Seattle Socialists Strangle Golden Goose

[JohnDonne]

To recap: If you're going to claim a billion dollars was wasted, you have to prove it.

If your proof is simply, "There's more homeless people now!" You have to factor in the percentage of homeless that were already going to increase without that billion dollars spent due to rent raises (30 percent in five years) and subtract it from the percentage of homeless that specifically came to the city seeking those services. (Unknown?)

Then take that number and compare it to how many people were taken off the street and decide if that's a fair trade off. 15,000 affordable housing units were built in Seattle in the last 12 years. That's fifteen thousand would-be homeless and their families compared to the 12,000 still on the streets.

But you also have to remember, only a portion of the billion dollars actually went to affordable housing.

You can't say the entire billion dollars was wasted if you turn around and say you believe in things like ER care, rehab and homeless shelters, because that all makes up a significant portion of the billion dollars.

But here's the kicker. That billion dollars a year that Trek was mewling about was actually for the entire Puget sound area, not just Seattle. Seattle, according to the article, only spends around 60 million a year on the homeless.

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/new ... costs.html

The city plans to spend $63 million addressing homelessness next year, $2 million more than this year. Much of those funds will go to nonprofits, which spend more than $746 million on the issue each year.

Weird. I still don't understand how non-profits could take that much from the Puget sound area if their biggest city only has a 63 million dollar homeless budget. Anyone know what's up with that?

My main point is this is far from an obvious cut and dry issue, but reactionaries are addicted to anger and allergic to nuance so one can only shrug.

[DBTrek]

My main point is this is far from an obvious cut and dry issue, but reactionaries are addicted to anger and allergic to nuance so one can only shrug.

There's progressive accountability at its finest:

"What, a billion dollars we can't account for and a growing homeless population were were supposedly addressing with that money? Well it's not OUR fault if YOU are addicted to anger and allergic to nuance. *snif!*"




We know. Nothing is ever your fault. You're unaccountable for all your failures, and we're all just a bunch of rage junkies.
Poor, blameless, you.

BWhahahahahahahah

[JohnDonne]

Sure

Good luck with that

[DBTrek]

I'm going to need more than luck to weather a bunch of self-serving, unaccountable, "nuance"-addicts who reliably fall back on the old saw of "complexity" to explain why they have lost a billion bucks, but need more.

"We wish we could explain why our staggeringly expensive programs are a dismal failure, but it's complex and there's so much nuance, maaaaaan".

They should be down on their knees praising the God of low-info voters that they found a city of JohnDonnes to fleece.
Lucky scoundrels.

[JohnDonne]

No autographs

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Nobody offers fire insurance for full reimbursement value in California at a market price?

I had no idea Californians were so exposed to loss. Sounds like a shitty place to live if that's the case.

Maybe environmental hazards should be a consideration for people spending their money on deciding on where to live.

Funny thing is, people value their homes and possessions higher than the market value.

And, environmental hazards have been considered, and it has been considered that anyone contributing to the potential hazard should contribute to the mitigation.
Not for nothing, but what is that old adage about the value of prevention versus the value of cures?

As I figure it, the question is whether free riders are worse than rent seekers. The answer determines the rest of one's economic ideas.

I've been thinking about the way you put this. When you say that people value their property higher than market value, what do you mean by "market value?" I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about some tie-in to available insurance limits, or what?

And on free riders vs. rent seekers, are we still talking about fire prevention / remediation, or something more general.

I'd like to address what you are getting at, but I don't want to go off on some crazy tangent.

I mean that a fire tearing through your home not only destroys things with a value that is hard to claim to your insurer, but it creates a massive hassle as well.

As far as rent seekers and free riders, we can attach it to the fire situation. I am a free rider if I build without making sure I account for the fire mitigation my neighbors are providing, and a rent seeker if I am profiting on the regulation that requires others make sure they contribute to fire prevention and containment. But it works more generally as well, I think.

[DBTrek]

No autographs

Better. Less drunkenly-screeching for sure. Yet I doubt your convoluted mathematical theory convinced anyone that Seattle was better off investing a billion in government schemes than it would have been leaving it with the people.

Honestly, you can nickel-and-dime reason your way into justifying a portion of the expenditure, but the fact that you repeatedly run into (unknown) walls when trying to justify the excessive amount of money we’ve spent to GAIN homeless should clue you in that you’re on the wrong side of this.

That’s a billion dollars that could’ve widened I-5, facilitated commerce, and improved the lives of every commuter in the region. That’s a billion that could’ve gone to renovating infrastructure. A billion that could’ve gone to cleaning the environmental disaster later known as the Dwamish river. A billion that easily could’ve bridged the school-assisted lunch program shortfalls a million times over.

... And here you are trying to justify it with fuzzy math, speculations, (unknown), and personal attacks. You’ve lost this one long ago, but your devotion to the Malthusian ideology of progressives compels you to keep arguing anyway, as if the last word can deliver you from failure.
/shrug

[JohnDonne]

Maybe your premise that Seattle spent a billion dollars a year is wrong.

How is the Seattle city council responsible for the budget of the entire Puget Sound area when they only set aside sixty million a year for the homeless?

[DBTrek]

Maybe your premise that Seattle spent a billion dollars a year is wrong.

How is the Seattle city council responsible for the budget of the entire Puget Sound area when they only set aside sixty million a year for the homeless?

It has been a wide ranging discussion, beginning with the head tax (which was never a billion dollars) and covering a multitude of topics including the region’s billion dollar expenditure on homelessness in general.

However, everyone from the right, to the extreme leftists at The Stranger, to the ex-Mayor of Seattle himself, agrees that the money has been ill-spent. This has not led to any reform on the side of the government, nor any politicians being voted out by a self-aware public. It has only led to more demands for money to “fix” the problem with promises of some sort of oversight this time.

[Okeefenokee]

In their minds, it's not your money in the first place.