The Fallout 10: Imagine Aqualung
Continued from Part 9. This final chapter in The Fallout of Bad Choices deals with the costs that can't be quantified, societal costs. Yet, in the end, we somehow manage to hang a price tag on it.
War
According to the US Government, $2 Trillion has been spent on the Iraq & Afghanistan wars.
According to researchers at Harvard: The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history – actually totaling somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion.
Famine
According to the USDA in 2012: 17 million households or 49 million people were "food insecure". "At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food."
Government subsidy recipients now outnumber private sector job holders in 11 states. But wait, it gets better...
Since 2008, the number of SNAP recipients has grown by 70%. Of 248 million, one in five, 20%, or 47 million collect an average of monthly benefit of $133.44 in food stamps.
Alex, 38 million people. What is the population of California?
Wait, that's not all you get... one in five, or 20% of those receiving aid, approx. 10 million people, have NO INCOME.
Act now! and you could receive the most up to date Census Bureau numbers (2011): welfare recipients 108,592 million; full time employees 107,716 million.
In other words, nationally, welfare recipients now outnumber full time job holders. Double take, that's right, read it again.
Operators are standing by... According to the same U.S. Census Bureau statistics...
248 million people, 46.5 million below the poverty line, (and as promised in Part 3 with the comments from a pissed off senior, we are getting back to this...) 22.2 million are being kept over the line by "early retirement" Social Security.
In other words, 27% of the population, now lives at or below the poverty line which is at a 50 year high.
Pestilence
We're not done yet, to make this offer even more incredible.. 2013 AHAR Annual Homeless Assessment to Congress estimates: "In January 2013, 610,042 people were homeless on a given night."
According to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty: 08/23/13 Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading, report to UN Human Rights Committee:
"Many of the estimated 3.5 million homeless people in the United States regularly face discriminatory treatment and basic deprivations of human rights simply because they are homeless."
The Cost of Homelessness: In Texas, each person loitering, sleeping in cars, and begging cost the taxpayers $14,480 per year, primarily for overnight jail. A typical cost of a prison bed in a state or federal prison is $20,000 per year.
In Los Angeles, home to 10% of the entire homeless population, healthcare, emergency hospital visits and police services cost $2897 per month, per person, on average.
Death
Nearly 33% of all visits to the emergency room are made by people struggling with chronic homelessness. On average, they visit the emergency room five times per year, some visit weekly.
Each visit costs $3,700; that's $18,500 spent per year for the average person and $44,400 spent per year for the highest users of emergency departments.
Older single adults 46 or more years of age with co-occurrent substance abuse and mental illness, and no recent employment history cost an average of $5,038 a month.
Don't snicker, if you were in their shoes, you wouldn't last a week in the street, you would invite any mental escape, and you'd go nuts too.
A recent study found that placing four chronically homeless people into permanent supportive housing saved the city more than $80,000 per year, or $20,000 per person.
Ultimately, offering the provision of supportive housing to the homeless community results in:
Health care costs are reduced by 59%.
Emergency room costs are decreased by 61%.
General inpatient hospitalizations are decreased by 77%.
We Are The World - 3rd That Is
Akerlof was spot on: "Future generations and even people in ten years are going to face massive public deficits and huge government debt. Then we have a choice. We can be like a very poor country with problems of threatening bankruptcy."
The Nattering One muses... This is the societal cost or real fallout of making horribly bad choices.
A dash of salt... to feed a family of four (2 adults, 2 kids) on the USDA "liberal" program costs $15K per year.
Two pinches of black pepper... Last year, 2013 Wall Street Bonuses: $26.7 Billion. 2013 - Median sales price of existing home = 197K
Simmer.... So, let's just say the war's only cost $2 Trillion; there are only 2 million homeless; a house costs 200K; to feed a homeless person costs $3500 a year; to affordably house one costs $7000 a year.
With the $26.7 billion in Wall Street bonuses you could:
House ($7000 x 2 million) = $14 Billion
and Feed ($3500 x 2 million) = $7 Billion
for one year and still have over $5 Billion left over, for incidentals like utilities and retraining.
Lets say the number of homeless was closer to the low estimate of 600K: Housing would cost $4.2 billion for a year, $26.7 billion would buy 6 years, and still net an overall savings (more on this later).
With the conservative $2 Trillion war budget you could:
Buy or build permanent housing (houses 4) ($200,000 x 2 million/4) = $100 Billion
Feed for 10 years = $70 Billion
and still had $1.83 Trillion left over to pay for housing costs, re-education, etc.
A clove of garlic... Remember baby ducks, its all about the money... so show me the money... where's the money, Lebowski...
Conservatively, every year each homeless person costs $3500 to feed + $7000 to house = $10K spent.
However, each homeless person housed and fed saves $20K per year in other costs for a net positive of $10K on a $10K investment.
Riddle me this... where can you get 100% on your money, pull someone up and save a life in the process?
