US national debt ：31trillion

[hualushui]

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

[Goritoes]

Can I have only 1 Billion ? I swear I will return it

 

[beijingwalker]

U.S. National Debt Tops $31 Trillion for First Time​

America’s borrowing binge has long been viewed as sustainable because of historically low interest rates. But as rates rise, the nation’s fiscal woes are getting worse.

President Biden has pledged to bring down federal budget deficits by $1 trillion over a decade. Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Oct. 4, 2022
WASHINGTON — America’s gross national debt exceeded $31 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, a grim financial milestone that arrived just as the nation’s long-term fiscal picture has darkened amid rising interest rates.

The breach of the threshold, which was revealed in a Treasury Department report, comes at an inopportune moment, as historically low interest rates are being replaced with higher borrowing costs as the Federal Reserve tries to combat rapid inflation. While record levels of government borrowing to fight the pandemic and finance tax cuts were once seen by some policymakers as affordable, those higher rates are making America’s debts more costly over time.

“So many of the concerns we’ve had about our growing debt path are starting to show themselves as we both grow our debt and grow our rates of interest,” said Michael A. Peterson, the chief executive officer of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which promotes deficit reduction. “Too many people were complacent about our debt path in part because rates were so low.”

The new figures come at a volatile economic moment, with investors veering between fears of a global recession and optimism that one may be avoided. On Tuesday, markets rallied close to 3 percent, extending gains from Monday and putting Wall Street on a more positive path after a brutal September. The rally stemmed in part from a government report that showed signs of some slowing in the labor market. Investors took that as a signal that the Fed’s interest rate increases, which have raised borrowing costs for companies, may soon begin to slow.

Higher rates could add an additional $1 trillion to what the federal government spends on interest payments this decade, according to Peterson Foundation estimates. That is on top of the record $8.1 trillion in debt costs that the Congressional Budget Office projected in May. Expenditures on interest could exceed what the United States spends on national defense by 2029, if interest rates on public debt rise to be just one percentage point higher than what the C.B.O. estimated over the next few years.

The Fed, which slashed rates to near zero during the pandemic, has since begun raising them to try to tame the most rapid inflation in 40 years. Rates are now set in a range between 3 and 3.25 percent, and the central bank’s most recent projections saw them climbing to 4.6 percent by the end of next year — up from 3.8 percent in an earlier forecast.

Federal debt is not like a 30-year mortgage that is paid off at a fixed interest rate. The government is constantly issuing new debt, which effectively means its borrowing costs rise and fall along with interest rates.

The C.B.O. warned about America’s mounting debt load in a report earlier this year, saying that investors could lose confidence in the government’s ability to repay what it owes. Those worries, the budget office said, could cause “interest rates to increase abruptly and inflation to spiral upward.”

Rate increases could cut short what has been a brief period of improvement for the nation’s fiscal picture as it relates to the economy as a whole. Both the C.B.O. and the White House have projected that the national debt, measured as a share of the size of the economy, will shrink slightly through the coming fiscal year before growing again in 2024. That is because the economy is expected to grow faster than the debt.

The $31 trillion threshold also poses a political problem for President Biden, who has pledged to put the United States on a more sustainable fiscal path and reduce federal budget deficits by $1 trillion over a decade. Deficits occur when the government spends more money than it takes in through tax revenue.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Mr. Biden’s policies have added nearly $5 trillion to deficits since he took office. That projection includes Mr. Biden’s signature $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill, a variety of new congressionally approved spending initiatives and a student-loan debt forgiveness plan that is expected to cost taxpayers nearly $400 billion over 30 years.

White House budget officials estimated in August that the deficit would be just over $1 trillion for the 2022 fiscal year, which was nearly $400 billion less than they had originally forecast. Mr. Biden says those numbers are the product of his policies to stoke economic growth, like the American Rescue Plan.

“We brought down the deficit $350 billion the first year and nearly $1.5 trillion this year,” Mr. Biden told a Democratic National Committee event in Washington last month.

Those figures obscure the effects of the rescue plan, which was financed entirely with borrowed money. Much of the deficit reduction Mr. Biden is championing reflects the fact that both he and former President Donald J. Trump signed laws that borrowed heavily in order to mitigate the damage of the pandemic recession. The deficit has fallen in large part because policymakers did not pass another large round of pandemic aid this year.

Mr. Biden’s budget office now expects the deficit to rise higher than previously expected over the next three years, largely because of higher interest costs as a result of rising rates. In recent weeks, borrowing costs have climbed even higher than the White House expected, suggesting officials will need to revise their deficit expectations upward again.

