Amsterdam supermarket offers free groceries, life coach to struggling families
nltimes.nl
nltimes.nl
Yes, America can learn from The Netherlands and other countries that are doing well, but it’s also reasonable to acknowledge how hard the American problem is.
https://ind.nl/en/consequences-for-right-of-residence-when-a...
In the US you can generally establish residency in a different state in the amount of time it takes to get a USPS change of address notice and a billing statement of some sort showing that you’re able to receive mail there.
Yeah you can move wherever but you're not eligible for benefits, and the hiring managers want to know you speak fluent $LANGUAGE and have the right certifications from whatever credentialing system exists there.
Common currency and regulatory standards, but it's not like you're just moving from Spain to Poland, at least not without serious hurdles.
Controlling who has the vote has long been an issue, but denying political power to a region is a different category of thing than denying it to poor people etc.
Anyway, money is fungible you could say you’re helping Mississippi schools just as people in Mississippi schools are helping your local schools. Or you can think of it like the electric grid where money doesn’t get sent around the country just shifted left and right regionally which smooths things out.
Here is a list from English Wikipedia about the floods. The Dutch Wikipedia has much more info on the flood, as well as a museum in Leyden (from Rijkswaterstaat if I remember well). Not everyone can read the Dutch language. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods_in_the_Nether...
The problem is that the US isn't really trying, and there's a large movement that's actively trying to make the government worse. Fix that, and I think a lot of problems will disappear.
More likely, there are a benefits and costs to a large government. I doubt it's scale-free.
Look at all the process at BigCo vs the lean startup. Government also has to deal with all those tradeoffs inherent to people managing.
It’s not an easy task.
Overall I believe that free and good(!) basic education independent from status and location is a solution for many problems but it seems that as more capitalistic a system becomes as less incentive there is to actually educate and teach the population.
West coast US cities are a perfect example of this, not enough housing means labor resources are constrained which is the biggest input for actually getting things done (fixing problems, creating value, etc).
It’s not easy.
Taking something like medical treatment as an example, it's not just that you have to scale up the number of beds and doctors in each hospital - you need to build many, many more hospitals, staff them, ensure they have critical infrastructure, etc.
That's not to say that the US is doing even close to enough, but the fact that GDP per capita doesn't do anything to capture the differences in magnitudes of solutions required by the two countries.
But at the same time, the situation is nowhere near 10x worse in the US since you mostly just need hospitals close to the urban centers anyways.
(Though I do grant you that quality of life for people in very rural areas will be a bit worse since they need to travel far)
However, the US still has a higher GDP per land area than countries such as Norway, Sweden, Canada and Australia.
Furthermore, you would think that economies of scale should be quite beneficial for countries as large as the United States.
> I’m not hearing concrete evidence of a gulf that can’t be bridged by money.
The land area differences provided is part of the concrete evidence: I can invest a lot of value onto a small plot of land, but it will take many times more money in order to do the same for an area the size of a small town. The costs for infrastructure skyrockets as the amount of land in need of servicing increases. 15% more money per person is relatively useless if the people are spread thousands of miles apart.
It's not that the US doesn't have the means. It's just clear that its priority is not improving the lives of Americans.
As a person who works for a defense adjacent company, I can tell you confidently that government adjacent healthcare is the closest thing this country has to socialized medicine.
I do agree that it doesn't seem to be a priority. I have to assume there's a bunch of slack and waste in the system given the amount of money that goes into it.
Yes but most of that is medicare, most of which is really part of social security for the elderly (a very good thing, but not at all comparable to what European countries do in terms of providing access to health care for all their citizens).
It did help them jumpstart their economical development by.. quite a lot tho and they have been very prudent with their money ever since.
but like, at the end of the day thinking that "multiple cultural groups" is the problem basically a coded/socially-acceptable way of saying that we can't have a social safety net because of black/hispanic people (or whatever disfavored minority/immigrant group is currently en-vogue). It always has been.
It has nothing to do with race. Roma people have continuously refused to integrate, which is perfectly fine if they don't want to, but then don't be a weight on the host society by receiving every form of financial support you can get your hands on, while being a centre for criminality, and demanding access to what a contributing member of society can access.
I have experienced roma communities first hand. They shun their own who decide to get educated. Is that the kind of societies you'd like around your kids in the 21st century ?
There must be a reason that people dislike certain societies.
The British government doesn't, but it does show the "White Gypsy/Traveller" ethnicity has 31.2% "Never worked or long-term unemployed", higher than any other group [1].
Particular types of petty crime obviously increased when travellers settled (temporarily) on some land near where I grew up. It happened every 18 months or so. However, this doesn't show up in arrest statistics, so I think it's that society is accustomed to the existing petty crime and notices the change.
[1] https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-popula...
Our string of right-wing governments haven't done much to fix that (and sometimes made it a lot worse), but it's good to see citizens step up with these sort of projects.
I still think it's a failure of the system that this is even necessary.
The comments here are focused on how the US government should do more.
In the US we have churches and other religious institutions that would help with problems like this locally but as time has gone on, their membership has dwindled. Perhaps we should take a look at this article and try to get our companies to emulate what is being done here?
But I also think that it is business's purpose to serve society as well. At some point we moved away from that.
