Time for a rethink of social programs? A chance discussion this week got me to thinking about how the world really needs a way to “recapture waste people.”
Who???
There’s no one who is “waste” per se, but circumstances in life often result in a lot of people ending up in hopeless, dead-ends, that seem almost inescapable without some kind of aid program. Yet, most of what we have today doesn’t work well. Something must be missing…so we’re off in search of “it.” After headlines and our charts, of course.
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Shame on you George for if you advocate ANY type of social programs you automatically become a (dare I say it) a lefty,liberal,socialist,communist or a few other demeaning names, but if you advocate giving business a hundred tax free billions you become the man of the hour,just the American mentality of years of propaganda that’s what good for business is good for America.!!!
George, in the US Government, there are literally thousands of Social Care Networks, but none are integrated. And, that kind of integration in of itself, could be the holy grail of solving our social programs. If there is one thing both sides of the aisle can agree on is that there is inefficiencies in the way our social programs are managed.
They are all fingers that clog the holes in the dike type of programs, with very little solution based initiatives. What’s the exit plan of any of these programs and how many just bounce from one social ill to the next?
Working class people are judged on the credit scores, job successes, driving records, etc, but where is the accountability for the people that haven’t had the type of consistent mentorship like the rest of us? One of the AI initiatives should be a government run and paid for program to tackle these issues, streamline the system, find holes and inconsistencies to help save billions of dollars to be allocated to solutions, not fixes.
Van Jones and Kim Khardassian are making great strides in solving and championing prison reform. Take that model and integrate it with seniors, homelessness, substance abuse, under skilled etc and then, use AI to find out the solutions that yield the best results. The difference maker happens when AI goes a step further to develop preventative programs to make sure that the issues are abated for future generations.
You reinforce the idea that reproductive capability should be removed from people – not the happy sensations. Genetically perfect humans should be made to order from the Genome Factory.
Government AI is a key. No longer do we as a society have to face the results of unmonitored parenting.
Instead of the parents owning the child, children will be owned by the state and licensed to people. Using at this time unknown IoT technology, government AI can monitor the children and parents 24/7. As soon as the AI notices child is going off the rail, they can call them in for tweaking as necessary.
Mark & Steve F,
I was in Green Haven Correctional Facility in NY collecting data one day in 1973. I was having lunch in the Officer’s Mess when the protestant chaplain came in and said breathlessly, “Marc, have you heard about what the Supreme Court did?” I hadn’t and he proceeded to tell me about Roe v. Wade and added, in 15 to 25 years these places will start emptying out. His theory was that most criminals were either unwanted or badly parented children. His theory didn’t quite work out: state and federal prison populations have gone up by a factor of approximately seven since then.
Many years later a social worker colleague had the bright idea of training female ex-offenders to be health care aids, so we started taking a hard look at what it would take to convert motivated ex-offenders into reliable caretakers. Training grants were easy to get, but we gave up when we realized that the plan would not work unless we integrated housing, transportation, therapy for PTSD and substance abuse, and child care support into a comprehensive program.
Eugenics is not the answer. Licensing reproduction has sometimes appealed to me, but it is also not the answer. In a liberal democracy, there probably is not answer to “wasted people.” I will be thinking about George’s idea a lot, but I am not optimistic. I remember Arlen Spector’s flowchart of Hillarycare in the early 1990s–it looked like a circuitboard drawn by a spider on LSD. I knew instantly that Hillary’s medical reform plan was doomed. The “wasted people” problem is too damned complicated.
And yet, with some thought, I have been able to take the most convoluted of federal student loan funding and reduce it to sql operations and a screen. I think you’re right (this IS complicated) but also wrong (as the x files puts it, there’s an answer out there). It’s like any other damn engineering problem in the world – just a matter of time on task.
“but none are integrated”
I agree I think you are onto something….. lets start with Social Security and Medicare…
incorporate the congressional and federal employee pension plans..
the military and all govt. and public service. pension plans.. the rail road etc.. all of them..
the medical plans for both.. tri-care.. nope lets make it all medicare..and social security title nineteen..put all the control under the same roof with the same guidelines and security
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_pension..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricare
OOPS that will never happen..seems when they deregulated and signed the nafta another cute move was to encorporate the funds so congress could bail out those that were to big to fail..
Hint if we had let the transition happen then.. and followed Jimmy’s original plan we would’t be facing the Everest of falls that we are going to face soon..
“Haven’t had the type of Consistent mentorship like the rest of us….” HAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, A MOM AND A DAD!!! Can’t beat the PARENTAL ROLE MODEL of a MOTHER AND FATHER. It’s the best, the foundation of society, and this culture has almost extinguished it! Yet, the demoncrats don’t want families separated at the border, but it’s okay for illegals to kill Americans and separate them from their families, it’s okay for the illegals to self-separate from their OWN families, it’s okay to put American citizens at the back of the line so that all those just released homeless illegals get room, food, and healthcare, PLUS jobs. Yeah, this communist socialistic BS is all about stripping the American citizens of their rights and replacing them with EVERYONE ELSE. It’s ALL about the UN POPULATION REPLACEMENT plan it is NOT about votes!
A sizeable portion of the local seasonal agricultural workers are felons or ex-methheads, or both. There has always been a support network with small business owners for people down on their luck who are willing to do seasonal work.
