The guy's Scottish, he thinks it's about San Fran specifically, it's really about AMERICA. Maybe San Fran puts it even more in your face. But compared to most any other country even half as rich as America, the lack of social safety net in the U.S. is kind of shocking. People in Europe don't really realize the extent of it.
I'm French living in Jersey. I have been to San Francisco, even though it's blatant when you walk here, everywhere in the US I have that feeling that the poor are really forgotten. And they live in third-world country conditions. In France, the average rich is not as rich, and it's probably a lot harder to become successful and wealthy than here; but the poor are not left behind as much. It feels more like a society where you take a significant chunk from the rich to make sure the poor can get by. Sure there are abuses, high taxes and whatnot, but the old and the poor can afford to go to the dentist, and retire when the time comes.
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.
> 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.
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].
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.
> There won't be a cholera outbreak. Food is available and nobody is going to starve to death.
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.
There certainly is a very real cholera risk in the poorest communities in the US.
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.
"it's probably a lot harder to become successful and wealthy than here"
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.
I tend to think a lot of the social programs that do exist in this city (and there are many – healthy san francisco, housing subsidies, dozens of shelters, and even more food programs) don't really address the root problem that causes such a disparity. For instance, I've a number of friends who work in the tenderloin with some of those same social programs, and they're perspective is that the housing subsidies that bring people to the tenderloin only exacerbate the issues that plague it.
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).
I live 4 blocks from Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, and I feel exactly the same way. US-style homeless shelters just seem to concentrate the homeless in a geographic area, without providing them with anything they need (what most of them seem to need is access to mental health services and medications). I've heard multiple formerly incarcerated people say that staying in homeless shelters is worse than prison.
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.
The wealth disparity is probably more evident in SF.
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.
We're very well aware of the extent of the situation in the US. It's been a long time since Europeans lined up to emigrate to America.
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.
I dunno. Feel like that's not the case for a lot of very talented Europeans, many of whom I've met in my multiple trips there and unanimously want to emigrate to the US. They certainly aren't the "give us your tired, your poor" immigrants anymore, but I get the sense there's a real sense of economic stagnation there. I've only been to Europe about 25 times, but you get a sense of it pretty well. But you seem to be European, what do you think?
I'm Scottish and while I've not quite experienced it myself, I'm happy living in Europe where m taxes are spent on health care as opposed to bombs. It's not so much shocking as it is just really sad. :(
True. Not only does the US as a nation spend more on healthcare than almost anyone else, US citizens also spend more on healthcare than citizens of almost any other country. So the govt. and the citizens are paying boat-loads--that's inefficiency.
And, it doesn't help anything that we're one of the most unhealthy nations.
It's almost all the result of the extra administrative overhead from our fragmented insurance market, profits to the for-profit hospitals and insurance companies and the extremely expensive ineffective end-of-life care that is incentivized by that incredibly messed up system.
Yeah but that'd all seem to be from private individuals, which seems to fit with my idea of a US that is more than happy to collectivly suffer, as long as folks don't feel anyone is getting a free ride.
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.
And the rest of the Western world, like it or not, is able to spend less on defense precisely because -- thanks to some unique events in the 20th century -- the US is effectively providing a defense subsidy for all of its allies.
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.
The US is in fact providing a defense subsidy to it's allies AND to it's enemies.
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're mistaking what I mean by subsidy. I'm talking game theory, not short term shuffling of monies.
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.
> many other countries have in effect outsourced much of their security apparatus to the United States
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.
This may have been true in the Cold War, but that war has long been over. To say that US defense spending now is benefiting anyone in any way now is laughable, except for maybe South Korea and Taiwan. If anything, our meddling has raised security concerns for all our European allies due to the displacement and disruption of life by our actions in the Middle East.
US is not doing any defense charity. It's present in Europe only because US commanders think it's in the best interest of US. Europe spends on its military half of what US does.
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.
> Obviously. Every country in the world spend money in defense, the difference is the percentage of the GDP spent.
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.)
Toronto has way more of a handle on homelessness than other parts of Canada in my experience. It's much worse in the neighbouring provincial capitals, Montreal and Winnipeg.
I've always been somewhat confused by the homeless out in the street in Canada. I thought we had a social safety net, shelters, etc. Everyone of these people can't be drug users and people with severe mental health issues, right?
I live in San Diego now, but I just moved back here from San Francisco. I've lived elsewhere in America. I never felt the disparity as much as I did in SF. I walked around being intensely aware of my privilege and it was uncomfortable.
San Fran's housing policy and strict land-use regulations have prevented the creation of large-scale housing units (both public and private) that address this problem elsewhere. The homeless population isn't an accident; it's the creation of government regulation and middle-class fear of high-density housing.