“I don’t know where interest rates are going, but whatever you thought a year ago, you definitely have to revise that,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former top economic aide to President Barack Obama.

“The deficit path is almost certainly too high,” given the rise in rates in recent weeks, Mr. Furman added. “We were sort of at the edge of ‘OK’ before, and we are past ‘OK’ now.”

In recent weeks, administration officials have walked a thin line on deficits. They have championed deficit-cutting moves — like the climate, health care and tax bill that Mr. Biden signed into law in August — as necessary complements to the Fed’s efforts to bring down inflation by raising interest rates. They have said Mr. Biden would be happy to sign further deficit cuts into law, in the form of tax increases on high earners and large corporations.

But the officials also say they are comfortable with the debt and deficit levels in the administration’s forecasts and do not see the nation as anywhere close to a fiscal crisis. They say the government’s inflation-adjusted interest costs — their preferred metric for the debt burden — remain historically low as a share of the economy. They say it would be wrong for Mr. Biden to shift fiscal priorities in response to rising interest rates.

“Our budgets have been heavily fiscally responsible, and they build a very compelling architecture toward critical investments and fiscal responsibility,” Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. “So it would be a mistake to overtorque in reaction to current events.”

Top administration officials have said since Mr. Biden took office that plans for expensive investments were fiscally responsible because interest rates were so low. At her confirmation hearing last year, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen pointed to rock-bottom borrowing costs as justification for ambitious spending proposals and stimulus measures.

“Neither the president-elect, nor I, propose this relief package without an appreciation for the country’s debt burden,” Ms. Yellen said. “But right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big.”

Critics of the Biden administration’s spending initiatives have warned that a reliance on low interest rates to justify expansionary policies could come back to bite the United States economy, as the debt burden mounts.

Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said the United States was unwise to make long-term debt commitments based on short-term, adjustable interest rates. Adding new debt, he said, as interest rates rise would be pouring fuel on a fiscal fire.

“Basically, Washington has engaged in a long-term debt spree and been fortunate to be bailed out by low interest rates up to this point,” Mr. Riedl said. “But the Treasury never locked in those low rates long term, and now rising rates may collide with that escalating debt with horribly expensive results.”

U.S. National Debt Tops $31 Trillion for First Time

America’s borrowing binge has long been viewed as sustainable because of historically low interest rates. But as rates rise, the nation’s fiscal woes are getting worse.

www.nytimes.com

 

[retaxis]

Can I have only 1 Billion ? I swear I will return it

I trust you more that you will return it than the American gov paying off 31trillion lol. Homelessness and changing demographics of America is only going to cause increasing poverty, recession, depression and whites becoming minorities. US is headed to becoming a welfare state where even the middle class can no longer afford houses and medical care.

 

[VCheng]

I trust you more that you will return it than the American gov paying off 31trillion lol. Homelessness and changing demographics of America is only going to cause increasing poverty, recession, depression and whites becoming minorities. US is headed to becoming a welfare state where even the middle class can no longer afford houses and medical care.

So when does the civil war start? I should be ready for it by Halloween.

 

[Abdul Rehman Majeed]

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

US can just print dollars and clear all the debt.

That is the power only the US has.

 

[retaxis]

Can I have only 1 Billion ? I swear I will return it

I trust you more that you will return it than the American gov paying off 31trillion lol. Homelessness and changing demographics of America is only going to cause increasing poverty, recession, depression and whites becoming minorities. US is headed to becoming a welfare state where even the middle class can no longer afford houses and medical care.

US can just print dollars and clear all the debt.

That is the power only the US has.

Then the currency would be worthless and you will need a wheelbarrow of US dollars to buy bread. It would make the situation 100x worse lol

Want to know if US is in a recession? You’re asking the wrong question

America is simply too big for generalizations. The right question is whether your industry is in recession

www.theguardian.com

 

[Abdul Rehman Majeed]

I trust you more that you will return it than the American gov paying off 31trillion lol. Homelessness and changing demographics of America is only going to cause increasing poverty, recession, depression and whites becoming minorities. US is headed to becoming a welfare state where even the middle class can no longer afford houses and medical care.

In the US when one registers as homeless, they get a luxury home for free.

If not the homeless will sue the government.