We used to have companies that would donate to the school library or to fund school technology programs. Now, some of that was rooted in the idea that they would need workers in the future so this was part of the pipeline but it was also building society. (You still do see companies donating money to sports programs, for their banner to be displayed)
Currently companies are all complaining about the lack of X, yet are they funding training for X? No, we expect workers to come in fully trained and ready to go.
Looking beyond that, companies are willing to up and shift counties in order to save money but that has effects on the local economy.
Everything gets easier, when you live in a high-trust society--unfortunately I don't think the US has been high-trust in quite some time. The bad part is that it takes generations to build and a decades to erode. My local bodega doesn't have free groceries, but rather a sign on the door prohibiting people from wearing ski masks, because groups were walking out with merchandise.
There was a time when people with a minimum wage job could afford to pay rent. Now the government has to pay 10k euro to help them make ends meet.
For all it's progressive reputation, Netherland has had economically conservative right-wing governments for a long time now, and vocal extreme-right parties trying to push further into that direction, while the left has been dwindling. A couple of years ago there was a massive long-term scandal where poor families of a mixed background where treated as fraudulent criminals, which has done tremendous harm, and despite everything coming to light and everybody being upset about it, the main person responsible for it is still our prime minister.
It's good that the Dutch people and companies are stepping up where the government is failing, but it would be better if the government wasn't failing this sort of thing.
But from the mercenary point of view, I think reducing poverty is worth it from a security and quality of life point of view. If public spaces are dangerous that is no good for people and poverty also degrades peoples quality of life, examples like not having to step over homeless people outside your front door don't really have dollar values, but they make people happier.
Not trying to be crass but that's literally reflected in the real estate prices. Homes in areas with lots of homelessness and related crime in the area will have lower prices than equivalent homes somewhere else. It does have a dollar value.
But it's not extra money in your pocket if you don't sell your property.
(As an American) when I think of places that fight crime primarily with welfare (aka the idea better policing doesn’t work, equality will fix it), I think of San Francisco and Seattle which have crazy homeless and crime problems.
However, it seems to me like in Europe, plenty of places seem to do this and see positive results.
What’s the difference? Why is the welfare city of San Francisco terrible but the welfare city of Amsterdam/Stockholm/etc seem to be fine?
I am in Canada, so we have a blend of American, and European society, and it seems that when people want to extract money from the community, the problem isn't resolved. I see this in the homeless/drug space from activist organizations who are extracting lots of money from government, but are not doing a good job of solving problems, as that would end the flood of money.
As an aside: The big cities in the Netherlands also have some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. If you pick a random smaller town/city it is likely to have less poverty than Amsterdam, (but also less wealthy residents).
My neighbor was the director of a homeless shelter and the crap he had to deal with was unreal.
I look at it kinda like the anti car movement. The big companies supported whichever side would save them money. They supported getting rid of street parking for bike lanes and making parking under a building part of code.... then sabatoged it by making the parking all permit only or very expensive. Now theres too little parking either way to go shopping and the anti car people get to look bad. But it didnt really affect the average s class driver at all so who cares right?
This is just the impression I got working downtown for 10 years. Probably have some misunderstandings.
At which level they should or should not exist is dependent on many parameters, but I would not classify it as bizarre.
People in the US are fortunate enough to have so much space that many times distances themselves serve as the gate, but if you live in a more dense society, perhaps a controlled border is necessary for some purpose.
It is dystopian though, I imagine it is a direct representation of lack of trust between the members in society, and likely related to the size of wealth gaps.
Every EU country is.
At current technology levels, it's simply impossible to have a "social net" (i.e. guaranteeing every citizen enough resources for a minimum standard of living) and open borders (i.e. infinite demand for said resources)
Oh? Well how easy is it for a poor person from India to move to the Netherlands to take advantage of this?
That being said, there is a different argument to be made. The Netherlands does not have a lot of private schools, and private schools generally tend to not be more exclusive than regular schools. This means that an applicant that went to private school might have an advantage but generally you can go to any school and there will be plenty of decent paying jobs or chances for you. Along with that, every person in The Netherlands is able to go and study. Either you take out a (compared to the US, small) loan and even that is being reverted to a gift from the government or you work along side to it. I am quite sure that this is not the case in India and therefore a poor person will have less of a chance then a rich person. But this is unrelated to the companies hiring and it is purely related to your study.
The point of the parent is that it is hard for a random Indian to immigrate to the Netherlands, that they must show some skill or ability in order to gain entry.
The argument is that the Netherlands can afford their social net because they do not have an endless stream of people coming asking for benefits. So by limiting the amount of immigration, the Netherlands is acting like a gated community.
A further argument along these lines would be, if you do not feel that the Netherlands is acting as a gated community. Should the Netherlands open it's social programs to people not in the Netherlands? i.e. Should Americans or Mexicans be allowed to apply and receive benefits from the Netherlands even though they have no tie to the Netherlands?
From a cultural standpoint I wouldn't want to open up further, from a purely theoretical standpoint I would have no problem opening up our social programs to outside the Netherlands if the additional group (regardless of it being a group, country, province, state, whatever) pays the same amount of tax as we do. But good luck implementing that, income tax for India is max 30%, compare that to our lowest bracket which is already 37% and goes up to 50%.
If you throw in people that live in earthquake/typhoon/volcanic/etc locales, with different diseases and food production, natural resources, climate, and scale up the population of people to administer all those benefits by a couple orders of magnitude, you can bet you’ll be paying a lot more in taxes to try to afford the same quality of life for everyone.
