I think these days we forget that the gov was never meant to provide a social net. The mechanism for that is charity. It's much harder nowadays with disconnected communities, but reaching out for help often works.
I myself spent years with belongings only as burdensome as I could carry (at worst case) or pack into my sedan. It made moving from one place to another easy, and I could always rent a cheap hotel to live in since I wasn't burdened by possessions.
It absolutely was. Government has grown into this leviathan we have today, and the world's drastically more complicated since the days of living in huts in villages but the underlying principal is we take care of our own.
Welfare is right there in the founding document, and a safety net is part of that.
What you are you are referring to is the following: “ Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…”
First, “welfare” here means “the state of well being.”
Second, it is tied to the “United States” as a whole - not any given individual, especially because the Supreme Court has ruled the government has no duty to protect its citizens from harm (Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 1989; and The Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 2005).
Thus, if the Supreme Court has established that the government has no obligation to protect citizens from harm, it has no obligations to economically provide for citizens either. That’s called “charity” and it’s what churches have typically done by collecting revenue (tithing) from its congregants.
20th century governmental usurpation of charity by rebranding it as “welfare” is a distinctly modern concept, that also happens to be constitutional, insofar that the government collecting taxes to distribute benefits on a needs basis does not violate the Constitution, which is entirely different than being enumerated in the document itself, which you erroneously conflated.
The constitution should be ripped apart and rewritten — if it requires hordes of over-educated lawyers to faff about on what it actually means.
The supreme court was a mistake. Congress was a mistake. The executive office was a mistake.
The only thing all of these organizations do is further their own interests.
Here’s the one, let’s see if it renders:
Chinese jiong should be the only emoji allowed on HN, since it is a valid Chinese character, but then so is a swastika (in both directions, non-nazi Buddhist meanings of course).
Moving may be easier in that it doesn't have a high risk of death, but much harder in actually surviving at your destination. You don't just grab a plot of land and start building your own house these days. America did that hundreds of years ago and charges for it now. How are you paying a security deposit in another state on minimum wage, let alone the travel and job seeking?
Consider that for many people in this situation, missing a few days of work to look for a new place to live might mean getting fired. Even if they don't get fired, the lost wages for missing those days of work could put them behind on their bills or make it difficult to buy food.
And even if they are able to spend time to find a new place to live without putting their finances in jeopardy, remember that they also have to find a new job in the new location, and doing that without further financial hardship could be difficult.
There are also other considerations: someone barely able to afford living in SF or NYC might not have a car, and walk or take transit to work and to do errands. Living in a lower-cost area might mean needing a car to do things like buy groceries or get to work. If you already can't save money, how are you going to afford a car before you move to the new area?
Many of us here can afford to take weeks or months off to take a break between jobs. Sometimes it's hard to understand that many people can barely take sick days without risking financial ruin.