When it comes to homelessness it’s worth noting that while the US might have a particularly bad situation even in a country like Germany where the government is willing to pay the rent for people who have no job, you still have homelessness.
Let’s assume that there is at least one major, important thing you could do with a one-time investment of $20 billion (seems reasonable).
In most cases there are dimishing returns to the value of money. Spending 20 billion on one cause instead of spreading it over multiple causes is likely no effective way to spend the money. It goes counter to EA principles.
When it comes to homelessness it’s worth noting that while the US might have a particularly bad situation even in a country like Germany where the government is willing to pay the rent for people who have no job, you still have homelessness.
In most cases there are dimishing returns to the value of money. Spending 20 billion on one cause instead of spreading it over multiple causes is likely no effective way to spend the money. It goes counter to EA principles.
From Forbes:
That’s not nothing and at the same time you might want it to be more.
It might buy you a geoengineering solution but it not enough to build enough renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels.
It doesn’t yet seem desireable to do large scale geoengineering.