Alt Left: What’s Behind California’s High Housing Costs and High Rates of Homelessness, Poverty, and Welfare Use?

Tulio: Hey RL, just a bit off topic, I was recently reading that California when adjusted for cost of living has the highest poverty rate in the country and that it also has the most welfare recipients.

The Right has been going nuts in the Trump era bashing California and called it a failed 3rd World state that looks the way it does because it’s controlled by Democrats. A lot of that is of course hyperbole, but there is a lot of struggle in California.

I’ve always found this argument a bit specious because there are 15 or so other states where Democrats control the governorship and legislature that don’t have the same quality of life problems. The Right will ignore of course that the majority of high-poverty states are red states.

But there is a question I’m wondering. Is the demographic change of California from majority White to now mostly Latino the reason for these economic problems? It stands to reason that if most of your demographic change is coming from immigrants of a poor country, it will make your state a poorer place.

And this has nothing to do with people voting Democratic per se. If tomorrow 10 million Central Americans immigrated to Nebraska I’m sure you’d see similar issues emerge.

Good question.  This is an excellent hypothesis, actually. I just don’t think there is much of anything to it.

High Cost of Housing: The Secret Behind All of the Problems

The adjusted poverty rate is due to the high cost of housing. Everything else flows from that. What are we supposed to do about it? This is a problem of capitalism. Explain what the state is supposed to do about this housing problem.

I mean we are trying to do a lot of things but the money’s not available for a total solution to the problem. Also our solutions are running into a lot of NIMBYism.

The Homeless Cataclysm

We are fairly kind to our homeless here, so other states kindly put their homeless on buses to California, especially cities like San Francisco. We are trying to deal with this homeless problem as best as we can. What are we supposed to do? The homeless problem is also tied into the housing problem.

Problems of Penal System Reform

The problem is also drugs. Face it, a lot of the homeless are mentally ill or alcohol or drug addicted. They can’t work even if they wanted to. We have decriminalized a lot of drug use here and we released a lot of inmates and reduced a lot of crimes from felonies to  misdemeanors. Also our jails and prisons are badly overcrowded. Hence a lot fewer minor offenders are getting locked up and a lot of them are just roaming the streets instead.

Problems of Drug Decriminalization or Legalization

Everyone says we ought to decrim drug use and I have always tended to agree. But this is what you end up with when you do that. In Seattle, they look the other way on minor drug use and possession, hence there is a huge amount of open drug possession, use, and dealing, a lot of it right out in the open and associated with the homeless.

The drug of choice is often methamphetamine, which can make you act pretty crazy. So you have these crazed meth heads roaming around the streets scaring everyone, certain streets no-go zones due to open drug use, homeless everywhere, even sleeping on sidewalks  where you have to step over them, and rampant crime, mostly petty thievery from stores as addicts steal like crazy to get money for their habits.

I am at a loss to do about any of these problems, sorry. I just want to throw up my hands.

What’s Wrong with Social Programs?

So we have a lot of welfare? Big deal. That’s the state trying to deal with the poverty problem. Good for the state! Keep in mind that to these guys, everything is welfare: Section 8, Food Stamps, Disability, Workman’s Comp, reduced utility bills, on and on.

Serious Limits on What a Mere State Can Do about These Things

We are a very liberal state with a very liberal Legislature that cares a lot about these problems, but they are beyond the scope of the state government to deal with, much less fix. But we are trying our best. Ask these Republicans what we ought to be doing instead.

I don’t think changing from a majority White state to a majority Hispanic state has much to do with it. There is a lot of poverty, here but there is also a lot of wealth. Keep in mind that California has the 8th largest economy on Earth, higher than the vast majority of actual countries. And we’re not even a country. We are just a state.

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11 thoughts on “Alt Left: What’s Behind California’s High Housing Costs and High Rates of Homelessness, Poverty, and Welfare Use?”

  1. RL

    I’ve always been curious about this and you’re the right person to ask. How gay is Hollywood? I mean you surely hung out with that crowd before.

    I heard that “casting couch syndrome” is quite real in Hollywood because of competition. Does this mean all famous actresses probably fucked producers at some point of time? How about Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, Cameron Diaz, and other A-list names?

    Also, I heard many famous Hollywood men used to “bat for the other team” as stragglers or just to survive in the profession. This means fame comes at a price or something. When money’s that good and all the producers are sleazebags, no one can remain straight for very long. Some say that even Mel Gibson sucked dicks in early career.

    Now this is what we know as California outsiders and through rumor mills. You surely have an insider perspective.

    You probably get this a lot: “Oh, you’re from California. Do you know Brad Pitt?”