Unhoused San Francisco Residents Sue City Over Displacement, Rights Violations​

Vanessa Rancaño
Sep 27
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Toro Castaño poses for a portrait outside his home in San Francisco on September 27, 2022. Castaño says he was displaced nearly daily when he lived on the streets of the Castro for two years. He's one of seven unhoused or formerly unhoused residents suing the city over forced displacements. (Marlena Sloss/KQED)


A group of unhoused San Francisco residents is taking the city to court over its sweeps of homeless encampments, arguing that forced displacements and destruction of property violate their constitutional rights.
Attorneys for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit Tuesday evening on behalf of the Coalition on Homelessness and seven city residents who are unhoused or at risk of returning to the streets.

'You cannot criminalize homelessness. It is both counterproductive and unconstitutional. You have to stop investing in that.'Zal Shroff, senior attorney, Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights

The lawsuit is asking the court to prevent the city from punishing people for sleeping on public property or seizing their belongings until the city can guarantee the availability of appropriate shelter.
“You cannot criminalize homelessness. It is both counterproductive and unconstitutional. You have to stop investing in that,” said Zal Shroff, senior attorney with the Lawyers' Committee. He said the aim of the suit is to shift away from enforcement toward building affordable housing: “It has to be the city's first and chief response to homelessness, and at this moment it's the one thing that the city has simply not gotten its act together to do.”
The 105-page complaint draws on research and public records to depict a homelessness crisis shaped by a history of racist and exclusionary housing policies, and stoked by underinvestment in affordable housing and punitive practices.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11914346/...s-the-bay-area-over-last-3-years-except-in-sf

The suit argues the city is “punishing residents who have nowhere to go” in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The argument draws on the Ninth Circuit’s 2019 decision in the Martin v. Boise case, which found that people who are homeless can’t be penalized for sleeping on public property, if there is no alternative offered.
The suit also alleges violations of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the 14th Amendment’s due process requirement.
“They would come out at, like, four in the morning, five in the morning. Usually when you're in the dead of sleep and it's very, very cold,” said Toro Castaño, 51, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. He was living on the streets of the Castro for two years, until the fall of 2021. “It was very traumatic because it's very cold outside and a lot of things they're taking are warm clothes, warm jackets, blankets, things that you need just to survive.”
Castaño had his belongings taken from him by the city four times during the pandemic, according to the complaint, and settled a claim against the city for $9,000 after his property was destroyed. He now lives in a co-op in the city.
While Castaño was unhoused, he said he was asked to move nearly every day. “It makes you very sleep-deprived, makes it difficult to make decisions, to make appointments, to try to look for work or try to look for jobs — basically to function,” he said.
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said the goal of the lawsuit is to stop sweeps, which she said only perpetuate homelessness. “When the city takes folks’ IDs, their cellphones, the things that they need in order to really navigate a very complicated route off the streets, that ends up extending their homelessness,” she said, explaining that people can lose contact with social service providers and miss out on housing opportunities. “What we hear from folks again and again is they feel like they're starting from scratch.”
She argues the city’s enforcement resources would be better spent on housing and treatment programs. “It's in everyone's interest to really, truly invest in the permanent solutions we need to solve homelessness,” she said.
The suit names the city and county of San Francisco; Mayor London Breed; Director of the Healthy Streets Operation Center Sam Dodge; and several city departments as defendants.
Jen Kwart, director of communications for the city attorney’s office, said in a statement, "The City is acutely focused on expanding our temporary shelter and permanent housing options to alleviate our homelessness crisis. Once we are served with the lawsuit, we will review the complaint and respond in court."
The city’s latest point-in-time count found a total of about 7,700 people living on the streets or in shelters, a 3.5% decrease since 2019. But, Latinx homelessness spiked 55% and Black people continue to be overrepresented among the unhoused, at 38% of the total homeless population compared to 6% of the general population.
Based on the new count, officials now estimate that as many as 20,000 people experience homelessness in a full year.
From 2015 to 2022, the city built just 2,067 units of very-low-income housing, just a third of its goal, while far exceeding its goal for market rate housing, according to the city’s 2020 housing inventory.
Emily Cohen, deputy director of communications for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, points out that since 2017, the city has nearly doubled the number of housing units dedicated to people leaving homelessness.
The lawyers for the plaintiffs have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to ban the city from conducting sweeps or otherwise enforcing ordinances that punish sleeping on public property while the suit proceeds.
Castaño said he hopes the suit leads to more affordable housing and better conditions for people experiencing homelessness. “I'm hoping that people on the street will be protected a little more, that the things won't be taken that they used to survive and to stay warm,” he said. “And there's a little more compassion.”