The political reason for the Dutch social safety: stop an impending socialist/communist revolution. This was a real threat in Europe at the time. A second reason was scientific: poor people were spreading diseases which are a threat for everyone. A third reason was economic: healthy and happy people work harder.
now of course I am not claiming that this is true, nobody can know, and I'd much rather we helped eachother than not, but there's certainly an argument to be made.
Don't you think there's value in playing the devil's advocate, just for the sake of the argument ?
because it's fundamentally bad-faith argumentation and when it's used to argue that people don't deserve to live, people find that adversarial and an attack on their existence.
> Don't you think there's value in playing the devil's advocate, just for the sake of the argument ?
look, you're not arguing about the color of the bikeshed here, are you?
I think you'll find there's certain viewpoints that we don't want people even "hypothetically" (not really, the whole point of the devil's advocate is that you inherently feel that it has some merit worth) advocating for. People find it real offensive if you argue that they don't deserve to live, and in this case that includes disadvantaged people who are barely scraping by.
it is (or can be used as) a coward's way to argue for something that you think holds some merit but you don't actually want to attach your name to, and when the argument itself is adversarial/antagonistic or genocidal we should generally not be encouraging that even in a "hypothetical" (again, not really) sense, no.
And when you are basically arguing "poor people need to be cut off from their safety net" etc that does reach towards the genocidal things - everyone knows what happens next when people on the edge of survival are cut off from their remaining resources. It's arguing they as a class don't deserve to survive.
Like gosh "I said it was hypothetical, it's a devil's advocate, what are you even mad about???" is such a HN perspective.
I could not argue for letting people suffer and not helping them, I'm not a lunatic. Would the argument that they are unfit for current conditions hold some merit ? Perhaps. I cannot know, and neither can you. It is a far too complex topic to firmly attest an opinion on, especially with our limited current knowledge. Is that an extra reason that this makes it an interesting topic to discuss ? I think so.
The extrapolation to genocide from a simple discussion is akin to calling everyone with different opinions a nazi. It's plain silly.
But that's literally what you did in your top comment
If one does not already know of any bullet proof counter argument, then presenting a "hypothetical" (devil's advocate) argument is extremely helpful to investigate why that argument is in fact wrong (or the "hypothetical" might even be correct. How can you know if you don't investigate the counter arguments?)
Refusing to engage with an argument because it is "dangerous" leads to no deeper understanding whatsoever.
A.
The sum total of all humans alive at moment X are fit to be alive at X and have an equal fitness of survival.
Divergence occurs when we talk about probability of surviving in future time frame Y. Even so, criteria that defines current and future fittest in "survival of fittest" can be many things. Dinosaurs roamed the earth, but mice survived whatever killed the huge, strong lizards.
B.
A society that does not care for its least might find that its least are not loyal. This can have security implications, especially when bordered by unfriendly states.
A perhaps generous view of how the Federal Reserve manages our economy is to avoid inflation. A less generous view might be that they aim to keep unemployment high enough that workers are desperate enough to accept shit jobs, and that wages don't take too large a slice of the pie. Obviously this requires less than full employment, such that they actually define full employment as "the highest level of employment that is consistent with price stability".
In other words, one output of the way our economy is managed is that some people are desperate. At that point you're simply stack-ranking people, and claiming that the bottom 3-4% deserve to be desperate regardless of actual fitness. (Never mind that we don't have anything close to a meritocracy.)
There's no need to make insinuations that the fed is conspiring to oppress workers when their mandate (as defined by congress) is to both have maximum employment and to avoid inflation.
"The Federal Reserve Act mandates that the Federal Reserve conduct monetary policy "so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates."
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/monetary-polic...
>In other words, one output of the way our economy is managed is that some people are desperate. At that point you're simply stack-ranking people, and claiming that the bottom 3-4% deserve to be desperate regardless of actual fitness. (Never mind that we don't have anything close to a meritocracy.)
Contrary to what you might think, "full employment" doesn't mean 0% unemployment. There are many reasons why you don't want 0% unemployment[1]. Therefore the fed targeting 3-4% unemployment (or whatever they think "full employment" is, isn't some sort of plot for "stack-ranking people".
Otherwise, we’re in societies that evolve at crazy paces, some parts of our lives 5 generations ago were radically different from our lives now, while other groups almost didn’t change. I don’t see the concept of “fitness” to be relevant to our current situation where we have no idea of what’s coming up even in 50 years. In times of uncertainty, diversity is a better bet than trying to optimize for a status quo.
A simple example is that people in a poverty culture tend to spend money immediately on short term gratification. On one hand, we could assume this is because they are foolish, but many have experience that if they try to save $20 for something longer term, someone in their household will end up just taking the money for something else. So their are acting rationally by trying to convert that $20 to something that will bring pleasure to them rather than deferring the pleasure only to lose the ability to spend the $20 on something they would enjoy.
The latter is not generally what we do as humans, only when all other means of survival fail do we migrate. We have the ability to use technology to adapt to our environments, such as in making clothing, and even change the environments, like making a warm dwelling or lighting a fire. These are within our toolsets for survival so we should use them, versus moving to where we happen to find adaption without these abilities.