Politicizing employment (and everything else) isn’t a characteristic of the right, or of independents, just the left.
I concur that corporations are the worst offenders in passing over job-seekers with cosmetic defects. Corporations are bringing in visa holders wholesale rather than employ qualified local applicants who don’t measure up to their corporate eugenics standards. And you wonder why I refer to corporates as brown shirts.
We do not want to, and probably cannot, reclaim the wasted people on the streets. In Portland we have “west coast fever”, or “heroin”. If we were to simply jail every junkie there would be hardly any camps. Taking care of the mentally ill and truly displaced would be much easier.
Heroin, meth, PCP, etc. are all decriminalized in Oregon, thanks to our governor. Because of this the cops don’t bother much. It’s the Wild West.
But the fact remains, you can’t get these addicts into shelters, you can’t make them clean up, there won’t be much left if anything once they hit bottom and get help. Would you hire someone who spent 5 years shooting up, stealing bikes, and living under a bridge?
Here is what we need: Drug Island. Some place warm and nice. Put all the addicts on one side, put a rehab center on the other. Deliver all the tons of meth, heroin, coke, etc, that is seized in raids. Offer “as much drugs as you can possibly ingest”, and a free boat ride. In other words arrest them and take them to the island.
In order to get off the island, you simply show up at rehab, complete the program, get clean, get healthy, get an education, and you can then leave any time you like. It would be cheap compared to the system we have now, and get these people out of the situation that they cannot leave today.
Phil.E
Eccollent idea but could we find a big enough island
New York – remember the escape from ny movies?
They are called sacrifice zones, Chris Hedges found several existing already in the USA and wrote a book about them a couple of years back . We have been seeing them for years in the movies, with the poor ragged inhabitants huddled around the burning barrels with the big screens to watch. They are basically third world environments. The are forming in many of the more than 40 cities in the USA where there are tent camps or large populations of homeless.
They just haven’t built the walls around them yet so the inhabitants cannot leave to sh*t in the streets or throw their used needles where the privileged live and work. But there are certainly many abandoned factories/industrial areas where these folks can be relocated.
In the current USA culture, rehab is so expensive that there is no way that the addicted would ever be able to contribute to society in their lifetime the cost of rehabilitating them into a minimum wage job at best.
Thank you Mr. Ure for your sane, level headed view on things. It has brought clarity into my life in how a view things and make them happen!
I am please as punch about that!!!
Hey George, I’m sure You’re on to something a whole lot of the rest of Us have pondered and probably dismissed as almost impossible to pull off,, it must be doable.
But how?
Love the concept, but no clue how to pull it off,
What a great leap into the future, the wasted people concept, I like.
Well let e offer a suggestion..
With the huge percentage of our population encarcerated..
We do have the NAFTA treaty.. we outsource our industry why not our violent prison population.. let’s say Mexico or turkey.. we send industry to china..they have wonderful prisons there.. five grand compared to what fifty to a hundred grand a year here..
For non violent fine then if the decide to continue have one of the bamboo swingers from Singapore corporal punishment come on over..
For those wonderful offshore investment schemes.. heck pay a tax on money made in the usa..if not move on out let a co. Willing to invest in their milking machine.
Welfare.. well we outsource jobs give those jobs to those that can pay..
This is a thoughtful and most important column! There’s a wealth of talent willing to do its best to improve the human condition – especially among those who are left along the wayside. I’d love to help with such a thing, though IMHO it can never be started by an individual. At the least, it needs a couple, since the male and female perspectives are so very different.
Lazy people need to be shown a path to success that they can buy in to. Most don’t see a purpose in doing more than the minimum. This is the simplest of the array of problems to be solved here. Any agency or program needs credibility and that’s sorely lacking in our great country.
Having a safe space for nonviolent yet incompetent people is a start. They need to be instilled with a sense of worth – not possible while “drugs” are demonized. Among drug users – those who are addicts need to be separated from the greater pool of users, since there are many users of non-addictive drugs that can function perfectly well in non-safety related jobs. We also need to revisit DEA schedules and eliminate schedule I completely. The punishment is often worse than the “crime”. In some/many cases, the use of non-addictive yet currently illegal drugs allows users to be either functional or high functioning. Addicts are a different story. From my own experience in life, I’ve observed that any addiction will resolve on its own if it doesn’t kill the addict first(a real possibility). Of course, there are the health sequelae. Intervention may or may shorten this path. The key is compassion! We’re hung up on “justice” to the exclusion of compassion. We must eliminate the problems of their behavior by isolating them from the mainstream and offer the widest range of options humanely available. Psychedelic experiences often change the path for an addict – though the science is poorly understood and the path may be for better or worse. Life is not safe.
All people need to feel that they are loved. Normal non-tactile expressions of caring from the helping professions don’t convey this message at all – except possibly to those who are high functioning already. Babies die if they don’t feel physical/tactile love, and older people just become addicts. How to embrace a filthy and hostile homeless addict on the street is left to the imagination. I don’t have that answer – though perhaps someone does.
We have too many people in the world that are swayed to poor choices via emotional rhetoric. This really needs to stop. We want a free country, yet we do need to tamp down the SJW types to the point that they won’t cause chaos and rioting.
These are preliminary thoughts. The exercise is ongoing.