Unhoused San Francisco Residents Sue City Over Displacement, Rights Violations | KQED

A group of unhoused San Francisco residents is taking the city to court over its sweeps of homeless encampments, arguing that forced displacements and destruction of property violate their constitutional rights.

www.kqed.org

 

[retaxis]

In the US when one registers as homeless, they get a luxury home for free.

If not the homeless will sue the government.

Unhoused San Francisco Residents Sue City Over Displacement, Rights Violations​

Vanessa Rancaño
Sep 27
Save Article

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Copy Link

Toro Castaño poses for a portrait outside his home in San Francisco on September 27, 2022. Castaño says he was displaced nearly daily when he lived on the streets of the Castro for two years. He's one of seven unhoused or formerly unhoused residents suing the city over forced displacements. (Marlena Sloss/KQED)


A group of unhoused San Francisco residents is taking the city to court over its sweeps of homeless encampments, arguing that forced displacements and destruction of property violate their constitutional rights.
Attorneys for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit Tuesday evening on behalf of the Coalition on Homelessness and seven city residents who are unhoused or at risk of returning to the streets.

'You cannot criminalize homelessness. It is both counterproductive and unconstitutional. You have to stop investing in that.'Zal Shroff, senior attorney, Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights

The lawsuit is asking the court to prevent the city from punishing people for sleeping on public property or seizing their belongings until the city can guarantee the availability of appropriate shelter.
“You cannot criminalize homelessness. It is both counterproductive and unconstitutional. You have to stop investing in that,” said Zal Shroff, senior attorney with the Lawyers' Committee. He said the aim of the suit is to shift away from enforcement toward building affordable housing: “It has to be the city's first and chief response to homelessness, and at this moment it's the one thing that the city has simply not gotten its act together to do.”
The 105-page complaint draws on research and public records to depict a homelessness crisis shaped by a history of racist and exclusionary housing policies, and stoked by underinvestment in affordable housing and punitive practices.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11914346/...s-the-bay-area-over-last-3-years-except-in-sf

The suit argues the city is “punishing residents who have nowhere to go” in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The argument draws on the Ninth Circuit’s 2019 decision in the Martin v. Boise case, which found that people who are homeless can’t be penalized for sleeping on public property, if there is no alternative offered.
The suit also alleges violations of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the 14th Amendment’s due process requirement.
“They would come out at, like, four in the morning, five in the morning. Usually when you're in the dead of sleep and it's very, very cold,” said Toro Castaño, 51, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. He was living on the streets of the Castro for two years, until the fall of 2021. “It was very traumatic because it's very cold outside and a lot of things they're taking are warm clothes, warm jackets, blankets, things that you need just to survive.”
Castaño had his belongings taken from him by the city four times during the pandemic, according to the complaint, and settled a claim against the city for $9,000 after his property was destroyed. He now lives in a co-op in the city.
While Castaño was unhoused, he said he was asked to move nearly every day. “It makes you very sleep-deprived, makes it difficult to make decisions, to make appointments, to try to look for work or try to look for jobs — basically to function,” he said.
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said the goal of the lawsuit is to stop sweeps, which she said only perpetuate homelessness. “When the city takes folks’ IDs, their cellphones, the things that they need in order to really navigate a very complicated route off the streets, that ends up extending their homelessness,” she said, explaining that people can lose contact with social service providers and miss out on housing opportunities. “What we hear from folks again and again is they feel like they're starting from scratch.”
She argues the city’s enforcement resources would be better spent on housing and treatment programs. “It's in everyone's interest to really, truly invest in the permanent solutions we need to solve homelessness,” she said.
The suit names the city and county of San Francisco; Mayor London Breed; Director of the Healthy Streets Operation Center Sam Dodge; and several city departments as defendants.
Jen Kwart, director of communications for the city attorney’s office, said in a statement, "The City is acutely focused on expanding our temporary shelter and permanent housing options to alleviate our homelessness crisis. Once we are served with the lawsuit, we will review the complaint and respond in court."
The city’s latest point-in-time count found a total of about 7,700 people living on the streets or in shelters, a 3.5% decrease since 2019. But, Latinx homelessness spiked 55% and Black people continue to be overrepresented among the unhoused, at 38% of the total homeless population compared to 6% of the general population.
Based on the new count, officials now estimate that as many as 20,000 people experience homelessness in a full year.
From 2015 to 2022, the city built just 2,067 units of very-low-income housing, just a third of its goal, while far exceeding its goal for market rate housing, according to the city’s 2020 housing inventory.
Emily Cohen, deputy director of communications for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, points out that since 2017, the city has nearly doubled the number of housing units dedicated to people leaving homelessness.
The lawyers for the plaintiffs have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to ban the city from conducting sweeps or otherwise enforcing ordinances that punish sleeping on public property while the suit proceeds.
Castaño said he hopes the suit leads to more affordable housing and better conditions for people experiencing homelessness. “I'm hoping that people on the street will be protected a little more, that the things won't be taken that they used to survive and to stay warm,” he said. “And there's a little more compassion.”

