Shekwan
Kim Chi Quaffing Celt
Maybe, the idea of "overtime pay" is somewhat less common here than what I experienced in Australia anyway. However thats anecdotal so I dunno.
Americans and European welfare states.
- Thread starter fugazi
- Start date
I think continental Europe regulates it pretty firmly. Wasn't one of the last election is France's issues allowing longer working hours for people?
I honestly don't know OR care. This is America, not Scandinavia and I'm really not remotely interested in their internal economic system. Let them do their thing their way and ditto for us.
Even though your way manifestly isn't achieving the meritocracy you value as a country? This isn't about America failing to live up to external standards, it's about not meeting its own bootstrappy Gatsbyesque values.
Incidentally, the answer is likely in the education systems. An effective, fairly resourced education system is absolutely critical to breaking the link between parental income and offspring income. Gives everyone fair access to their bootstraps.
Incidentally, the answer is likely in the education systems. An effective, fairly resourced education system is absolutely critical to breaking the link between parental income and offspring income. Gives everyone fair access to their bootstraps.
Merkinball
Deity
If we had a budget as balanced as European nations, we'd be paying just as much as they are. Probably even more. What's the deficit next year? $11,000 per PERSON? What's that translate to TAX PAYER added on top of what we already pay? Let's use our heads now.
Laziness has nothing to do with it? Oh yeah man. That's why 20%+ of Americans drop out of high school. That's why we have five million Americans that make more than $50,000 a year without health insurance. That's why we have 20,000,000 American citizens that are chronically on welfare when we have 12,000,000 illegal immigrants doing jobs that "Americans just won't do." Because we're not lazy, and we're all hard working. Have you ever worked in a low end job in your life Cheezy? I doubt you have, because if you did, you'd realize that laziness is a burdonsome thing in America.
How is that theft? If you don't like what an owner is paying you, then you have the freedom in this country to be your own boss. Except people are lazy, and instead they think that they deserve all those profits above and beyond the wage that they accept in a contract.
No it's not. 60% of Djibouti is unemployed. They may be hungry, but they don't starve to death. If I wasn't employed, I'd buy a few chickens, catch fish out of Lake Ontario and the river behind my house, till an acre of land, and buy a few cows. It's called subsistance farming, and I don't doubt that I couldn't do it. But I bet 95% of the people on welfare right now couldn't...
I don't even mean nominal as in...total bulk. I mean, "nominal" as in the amount of money that we directly hand to people for doing nothing. Including unemployment benefits. We nominally hand a larger stack of cash to our curmudgeons than any other nation. And our curmudgeons live a better life than he curmudgeons of any other nation. They have more living space, more stuff, more ostentatious items, etc, etc. The average earned income in France is substantially lower than ours. They may pay a higher percentage in France, but the French poor still get a smaller stack of cash than what our poor people get.
Social benefits handed to people for doing nothing should not be predicated on a percentage of earned income in a given country. It should be predicated on a set number, no matter what the country is, and it should be a number that makes people want to get off of the welfare system entirely. It should be extremely regulated, and not afford people on poverty the ability to buy anthing that isn't essential. It should shove them into safe, clean, but very cramped living spaces, it should not afford them any "wants." Instead of food stamps we should give out strict and cheap food stuffs (cereals, rice, beans, vegetables, and enough meat, but nothing more). Poor people should be restricted from having cable, having cell phones, having shiny new rims on their cars, having stereo systems and LCD TV's. There should be restrictions in place to prevent them from obtaining cigarettes and booze. They should be drug tested. The list goes on and on.
We have millions on welfare, while millions of Mexicans are "enslaved" into our dirty jobs because our welfare system is much too comfortable.
Nada. You are entitled to the wage that you agree to take. Labor is just like any commodity. Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for.
Ummmm...
Not so much anymore...