I personally have no problem other than the casual nuisance and I have positive experience overall during my stay over there for a couple of years.
The founder of the supermarket/umbrella foundation seems to have the similar background as the people live in the area. Thus, I think he has insight on what the community needs and how to help them.
Life coach is dependent on the opportunities available to that family, otherwise the life coach might just be left with cutting the only entertainment or treat food the people buy to alleviate some of their daily stress.
The problem with a lot of poverty focused charity is that it is, essentially, a payment to a vulnerable person to be dehumanised. Fortunately, that means we can assess a poverty charity easily: do they humanise the people receiving help? Allowing people to come into a store and shop and engage with bespoke support is very humanising, because it’s just removing money from the equation, it does not take away agency or trust. The support they’re offering is not one size fits all, or a jobs-pipeline, rather, it’s whatever the customers need help with — essentially, what someone with money pays for!
There’s certainly the possibility that even a well designed service can become a karma-mill for the middle-class, but in this case, I think we can be quite optimistic.
That said, “life coach” has terrible connotations in the US but I think that’s just something lost in translation.
I can't vouch for this specific organization, but i'm very familiar with similar organizations. This kind of organization runs on volunteers, many of whom have experienced poverty firsthand, and virtually all have experienced poverty secondhand. This kind of volunteer work is typically people actually caring, not people 'virtue-signaling'. This kind of work is done in intimate collaboration with municipal social services, which are typically well-respected in the Netherlands.
There is no doubt in my mind that everyone involved is intending and capable of affecting a change for good.
> I wonder how effective life coaching is to people in poverty.
I've personally volunteered as a coach in poverty situations. It works. The coach doesn't need to do much, just listen to the problems people cope with, and occasionally point them towards a resource that'll help them is enough. Just being able to vent to someone who knows how it feels to deal with poverty might be enough. If it's not, helping people navigate social services and programmes typically ends up lifting them from poverty.
It helps that in the Netherlands, poverty is typically unnecessary. There is (almost) guaranteed livable income for everyone independent of employment, due to our strong social security system.
I lived in multiple countries, including the Netherlands.
Living there substantially changed how I view subjects such as taxation and social security. Taxes were high, but the benefits a strong social security brings to the place are great.
Not saying that there's no waste, things that could be improved, etc. But in comparison to the other places I lived, the Dutch were way ahead of the curve.
My family came to the US in the early 90's with zero dollars, but now we're doing well. The difference between us and those who didn't make it out of the neighborhood was what we did with the little money and time we had.
Basic things like figuring out how to get a bank account open vs paying a check cashing fee, things add up quickly. If you don't figure that stuff out, you're screwed. I find it off for poverty-advocates to get indignant when poverty education comes up, because they don't understand how much ignorance/lack of interest/lack of skill exists in those communities, and how much of a headwind that is.
Forget things like encouraging your kids to study in school, apply for competitive courses - etc. Even if your kids are capable of that, if you don't know to push them, you perpetuate your poverty. In contrast to say Asian immigrants who drive their kids to excel and go from poverty to 1% in one generation. Any coaching that helps people recognize and take advantage of the resources and opportunities in front of them - if it actually sticks - is super valuable.
I was pretty shocked to discover that one of my friends (2nd gen asian immigrant in amsterdam) had parents who even tapped large interest free loans, and that the community largely expected this kind of help to be given freely.
>I find it off for poverty-advocates to get indignant when poverty education comes up
Yeah, coz it's well known to be ineffective (by design, pretty much), and is almost universally used by banks and politicians fronting for banks to try and get the heat off their backs and let them keep raking in profits unimpeded.
Stuff like interest rate caps and banning payday lending, on the other hand, is very effective but impedes profits. The goal of corporate lobbyists is to present solutions (usually faux) that appear genuine but don't impede profits.
Hmm, the argument I always hear is "the poor don't need to be taught, they need (some short term thing that won't scale)"
If you want to argue the effectiveness of various education methods, I am not down to that level of nuance. Obviously if the education is ineffective, that's a problem, it's still necessary.
And if the benefits of networks based on country of origin were so powerful you'd expect places with a large percent of South American or Caribbean countries to be wealthy. But if you look at small Haitian or Dominican you don't see the same kind of upward mobility compared to asian neighborhoods.
Are you equating the economic potential of being able to tap a large interest free loan from your community and having an equally poor sibling?
Btw i wouldn't discount free childcare and is honestly worth more than an interest free loan. If you can help share childcare you can work many more hours
Needless to say, frequently is a scam.
EDIT: Here are examples:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+informal+...
Means for the slightly-better-off middle class to exploit the lower class through rent are being thwarted, thankfully. They just allow one half of the population to exploit the other half without providing any tangible benefit in return.
Source: I'm born in, and living in, the Netherlands.
How does merely visiting Netherlands tell a person that inequality stats are misleading ?
I actually lived there for a period, not that it's relevant.
Also, not sure but this comment may be a reference to:
How The Dutch Economy Shows We Can't Reduce Wealth Inequality With Taxes | Economics Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE
and if you watch that it's well worth watching this Dutch economist's rebuttal
The Dutch Economy is NOT the Most Unequal
May I ask what was the path to financial well being ?
Coming to US with zero dollars is pretty common and doesn't really tell the whole picture. You might come with things that can be converted to money later like an education, family connections ect.
