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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

> Not only is income inequality in America not growing, it is lower today than it was 50 years ago.

Of course. This is common sense if you understand the US welfare state has expanded radically since the late 1960s, and nearly all of that is a financial transfer from the top 1/3 to the bottom 1/3. The US has an exceptionally progressive taxation system that puts much of Europe to shame. Our single greatest governmental flaw is that we spend such a large amount of money on our welfare state and get such poor results because we don't administer it well; affluent European nations largely embarrass the US at that.

If you attempt to point any of this out using facts, you will be shouted down because it's against the popular narrative (which is to pretend that the US has no welfare state, no social safety net, the rich are evil and don't pay their "fair share" - whatever that means in a system where the top brackets pay nearly all the taxes).

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Medicare costs $750b. Medicaid $597b

That's $1347b a year. The US population is 330m, that's $4000 per person.

The NHS in England costs £147b, or $200b. England's population is 56m.

So the NHS in England, which costs the government 13% less than the cost of medicare/medicaid, manages to cover the entire population.

My understanding is that medicare at least has extra charges for those who are covered too?

I think you'd get a better reaction if you dropped the straw men and the persecution complex.

The thing is – you are in some ways correct! The US has a large welfare and social security system. It's hard to compare directly, but it's probably reasonable to say that US social spending is in the same ballpark as many European countries.

The point about an "exceptionally progressive taxation system" is of course nonsense, and the idea that the "popular narrative" claims the US has "no welfare state, no social safety net" is misleading. In reality, the popular argument is that these services is the US are exceptionally broken. There is no effective "social safety net" if that system fails to capture people so often. It's like US healthcare expenditure – spending that's fare above that of many countries with efficient, effective, and universal systems, but with a huge chunk of the population unable to access it.

However, even an article like this—which tries to choose a comparison to make its ideological point as forcefully is possible—only manages to claim that income inequality has shrunk to a relatively limited extent, if you count all forms of government spending as income! Not a ringing endorsement.

The US is so weird with this stuff. Massive government spending programs with a culture that wants to deny it, resulting in this messed-up system with massive spending and rubbish outcomes.

Where is this "welfare state"? How are people suppose to get that money? I don't see it happening - it all goes to programs that suck the money up before it reaches anyone like Medicare and supporting end of life cost for people that weren't even poor while providing little for the actual poor, etc.

Is that why you didn't use a single fact to make these claims? Is that really supposed to go over better?

> If you attempt to point any of this out using facts, you will be shouted down because it's against the popular narrative

Anybody can claim anything and it will turn into a shouting match unless reliable sources are cited (Breitbart, Alex Jones, Fox, etc. aren't reliable sources)

Welfare:

- what counts as welfare

- how much of it do people get (percentage of GDP and per capita)

- what percentage of coats does it cover

- which people get it

- how long do people get it

Then there are questions of what poverty is defined as, how many people live in it, and how many live below the poverty line.

The topic of healthcare is naturally important in all this.

Taxes:

- what is the rate (% paid by tax bracket)

- is it actually paid

- which percentage of the population is paying the highest rate

And of course, how does this compare to Europe (since you say "it puts Europe to shame")?

You can focus on one point, cite your source and contrast them.

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