Yeah, if you're okay with chronic double digit, or near double digit unemployment. If you are down with limited economic growth. And the problems sewn decades ago are just now beginning to rear their ugly heads. Regions of Germany now have 20% unemployment. National unemployment in Spain is a staggering 19% right now. In short: what some of these nations have had, and have always had, has been unsustainable. Totally unsustainable. And now it's starting to come to a front in Spain, Germany, and France. With Germany being the only nation that will likely avoid a depression like state. From what I have read from numerous sources, a second wave of economic collapse and bank failures still awaits the continent of Europe as well. Germany and France only came out of chronic double digit unemployment with economic liberalization. And again, their social economic policies are unsustainable. The only reason ANY European country can afford universal healthcare from an economic basis is because America is defending them. If the US left NATO and European nations actually had to spend money to defend themselves, universal healthcare would go away.
Stop living a pipe dream.
What? Americans work marginally longer hours than Europe. Perhaps 8 hours a week more on average. This is a complete and total farce. And America has a much higher median income than European nations, and much stronger sustained economic growth.
This is because poverty lines in western nations are looked at differently, and are judged on the basis of "percentage of income earned versus the median income." The media income in America is roughly $45,000 a year. The median income in France is less than $40,000 a year. So the poverty line in America is significantly higher than the poverty line in France. Poverty lines in western nations are also examined on "earned income" and do not take into account social benefits. When you take into account social benefits, a family of four in America stands to recieve 2/3's of an average frenchmans annual income in just handouts. Most poor people in America hold down part time jobs and also reign in social welfare benefits.
Because of laziness and an extremely inneffective education system for the urban poor. The urban poor in this nation have been utterly destroyed by social welfare programs. We've constructed a fatherless society that cares not for the people around it. We've bred generations of inner city poor people who feel disseffected by society as a whole, feel no need to work, do not understand their need to contribute to society, and do not have the skills to independently succeed in America. The urban poor largely constitute high school drop outs and people with substance abuse problems. Or people involved in organized crime that make tons of illicit money but technically fall under the poverty line (more people than you think). Todays children that are poor in the inner cities and our rural areas almost entirely reject education. This is problem is particularly acute in our urban poor areas. These societies simply do not care. They don't care for other people in America. They don't care to become educated. They don't care about their neighbors. They just care about getting a check in the mail, having free housing, free access to healthcare, food stamps, and a blethra of other social welfare benefits. Social welfare in America allows people to live comfortably, and we've now raised two generations of of children that understand that. Social welfare affords people the ability to have children and not keep the father around, it actually makes financial sense to do this.
Sweden doesn't face these problems because Sweden is almost an entirely homogenous society. And where there are incongruities in the homogeneity of that society, problems with the social welfare system and social friction exist. I'll point out to problems associated with the Somali immigrant population in Sweden that has isolated itself from greater Sweden, and has been drawing social ire for years now.
Anyhow, the disparities described in the article have more to do with education than anything else. Sweden, Norway, and Finland have arguably the best education systems in the world. Competing on a year by year basis with Japan and South Korea. Educatiton breeds social mobility. We have the capacity to educate our people to these levels, but a major problem has been a systemic rejection of education within the lower class, and a system problem in generating good teachers in America. Our welfare system has produced children that see no need to obtain an education (this problem is also acute in chunks of France and Germany, particularly East Germany), and us such, they inherently have NO ability to move up the social ladder.
There was an article and a debate last year about this time in reference to Washington DC public schools. They spend much more per student than schools in Finland, South Korea, or Japan which are perennially the best three in the world. Yet, only 8% of 8th graders in DC pass the math tests, and only 12% pass the English tests. And these standards are LOWER than the standards in Scandinavia. How can you have social mobility if you are not educating your people? How can you have education when you have a dangerous, fatherless society?
It's been shown in studies that on the whole, American students perform worse than almost all industrialized nations. The same studies show that lower class Americans perform the worst out of ALL demographics within industrialized nations. However, it has also been shown that publically schooled suburban students outperform everyone in industrialized nations. Many scholars within the education system say that the largest factor in determining the performance of a child in America is not the school he attends, but his parents and their involvement in his/her life. Poor American parents do not give a damn about the education of their children (on the whole, a generalization I know...) The few that do are stuck and forced into a public school system that is not condusive to learning. The system is polluted and ruined by the rest of the children that reject education, and have parents that simply do not care.
This is the primary difference in social mobility. But we'll never see this change so long as social welfare in America is comfortable.
