Cal State Online Fall 2020

[Life Long Learning]

The homeless on the streets in the West Coast make Cali, OR, and WA looks like the 3rd World.

It is easier to be homeless in a temperate climate with moderate temperatures and mostly nice weather; that draws a lot of homeless to those states, and to California in particular. But I wouldn't agree that it looks like the 3rd world. Yeah, it's bad in downtown San Francisco for example, but that isn't the norm everywhere. But every city has homeless... heck they were everywhere when I was last in Hawaii. But for much of the same reason as California.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the homeless population, especially in San Francisco, since they tend to be a drain on local resources without providing any utility. Some actively cause problems for people walking through the city or commuting on BART, etc., though most are benign.

Unfortunately, the local and state governments don't have a solution to help those people become productive members of society. Many of the homeless are also mentally ill and/or have chronic medical issues. The city and state do the humanitarian thing and provide some level of support and protection, but a lot of the homeless cannot or will not get the help they need.

All of that is paid for by our taxes. That, and other programs, is part of why California's taxes and debt are so high. Between those programs and the housing market being so crazy this has also driven up our cost of living to the point where salaries have to be super high to compensate. So, as a fiscal conservative, I agree that a lot of this is untenable in the long run.

Of course, as the world's 5th largest economy, California also has the problems of a small nation to deal with. Some of these expenses are inevitable without larger social change.

And wow, we're really off-topic now. We may need to create a new thread if this conversation is to continue.

Democrat California governor Gavin Newsom is cutting higher education by $1.7 billion. 
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020...es-clearer

Many more Cali students will go to Oregon and Washington colleges to graduate in four years.