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457 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury 23 Feb \ parent \ on: The Homelessness Crisis mostly_harmless

There are so many other things going on that I'm not ready to conclude that this is just a fact of our modern economy, but it is clearly part of what is happening.

Same. It's worth more than zero, but less than everything. The nuance that seems most important to me is not "are some people too dumb to work in the jobs favored by the modern economy" which would be a more extreme rendition of JBP's point; but "after you've made enough bad decisions to be in danger of homelessness, have you got yourself into a corner s.t. you can't get on board in the modern economy." I think the two are related and not identical.

Somehow, we have both a huge pool of unemployed low-skill people and a bunch of employers desperately seeking entry-level workers.

I posted about this at some point -- am very very interested in the topic because I just can't fathom how it's possible. And yet it's right there, in front of us. So bizarre.

27 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined OP 23 Feb

Even practicing labor economists don't know what's going with entry-level employment trends. We're missing something important, though.

after you've made enough bad decisions to be in danger of homelessness, have you got yourself into a corner s.t. you can't get on board in the modern economy

Then again, you hear about people getting out of prison after decades and starting back up. My dad worked with inner-city kids for a long time and one of the things that stuck with me from that is how some people overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and others just can never get out of their own way.

123 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 23 Feb

There's no question that some people can surmount any hellish depths you can imagine, just like some people can smoke for 50 years and die of natural causes. It gets less likely as you stack the deck against them, though.