Similarly, Vermont keeps voting in Sanders despite there not being homeless issues there.
Dig deeper.
>You’ll find plenty of dirt poor rural people that would benefit from entitlement programs just as much.
The big difference is in an urban area even the non homeless want to solve homelessness because it's a public nuisance that directly affects them. See any thread here complaining about sf. In rural areas poverty is a much more private problem.
As for Vermont, you're cherry picking. By and large it is undeniable that the Republican/Democrat divide follows an urban rural line. The exceptions are parts of the deep South (where the racial divide is more prominent), and parts of the coasts where liberalism is so dominant even the rural areas are blue. I don't know the mechanism for the latter, but if I had to guess I'd say a big part of the rural population in those areas aren't farmers but retired professionals living in mcmansions. I know people like that but let's not get into anecdotes.
I'm going to double down here. It's not just attitudes on entitlement programs that are influenced by rational interest among urban and rural residents. Literally every hot button political issue can be understood in these terms.
Take guns for instance. Guns in cities are synonymous with gun crime. Owning one is deeply impractical and police response times are fast enough that you don't need one. In a rural area guns are still practical and police response times are slow.
Take endowments for the arts. Guess where the all the state subsidized art ends up. Hint: it's not Topeka Kansas.
Want me to keep going?
Speaking of which - if cities and their urban populations want to solve homelessness, why can they not do it on a city-by-city case, locally? A tragedy of the commons type issue, where a city that takes care of the homeless better will have more homeless people heading there?
I kid but this has been a known problem for two thousand years. The solutions are continually rediscovered, reimplemented and then ignored by later generations that "know better".
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."
- Aristotle
I think we could improve upon on current system by adding a vice-governor to the governor's ticket, and subjecting the ticket to the popular vote. Then the governor could send the vice-governor, his popularly elected subordinate, to Congress, which would help shift power back to the states. As it currently stands, senators do not feel a need to pay heed to their states' governors.
Imagine if California was free to regulate all of healthcare for itself. They could write whatever socialized medicine program the voters desired all while not burdening the people of Texas with the cost who perhaps prefer a free market solution of some kind. As different states implement different programs people would be able to vote with their feet as to what was the better deal, causing states to compete with one another to offer the best deals to its population.
States are too small to effectively implement what they want? That isn't a problem as they can contract with each other and if that goes south look to the federal government to resolve the dispute.
You’re too shallow in your assumption that everyone wants free stuff from the government and only votes against it when they don’t benefit.
>Take guns for instance. Guns in cities are synonymous with gun crime.
Boring trope. Owning a gun in any Texas city isn’t a problem at all, including Austin, which isn’t exactly a conservative stronghold.
more nyc subway information than you'll ever need:
- nyc has a globally rare subway in that it is 24hrs
- you need to be sitting up to sleep on the train, if you lie down you can be removed (was so told by a cop when i was first arrested for sleeping on the train that this is 'the law')
- subways run the full length of a track, then back, then swap drivers
- when a driver swaps they have to remove everyone from the train so all transients get up and go across the track to the next train that is waiting to drive off
- the two longest trains: ORANGE(D,1h-1h15m before driver swap), RED(2,1h30m-2h before driver swap)
- meaning you could get about ~1h30m of uninterrupted sleep
- that was until i discovered the L train is driven by software and the conductor is there as a failsafe
- as such there is a different driver procedure and you can run the train back and forth all day all week without being removed, thats eventually how id get 8h+ nights
someone down thread said 480$/mo for tickets, but id rarely pay
> why not more?
i wondered the same thing, its warm, even in winter, and heavily populated, protecting you from assaults
im unsure what percentage of people without places to sleep choose the subway, but there are some options
there are shelters, but after my experiences there: caging you in or out after curfew, once shut a lawlessness among the people, being placed in rooms with territorial long termers, structurally and hygienically questionable building; i decided id rather risk the street
but it was a winter with a foot of snow on the ground so i tried to sleep in a decommissioned subway stop where there were others sleeping but was woken up by the blunt end of a cop's foot
when i explained i thought it was okay to sleep here because i saw others doing the same the cop responded, 'that guys been there 7 years, get the fuck out of here kid'
hostels at the time cost about 30$/nt for a bunk in a room with 40 people, in brooklyn, so out of my price range but once i got a job i would stay in one once a week to take a shower
> how was that allowed to happen?
compassion, human decency, empathy
i jape, though thats why, im guessing, most riders accept it as a reality
but its probably more to do with poorly handling government resources to address the issue that some people need to sleep sitting up on a subway to have a warm place to rest