Summary Of Malcolm Gladwell's Million-Dollar Murray

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In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Million- Dollar Murray” he takes on the plight of chronic homelessness. He uses Murry Barr as an example of how much money is spent on those living in chronic homelessness. Murry Barr had the larges medical bill in the entire state of Nevada; “It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murry.” Reported officer O’Bryan. The reason for this claimed is that it might be more cost affective to take the homeless off the street and give them a home. The author theorizes something called power law theory or distribution which means that not all homeless end up in chronic homelessness or that they will run up a million dollar medical bills. What is implied is that only about 10% of the homeless continue to cost …show more content…

Is it fair to give the homeless a handout and not those whom may be more deserving? This program for the homeless has rules yet it is shown when a you twenty something trashes two apartments he is given another one; is this fair to the elderly, the veteran or the single mom? According to Gladwell it is about efficiency and he feels that not everyone can be help but that it may be more cost affective to give the homeless a home. He does explore similar things such as police brutality in the LAPD and air pollution here in Denver. How do these things appear similar to chronic homelessness? They cannot be explained by a bell curve; the LAPD police department only has a small portion of officers who are chronically brutal, while only a few cars out of several hundred or thousands omitted too much admissions. So his point is you can’t punish all the officers over a few bad ones and you can’t punish all automobile drivers in Denver because of a few. So why lump all homeless into the same category. Instead address the ones that pull the most from the system, those who are chronically homeless and spend more time and money on be admitted and readmitted to local hospitals and