I came to us with no money but I had education for in demand jobs. Lots of patels from india come to usa with zero dollars but they have family connections that get them started on a path to setting up a business. We are close to a patel family that came to usa with zero dollars but grinded for years to finally become business owners. They are insane hardworkers but having that family connection that set them up on the path was critical imo.
That's the point - it's things that can be taught and learned. The person I am responding to is acting like an attempt to teach poor people anything is evil.
There’s also a selection bias amongst immigrants like yourself: immigrant families have already made the biggest leap, they’ve uprooted their family and gone to a new country, and so they’re already on the path towards all of the behaviours you describe — they didn’t arrive in America and then decide that education was the path forwards, they arrived in America with optimism and gusto and were ready to do whatever it takes to realise their dreams.
Many people just want to live a life, they don’t want to pursue greatness at all costs. Many of those people are in poverty, many of those people are rich. Many people are not suited to a life of intense pressure to succeed.
The problem of poverty education as the solution to poverty is that it is built on the idea that education is why people are in poverty, and that if they just knew a bit more than they’d be doing great… but that’s not really true, poverty is a trap, education cannot save you from the poverty trap.
The value of support for people in poverty is that it gives them a better chance to escape poverty and for many people, education is a part of that support, but it’s important to understand that the solution to poverty is not education about how to open a checking account, it’s the whole spectrum of support from financial to education.
Give every person in poverty a million dollars, and many will escape poverty and go on to live very prosperous lives — no education needed.
You sound like you have never been around a poor person. Most people if they get a raise, their spending magically goes up by the same amount.
And people don't understand how money works.
My in-laws provide healthcare and profit sharing for everyone who works in their business. And guess what, a big percentage of their turnover is someone gets a 50 cent an hour raise somewhere else but doesn't understand that they are missing out on much more in profit sharing and healthcare. When they leave and get paid out their profit sharing, they are like "what's this??" even though it's been explained to them a thousand times.
A million dollars is nothing. You can blow it on a few ill advised purchases and be back where you started. It takes brains to make it last, not to mention make it grow.
There are rich people who are bad with money, there are poor people who are bad with money. The only difference is that rich people have a much greater ability to tolerate financial mistakes. I can burn $10k and absorb the consequences, a person in poverty cannot.
Poor people are no less equipped to make use of money than rich people: credit card debt is a huge problem _amongst the middle-class_. For every poor person who can’t afford to feed their family, there’s a middle-class person who can only afford to feed their family because they make so much more money and would be even worse off if they didn’t have such a high income.
There’s no evidence that poor people are any more “bad with money” than rich people.
If this were true many lottery winners would have their lives and their children's lives changed forever after winning. As it stands almost every person who wins the lottery ends up in the same place they were before within 10 years.
The skills required to get out of poverty are often the skills required to stay out of poverty.
You: Many people just want to live a life, they don’t want to pursue greatness at all costs.
These things are incongruous.
Separately, in the US you only need two factors to predict poverty: did you graduate high school and did you wait for marriage to have children. For the vast majority of people, it's their culture that determines if those are valued. You need to change culture to change those, and people are suspect of having the government do that because of past and ongoing mistakes.
What predicts high school graduation? The framing of your comment ("did you graduate..." "did you wait for marriage...") suggests that these are choices made by people which determine whether they'll go on to live in poverty and if they just stayed in school and just didn't have kids then their lives would be great. The problem is, poverty does not start with the individual, in fact, it can be traced to before the person was born. High school graduation rates can be predicted based on the circumstance the child was born into.
Yes, that's literally what they need to do. If we want to change that, then changing their culture to value education is the only way to do it. No culture which denigrates education is going to equip the majority of its adherents for the modern world.
Edit: I feel you're saying the same thing. Said poor immigrants succeed because they value succeeding. That's culture.
I know people in poverty where the root cause is downs syndrome: they mentally don't have the ability to be any more than assistant usher at the movie theater. They can handle most usher tasks, but when there is someone difficult they need the head usher: some 16 year old kid who has been on the job for at least 2 weeks.
I know people in poverty because they despite getting straight A's in school they dropped out at 16 and started having kids (I'm not sure if they dropped out before are after the kids started coming, it doesn't matter: both dropping out and having kids were intentional decisions). 10 years latter it finally occurred to them how much their bad life choices has hurt them.
There is nothing a coach can do to help the first person, no matter what they will still be in poverty as they are not capable of doing better. The second just needs a bit of help to turn life around - this help will work now, but at 21 this person would have refused all help as they didn't see that they were doing anything wrong in the first place. Most people in poverty are somewhere in the middle of these two.
The above is based on real people (though I'm hiding a lot of details for privacy reasons). These are not strawman examples, but they should feel like it. I intentionally picked people who are on the two far ends of the extremes.
Here in Canada, a single disabled person that is expected to live independently receives about 800 USD per month from the government. Out of that, they're expected to pay all their expenses. Canada is relatively typical as such things go. In France or Germany it's about 1000 USD a month. It's about 900 USD in the United States. It's only some 300 - 500 USD in the UK.
Depending on jurisdiction, there may or may not be subsidized housing which can make a big difference; but either way, many are paying market rate for housing. There are also other benefits, etc., that may alter the picture. But the overall picture is very very poor. The Scandinavian countries are the only major exception I can think of, where the disabled living only on a government pension might not actually be in poverty.
