Musk - Homelessness a LIE

Yes, but I don't think Rockefeller had a billion dollar bill he could deposit in the bank either. Whatever he was worth in todays money you are also factoring in the future value of oil deposits, productive assets, 'human capital' etc he controlled. Capitalism has changed but not all that fundamentally.

 

My mother an I spent two years either living at the kindness of family, friends, or shelters. Sometimes, it was just our little Reliant K car. Mom lost her ass when the Oklahoma mortgage business tanked back in the late ‘80’s/early ‘90’s.

Mom did temp work. We’d have been screwed if not for safety net programs that the DOGE nepo babies (and many ghouls on this forum) want to end to benefit the rich. Things only improved once she saved enough cash to pay for a new certification and work some okay-paying jobs long enough to finally get back on our feet.

No drugs or alcohol were involved. We were simply a family who fell on hard times.

Watching rich assholes joyfully defecate on poor and lower middle class people, while telling us we deserve it, is precisely what will lead to Lady Guillotine being brought out again. It’s like America’s ruling class have utterly failed to learn the lessons of the past. Unions were literally created to keep angry, abused workers from dragging bosses out of their homes and beating them.

 

If only he hasn't started turning bat shit crazy. I definitely don't trust that man with the "keys" to our space program.

Amazon sold over 1000 of these bumper stickers in the last month. There's a page full of ones with similar messages.:

"I Bought This Before We Knew Elon was Crazy"

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=anti+elo...379713&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_67thnk86om_b

 

…only everything DOGE wants to do is precisely the opposite. Cancel entitlement payments? Cut VA programs? Obliterate the social safety net programs?

“Here are some bootstraps. Pull yourselves up” is worthless. You want to help homeless people with serious mental illnesses? Fund programs to house and treat them. Addiction? The same. Working poor? Safe, affordable housing.

We seem to want to demonize the homeless rather than the root causes that lead people to live on the streets.

 

I suppose if you consider investments in private prisons and such paying to shape the world to your view "great for humanity" ... I'm not sure anyone should control that much wealth no matter how benignly they claim to be acting.

 

First ever social media post occurred in 1789 when Marie Antoinette posted:

 

Rating this 2 Pinocchios as this quote is disputed, and could mean either contempt or benign ignorance of the plight of the French peasantry. Could be a Russian disinformation campaign to promote their preferred candidates in the Estates General.

 

IIRC, her personal and even political records indicate she had populist sympathies, right?

 

Yep, all that government assistance, half his teslas are now made in China, yet maga loves him. Imagine that.

 

This response degrades the quality of the discussion. I’ve posted my view on Musk’s comments (and if the original quote deserves a Pinocchio rating, shame on me). But Bill Gates is one of the 10 richest people in the world because he dropped out of college and took the risk to create a product that is on the screen of every office employee in the world daily.

There is no scenario where the world would be better off if the money in the Gates Foundation was given to a different source to someone who didn’t create that wealth.

The Gates Foundation owned $6.6 million worth of shares in a UK private prison which is literally a rounding error to them and not within the spirit of billionaires using billions to buy influence.

You had a layup to bash Musk (again if quote is true), but trying to say Bill Gates is evil b/c he is rich looks foolish.

 

You’re acting like he had a grand plan when he committed to buying it; he didn’t. It was temper tantrum impulse buy that he quickly tried to back out of when he had some time to think about it. The only reason he went through with it was because Twitter sued him. You can’t go back and try to whitewash the purchase.

 

Like putting trackers in the vaccine

 

But saying it like he did is a justification for giving up on all of them. They can't be helped, so might as well push them into a meat grinder and fertilize the farms with them. That's not an acceptable answer.

This situation was not nearly so bad when we had more hospitals and assisted living facilities for the mentally disturbed and disabled. Maybe we need to have more facilities to care for and provide basic services for these people. That way, it would be easier to provide career counseling and job skills for those who can potentially function in today's society. Handing them welfare money and watching large numbers of them spend it on drugs is not a good answer.

 

He has not revolutionized the Soylent Green Machine yet. But give him time.

 

I’m glad you qualified it with “pretty much” because his tunnel digging is shit.

 

I don’t disagree with you but dealing with mentally ill and drug addicted is very difficult and expensive (I speak from experience). We went from a model where they had no rights and were institutionalized and treated like crap to a different model where they were completely free to harm themselves and everybody else.

In terms of drug addiction, at least with harder illegal drugs, I guess what I’d like to see is either mandatory treatment or prison. To the extent recovery is achieved, wipe away the criminal record. Mentally ill is more difficult - with some forms of mental illness you need constant reinforcement and oftentimes medicine - a weekly therapy session doesn’t cut it. There does need to be somewhere for people to go that just can’t take care of themselves in terms of mental illness.