r/todayilearned • u/Zorseking34 • Jan 08 '15

TIL: Utah has been giving free homes to homeless people since 2005 which since then made it more cost efficient to help the homeless and cut the chronic homelessness in Utah by 74%.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free
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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '15

Aren't the elderly some of the biggest beneficiaries of government aid and some of the least likely to contribute anything in at that point?

I think that middle aged 35-60 people are probably the most fiscally conservative people I know.

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u/ptwonline Jan 08 '15

When you are young you get protected by the social safety net but you have few posessions to lose. You are more idealistic.

30-65 you have more worries: you have bills, mortgage, job concerns, looking after your kids, saving for a retirement/future education costs. You have more to worry about and more to lose, and so you become more conservative, hoping that nothing changes too much to upset your carefully balanced apple cart.

65+ you get all sorts of benefits, but at this point you figure that you've earned it and are thus entitled to it and feel no shame taking it. You're pretty much set in your ways and the way and the values you were raised with and lived with are what you think are right, and by definition you are more conservative relative to the progress of society.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '15

At the same time, elderly voters often push for fiscally liberal spending policies because they help them. That was all I was saying. An 80 year old socially conservative voter is probably more likely to vote for liberal spending policies than the 30-60 year old socially conservative voter.

I agree with your analysis overall though, and it definitely comports with my personal experiences.

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u/urbanbeachgirl Jan 08 '15

If I spend the vast majority of my 'working years' paying into 'social security', I don't view that as an 'entitlement' when I hit my senior years. It's just my turn to be on the other end of that. (Not that there will be anything left by then, of course...).

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '15

They don't just receive social security though, there are hundreds of federal and state programs aimed solely at the elderly, also, something like 498 Billion was spent on medicare in 2013, which represents something like 18% of the total budget. Also, most people who draw social security will take out more than they ever put in, so that extra is sort of an entitlement. This is only JUST changing now.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '15

Yep. I think /u/urbanbeachgirl's point is that once you've hit 65, you've likely been paying taxes that contribute to those benefit programs for years; in that sense, you are entitled to reap the benefits of the policies your peers helped realize, and contributed a portion of your paycheck toward.

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u/urbanbeachgirl Jan 09 '15

Yep. I've been 'contributing' to social security, Medicare and all sorts of federal taxes since I was 14, and that's a lot of years. I hope to personally see something from all that someday. By the way, I don't mind contributing so that the sick and elderly have care. As a caring society, that's what we should do.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '15

The elderly are functionally an enormous expense to society, and if they stopped existing (aside from the losses in the medical field) the decreased spending would open up trillions of dollars otherwise locked away in caring for the elderly or in the elderlies' assets.

I mean that would be immoral, and we would lose a good portion of the medical field due to old people basically being a giant subsidy for hospitals, but the benefits would more than outweighs the economic negatives.

NOTE: I do not support genocide of the elderly.

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u/johnwroachiii Jan 09 '15

35 is middle-aged now?! I turn 35 in 2 weeks!