> Welcome to the club. I had a brother who hung himself in a mental hospital > in 1971. Frankly, anecdotes like this are about as useful as Ronald > Reagan's anecdotes about welfare queens driving Cadillacs. . . . > > The problem we are dealing with is a social problem. The American people > were sold a bill of goods when they were told that the solution to inhumane > mental hospitals like Boston's infamous Mattewan, subject of Frederic > Wiseman's "Titicut Follies", was to empty the mental hospitals while giving > each discharged patient medication to help them function. Actually, they (we) were also told that the public sector would provide care in decentralized facilities. We also had the institution of rights for mental patients, even a "Mental Patients Liberation Front," and those rights have proved to be a double-edged sword. > The true solution is group homes where the chronically ill can get adequate > supervision and medical attention. Even though these group homes are > cheaper than the old-time mental hospitals, the ruling class doesn't want > to foot the bill. Psychotics, like disabled children and poor people with > AIDS, are just not important enough. This is the significance of the > balanced budget austerity program of the Democrat-Republican party. Less > money for social services so that people like Bill Gates can afford a $30 > million house instead of a $20 million house. As my 'anecdote' (unlike yours) pointed out, there isn't any such safety net. The L&O story, while falling short of great art or trenchant Marxist analysis, reflects that dilemma. Everybody with a pulse understands that the homeless reflect some kind of failure of policy, or a 'social problem' if you like. Whether the 'solution' is taxing Bill Gates is another matter, but even so, this amounts to the old joke about economists assuming a ladder to get out of a hole. There is no safety net, so shit happens and stories are told to that effect. Even if there were such facilities, there would be people who would refuse to live in them and civil libertarians who would defend their right to do so, with the best intentions in the world. It's not quite the simple morality tale you make it out to be. There are villains enough in other respects, so it ought not to matter. MBS =================================================== Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 http://epn.org/sawicky Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute other than this writer. ===================================================
