This nice timelime adds to what this person said.
There's more that helped shape the publics perception of mental health. The movie "One flew over the cukcoos nest" seemed to create a negative perception about these facilities.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1983.53.1.1...
This study in 1983, though small, showed that 4 out of 5 people who were questioned before the film was released ,then after, changed their view of mental institutions to negative. They also showed them a TV documentary that was more factual about the mental health system but it didn't have an impact.
In my opinion this is case of the public hearing about a systemtic issue within a very nessacary institution, regardless of how frequent or serious, becoming upset, locking their view in, then the government taking action by either reducing or eliminating that institution.
It's the same with mental institutions. There are people who should be committed for the rest of their lives and nothing, short of curing them, changes that
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/couple-attacked-man-killed-...
https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/suspect-charged-sou...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10492101/Moment-hom...
I guess, fine for them, bad for us.
They'll end up confined anyway, just a lot of collateral damage on the way.
He has a short novel about man who tries to get arrested and convicted to be in jail for winter. He attempted to rob a person, broke the window glass and finally got his arrest for loitering, if I remember correctly.
That’s the stick. The carrot is a generous welfare system which isn’t afraid of invasive intervention. Those deemed a danger to others or themselves can be detained for treatment. Involuntary commitment has virtually disappeared in many US states. Mental health treatment is also free, so there isn’t a barrier to access (though lately it has become harder to access treatment which isn’t considered acute).
* Outside of LVT.
This is definitely an issue with levying LVT at fairly low rates. Granted, at the time it was relatively high but it wasn't high enough. The 'ideal' LVT would bring down the price of land -considerably-, close to $0. The fact that land still has a large selling price means it is still largely financed with loans, and sensitive to interest rate adjustments.
I suppose that is an impressive feat to do something that no other governors can fix.
Or perhaps they don’t want to fix it since they can just blame Reagan and then pretend it’s unsolvable.
> Now clearly mentally ill people - who needed help - were turned away unless they were clearly "a danger to themselves and others".
It's been 50 years between then and now, so... why has no other politician increased it if the funding cut was the problem?
However, California has run massive surpluses lately: The average ending balance from 2006 through the 2019-20 fiscal year was a surplus of about $2.8 billion; for 2020 through 2022-23 it was more than $37.5 billion.
So why doesn't Newsom, or his predecessors, re-establish the funding? Clearly it isn't a priority to them either.
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/06/13/californias-b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100th_meridian_west
> In the United States, this meridian roughly marks the boundary between the semi-arid climate in the west and the humid continental and humid subtropical climates in the east and is used as shorthand to refer to that arid-humid boundary.
In reality, in the 1970s there was a series of landmark supreme court decisions that dealt with the civil rights of mentally ill, setting a very high bar for involuntary commitment. In California specifically, Short-Doyle act of '57 functionally defunded state run asylums, and Lanterman-Prentis-Short Act of '67 capped the length of involuntary commitment half a decade before the SCOTUS decisions.
http://n204xn214l.pbworks.com/f/Short-Doyle+Act.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterman%E2%80%93Petris%E2%80...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson
What is fascinating to me is that you can plainly see this evolution of thought play out in books, music and film. The portrayal of involuntary commitment slowly shifts from something that is normalized and somewhat necessary for society at the beginning of the 20th century, to something that is unabashedly evil by the end of it.
Everyone knows sending an innocent person to prison is really bad. But if you throw "they're not well..." in front of it and you have all the green lights you need.
Mostly agree with your argument and I'm a Reagan fanboy, but Reagan did put his signature on that law. It was a bi-partisan bill (Lanterman was a Republican, Petris and Short were Democrats), and it passed with veto-proof near unanimous majorities, but he put his name on it.
Years ago, the law was changed to allow mentally-ill but benign or even non-ill people to escape the "snake pits", mental institutions that kept people incarcerated and drugged. This allowed lots of people to recover.
But then Ronald Reagan (as governor of california) cut state mental illness funding.
Now clearly mentally ill people - who needed help - were turned away unless they were clearly "a danger to themselves and others".
Many homeless people are these mentally ill people, and they can't get help (and they can't be forced in unless they are dangerous, which is usually how recovery begins)