I really wish we could take the good parts of organized religion and turn them into regular institutions. In our town the local library has taken on a strong community center role but that's just because the staff there happens to be excellent.
The two things required for this program to work are useful information & willing learners.
By making it free, the organisers are incentivised to provide the first, and by requiring participation with a coach they're asking for the second. Could your question be more accurately stated as "is the information good?".
People stay in bad situations when they don't know how to change and/or they don't want to change. The former is kind of up to those with knowledge, however ultimately nobody can do anything about the latter but those affected themselves.
Social workers and life coaches are really great when they are able to fill in the gaps. Help people acquire the resources they need and take advantage of the services offered to them that they may not already know about. Even something as simple as filling in a form properly can be life-changing. Not to mention connecting them to resources like housing assistance and debt forgiveness.
Example: the recent MrBeast video where he restored sight to 1000 people [1]. Really, this should make you angry at a system that allows people to be virtually blind when fixing it is so cheap. It makes no sense from an economic standpoint. People who can see can be way more productive (let alone all the personal benefits of course). But we don't do that. Why? To protect private health care profits.
There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on this planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over their heads and enough to eat. It is a choice to deny it to them. Why? So a handful of people can become obscenely wealthy. That's it.
The reason our country/world has so many resources, is because people with a commercial interest worked had to develop/build it. Like, our medicine is amazing because there historically has been so much money in it, which attracted talent and research dollars.
So it's easy to look at that and say "oh wow we have so much, how can we not be giving it away for free" but that misses the point that with that mindset, we wouldn't have built what we have to begin with.
People often fail to understand that it's a balance.
For every piece of equipment, mobile bed, ekg, sensor, sample etc - here's a company that makes that stuff, efficiently and at scale. They are driven by the fact that hospitals buy this stuff, which is in part driven by the patients and insurance ability to pay. Money makes this stuff go round.
And yes a homeless person walking into the ER gets a benefit out of all this stuff for free - but only because everyone else pays for them. If nobody paid for it, it wouldn't exist.
Another commenter mentioned insulin. Despite insulin being invented 100 years ago and the IP being given away for $1 to benefit people, we're still paying outrageous prices for insulin in the USofA even with supposedly limited patent life. The system has been successfully gamed and government bought so that people can be charged $1000/month for something necessary to live that costs a fraction of that to produce.
A lot of pharma is like this: pharmaceutical companies primarily spend on marketing and lobbying. A huge chunk of the so-called innovation actually happens with Federally funded research in universities that we just give away to a company to profit from.
If you accept that "our medicine is amazing", what about pretty much every other developed nation giving universal access to health care? Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are generally worse because we restrict access only to those with money.
Comrade, I am curious - what is the economic system of the country you live in? And if it's not socialist, why have you not migrated to one of the existing socialist paradises?
I ask this as someone whose family made the move in the other direction. Life in capitalism is better empirically than the alternatives, it's not propaganda for millions of us who experienced it both ways.
// Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are generally worse because we restrict access only to those with money.
Is that true and is it accurate to compare say Sweden which is a small, uniform country (everyone is an in-shape middle class white guy) to the US which is vast and diverse in every way?
Businesses close when they make no profit, or when there's not a market fit, or for many other non-tax-related reasons. I've never heard of a business failing simply because their taxes were too darn high.
Do they "Go Galt"? No, but their money often goes somewhere else. A different company, a hedge fund, or even a different country are all options used quite regularly. Taking their ball and going to play somewhere else with some other people is always an option. Tax policy can and does influence this.
There absolutely is a level of positive profit below which it makes more financial sense for investors to sit on their money.
Governments are aware of this and set their taxation policies accordingly. That is why long-term capital gains usually have a relatively low tax rates. There is a high drag on expected ROI due to inflation and risk that makes many of those investments unattractive ceteris paribus.
No, you are not. Out of patent insulin is cheap. Newer, far more effective patented insulin is expensive. Insulin makes for great clickbait, because the average person does not understand there are many different kinds at different prices.
Where is the incentive for a business to research better insulin?
And no one is stopping US taxpayers from voting for US politicians to pay for R&D of insulin (and other medications) so that it is in the public domain and can be produced and sold as cheaply as possible.
The strawman here is that capitalist ideology requires "nothing happens without the profit motive" to work. It doesn't. Take food for instance. There's no doubt that there are altruists willing to feed people for free (eg. soup kitchens/food banks), but you can't rely on altruists to feed the world. The point of capitalism is that you don't need to rely on people's charity to get fed, or whatever other products/services you want. As Adam Smith puts it:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. "
Can we stop a second and talk about this? Morally and ethically, you are absolutely and completely right in every possible way. There's nothing at all to talk about.
Yet food and shelter aren't just moral questions of basic humanity. They're also logistical questions. Having a warehouse of stored grain in Nebraska is useless to starving people in Indonesia without a way to get it there and a way to feed them for all the days to come. Having empty houses in Detroit is not useful to unsheltered people in Budapest without a way to get the latter to the former and enable them to actually live there - never mind if they would accept such an offer.
You're absolutely right. These are moral and ethical non-questions. There just might be practical questions in there too. Ignoring the latter to focus on the former is perhaps not an ideal way to identify systemic changes that can address systemic problems.
