The whole report is a great read, which completely lines up with my experience living in various places in the US (particularly California + Louisiana) as a European - but this example near the beginning particularly stands out to me because, living in an area in San Francisco with a very visible homeless population, I witness it on a near daily basis:<p><i>"I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to"</i><p>As I said, I witness this extremely regularly just outside of my apartment. It ranges from a patrol car stopping for a few minutes to just give a talk to the homeless people that amounts to "hey, we're the police, we are letting you know we're here and we've got our eye on you... we know you can't magically stop being homeless but please stop looking so homeless", all the way to 4-5 cars + a firetruck/ambulance on standby while the officers make the homeless people take down camp, pat them down, etc. with sometimes a city sanitation pickup truck taking away all of their possessions as garbage (it seems that many homeless people are hoarders).<p>I'm not sure what's going on "behind the scenes" here. Is it an irate neighbor that calls the police complaining about the homeless people and asking them to do something about it, which they then do their best to? Or is interacting with the homeless population an actual, documented part of their job? If so, is it tracked? What are the outcomes they hope for?<p>What I observe is that when they make the homeless people leave, they'll typically be back a few days/weeks later, so clearly this is only shuffling the problem around, rather than actually solving it in any meaningful way.<p>My hunch is that this is all essentially theater - the police/fire department know they can't do anything, but have instructions from above to do "something" about it, so they just end up doing what they can, even if it is utterly pointless and ineffective. But at least the irate neighbor is satisfied that there are no more homeless people outside their window for now.<p>It's all very sad.
> 2. My visit coincides with a dramatic change of direction in US policies relating to inequality and extreme poverty. The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans<p>Really hard to take this seriously. I don’t think anyone in the US needs a tax cut right now, so I oppose the tax reform. But the fact is that before the Trump tax cuts, US corporate tax rates were higher both in theory and <i>in practice</i> than in Germany, France, Australia, Canada, etc. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the-u-s-have-the-highest-corporate-tax-rate-in-the-world" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the...</a><p>Our taxes are also far more progressive than Germany, France, and Sweden: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/05/americas-taxes-are-the-most-progressive-in-the-world-its-government-is-among-the-least/?utm_term=.a05b599f3342" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/05/ameri...</a>. Trump’s tax plan won’t change that: the cuts in the top rates are very small and even most people in the top 1% won’t be able to take advantage of things like pass through treatment.
Philip Alston <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston</a>
<i>"The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans....It is against this background that my report is presented."</i><p>It's interesting that he is a law professor (not an economics professor) and yet he stated this as if it were incontrovertible fact, with no facts to back up his prediction, and then went on to base much of the rest of his report on it. That statement may turn out to be true, and it may turn out to be false, but it is certainly not settled fact.<p>It renders this entire report meaningless, as it is based on nothing more than speculation on the part of a clearly biased author about what the outcome of recent tax policy changes will be.
Apologies for going off topic but what the hell did the developers of that do to the keys? If you scroll down and then use the down arrow you're taken to the top of the page and, paradoxically, one of the nav items opens. Can't use Command-Left Arrow to go back in the history. Just does nothing. Did they do that on purpose? Who thought that was a good idea? One I hope doesn't spread.
I don't doubt the gist of most of the report. We could do much better with the money we spend on Health...<p>but this sounds odd: "Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, are increasingly common in the USA"<p>Given that a few years ago it was unheard of disease by most professionals.
Interesting, and sad to read. Our America has many problems, many of which shouldn't exist on a nation as rich as ours. What amazes me is, did he gather all that, first hand, within two weeks?!
<i>US infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world</i><p>This is a common stat thrown around, but there is a non-obvious caveat. How this is counted differs between countries (even different in different EU countries). Wikipedia has a pretty good summary. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality</a>
> often make their profits purely from speculation rather than contributing to the overall wealth of the American community.<p>Wondering what some of these speculations are. Stock markets?
That report starts out with the ridiculous statement that "40 million people continue to live in poverty" in the US.<p>If you spend just five or ten minutes trying to understand where that number comes from you can only include that Mr. Alston is either unimaginably incompetent in understanding poverty statistics or he is being massively disingenuous in his reporting.<p>A little googling will show that the 40 million number is based on cash income that doesn't excludes massive amounts of government assistance (housing assistance, food stamps, and so on). It is an absolute useless statistic to use as a primary statement about "poverty" in the US.<p>Here is a good take down of this misleading report: <a href="http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018/1/30/completely-taken-in-by-the-poverty-fraud" rel="nofollow">http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018/1/30/completely-tak...</a>