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It would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in America.
Bullshit. Hope you guys don't seriously believe this.
Edit: it really underscores the mentality of the community when a straightforward debunking of a false statement has a negative score, lol.
What does it matter about the exact dollar amount? The top 3 wealthiest people in the US could provide housing, sanitation and food for every single homeless person in the US and still be multi-billionaires. It doesn't matter if the cost of tackling homelessness is $20bn or $200bn, it's still a fact that a handful of people hoarde enough wealth that they could actually pay to house every single homeless person, and still have millions (if not billions) left over.
Yes, this is a trite example and doesn't address the systemic failures in healthcare and education that are a major factor in people becoming homeless. But the wealth the ultra-rich hoarde could help with that too.
What does it matter about the exact dollar amount?
If it's an amount that exceeds the means of the person you're complaining isn't paying for it, it's pretty relevant, don't you think?
The top 3 wealthiest people in the US could provide housing, sanitation and food for every single homeless person in the US and still be multi-billionaires.
This is literally false. The combined total net worth of the three richest in the US (~$800 billion) is less than the US government spends on welfare EVERY YEAR (over $1 TRILLION), lol.
Hell, even that nonsensical $20 billion figure put forth was ANNUAL, not one-time, so even IF we used that figure for the sake of argument, and even IF you could wave a magic wand and convert all of Musk's net worth straight into cash 1:1, it STILL would barely last 10 years. Then what?
You have no idea of the magnitude of the cost of solving this problem. Stop writing as if you know what you're talking about when you obviously don't.
You uhh aren't doing yourself any favors trying to compare the entirety of welfare to a fraction of what welfare does and yes an annual 20B is affordable on a national level. Elon's wealth jumped 170B just since November. He could absolutely afford 20B a year.
You uhh aren't doing yourself any favors taking that already-debunked 20B figure seriously.
Elon's wealth jumped 170B just since November.
And a couple of years ago, it shrank by $182 billion.
Stop treating net worth like it's an amount of cash. It isn't.
Stop treating net worth like it's an amount of cash. It isn't.
It is literally equivalent amount of cash lol
It is not annual income, but it would support a decade of expenditure for 10 years though, ie enough time to solve the issue.
One billionaire is a price most of are willing to pay too lol
It is literally equivalent amount of cash lol
Cash can't increase or decrease in quantity without any transaction having happened.
It's absolutely cash. It's cash when they want to use it, but not when we want to tax it or talk about using wealth differently in our country? Bullshit. It's cash.
And you might be surprised to find out politifact is in fact not the arbiter of reality.
It’s cash when they want to use it
When you sell a possession, you can obtain cash in exchange for it. It's not cash until then--up to that point, it's only a price tag, a valuation.
And taking out a loan using a possession of yours as collateral isn't income at all. Loans are not income--you need to pay loans back.
And you might be surprised to find out politifact is in fact not the arbiter of reality.
Until it debunks a claim made by the Other Team, right? That article goes into a lot of detail about how and why the claim is wrong/misleading.
That article goes into a lot of detail well beyond the original claim. Which is why it's a strawman argument. And Elon used his stocks to buy Twitter. It's cash.
The billionaires of this country could spend 20B a year, every year of their lives, and never run out of money.
Politifact isn't the end all of fact checking. 20B is in fact the widely cited figure for yearly housing costs if we just paid rent for all homeless people.
We could build social housing to cover the lower end of sector!
It ain't never gonna happen but that's purely ruling class decision.
Lemmy dogpiles ad nauseum.