It is truly sad that in by far the richest country in the world, and ostensibly the best, millions of people are living this way.
Why on earth Americans are not fixing America, I have no idea.
Why on earth Americans are not fixing America, I have no idea.
Is it because in America who are 'your own people'?
Second, you said "resistance to supporting your own people". Well, even if you don't resist, thats very difficult because figuring out who "your own people" is, is nearly impossible here because of the immigration situation.
Regardless of stance on immigration, the fact is that the way to most efficiently reduce poverty will differ based on if someone has been here all along and got screwed, based on if they are refugees, or if they came by other means. You have to analyze the pipeline and allocate resources, people, and programs for both prevention, and for safety nets.
People make it so damn hard to differentiate and allocate logically, its impossible to be efficient there.
(Note that I'm a green card holder, I wasn't born in the US, so this is just what I'm seeing in polar contrast to my home country). When data is collected and surveys/analysis presented, most of the time everything will be mixed in without separating root causes (someone who fell into poverty because of medical bills, is a very different problem to solve than someone who came here being poor in the first place). And then there's the racism situation...
So authorities are left with 1 size fit all programs that get abused left and right, with corruption sprinkled in to make it harder. Yeah, its impossible to fix things this way.
The problem is that we already pay a lot in taxes and we get poor returns on this money as it is. I think there would be more people willing to pay more if they thought money was the answer and it would help people. Most people think the money would just be wasted.
At the same time we also have large numbers of people who pay no taxes, 51%. So as our population grows, the demand for services increases but the percentage of tax paying citizens is not increasing.
We have a real mess here.
Mandatory spending was 65% of our budget last year the majority of which goes to healthcare, pensions, and social security. Defense was over half of our discretionary spending. I'm hopeful that the US could make changes in defense spending but healthcare and pensions will screw us and it will be our own fault.
The second you open a conversation with "We are going to reform pensions" or "We are going to guide health access in medicare" politicians have stepped on too many voters' toes and the system falls apart.
If the US adopted a policy for medicare similar to the UK's NICE it would be derided as "death panels".
I think we all want an easy ride and regrettably the people who will end up paying for it are going to be the people with little to no say.
However, the part about "pay spiking" by taking on a more difficult or higher cost of living locaiton, but higher paying, job in the last 2 or 3 years, is very true. It would probably make more sense to average your entire career.
It's a shame private companies don't offer pensions anymore, but I guess that was just a thing for my grandparent's generation.
Total tax burden in the US is about 30%, slightly higher for the top half of the income scale. http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2015/04/who_pays_taxes_in_america_...
> The lions share goes to Washington where as far as I can tell it either evaporates or gets spent on very expensive jobs programs like the F-35.
About 2/3 of taxes go to the federal government. Half of federal spending is on Social Security and medical spending (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.). About 16% is defense and international security assistance.
http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-wh...
> At the same time we also have large numbers of people who pay no taxes, 51%.
About 45% of households pay no federal income tax, but most of them still pay federal payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and so on. The estimated tax burden for the lowest income 20% of the population is 19.2%, less that the overall 30%, but still significant.
By large number of people who pay no taxes, I assume you are referring to working age adults? In other words you exclude those under 18 years age, most college students, retirees, people with major disabilities, those who choose to stay at home to take care of their kids because child care is unaffordable? Also most of those who pay no income taxes still pay sales tax, social security tax, medicare tax and (sometimes) property taxes.
What we're really good at is throwing our money either in a dumpster or into corrupt people's pockets. Weve got farm subsidies, corporate health care, bombs in the Middle East, transit infrastructure that is 5-10x more expensive than anywhere else in the world, heavily subsidized roads, and pork barrel spending as the only way to break up congressional gridlock. We've fucked everything up, and it's probably too late to do anything about it.
That being said, the homeless rate in England and the United States is the same ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_... ). Do you see a similar resistance to supporting people there?
The rich have all the political power, so this makes sense. You'd think the working class has political power but their opinions are controlled by the wealthy.
So for the people running America, there's nothing to fix. The system is designed to produce exactly what it produces. The fact that there's no shelter or health care for the poor is a result of the fact that the poor in America are discarded. We don't have a cultural respect for human life here. We have business. And business doesn't need poor people. They're not good workers or good consumers.
I'd like things to be different, and I'm working on it, but I don't have much power at the moment.
That's an excellent insight, and it agrees with my experience. When I lived there I was earning minimum wage, as were all my (local) friends and I was not impressed. Friends who needed surgery could not afford it, could not afford car insurance, etc. etc.
A few years later I met an Aussie working in a very high paying Engineering job and he loved the country because when you have money, you can own and do anything you want. You are a god.
>We don't have a cultural respect for human life here. We have business.
It blows my mind that masses have not voted to do something about this to better their lot.
There are probably several ways around that, but why change it, since the system is "working"?
The media is very powerful here.
It's profiteering all the way down.
I read a book last year I think you would enjoy. The Culture of Make Believe by Derek Jensen. If you've got time I highly recommend it.
Based on what criteria? You can tell who the richest person in the world is by subtracting his liabilities from his assets and arriving at a large number. US budget liabilities exceeded US budget revenues for quite a bit now.