Unhoused San Francisco Residents Sue City Over Displacement, Rights Violations | KQED

A group of unhoused San Francisco residents is taking the city to court over its sweeps of homeless encampments, arguing that forced displacements and destruction of property violate their constitutional rights.

www.kqed.org

US locks up the most number of people in their prison slave systems than any other country in the world by a wide margin. Those felons don't get free housing and free money, They go back to selling drugs and committing crimes and living in tent cities which do not exist in any other western country like Aus/NZ. US is the first to become a brown/black majority country by 2040 and then living standards are going to fall off a cliff. UK/France/Germany will follow soon. Brown/Black culture result in 3rd world countries and when they lead the US in population US will end up at best a Brazil or Mexico 2.0. At worst it will end up like South Africa when Blacks took control of the country and now its a total sh1thole

 

[VCheng]

Then the currency would be worthless and you will need a wheelbarrow of US dollars to buy bread. It would make the situation 100x worse lol

And yet why does the rest of the world prefer to buy dollars, specially in times of uncertainty, boosting its value?

 

[retaxis]

And yet why does the rest of the world prefer to buy dollars, specially in times of uncertainty, boosting its value?

Because US is still sole superpower but in the future demographically they will turn into brazil/mexico/South Africa state where hyperinflation occurs and blacks/latinos take over. Trust in US currency has been falling since the 2000s every year. Its a bad trajection for US demographically, socially, culturally and politically.

When you beat a country in war like Germany in WW1, they can come back stronger a few years later in WW2. When you completely replace the local population with different ethnic groups/races e.g. babylonians/Baiyue people/Anatolian Byzantines. The country dissappears completely.

 

[Abdul Rehman Majeed]

US locks up the most number of people in their prison slave systems than any other country in the world by a wide margin. Those felons don't get free housing and free money, They go back to selling drugs and committing crimes and living in tent cities which do not exist in any other western country like Aus/NZ. US is the first to become a brown/black majority country by 2040 and then living standards are going to fall off a cliff. UK/France/Germany will follow soon. Brown/Black culture result in 3rd world countries and when they lead the US in population US will end up at best a Brazil or Mexico 2.0. At worst it will end up like South Africa when Blacks took control of the country and now its a total sh1thole

Home Free?​

By James Surowiecki
September 15, 2014

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Illustration by Christoph Niemann
In 2005, Utah set out to fix a problem that’s often thought of as unfixable: chronic homelessness. The state had almost two thousand chronically homeless people. Most of them had mental-health or substance-abuse issues, or both. At the time, the standard approach was to try to make homeless people “housing ready”: first, you got people into shelters or halfway houses and put them into treatment; only when they made progress could they get a chance at permanent housing. Utah, though, embraced a different strategy, called Housing First: it started by just giving the homeless homes.
Handing mentally ill substance abusers the keys to a new place may sound like an example of wasteful government spending. But it turned out to be the opposite: over time, Housing First has saved the government money. Homeless people are not cheap to take care of. The cost of shelters, emergency-room visits, ambulances, police, and so on quickly piles up. Lloyd Pendleton, the director of Utah’s Homeless Task Force, told me of one individual whose care one year cost nearly a million dollars, and said that, with the traditional approach, the average chronically homeless person used to cost Salt Lake City more than twenty thousand dollars a year. Putting someone into permanent housing costs the state just eight thousand dollars, and that’s after you include the cost of the case managers who work with the formerly homeless to help them adjust. The same is true elsewhere. A Colorado study found that the average homeless person cost the state forty-three thousand dollars a year, while housing that person would cost just seventeen thousand dollars.
Housing First isn’t just cost-effective. It’s more effective, period. The old model assumed that before you could put people into permanent homes you had to deal with their underlying issues—get them to stop drinking, take their medication, and so on. Otherwise, it was thought, they’d end up back on the streets. But it’s ridiculously hard to get people to make such changes while they’re living in a shelter or on the street. “If you move people into permanent supportive housing first, and then give them help, it seems to work better,” Nan Roman, the president and C.E.O. of the National Alliance for Homelessness, told me. “It’s intuitive, in a way. People do better when they have stability.” Utah’s first pilot program placed seventeen people in homes scattered around Salt Lake City, and after twenty-two months not one of them was back on the streets. In the years since, the number of Utah’s chronically homeless has fallen by seventy-four per cent.
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Of course, the chronically homeless are only a small percentage of the total homeless population. Most homeless people are victims of economic circumstances or of a troubled family environment, and are homeless for shorter stretches of time. The challenge, particularly when it comes to families with children, is insuring that people don’t get trapped in the system. And here, too, the same principles have been used, in an approach called Rapid Rehousing: the approach is to quickly put families into homes of their own, rather than keep them in shelters or transitional housing while they get housing-ready. The economic benefits of keeping people from getting swallowed by the shelter system can be immense: a recent Georgia study found that a person who stayed in an emergency shelter or transitional housing was five times as likely as someone who received rapid rehousing to become homeless again.


