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Homelessness in Seattle is exactly what to expect in this system

Writer's picture: Timothy S. ColmanTimothy S. Colman

Updated: Jun 18, 2024

Jesus. Nick ranting about homelessness as a problem created by blue progressive states.


How far off the mark can you get?



Not a word in the article about income inequality, or the theft by the top 10% from us working class Americans to the tune of $51 trillion over the last 50 years. I'm quoting that corporate conservative Time Magazine, complete with a chart. https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/


Here in Seattle King County -- with Washington State having the 49th worst regressive tax system, we have infinite billionaires and millionaires and 47,000 people on the street.


The System is working as planned.


The city we bought a house for in 1996 for $180K? Houses in this same working class neighborhood are now over a million. Absolutely absurd.


You know why?


You would if you can answer this question: who is the biggest lobby group in Congress?


And you'd be like me if you thought the killing and drilling crew Big defense industry and Big Oil.


But they are not first.


Realtors and developers are first.


Think that has anything to do with the capitalist artificial scarcity in our housing crisis?


Nick misses the most obvious point: public policies since Reagan gutted mental health care, and neoliberalism gutted families in rural and poor Americans.


Housing is scarce because markets are by nature made to create winners and losers. The capitalists are reaping trillions with near zero taxes.


Homeless are social trash in this economic system.


People have a right to shelter from the storm. That is our nature, not living on the street.


And most people I know think very little about other people. So we have to begin again by organizing systems that do not spit out human beings as waste that can be tossed on the street.


Further reading


I'm volunteering here in Seattle with Initiative 137 to build social housing and pay for it with a payroll tax on overcompensated.


Robert Sapolsky in Determined has been eye opening on the roots of our human behavior in general. Sapolsky's work is helpful in his strong determinist point of view to challenge the assumption that people who are without houses are on the streets because they are bad or they have free will. He would say that is nonsense. And so we should not punish people who are swallowed by circumstances impacted in systems that are larger than the individual.




Tim Colman

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