A major cause of homelessness is unemployment.

• (2) unemployment,

The cure for unemployment is free competition for jobs.

Incentives affect behavior.

This principle is widely apparent in human behavior. Parents incentives good grades by promising rewards. Similarly, governments incentivize unemployment with subsidies.

When these subsidies make unemployment more attractive because of the unemployment benefit, workers may no longer try to find a job, or may not try to find one as quickly as they would without the benefit.

We measure the effect of unemployment benefit duration on employment. We exploit the variation induced by the decision of Congress in December 2013 not to reauthorize the unprecedented benefit extensions introduced during the Great Recession. Federal benefit extensions that ranged from 0 to 47 weeks across U.S. states at the beginning of December 2013 were abruptly cut to zero.… In levels, 1.8 million additional jobs were created in 2014 due to the benefit cut. Almost 1 million of these jobs were filled by workers from out of the labor force who would not have participated in the labor market had benefit extensions been reauthorized.

Ways to get around this problem are to provide unemployment benefits only for a limited time or to require recipients to prove they are actively looking for a new job.The theory here is straightforward: when the government subsidizes an activity, other things equal, people will engage in more of it.

There are countless needs and wants not fulfilled, desires not met. Labor is the great provider and producer of wealth; it moves all other causes.

But perhaps one of the most perverse distortions comes from unemployment benefits. Economists argue that these can provide an incentive for people simply not to work. Indeed, a new NBER working paper by Marcus Hagedorn, Iourii Manovskii, and Kurt Mitman estimates that the abrupt end of unemployment benefit extensions led to 1.8 million additional new US jobs created in 2014.

There is no reason for such an idea to put an end to labor unions. In fact, it could stimulate the formation and growth of a whole network of unions of a new breed, or of one or two great labor organizations that would embrace all who contribute brains and brawn, from newsboys to top executives.

 

Minimum wage laws have the • same restrictive effect as collective bargaining. They destroy the natural right of certain persons to bid effectively for a job. By raising wages by force, or the threat of force, above the free market wage, it is decreed, absolutely, that some will not be hired who wish to be hired. This is especially sad because it victimizes the young, the uneducated and the inexperienced—the very poorest of the would-be competitors in the labor market. It keeps some from ever getting on the ladder of accomplishment, and thus creates frustrations that often lead to drugs and crime.

addressed almost every conceivable human problem by being liberal with other people’s money—collected, or printed, by the government.

 

we are concerned about those arbitrary, deliberately applied forces in the marketplace—attempts to raise wages above free-market levels. Such forces, to the extent that they accomplish their objectives, cause totally unnecessary and permanent unemployment. Bitter frustration and misery for countless thousands of would-be workers is the inevitable result.

The minimum wage law is most properly described as a law saying that employers must discriminate against people who have low skills. That’s what the law says. The law says that here’s a man who has a skill that would justify a wage of $5 or $6 per hour (adjusted for today), but you may not employ him, it’s illegal, because if you employ him you must pay him $7.25 per hour. So what’s the result? To employ him at $7.25 per hour is to engage in charity. There’s nothing wrong with charity. But most employers are not in the position to engage in that kind of charity. Thus, the consequences of minimum wage laws have been almost wholly bad. We have increased unemployment and increased poverty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• (3) poverty,
• and (4) low wages, in that order.The same report found that the top four causes of homelessness among unaccompanied individuals were (1) lack of affordable housing, (2) unemployment, (3) poverty, (4) mental illness and the lack of needed services, and (5) substance abuse and the lack of needed services.Education – It just plain sucks for most poor people, and a lousy education is a lifelong handicap.
• Healthcare – The poorest need it most, and when they don’t have it, the rest of us pay for it anyhow.
• The “War on Drugs” – Whether you study its history or its effects today, this is truly just a war on minorities. It’s cost us over a trillion bucks over the last 40 years, it’s provided no benefit to the public at large, and it severely limits the economic output of those it targets.

By stabilizing people through shelter, moving them into permanent housing, and implementing assistance programs to keep them in their housing, we can not only reduce, but eliminate, homelessness in New York City.