94. San Francisco, city by the Bay

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A Twitter thread by Martin Varsavsky some days ago compared San Francisco with Spain in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. Spain comes off better because of its welfare state, public education, public healthcare, etc. The first thing about San Francisco which he mentions in the thread, and I agree is the most striking, is the staggering amount of homeless people you see everywhere. San Francisco is the 8th city in the World by number of millionaires and the 3rd by number of billionaires and it is a paragon these days of entrepreneurial success. It also has 70,000 homeless in a total population of under a million. This is staggering and it is difficult to reconcile both statistics. We are becoming more individualistic by adopting, inadvertently, the way of life proposed by neoliberalism (liberalism is a misnomer, even a red herring, I rather call them neocons). If we don’t change our ways, slowly but surely San Francisco will become the global norm rather than a shocking exception

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Location: Hereford, UK

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