Where do I sign up to have my hard earned tax dollars go for this cause, rather than busting caps in some insurgent's ass to guard Haliburton's pipeline?
What are we collectively thinking? Oh, we're apparently not, so let's just Imagine... You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...
War
According to the US Government, $2 Trillion has been spent on the Iraq & Afghanistan wars.
According to researchers at Harvard: The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history – actually totaling somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion.
Famine
According to the USDA in 2012: 17 million households or 49 million people were "food insecure". "At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food."
Since 2008, the number of SNAP recipients has grown by 70%. Of 248 million, one in five, 20%, or 47 million collect an average of monthly benefit of $133.44 in food stamps.
Alex, 38 million people. What is the population of California?
Act now! and you could receive the most up to date Census Bureau numbers (2011): welfare recipients 108,592 million; full time employees 107,716 million.
In other words, nationally, welfare recipients now outnumber full time job holders. Double take, that's right, read it again.
Operators are standing by... According to the same U.S. Census Bureau statistics...
248 million people, 46.5 million below the poverty line, (and as promised in Part 3 with the comments from a pissed off senior, we are getting back to this...) 22.2 million are being kept over the line by "early retirement" Social Security.
In other words, 27% of the population, now lives at or below the poverty line which is at a 50 year high.
Pestilence
We're not done yet, to make this offer even more incredible.. 2013 AHAR Annual Homeless Assessment to Congress estimates: "In January 2013, 610,042 people were homeless on a given night."
According to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty: 08/23/13 Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading, report to UN Human Rights Committee:
"Many of the estimated 3.5 million homeless people in the United States regularly face discriminatory treatment and basic deprivations of human rights simply because they are homeless."
The Cost of Homelessness: In Texas, each person loitering, sleeping in cars, and begging cost the taxpayers $14,480 per year, primarily for overnight jail. A typical cost of a prison bed in a state or federal prison is $20,000 per year.
In Los Angeles, home to 10% of the entire homeless population, healthcare, emergency hospital visits and police services cost $2897 per month, per person, on average.
Death
Nearly 33% of all visits to the emergency room are made by people struggling with chronic homelessness. On average, they visit the emergency room five times per year, some visit weekly.
Each visit costs $3,700; that's $18,500 spent per year for the average person and $44,400 spent per year for the highest users of emergency departments.
Older single adults 46 or more years of age with co-occurrent substance abuse and mental illness, and no recent employment history cost an average of $5,038 a month.
Don't snicker, if you were in their shoes, you wouldn't last a week in the street, you would invite any mental escape, and you'd go nuts too.
A recent study found that placing four chronically homeless people into permanent supportive housing saved the city more than $80,000 per year, or $20,000 per person.
Ultimately, offering the provision of supportive housing to the homeless community results in:
Health care costs are reduced by 59%.
Emergency room costs are decreased by 61%.
General inpatient hospitalizations are decreased by 77%.
We Are The World - 3rd That Is
Akerlof was spot on: "Future generations and even people in ten years are going to face massive public deficits and huge government debt. Then we have a choice. We can be like a very poor country with problems of threatening bankruptcy."
The Nattering One muses... This is the societal cost or real fallout of making horribly bad choices.
A dash of salt... to feed a family of four (2 adults, 2 kids) on the USDA "liberal" program costs $15K per year.
Two pinches of black pepper... Last year, 2013 Wall Street Bonuses: $26.7 Billion. 2013 - Median sales price of existing home = 197K
Simmer.... So, let's just say the war's only cost $2 Trillion; there are only 2 million homeless; a house costs 200K; to feed a homeless person costs $3500 a year; to affordably house one costs $7000 a year.
With the $26.7 billion in Wall Street bonuses you could:
House ($7000 x 2 million) = $14 Billion
and Feed ($3500 x 2 million) = $7 Billion
for one year and still have over $5 Billion left over, for incidentals like utilities and retraining.
Lets say the number of homeless was closer to the low estimate of 600K: Housing would cost $4.2 billion for a year, $26.7 billion would buy 6 years, and still net an overall savings (more on this later).
With the conservative $2 Trillion war budget you could:
Buy or build permanent housing (houses 4) ($200,000 x 2 million/4) = $100 Billion
Feed for 10 years = $70 Billion
and still had $1.83 Trillion left over to pay for housing costs, re-education, etc.
A clove of garlic... Remember baby ducks, its all about the money... so show me the money... where's the money, Lebowski...
Conservatively, every year each homeless person costs $3500 to feed + $7000 to house = $10K spent.
However, each homeless person housed and fed saves $20K per year in other costs for a net positive of $10K on a $10K investment.
Riddle me this... where can you get 100% on your money, pull someone up and save a life in the process?
Where do I sign up to have my hard earned tax dollars go for this cause, rather than busting caps in some insurgent's ass to guard Haliburton's pipeline?
What are we collectively thinking? Oh, we're apparently not, so let's just Imagine... You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...
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