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submitted 2 days ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Summary

Elon Musk has called homelessness a “lie” and “propaganda,” claiming advocacy groups profit from maintaining high homelessness rates.

Partnering with Donald Trump, Musk is pushing for drastic federal budget cuts targeting programs for vulnerable populations, including food stamps and healthcare.

Trump’s plan includes forcing unhoused individuals into treatment or institutionalization.

Critics argue these approaches criminalize homelessness while ignoring root causes like lack of affordable housing.

Homelessness in the U.S. has reached record levels, with 650,000 people affected in 2023, prompting calls for evidence-based solutions over punitive measures.

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[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago

Wow, I didn't think I could hate him more. But - here we are.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago

Im almost convinced Trump is picking the worst people possible so he looks good in comparison...

[-] _core@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

If you're picking shitty people it doesn't make you look good, it makes you look like a shitty person for picking shitty people.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah, but you're thinking beyond a 5th grade level.

[-] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago

Forcing the homeless into privately run concentration camps. What a sick bastard.

[-] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 8 points 1 day ago

Ah yes, it is a "life style" choice and all that jazz..... Not at all the inevitable result of decades plus of poor governance/systemic failures.

[-] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Sir, you can't sleep here.

"Didn't you hear? I don't exist."

[-] ArchRecord@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago

This is the danger of elite projection. What his life is like must be how other people's lives are like.

He was successful. If he wanted to get a job, he could. If he did work, he got paid.

If these people aren't doing that, it must be their fault, and they need "treatment" (via institutionalization) in his mind. It couldn't possibly be because to get a job, you often need existing housing, but to get housing, you need money from a job. Or the fact that people like him don't pay enough.

It's always their fault. Individual responsibility, meritocracy and all that jazz.

[-] Doomsider@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Likewise I call billionaires a lie and propaganda.

It is so disgusting. Print out this news article, stick it to your wall. Read it every day to remember why these people are a disease to society.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago

Better yet, stick on public walls

[-] Allonzee@lemmy.world 37 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Market Capitalism needs homelessness.

If you will not make the owner's money through labor, You will help them make money as capitalist scarecrows. A warning to any laborer thinking of failing to comply.

You WILL serve the owner's greed disease, or else.

It would literally be cheaper to house them without conditions than all the conditioned programs and homeless encampment clean up costs.

But that doesn't send a message of fear.

Herp derp Freedom 🇺🇸

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[-] ramsorge@discuss.online 21 points 1 day ago

He says it’s a lie because he thinks those people are just NPCs

[-] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago

He thinks everybody is a NPC, as do all sociopaths.

[-] ramsorge@discuss.online 8 points 1 day ago

I think he is in a special group of sociopaths.

[-] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 29 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

"claiming advocacy groups profit from maintaining high homelessness rates."

Uhhh . . . how? "You there! Go be homeless! I need to profit from your utter lack of income."

[-] frezik@midwest.social 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Social workers making literally tens of thousand of dollars a year off of this. That's enough to be rich according to people who make that much while eating a french fry.

[-] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Oooo. "Tens of thousands" you say? It almost sounds like keeping people from dying in the street should be a full-time job.

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 45 points 2 days ago

So... You think people who are homeless are just lying about not having a home?

Can we check this fuckstick for brain worms or just if his brain looks like swiss cheese?

[-] monotremata@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 day ago

It's so much worse than that. From the article;

“Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little bit behind on their mortgage, and if you just gave them a job, they’d be back on their feet,” he told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson in October. “What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human feces on the street.”

Basically, it's not the "homeless" part of "homeless people" he thinks is a lie.

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[-] pftbest@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think the idea is they are too lazy to work for rent. If they really wanted they would go to work and not be homeless anymore. And if they are not able to find any job, they can always do forced labor in a prison system. That's how it was in the USSR. People in power really like this kind of a system

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[-] UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone 222 points 2 days ago

Elon Musk is a certified piece of shit.

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[-] PoopSpiderman@lemmy.world 230 points 2 days ago

Homelessness couldn’t possibly be the result of late stage capitalism though, right?

[-] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 127 points 2 days ago

It's a result of any stage of capitalism

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[-] yarr@feddit.nl 15 points 1 day ago

For someone that claims to be so data-driven, I'd be curious what data he is looking at here when he calls it a lie. I will say that it is factual that the US spends a lot of money on homelessness and we still have homelessness, but the existence of homelessness is not something I would call a lie.