Merkin said:
Nah, I wouldn't blame u/e levels in Spain on their welfare system at all.
By European standards it's pretty minimal and not particularly generous. Spain's recent economic history is totally different to France and Germany because of its late development and industrialisation and Francoist past.
Spanish u/e rates have been high since at least Franco's era, and before that the country wasn't even industrialised so there's no comparison there. Spanish unemployment rates never really got as low as other Western European countries, even during the boom-time 90s and 2000s. All they did was move from the 25% unemployment of the 1970s and 1980s to below 10%. It's hardly surprising that with the end of the property boom there, and then the global recession hitting 6 months later, that unemployment has risen again. The reasons for the current problems are in the Spanish economy's over-reliance on the construction industry and low productivity growth, and these problems have been predicted for years. They have precisely zero to do with the Spanish welfare system, such as it is.
There's also other differences. Regional diversity in Spain is huge, and without looking at the data I can bet that the Basque Country, Catalonia and Aragón are on par with the rest of Western Europe or even better, whilst Andalucia and Extremadura will have unemployment figures even HIGHER than the national average of 20%.
Also, I suspect they overestimate their unemployment levels because of the comparatively huge informal sector, and finally, I suspect the impact of unemployment in Spain is also mitigated by the stronger traditional family support structures that still exist there, relative to Anglo societies.
Thorgalaeg
Deity
Precisely, even with unemployent levels as high as we have always had, Spain has universal healthcare and social security systems since 100+ years ago. Hardly "totally unsustainable".Merkin said:
Death_Machine
Slaytanic Warrior
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
But it helps. I love how these success stories are so popular, but you never hear about the many, many more businesses that don't make it. This one guy got lucky, so everybody can, should and will get as lucky if they just get of their damn lazy ass.
fugazi
King
Hence the use of those words
I wonder how much would change in the US if most citizens were to travel more often and see other parts of the world, parts outside their country. I know that my travel experiences have greatly impacted my thinking and view on the world, so not having any of those would have the same result - a big impact on one's thinking about and view on the world.
Death_Machine
Slaytanic Warrior
I would submit to you that traveling across this country is not all that different from traveling abroad.Hence the use of those words
I wonder how much would change in the US if most citizens were to travel more often and see other parts of the world, parts outside their country. I know that my travel experiences have greatly impacted my thinking and view on the world, so not having any of those would have the same result - a big impact on one's thinking about and view on the world.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
fugazi
King
That goes for most countries. The differences between my province, South-Holland, and the provinces of Groningen, Friesland and Limburg are huge. Still, if you go abroad and not just lay on the beaches but dive into their culture you'll learn a lot.
Death_Machine
Slaytanic Warrior
The difference between California & Georgia is almost like that between 2 countries.
Verbose
Deity
Being kind of curious about this, according to the US Census Bureau figure I found, in 2007 out of a total US population 12,6% were born outside the US. That's up considerably from a mere 4,7% born abroad in 1970.
http://www.prb.org/presentations/grieco.ppt#538,2,Purpose of Presentation
The Swedish figure as of 2007 is 9,5%.
Sure the US figure is higher, and granted the US has been an imigrant country for a lot longer, but if Sweden is still regarded as "almost entirely homogenous" that's very likely because integration of the 2 million immigrants to arrive since the 1960's, out of which about 1 million stayed, has so far worked out for the most part.
Merkinball
Deity
Look, universal healthcare with staggering unemployment means it's not sustainable. If America got out of NATO, got out of Rota, and completely abandoned Europe, no country in Europe would be able to afford universal healthcare without taking on unsustainable debt, or instituting unsustainable taxes.
Shekwan
Kim Chi Quaffing Celt
Where is this assumption that current european countries can't defend themselves coming from? If the US did pull out of defending Europe, then the EU would just coordinate a more combined defense policy and the current european militaries pooled resources would seem more than enough for any threat.
IIRC most european countrys have a military service for all male citizens. Although many refuse to go to the military and do some social services instead, Europe could easily draft 50-100 Million soldiers. Add the nukes from France and UK and the fact that everyone likes us. Europe is not in danger, with or without the US.
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