The way I see it, European countries have a kind of nation-wide health insurance, vs individual insurance here. We have a nation-wide student loan, versus individual student loans. That helps controlling the costs and profits, and helps making sure that everybody who needs care or education can get it.
But whether it is related or not, America is more daring, more exciting, and there are more opportunities when you have the right cards to do something. But if you had a bad hand to start with, then you're royally screwed.
Put simply, it's better to be born poor in Europe than in the US, and better to be born rich in the US than in Europe.
No.
Even a porta potty cleaned infrequently is more sanitary than the conditions in the third world. There won't be a cholera outbreak. Food is available and nobody is going to starve to death.
Heck, a simple clean water fountain in some third world countries can improve the lives of an entire village. Even in the most horrible cities in america there are dozens of sources of free water.
None of these really reflect how poor communities in the US are. Food insecurity is a real thing that affects a good number of households and individuals. Access to adequate medical care, including vaccinations, is difficult. Health and water conditions can vary greatly and may be unsanitary.
I agree that saying the US is like a third world is overblown, but we aren't exactly a shining beacon of care for all of the people that exist in our society.
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries
that remained non-aligned with either NATO, or the Communist Bloc.
And many parts of China, India, Western Asia, Southeast Asia, Central America, and parts of South America...
Take, for example, the colonias in southwestern Texas, where ~400k people live in informal housing without access to basic infrastructure or services, and where diseases like cholera and dengue fever have far higher rates of incidence. These aren't all illegal immigrants or anything, either -- the Texas secretary of state reports 64.4% of Texan colonias residents are US citizens[1].
It's easy to assume there's no poverty that deep in this country when, by and large, our standard of living is better than most of the world, but unfortunately there really are places in the US to which the descriptor "third world" is applicable.
NYT has some good coverage of the conditions in the colonias, if you want to read more. Here's a start: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/us/10tthealth.html?_r=0
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/487/h...
Absolutely fantastic comment.
This seems a little contradictory. Being daring and exciting as a country and an economy would be more like how America used to be, where the upside of having people dying in the street was that if you came here and you had drive and talent, you were much more likely to become wealthy and successful. This is in contrast to the way much of Europe functioned at the time, where a more entrenched and institutionalized class system meant that your position in life (by and large) was set at birth.
As it stands now (I believe over the last couple of decades), America performs _worse_ than every comparable developed country but Great Britain when it comes to income mobility[1].
[1] From a study done by the London School of Economics: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/intergenerationalmobility.pd...
One thing that is often forgotten is that in Europe it's generally much easier (or less burdening) to become successful in something that doesn't necessarily make a lot of money in the beginning or ever. It can also be a lot easier to feel rich. If you make three times the average income on consulting, you can pretty much take half the year of and still increase your living standard quite a bit if you wanted to.
For example, Honolulu has a huge homeless population despite the huge tourism industry. The city just pushes homeless towards parts of the island where tourists don't visit and thus aren't aware of the problem.
It's not just warm weather that draws people to SF, but a plethora of social programs that are often poorly executed, underfunded, and addressed at superficial issues and not their core causes (education, for example).
The end result seems to be a sort of outdoor insane asylum, with a bunch of privileged hipsters like me and my friends wandering from our high-end loft conversions to the latest trendy bars and restaurants.
I also feel that in many ways the property development companies are drawn to these dilapidated downtown areas with large homeless populations because it's "edgy" and the developments themselves are high-margin.
Also, ironically enough, most Northern Europeans would already consider the circumstances of the underprivileged in Scotland unacceptable... The bad parts of Glasgow are considered the most horrible places in Western Europe. And the people there have housing, healthcare and access to education.
It's a stupidly short sighted game of russian roulette but nowhere near as hilarious as if the Government itself really does pay out more per capitita than anywhere else in the world.
http://flipchartfairytales.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/healt...
When limited only to public spending, Norway and Luxembourg spend more per capita, but that's it
And, it doesn't help anything that we're one of the most unhealthy nations.
I'm not advocating, just saying. Perhaps European countries would have to spend more if the US did not concern itself with the rest of the world? Food for thought.
Not to mention the defense industry.
Kind of like healthcare.
Where, germane to other arguments made in the thread, the US also spends a larger share of its GDP than other developed countries, so, no, other developed countries aren't able to provide universal healthcare through public spending because of a "security subsidy" from the US; there able to do so because their mostly-public healthcare systems are more efficient than the US system which splits costs between public and private systems nearly evenly (with a slight private bias.)
EVERYONE gets their weaponry from the US (they bought it back when they were allies, now their enemies), and/or gets weaponry developed with US military R&D.
It's certainly good for the US defense industry. You've got to buy more better weapons cause your enemy has bought more better weapons, and both sides buy em from the US defense industry.
When the US gives another country military aid (or actually most any kind of aid), 100% of the funds 'donated' need to be used buying military goods from US companies. So military aid goes right to US defense companies too. (I think Israel is the one special exception, who for some reason only have to spend 50% of their military aid on US goods, and can spend the other half on Israeli-made goods).
The US spends more on the military than every other country _combined_.
So, yeah, I'm not sure this state of affairs could really be described as the US keeping the planet _safe_ by spending so much on military. But it is true that the US equips the entire rest of the world militarily.
You are correct in that there are transfers of money and arms, the individual value and long term wisdom of which are always debatable. What I am talking about is a de facto subsidy, based on the fact that many other countries have in effect outsourced much of their security apparatus to the United States because they know that the US would step in for any existential crisis caused by mutual enemies.
Think of it this way. It costs billions to construct a single aircraft carrier. Many seafaring nations currently build smaller navies than they would if the United States were not filling a large portion of this role for them. When buying aircraft, ships, tanks, missiles, etc, an allied country only has to build those assets marginally necessary to create a comfortable excess over and above the security already seen as inevitably provided by the US. That constitutes an indirect subsidy.
If any country had defense centered on such silly premise I think it migrated away from this since release of US cables that clearly show that US only cares about US and treats other countries not as venerable allies but as monkeys in their circus.
I don't believe that Europe would spend significantly more on military. Europeans after carrying two world wars on their soil seem little bit resilient to threats of war and to actual violence. When it comes to Americans it seems that goat fart spontaneously combusting on the other side of the planet constitutes experimental discharge of pyrochemical weapon potentially of mass destruction that ought to be carefully monitored by swiftly dispatched fleet of surveillance drones.
At least in SF a homeless person won't die from exposure in the wintertime.