Otherwise you wind up in a situation like San Francisco's, where people point to misleading numbers on vacant housing (and decry the abominable human greed) in order to distract from a decades-long failure to produce enough housing for people.
I could just as easily have picked almost any major rich world city. A poorer one would similarly have a homeless population, but the point would be less clear.
Only on paper. Reality is not that simple. The problems are not solved with giving people food and shelter. Rich countries did that, they still do it, it solves nothing. People will stay hungry, and now they depend on it, and will also raise demand. In the past, we've seen horrible cases of charity destroying local economies, making people even more depending on charity. This can't be an answer for making the world a better place.
We can do better, but not with a simplistic view. It will make things just worse.
Because the dictators where a lot of desperately poor people live will use their militaries to control donated food and goods to increase their control over the people.
We are all angrier than at any time I can remember, and it's not accomplishing anything.
We need to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric, and start implementing practical solutions, like what you describe.
Because that anger is being directed towards culture war wedge issues. That's on purpose.
> We need to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric ...
I'm more concerned with the direction rather than the intensity.
Because the choice to just give it to them will have consequences and will very likely fundamentally change the nature of the society we live in.
> So a handful of people can become obscenely wealthy. That's it.
That's one consequence. I highly doubt that would be the only one.
If one believes that this is a well intended effort that, however, is nothing more that a publicity stunt.
This appears to be a private initiative, and the only potential harm done here is iterating a point that is wrong (if one puts themselves in the Rousseau camp).
He's poor. Sure, doubling welfare payments would make him have more than the average citizen, but it wouldn't address the reason he's poor: because he doesn't want to work. If he worked, he'd have more money, but the calculation is simple: get 500 Euros + 77sqm flat + utilities + health insurance for 0 hours / year, or get 2500 Euros, pay everything yourself (including alimony) and have 300-400 Euros more a month for 1600 hours / year.
I'm not saying that some poverty can be sustainably alleviated by cash. But some cannot. Claims about poverty should consider that not all poverty is the same (and most poverty in Western countries (maybe minus the US) is relative, not absolute).
They're poor because we define poverty as having 60% or 50% of the median net income. You still live in a flat, you still have enough money for food and you don't need to beg to heat your home, but you'll have trouble affording things that average citizens consider normal, like taking trips, eating out, buying gadgets, or saving money.
In both absolute and relative poverty, more money helps alleviate it. But giving people enough money to escape abject poverty is something else entirely from enforcing everyone to earn exactly the same so that nobody could have less than the median.
From pensions, to drugs, to sex work, to engineering they are always at the frontier.
No big tech but that's more a function of 'working to live' vs. 'living to work' than outright inability to mint unicorns.
Btw, there are large companies in AMS (Booking, Amazon, Meta, Uber) and some financial shops. It's not comparable with US, but definitely in top3 in EMEA region.
Yes, only those big companies pay "ok" wages.
To all others thinking "but free healthcare/whatever/etc", then why don't these companies pay enough (compared to USA,England) for remote where you only pay in gross?
The Netherlands is definitely not in the top 3 of European tech wages vs cost of living.
E.g. selling weed to stores is still illegal - massively funding the underworld because there's no legal supply - which is quite backwards compared to Canada & some US states. Or up until a few years ago NL was dead-last in the EU for amount of parental leave a father gets (2 days), which was only changed when the EU forced them to by setting a minimum. Most (semi-)public services like health, public transport, taxes and education are also performing poorly and/or very fragile after long periods of budget cuts and neoliberal policies.
If the underworld only crime is to sell weed then what's the problem? It's just a matter of semantics. I think what you mean is that it's defacto legal but you have to chit-chat with some guy or gal who'd also try to sell you some of his/her music or a club entrance when they are DJ-ing as opposed to just ordering it on Amazon
The football ultras/hooligans phenomenon might also qualify as underworld but they mostly beat each others up
Society existed that way for a long time but there’s a reason we stopped doing feudalism
To your point not having everything enter the capitalist sphere is good, I think it’s possible to navigate one without the other
Well it doesn't exist in a vacuum, crime = money, money = competition, competition = violence [0]
And it's not only weed, they're one of the main point of entry for coke in Europe [1]
Some even start to talk about a narco state given how widespread drug related gang violence and corruption is [2][3]
But yeah I guess it's easier to see it as a western progressive paradise
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/oct/06/cartel-journali...
[1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/e...
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/narco-state-neth...
No it's not because it means it's also more profitable. More profit while something is illegal means it's more attractive to criminals to pursue. It means that the coke dealers, criminals from other EU countries (eastern Europeans or Russians) and other people that don't give a shit about The Netherlands will take it up and do it as a side hustle thing. And sure there are also "pure weed dealers", and yes for this group it's (almost) pure semantics. However, they now have to deal with crazed criminals that aren't afraid of shooting you when things go sour.
Source: I'm from Amsterdam, I've heard enough stories and anecdotal evidence is enough to challenge you on your assumptions that it's "just a matter of semantics".
Would you say moving even further and legalize everything except heroin and fetanyl would make things better?
When everything is legal the only recourse for criminals to make money is extortion and even that could go away with full digital payments
EDIT: "frikandel-automaat" -- that beast tells all you need to know about a country's attitude towards food.