It may seem surprising that a solidly conservative state like Utah has embraced an apparently bleeding-heart approach like giving homeless people homes. But in fact Housing First has become the rule in hundreds of cities around the country, in states both red and blue. And while the Obama Administration has put a lot of weight (and money) behind these efforts, the original impetus for them on a national scale came from the Bush Administration’s homelessness czar Philip Mangano. Indeed, the fight against homelessness has genuine bipartisan support. As Pendleton says, “People are willing to pay for this, because they can look at it and see that there are actually solutions. They can say, ‘Ah, it works.’ ” And it saves money.
The recognition that it makes sense to give money away today in order to save money later isn’t confined to homeless policy. It has animated successful social initiatives around the world. For more than a decade, Mexico has been paying parents to keep their children in school, and studies suggest that the program is remarkably cost-effective, once you take into account the economic benefits of creating a more educated and healthy population. Brazil’s Bolsa Familia is a similar program. The traditional justification for such initiatives has been a humanitarian or egalitarian one. But a cost-benefit analysis suggests that, in many cases, such programs are also economically rational.
Our system has a fundamental bias toward dealing with problems only after they happen, rather than spending up front to prevent their happening in the first place. We spend much more on disaster relief than on disaster preparedness. And we spend enormous sums on treating and curing disease and chronic illness, while underinvesting in primary care and prevention. This is obviously costly in human terms. But it’s expensive in dollar terms, too. The success of Housing First points to a new way of thinking about social programs: what looks like a giveaway may actually be a really wise investment. ♦













Published in the print edition of the September 22, 2014, issue.

Home Free?

James Surowiecki on Utah’s cost-effective approach to chronic homelessness: instead of putting people into shelters or halfway houses, just hand them the keys to a new place.

www.newyorker.com

 

[VCheng]

Because US is still sole superpower but in the future demographically they will turn into brazil/mexico/South Africa state where hyperinflation occurs and blacks/latinos take over. Trust in US currency has been falling since the 2000s every year. Its a bad trajection for US demographically, socially, culturally and politically.

And just how is it that you know so much about how the future will be so precisely?

If you are going by demographics, China is in a far worse position, as are Europe, Russia and Japan. USA is doing great by comparison.

 

[Abdul Rehman Majeed]

Then the currency would be worthless and you will need a wheelbarrow of US dollars to buy bread. It would make the situation 100x worse lol

US is a self sufficient nation. Prices will not rise.

 

[retaxis]

And just how is it that you know so much about how the future will be so precisely?

If you are going by demographics, China is in a far worse position, as are Europe, Russia and Japan. USA is doing great by comparison.

China is doing great because it is a pure country, It can make people have one children or it can just as easily make people have 5 children each. Thats willpower and collectivism which puts the country first and foremost. China culture/language and demograpphics will never be replaced by outsiders.

US/UK/Germany/France will be replaced by brown/blacks third worlders who will turn those countries into third world countries just like what they did to Brazil and South Africa. Replace the whites (who are woke lazy gender queers and not hard workers like their grandparents) and having a culture of independence (selfishness to put oneself before country/god/family) is a recipe for disaster. The simple fact that US is legalising drugs and promoting bisexualism and homosexuality and making it cool is degradation of society away from conservative christian values. US white values are being replaced by Drug seeking/gender bending/hedonistic sexual pleasuring values. Plus in the near future 2040 US whites will be minorities and the country will become a divided nation which will eventually result in South Africa type of nation state.