taxpayer, while others make the sacrifices to be independent through back-breaking work, is unjust.
It's not just a matter of competence. It's also a matter of choice. Some people choose to take responsibility. Some don't.
Like the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers.
Economic necessity has forced me to do very difficult things in my life. That's what people do, because becoming a burden on your family and the rest of society is a failing in every way.
Seeing the homeless gather with their buddies to smoke crack, and loiter all day on some street corner, while living and buying drugs at the taxpayers' expense, while people I know work back-breaking jobs at low wages, strikes me as a total injustice, brought about by people who manipulatively employ the victim narrative to perpetuate the current paradigm.
Life is tough. It doesn't get less tough when you redistribute the pain to make it more levelled. It just makes it less fair, by severing the link between responsibility and consequences, while creating unsustainable dependencies that will turn out badly for everyone involved in the long run.