davidagain

It's everything to do with it. Read some of the other replies.

Inflation is a real thing and will really happen. It's just that charity programmes have absolutely nothing to do with fuelling inflation. You have cause and effect utterly backwards.

The difference I guess is that I’m anticipating the possible negative outcomes and saying they should be resolved simultaneously instead of just saying “throw money at them”.

The difference is that I'm hearing the people doing the things and analysing the results who are saying no strings cash is far and away the best thing you can do. All the other stuff has to come later.

If it's 103 outside and you haven't drunk anything since the morning, your mouth is parched and you're starting to feel dizzy and I show up with a shrink and a sachet of electrolyte-rich powder, I'm just not helping. If I show up with three pints of cool but not cold water then you might be prepared to take some electrolyte powder in it but I bet you $100 you don't want to wait for me to mix it into the first pint, because here's the thing, the water is the main thing you need. Pint 2 or 3 you might accept the electrolytes, but frankly they can wait. And don't bother with the shrink yet either. Don't lead with the powder, don't lead with the shrink, lead with the water.

Minimum wage desperately needs to rise. It's not either or.

Not quite, it isn't, not in overall message, and if you read what I said, you'll see that I didn't object to any additional help, I just insist on substantial cash first and reject most firmly your absurd histrionics about inflation.

I didn't object to any of the extra help. That's a straw man. I just have to keep reminding you that giving people in abject poverty substantial chunks of no-strings unconditional cash has a large and growing body of evidence showing that it's more effective and cheaper than leading with non-cash interventions, which are slow, have limited long term benefits and high drop-out rates. You do them too, later, but you lead with cash. Actual cash. You know, to fix the lack of cash issue that's causing most of the rest of the problems.

Seriously? You went from giving some homeless people enough money to get accommodation and food to a global inflation crisis?

I mean ,that's some really absurd fear mongering right there.

You've got to be a Republican if you can swallow or invent nonsense like that. No, global inflation crises are caused by corporate reactions to war and stock market scares, not by charity projects.

Who the f*** ever heard of the global RedCross inflation crisis of 1987?! There wasn't one!
The World Food Programme guacamole price hike of 2014?! There wasn't one!
The International Rescue Committee credit crunch of 2018? There wasn't one!
The The World Health Organization cancer treatment rising expense scandal of 2023? There wasn't one!

Why didn't these things happen?

Because giving people in dire straights enough to get them back on their feet IS NOT a cause of any kind of inflation. Stop making out that your crazy catastrophe theories are even slightly plausible,

Charitable crisis solving is safe. It's unequivocally good for the economy. Keeping people on the streets and hence out of work is bad for the economy. Alleviating abject poverty is unequivocally GOOD.

I never said you shouldn't do anything else, I only disagreed with you when you suggested that giving them money wouldn't help and that somehow giving homeless people money would be a driver for inflation, but homeless people eating isn't a driver for inflation.

• Giving destitute people money does help. It helps a lot.
• You can take people to a shrink and a physiotherapist and a doctor as much as you like, but if they don't have food and shelter it's going to do jack shit for their mental health, their physical health and their disease resistance.

Guess what's cheaper than hiring shrinks and physios and medics? Giving homeless people enough money to get food and shelter. Guess what doesn't help homeless people solve their problems? Keeping them on the street trying to scrape together enough cash each day to get into shelter for the night.

• So yeah, once you've given them enough money to let them get themselves back into stable accommodation with enough food to eat they have the time to go looking for employment, so then you support them with that. That's when you can supply training, but for goodness sake don't take a homeless person to your employment training before giving them an address.
• And yeah, once you've given them enough money to allow them to get themselves back into stable accommodation with enough food to eat and some independent employment, sure, enrol them in medicare.
• And yeah, once you've given them enough money to allow them to get themselves back into stable accommodation with enough food to eat and some independent employment, and you enrolled them in medicare and they're having a normal life, guess whose mental health improved A LOT in six months?
• So sure, yeah, get them a shrink once they have a life, but for goodness' sake, what kind of an idiot goes to a rough sleeper and says "if we can talk through some of the issues you have with your dad, I'm sure it'll seem a bit less cold at night here."?!

And can you please permanently get lost with the thinking that says that we NEED abject poverty and starving people and rough sleepers to keep prices low?! Seriously, shut up. It's not working. It never worked. The USA has some insane levels of inequality and it didn't keep prices low in the USA. It just doesn't. False. Crazy talk. Stop it. Wrong. No. Doesn't help. Never helped. The poorest people having money was NEVER the cause of inflation. Nope, it isn't, it won't be. Please don't come back with that shit again. Stop saying it because it's really very stupid indeed.

So what on earth made you think that giving money to poor people would be the cause of inflation?! I'll tell you what, it's corporations spending a lot of money and time buying politicians who will parrot their line that raising the minimum wage will make inflation get out of control, whereas the main thing they're worried about is not making quite such astronomical profits. MW has barely changed in the USA over decades but has risen much more elsewhere. If the theory were right, USA would have been largely free of inflation and the rest of western democracies would be far worse, but I'm fact inflation is bad everywhere. Why? Corporate greed. Poor regulation. International tax avoidance.

Well done for going for something better.

The cause of most inflation is corporate greed, not excessive wealth amongst poor people!

You're missing that you yourself argued that giving poor people money would push prices up and wouldn't solve the problem, but charities are increasingly finding that no strings money is the most effective and fastest and surprisingly, cheapest way of getting people out of destitution and into accommodation, employment and reconnection with family.

So please stop saying that giving people money is somehow an ineffective way of dealing with extreme poverty. You're incorrect. It's very effective indeed.

The cause is doofuses saying crap like "don't raise the minimum wage, it's inflationary" so that the corporations get away with hunger wages. Countries with significantly higher minimum wages famously don't have significantly more expensive burgers.

So it's best to leave the money where it is then?!? WTF? You think that corporations raise prices in order to prevent homeless people from buying their products? What kind of crazy logic is that?