    On a serious note, I am really curious do you have to suck dicks in Hollywood to become successful? Thank you.

    1. Good-looking boys get it the worst. Haim got it more than Feldman, for example. Jonathan Taylor Thomas got it bad too. While handsome boys are more likely to get swarmed, still, no boy is safe. I’d lay odds some gay Jews can watch any media and be given access to any boy they see.

      1. Eyes Wide Shut is the closest most will see of it, but there’s always VIP orgy gatherings. Kat Williams, Richard Nixon, and others have walked into some gay shit. Spirit cooking parties, Bohemian Grove, etc. are on record. I don’t believe they’re all gay, but gay sex is part of the rituals. The music industry is highly involved in this too.

        There’s more – look at Celine Dion promoting transgender baby clothes.

        Any A-list star with long lasting fame has done some rituals. Don’t want to do the ritual? Fine, go make low budget movies. If you don’t play ball, you’re a one hit wonder or underground artist.

      2. Polar Bear is right. This is Hollygay in a nutshell.

        The place is pretty disgusting. Fags literally everywhere. Every time you turn around, there’s another one. Everywhere you go, there’s fags, fags, fags.

        It’s good if you are goodlooking and like women because fagged-out neighborhoods are full of young single straight women who are looking for cock and are hard up and frustrated as Hell. Cock which is nonexistent because as these women say, all the good men are gay or married. So if you are a hot young straight guy, you stand out like a lighthouse in the fog, and you can often slay like crazy in gay neighborhoods.

        Gay neighborhoods make me uncomfortable. I don’t want to see obviously out gay men every time I turn around. I don’t mind them existing and I wish them all the best, but they still make me uncomfortable, and I’d much prefer not to be around them.

        I live in a city with very few out gay men and no gay neighborhoods, bars, pickup spots or cruises zones. I know for a fact that some of them live here, but they are discreet about it as they should be and just blend in with everyone else. Some are quite straight-acting, possibly because the city is so straight, with conservative values of ethnics like Hispanics, Blacks, Arabs, and Indians.

        This is not a friendly city for gay men. If I were a gay man living here, I would definitely take off.

      3. Hollgay or Hollywood is one sick place. It’s a blast as in party at the end of world good times, but it’s also utterly amoral, cruel, and vicious. Fun but wicked, like a lot of things in life, but Hollywood is a pretty extreme example.

        In Hollywood, it’s not who you know. It’s who you blow.

        Popular saying here in LA, or more properly El Lay, even way back in the 1970’s. It’s probably just as bad or worse now, but #metoo was actually a breath of fresh air, as it fumigated out some real scoundrels when it hit Hollywood. It hit innocent people too, but all moral cleanups do that. You go round up the bad, and you usually drag in a few innocents too. It can’t be avoided.

        1. In Hollywood, it’s not who you know. It’s who you blow.

          Jesus Christ. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Come on spill the beans, will ya? We’re all ears for the inside gossip.

          Can’t imagine the likes of Brad Pitt, Leonardo diCaprio, Edward Norton and George Clooney sucking some ugly, deformed Jew’s tiny Kosher pickle. Because that’s exactly what they might have done.

          What wouldn’t you do for fame. YUCK! Not for a billion dollars, I’d rather kill myself.

          1. There’s video of a young Leo with convicted child molester Brian Peck that reeks of DiCaprio being groomed. Most celebs likely keep quiet about their own abuse and the abuse of others. Brian Peck’s friends with Charlie Sheen, Bryan Singer, etc. The pattern is: a light sentence for often years of abuse, rehired by Nickelodeon or one of your pederast bros, continue victimizing kids.

            If you can make lots of money, you can get away with anything. It doesn’t seem to hurt their movie careers. Polanski, sentenced to 50 years for forced sodomy on a 13 year old girl, simply fled the country. Woody Allen walked his 7 year old daughter by hand to the attic, told her to lie on her stomach and play with her brother’s train set, then violated her like an innocence-destroying demon of darkness.

  2. A lot of them are heading out to the South. It’s kind of a Reverse Beverly Hillbillies. No, more like a Reverse Grapes of Wrath.

    1. Hey what’s with all the Hollywood productions moving to North Carolina? Can’t be cost alone.

      We’re the Millers was shot in Wilmington, NC. They tried to pass it off as Denver. Cobra Kai – again, somewhere in North Carolina. They tried to pass it off as the LA Valley.

    2. Hey Jason, can you please get me that referral app please? Sometimes my traffic goes a lot higher, and I haven’t the faintest idea why. Might be interesting to see if anyone is actually linking to this site too. The search engine words are not that good. They give me 5-10 a day. Some days we have 700-1,500 visitors.

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