* Over-designed, over-controlled environment. If your idea of high quality of life is ultramodern office-buildings with no natural light offices, cities with every square foot either concrete or manicured lawn, buildings where you cannot open a window, and cannot water the plant because some central authority takes care of it, and every aspect of your life is efficiently managed, then go for it. I for one, need some unstructured "messiness" every now and then, otherwise I start to feel tense.
* people are nice and open though, society seems to work pretty well, and companies are efficient. No unicorns? ASML makes the machines that make the machines that make semiconductors, the modern world runs on them.
What natural light? As I said weather is very gloomy there
I was just inspired by FEBO listing themselves on UberEats. I thought if they could put themselves on UberEats, I can aspire to be anything in life.
I’m not going to say it’s bad because on average it isn’t, but this is patently untrue. The Dutch housing market is one of the worst in the world, and doubly so if you don’t speak Dutch or are on a budget. Double whammy for international students.
The healthcare system is... let me put it this way. As an Indian, I’d rather be in the Netherlands if there was a critical medical condition. You’re not actively suicidal or dying in the next 24 hours? Excellent, join the seven month waitlist for getting medical help. Or become suicidal enough to go to the ER, and then back to the waitlist you go!
In India (and what I’ve seen/heard of UK/US private healthcare) you can get faster treatment if you can pay. Nothing of that sort here haha.
(I should probably add that Germany and Belgium have similar issues from what I’ve heard, though that doesn’t excuse the Netherlands.)
Like literally anywhere in the world, in the vast majority of country if you show up poor and not able to speak the language you won't find a place to live.
Also by on a budget I mean a budget that’ll get me a very decent place even in for example Germany. The prices and costs of accommodation in the Netherlands is hilarious, ask anyone living here. One of my professors literally moved to Belgium to save on rent, despite needing to make a multi-hour journey when commuting multiple times a week.
How will you sign a contract you can't read ? Outside of tech hubs you can't even find a job in western Europe (not even speaking about the rest of the world) if you don't speak the language, without a job you won't find a place to rent
> Also by on a budget I mean a budget that’ll get me a very decent place even in for example Germany.
Compared to which city ?
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
https://supasuze.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/the-dutch-midwife-...
I first read it back in 2007, but I’ve always remembered it.
For Belgium at least, these issues are not similar. Our housing prices are high in some cities but definitely not on the level of the Netherlands. And the waiting list for medical help is much less of an issue here.
Belgium definitely has their own issues (often issues that the Netherlands don't have), but the issues you listed are not as relevant in Belgium.
They have raised 250.000 to fund this supermarket. Beyond the fact that a notable newspaper reported on it (Parool) I can't vouch for it other than that link really is their donation page.
Alternatively you could move to Amsterdam or Zaandam and pay your taxes. This kind of organization lives off government subsidies, donations are just an extra. Last year their total income was 2.1 million euros, although they do not specify how much of that is from donations.
Here's their annual financial report (extended report available through their contact form): https://studiezalen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/publicati... Here's their annual non-financial report (i.e. formal newsletter): https://studiezalen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Jaarversl... All of these are in Dutch.
https://nypost.com/2018/11/12/health-department-poured-bleac...
At least it's not motor oil. They seemed to have a kinda-sorta-plausible excuse for the bleach, but it sounds like they've made an internal decision that it was an overreaction and they stopped doing it.
But I kinda see their point, too -- random people making food and handing it out sounds noble, but it probably should have some oversight too. Arguably that would have been the better response from the health department. I don't think the charity in this case did a particularly good job themselves of handling the situation. Hopefully everyone learned something and five years later it's no longer a problem.
Basic assumption is, we know you need coaching, you probably won't take it, so we will bribe you with basic necessities.
It might work or might not, but it's patronizing for sure.
I guess it all comes down to what "life coaching" means in this context. If we are talking about some sort of social assistants that will understand what ails the people in need and help them find a way around their issues (e.g.: navigate state bureaucracy, acquiring some basic qualification, find help with rehabilitation, etc) I see no downside.
Instead of seeing this as patronizing, I actually see it as quite humane.
Municipal subsidies, private and corporate donations. I assume a municipal social worker decides who gets in and who does not. This is a really common approach in the Netherlands, which has been going on for decades for other projects. I can't remember any news articles mentioning significant problems with this approach.
This looks to me like an extended "voedselbank" which involves social work. I don't see anything truly novel or problematic with this approach.
Donations, apparently, likely both monetary and products.
> Who decides the cutoff?
They mentioned in the article that they're not a food bank, and they don't need proof of poverty. Since they connect the "shopping" to working with one of their life coaches (I don't know how often or how long you need to talk to them), I guess that's a deterrent against random rich people getting their diapers there. Or maybe they do, because they also want to talk to someone about their life, in which case I suppose they're also the target audience.
I have no clue about the sustainability or tax exemptions. It sounds like the supermarket is a way to get more people in the community in contact with their social workers. Outreach programs aren't that rare, the combination with a supermarket is, but it doesn't strike me as that odd.
Typically, expenses directly reduce income without any need for a special exemption.
There are places where selling certain product types below cost isn't OK, Wal-Mart got into trouble for this in Germany:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-sep-09-fi-18061...
Relevant:
> Wal-Mart’s prices were matched and even undercut by the Aldi and Lidl food chains, which also were ordered to cease selling below cost or face fines of about $445,000 for each product sold in violation of the order.
They probably still would have lost, our supermarket system is very cut-throat ;)