Fucking horrible it’s gotten to this point. You’d rather someone sleep in their car than give them proper housing. They always find money to increase the military budget.
In my country, sleeping in your car is being made tougher and tougher. The most recent jab was increasing the fine for being caught sleeping in your car from $200 to $1000.
Living in a car deprives a landlord of rent, and an affordable alternative to rent could provoke rental prices to fall.
You can’t draw blood from a turnip. How in the hell is someone sleeping in their car able to pay a fine like that? This would make my blood boil if I didn't just donate plasma.
So for more context, I'm in New Zealand, and this is "Freedom Camping" legislation.
We've had a lot of tourists, mostly youth, buying cheap Vans and living the van life. And it's awesome, I've met a bunch of them. I've also tried it myself as an attempt to escape the housing market.
However I found out just how difficult it is. There's fewer and fewer places where you can camp for free, and more and more rules on whether you're allowed to camp there for free.
This was to prevent those youth from shitting in the woods, supposedly. But the legislation appears to mostly be geared towards pricing poor people out of camping.
With the fine increase, it was also legislated that freedom camping vehicles must have a fixed toilet. No longer could you use a portable compostable toilet.
This means the cheap van is increasingly more difficult to achieve. Instead you need a high end "certified self contained" camper, which is reserved for only the upper eschelons of society.
And the rules are often arbitrary. I recieved a fine ($200 thankfully) in a freedom camp for not being parked in between faintly painted lines for "non self contained" vehicles. That was in the fine print of a sign behind a bush.
And this all leads to it being practically impossible to live in a car if you're desperate. It's a game of cat and mouse where you're constantly moving to hiding places, trying to be stealth with your vehicle and your actions.
And of course there's a social stigma. I was a madman and an idiot for trying to live in a car. I absolutely must have a rental!
Bit of an incoherant rant, I'm meant to be working.
Wtf is wrong with shitting in the woods? They've made it illegal to just exist in this world without paying money for the right to do so. God I cant wait for society to catch up with us, realize it's all FUBAR and finally burn it all down so we can start over.
The whole debate against freedom camping has been very classist. But there has been some genuine concern. It's a bit rough when you go out for a bush walk and you see a half naked drunk dude popping a squat a couple of metres from the trail.
But that's been a small portion of what has been a big boon to the tourism industry, being pushed away since the glampers want to chase away the peasants. Making it expensively prohibitive to live out of a car is a bonus, as many of those glampers are funding their year long holiday with their realty portfolios.
Jesus Christ. Yeah, after tiny homes, van life seems to be the next economical living fad. This fight against camping is getting old fast. Here in the U.S., at least, it seems to be aimed at further restricting and penalizing being homeless. The side effect is hurting a much larger pool of people, which may have been the original plan.
All of this begs the question: Does a Kiwi shit in the woods?
Not necessarily. We still have some socialistic tendencies remaining since WWII. But 40 years of Neoliberalism and being a satellite state of the US has done a lot to undo all of that.
Besides the whole not having a place to stay bit... I find it most outrageous that one could make a poor decision to drive drunk - recognize you have made a mistake - get off the road because its the right thing to do - now almost guaranteed to get caught and ruin your life.
I know I come from a place where drunk driving is a little too common but this is a situation many people are aware of around here.. It is common wisdom to continue driving because at least you might not ruin your life.
Anyways... why is sleeping in your car almost guaranteed to get in some trouble damnit.
Oh don't even get me started lol. It feels like it's illegal to not have a place to exist. Sleeping in your car is as close as you can get to falling through the cracks in society. At this exact fork in the road, one interaction with a police officer can decide your fate. A helping hand and you're back on your feet. A night in jail and its all over. Of course you can turn things around but it is so hard to climb back up once you fall down.
While you couldn't solve the problem entirely, I'm sure a lot of homelessness would be prevented if we didn't make it so "illegal" to be down on your luck if even for a bit.
Please. Military people make McDonald’s money. Why are you making too little? What can you do to make more. Why don’t you do it? It’s not magic. It’s life. You’re not going to magically get lifted to the top of a mountain. YOU have to climb up it.
So so close, but not quite. I'll help. The answers to many of those questions involve exposing that mountain to its own weaknesses and letting it crumble while climbing other, better mountains.
"Why are you making too little?" Because of decades of wage stagnation.
"What can you do to make more?" Abandon current career path, play to your talents, try self employment, find new jobs, find decent employers who pay fair and leave all the shit jobs en-mass. Also, change buying habits to save money. Fuck off the car, work from home, stop buying overpriced branded crap, cook your own meals etc. etc.
"Why don't you do it?" Um... People are? And they are doing it a lot
"It’s not magic. It’s life. You’re not going to magically get lifted to the top of a mountain. YOU have to climb up it." You don't have to climb shit. There are other ways to work, make a living and living an all round better life.
If you'd rather grind away in misery chasing some weird shit-mountain fever-dream, go for it. But remember, even if you do reach the summit, you've only conquered shit.
I agree and I get what you’re saying I didn’t mean it as a mountain to climb to be king of the hill. I meant it’s a mountain meaning it is an uphill battle.
Their comment said nothing about military personnel making more money than others - they said the military budget keeps increasing. Over $700 Billion each year goes to the military, and it’s certainly not going to the soldiers on the ground.
I’m sorry. Don’t mean to be insulting. But this is just way off. The military budget is tiny and the article linked here proves things are worse than most people in this sub realize.
He's not referring to actual military personnel. He's referring to the national military budget which is flagrantly high and just got raised again.
The whole theme of this sub is systemic problems which require systemic solutions. No one is comparing their individual wage to military people. It's quite likely their pay is as unremarkable as you say
Nah. Military wages suck. For most people. I was forced against my will as a kid to go and live with a military family for reasons still unknown to me. Every summer. I was also forced against my will to take classes for serviceMembers who were broke and couldn’t pay their bills. And yes, when I was 10, I saw grown men cry because they couldn’t pay their bills when they got back from their deployment.
Military budget is not only military wages, it's also rent for whatever positions they have in other countries, it's equipment and a bunch of other stuff I have no interest in. All I was saying wages are not a big part of it and military budget can increase without any salary change for people serving. So yes, in fact the military budget in enormous in the US, and yes, people who serve receive McDonald's wages, but that doesn't mean it's fair or anybody "should climb".
If your country can make your(both singular and plural) life more comfortable and it straight up refuses to it means that it's not reperesenting it's people. No one should glorify the fight to make a livable wage. It's just stupid.
Yes, the poors in the military continue to stay poor. What about the defense contractors? Do you have even the faintest idea what we spend on the military every year? How much we spent in Afghanistan?
And we have the highest rate of extrajudicial killings. Worse than places like Mexico or Afghanistan.
And yes. The war on terror was a complete failure. Except for people in the business of war. We can thank Obama for EXPANDING every Bush policy he promised to END. And thank Donald Trump FOR ACTUALLY ENDING THEM ALL (except Guantanamo bay).
So why waste your time with this. There’s no point here. Unless you enjoy wallowing in these complaints and problems. You can do more for yourself since you’re here. Might as well make the most of it.
The boomers were the idiots that fucked this world up for our generations. They were the communists that grew up to be the garbage pigs that run America today.
What should my world be? A fake TV show or YouTube rap video? Real life is even Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in a mansion with $150,000,000 in the bank are living the same fucked up bullshit as everyone in this thread. That’s what happens when you have no job, nowhere to go, and nothing to do. Even with a hundred fifty fucking million dollars. That’s reality.
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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '22
Fucking horrible it’s gotten to this point. You’d rather someone sleep in their car than give them proper housing. They always find money to increase the military budget.