[-] III@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

If his data driven claims aren't just complete bullshit, the data he is talking about tells him that saying this type of shit will get him something he wants. Whether homelessness is real doesn't matter to him.

If his data driven claims are bullshit, he probably saw a homeless person who didn't look exactly like a Hollywood movie homeless person so, per his tiny, tiny idiot brain, they must be faking homelessness.

[-] rational_lib@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Clearly we can solve homelessness by simply terraforming Mars and moving all the homeless there, right?

[-] Noodle07@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Why terraform before sending them there?

[-] tengkuizdihar@programming.dev 51 points 2 days ago

How far up the ivory tower do you need to be to ignore homelessness by denying its existence?

[-] SulaymanF@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago

It’s an old old myth. Ronald Reagan said that everyone who is homeless in America is by choice since there’s so many shelters and charities already. It’s incredibly out of touch, but today people like Musk brag about their ignorance.

[-] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 35 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Kind of like the "self-made billionaire."

[-] zarathustra0@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[-] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I'm inclined to agree. The idea that a cabinet-to-be is able to make headlines during a lame duck session is... well, I don't think it's normal, but I may be misremembering.

Nothing earth shattering today (Dec 13) but a few noteworthy things on AP: https://apnews.com/hub/congress

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[-] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 26 points 2 days ago

Elon Musk is actually bullet proof. Impervious to bullets. I guarantee it.

*Ymmv

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[-] asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 72 points 2 days ago

“What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human feces on the street.”

Yo this is the most cartoonish out-of-touch shit take I've see. In an election that accused a disenfranchised minority group of eating people's pets!

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[-] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 75 points 2 days ago

What an objectively evil thing to think, let alone say.

[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 37 points 2 days ago

Homelessness is a lie and propaganda? That's news to all the homeless people I used to regularly interact with when I worked down town.

[-] andallthat@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

can you imagine how happy they will be? "How did I fall for this? I was really convinced I was homeless!"

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[-] KnowledgeableNip@sh.itjust.works 41 points 2 days ago

Can't he fuck off and die on Mars already?

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[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

What if Luigi was acquitted and launched a startup that sold guillotines at cost...

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 81 points 2 days ago

Is there going to be room in the detention camps for the homeless?

[-] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 72 points 2 days ago

Instead of Jews, it's Hispanics. Instead of gypsies, it's the homeless. And instead of trans people....well that one is the same.

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[-] perestroika@lemm.ee 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Living on latitude 60 where being homeless can (and sometimes does) kill - I think the first step is giving a person who is homeless a place where they can set up a (semi)permanent home. That will go a long way towards solving the underlying issues which a shelter system cannot address.

A relevant paper from the EU Commission:

In February 2008, the Finnish government adopted a programme aimed at halving long-term homelessness by 2011. Referring to the “Housing First” principle, which considers that appropriate permanent accommodation is a prerequisite for solving other social and health problems, the programme seeks to reduce and gradually abandon the use of conventional shelters and change them into supported rented accommodation units.

Outcomes via OECD:

While there is no OECD-wide average against which to compare Finland’s homeless rate of 0.08%, other countries with similarly broad definitions of homelessness provide points of reference, such as neighbouring Sweden (0.33%) or the Netherlands (0.23%). [1]

Finland’s success is not a matter of luck or the outcome of “quick fixes.” Rather, it is the result of a sustained, well-resourced national strategy, driven by a “Housing First” approach, which provides people experiencing homelessness with immediate, independent, permanent housing, rather than temporary accommodation (OECD, 2020).

Getting better outcomes than neighbours is a reliable indicator that a policy does work.

P.S.

Regarding Musk:

"Downregulate Musk" will be my anwer to any mention of this election-buying oligarch, probably for a while. A kneejerking far rightist is no person to call any policies.

[-] MagosInformaticus@sopuli.xyz 69 points 2 days ago

"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

[-] Infinite@lemmy.zip 35 points 2 days ago

"If they would rather die, they better do it and decrease the surplus population."

Fuckin' hell, fiction is a warning not a guide, you filthy-rich absolute cockwombles.

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Of course it's a lie. With his money, he could end it overnight.

[-] MonkeyBusiness@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago

Yeah, it's not the homeless people that are victims of a cruel society that has not only abandoned but also ostracized them. It's the wealthy that have to share an imperceptible amount of their wealth so that they have somewhere to sleep.

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[-] Buffalox@lemmy.world 40 points 2 days ago

Musk just went from giant douche to pure evil.
The man is literally insane now.

I suppose it's good he moved to USA, he is fitting in nicely.

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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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