At a well known meeting in Chicago. It is around 16 degrees. Usually I try to keep these blogs light hearted, but after coming out of The Art Institute of Chicago and being greeted by a phalanx of homeless people begging for money, I realized something is incredibly wrong here. Yeah we have homeless people in Austin-usually meth addicts with no teeth and a few humorous ones who had their Lear Jets repo-ed. Then of course Leslie, the homeless transvestite who ran for Mayor and got 10% of the votes. Nobody takes it seriously.
In Chicago, these people have their teeth, they are sleeping on grates, they are cold-no bullshit. They are desparate and afraid. The Chicago police are oblivious to them. They are many. They do not appear to be of any particular age or race. 20 years ago when I was a graduate student at The University of Chicago (not Wuhan or some third rate English dive....), we didn't see very many homeless and they were taken into shelters in the cold. It's different now.
Why ? An economy that passed them by, based upon wallpapering fog.
Hungry, go get your two Whoppers tonight. Give one to a hungry guy/gal sleeping on a grate. Your postprandial glucose will sleep better and hopefully you will too....
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