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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38752 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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I mean something akin to the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden) in which the necessities of life (healthcare, housing, minimum subsistence) are essentially guaranteed, while maintaining a market economy.

as others have already observed when this comes up, such welfare states tend to not scale well for countries as big, and diverse, and low trust as the US. A prosperous, homogenous, small country having generous welfare is sorta analogous to a breadwinner providing for his family. Now try to scale this to a stadium.

c. "The Scandinavian countries only could do this because they are ethnically homogenous, tightly knit societies. Look at Sweden right now, it's falling apart as they let in more immigrants." Response: This goes more to the political problem with instituting this system rather than the desirability of the system itself. The fact that present-day social democrats are pro immigration does not make immigration a necessary part of a social democracy. One can easily imagine a social democracy with Japan-style immigration restrictions.

Too late for this to happen, and no political will either. American history going as far back almost to its inception has been tolerating immigration. Japan had the advantage of being close knit from its onset.

"Eliminating poverty will cause more pain in the long run because the economy will collapse or at the very least growth will slow, leading to a decline in living standards for everyone."

Poverty largely has been eliminated in America. Americans even in the poorest of states have higher living standards than people in the UK. There are so many programs for poor families in the US, like free education, up through college, dental, healthcare, subsidized housing, etc. People fail to avail themselves of such options due to addiction, mental illness (the two often go together) , or other problems, not because of America being against the poor. Controlling drugs would be a much more useful step for ending poverty.

as others have already observed when this comes up, such welfare states tend to not scale well for countries as big, and diverse, and low trust as the US. A prosperous, homogenous, small country having generous welfare is sorta analogous to a breadwinner providing for his family. Now try to scale this to a stadium.

I disagree, I think you could scale it to a stadium, or a thousand stadiums -- it's called insurance, and we do it all the time! We don't have to trust the other people on the same car insurance program -- you know some of them will be idiot drivers who cause mayhem and destruction, but you also know that many will be normal people who pay way more into the system than they take out in benefits. I take your point, but again this seems like more of a practical political problem with setting it up than an objection to social democracy in a large, diverse country per se.

Poverty largely has been eliminated in America. Americans even in the poorest of states have higher living standards than people in the UK. There are so many programs for poor families in the US, like free education, up through college, dental, healthcare, subsidized housing, etc. People fail to avail themselves of such options due to addiction, mental illness (the two often go together) , or other problems, not because of America being against the poor.

Poverty has not been eliminated in America. 11% of the country, which is 37 million people, were living below poverty in 2020 according to the US Census. There may be "many" programs in the US, but they are NOT sufficient at guaranteeing subsistence, healthcare and subsidized housing being two areas where many, many people fall through the cracks. Subsidized housing does not really exist in many parts of the country, and it is not comprehensive anywhere.

11% of the country, which is 37 million people, were living below poverty in 2020

Key qualifier there being "on paper", which often involves income off the books to maintain access to transfer programs. That also glosses over what poverty means in America - a place to live, often a car, amenities like AC and modern appliances, a new-ish smart phone and far too many calories. Poverty in an objective, global sense is non-existent outside extreme addiction and/or mental illness.

Problem is, some people take offense at the idea of having to pay for net consumers of insurance/welfare.

That's the whole point of insurance, that there are net consumers of it. If everyone was a net contributor, it would just be the greatest con scheme created by the insurers.

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