Cornelius Suttree

As we all know, America has a fairly significantly higher poverty rate than the UK, but did you notice any real difference when you made the move? I would say that I have.

Gillymonkey

Absolutely!

I have seen plenty of homeless people etc but prior to moving to San Diego I had never seen someone so unfortunate that they put their hand in a bin pulled out a juice bottle and drank from it. I see people eating out of the trash all the time here and it is not something I ever think I saw in the UK.

Michael

You are not necessarily seeing poverty but probably the mentally ill, alcoholics, and drug addicts. In the 1960s, the US supreme court ruled that a mentally ill person can't be involuntarily confined unless the state can prove that the person will be harm or himself or others and that is almost impossible to prove so about 500,000 mentally ill were released from mental institutions. Typically a person that attempts suicide can only be involuntarily held for evaluation for a maximum of 72 hours and people can do crazy things and the police can't do anything about it. They can't force a mentally ill person to accept treatment.

Most of the mentally ill are eligible for section 8 housing but many are paranoid and prefer to live on the streets. As far as alcoholics and drug addicts, most aren't allowed into shelters while under the influence. Most are too dependent on alcohol or drugs to give it up and spend their money on booze and drugs instead of housing and food. To try to make sure that the mentally ill, alcoholics, and drug addicts have food, most are eligible for food stamps but often they sell them on the black market to buy alcohol and drugs and then many of them eat at charities.

Unfortunately the vast majority the mental institutions were closed down in the 1960s and the most severe mental patients that agree to be treated have to rely on hospitals which have very few beds for mental patients. Therefore in the US, there are very few involuntarily confined mental patients except in jails when they commit serious crimes and when released, they continue to do the same things as before. That is a short coming of the federal and state governments but that is a different issue.

In contrast, this is an exert from the EU.

A basic objective of many of these reforms (Curran 1978) had been to reduce the frequency of compulsory admission to mental health care and of compulsory treatment. In sharp contrast to these intentions, increasing rates of compulsory admission have been reported by many European authors as an outcome. Additionally, it was criticised that over-emphasising the human rights of patients would stress autonomy at the expense of treatment, neglecting the need for appropriate care, so that in extreme cases patients might even “die with their rights on”.

European Commission - Health & Consumer Protection Directorate-General

Finland, Germany, and Austria have very high rates of involuntary commitment which are comparable to what the US had in the 1960s. All the information is in the above document.

Everything is not as perceived. I live in downtown San Jose and I see some really crazy people on the streets. One day I was standing against a wall and a woman came by and she was talking and I thought she was asking me a question and I said "What?" and she ran into the middle of the street and started screaming at me. Another time I was walking to my bank and a woman was about 100' ahead of me and when she approached an intersection, the light was red so I caught up to her. When the light turned green, she started to cross the street and in the middle of the street, she turned around and starting repeatedly yelling "Why are you following me?". I suspect the police know both of those women.

Sally Redux

Yes.

Michael

You were in agreement on thread about Brits with dual citizenship shouldn't be blocked from entering the UK if they were suspected of terrorism. Are you now saying that public safety is a higher priority than someone's rights?

Sally Redux

Don't follow you mate.

I'm answering the thread title.

Michael

Sorry, I thought you were making a comment about my post and was hinting about it's relevance.

Sally Redux

No probs.

Hotscot

There's all these places where the employees expect extra money from the customer just for doing the job that they're presumably paid to do in the first place.

BritInParis

I noticed it simply visiting New York for a few days in September. Many people - mostly African-American - in the streets or hanging around in subway stations with obvious mental health issues or physical injuries that had gone untreated.

Pete H

Yes, houses in disrepair, folks pushing shopping trolleys filled with cans and scrap.

The US seems like it has an epidemic of bipolar disorder (manic depression).

Sally Redux

Visiting a 'park' and finding it was completely full of homeless people.

Michael

Because of the differences between Europe and the US concerning mental illness and other laws concerning what alcoholic and drug addicts are allowed to do, it is hard to access real poverty by visualizing it. Also the way the poverty rate is calculated can be very misleading. As an example, India and the US have the same poverty rate at about 15% each but I don't think anyone would say that the American poor are anywhere near as bad off as India's poor.

The reason for that is that poverty rates are calculated as a percentage median income for that country. Europe has a more equitable system for distribution of income but the median household income in PPP$ is significantly higher in the US than Europe overall. Therefore if Europe used what is classified as poverty in the US, the poverty rates would be higher in most European countries.

Normally I prefer to use Median Household Income for comparisons which is the way it was done in the past but the OECD now only publishes Median Equivalised Household Income. They are similar in their percentage differences but the amounts are different. For example, the US had a Median Household Income of about $52,000 but it's Median Equivalised Household Income is only $31,000 but there are similar percentage difference for most countries so the comparisons should be similar.

OECD iLibrary: Statistics / Society at a Glance / 2011 / Median equivalised income of OECD countries varies between USD 5 000 and 34 000

Cornelius Suttree

It is a myth that homeless people are mostly mentally not-right.

dunroving

But aren't some of these people paid less than minimum wage? I'm currently staying with friends in GA and the daughter works in a restaurant. The wait staff are paid $3 per hour, when minimum wage is more than $7 per hour.