A Modest Proposal

A Story by Manster

A satire about the homeless problem in America

If I were to ask you to take a drive through the city of Tampa what would you see? You would undoubtedly mention things like tall sky scrapers, historic buildings and… the dirty, loitering homeless. Everywhere you look you’re bound to see at least one. Driving down a street you see one. Turn the corner and there’s two more. Like a hidden object game, except without the challenge. Homelessness is an epidemic in America. Studies show that well over 1,750,00 people are homeless, and over a quarter of them are children. Tens of thousands of them are military veterans. Here in lays my proposal, what to do with all these homeless people? Well, the first obvious step is to make homelessness a crime. Many cities already agree with this idea, 24% of U.S. cities have made begging in public a crime. 43% of U.S. cities have made it illegal to sleep in your car and 55% of U.S. have made it illegal to lay or sleep anywhere in public. Now instead of following the current endless cycle of locking up the homeless into our already vastly over populated prisons we instead send them to... the military. While in the military they would have shelter and food and would become productive members of society. Think about the strategic advantages of placing children on the front line. Who would shoot a young child? I challenge you to find even one. Following the children into battle would obviously be the pregnant women and I ask you what is more terrifying than an angry pregnant woman? Nothing, the benefits would be too numerous to count! The homeless would be gone making our streets look much better and I estimate that the rate of shopping cart thefts would drop by astronomical proportions. Now sure, we could actually help the homeless by doing things like providing affordable housing and job assistance to anyone who needs it and not get caught up in bureaucracy but why go through all the trouble when they make such good cannon fodder.