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Oh, brother here we go again. Is the welfare state breaking us? Or is it the warfare state? Does it ever occur to anyone that it's both? We're just like the Roman Empire. The welfare state is there to shut people up and keep them quiet while the warfare state intervenes militarily in things it shouldn't around the world. The populace is kept divided and distracted with a long litany of false dichotomies such as "welfare state vs. warfare state".
Give me a break. Sure welfare is expensive and ultimately a burden but to even compare it to how much is being spent on “spreading freedom” is absolutely laughable.
Do you have any data to support your claims or is it just the ideology talking?
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Originally Posted by ilovelondon
That's probably something he heard from Sean Hannity on Fox News and he's just regurgitating it.
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Originally Posted by philopower
Stupidest **** I’ve ever heard. Our debt is out of control because of our massive military campaigns around the world propagated by both democrats and republicans as well as the corporations raping the country dry from tax revenue
I guess Rocko is referring to the whopping 9% of US spending on welfare. It's just CRUSHING our economy. Here's a pie chart of federal spending so everyone can see where the money is really being pizzed away.
Are you now saying that the poor in the US are better off because of 'welfare'? You don't seem to have ANY idea about 'welfare' in Europe?
No, most Americans have no idea. They have been fed the stories they were meant to gobble up and many have never even been outside of their state, let alone outside the country. They have to go off what they read online in their echo chamber websites.
Having lived for nearly eight years in a former Eastern Bloc country and having a son while living there, I can compare to having a daughter later on here in the US. With my son, I received paid leave for three years so I could take a full-time role in the care of my son vs. the eight weeks paid leave I received with the birth of my daughter. And that was two extra weeks because I had a c-section with her. Then I had to hire nannies to care for her while I returned to work and used a breast pump to gather milk for my baby while I was at the office for 9-10 hours a day.
While living abroad with my son, the mailman delivered my cash monthly. This was convenient because I could walk a few blocks to the local markets and didn't need to do any banking in the heart of the city. To encourage young couples to procreate, the state gave housing grants for either the purchase of or construction of housing. A couple I knew contracted to have two children and were thus able to purchase their own flat in their early 20s. A relative, also in their 20s, contracted to have three children and they built their own three bedroom house with the grant money. Over here in Southern California, as I am attending university, most of my classmates in their 20s have already resigned themselves to the fact that they will never be able to enter the homeowner class, and will forever be renters. It's kind of sad, really, because they are at the beginning of their adult lives and have already been jaded to the unfairness and inequities surrounding them.
Actually when I visited Canada last summer I stayed at my friend's place in Montréal, which was in Hochelaga. Now I'm not saying that Canada = United States but I suppose if there's a country that looks a lot like the US, that must be it.
I was pretty amazed by the high proportion of people who looked unhealthy, as if they did a lot of drugs or ate really bad food, and what surprised me was also all these people who did not walk but used some kinds of electric carts to get around. Now I know distances there can be a pain, because as much as we were close to the nearest metro station, it was still about 1,5 km distant from our place, but these people were not all very old, actually there were many people who looked like they were about 50, yet they needed this, and I was thinking that if they started to use it everyday they would become unable to walk in no time. Now this is the kind of people I've never ever seen in any place in Europe.
Of course this was only one area in the city, and the majority of the people looked overall pretty normal, but some people looked like they were in a really bad shape and / or overly obese, and when looking for food in the neighborhood at grocery stores, it was often hard to find stuff that looked healthy judging by the components.
Well I guess if you look for something you will find it. Your experience is totally different than what Montreal is actually about, and totally different from anything that I have ever experienced in Montreal.
As for the electric scooters, you are assuming a lot. People use them because they do have a limited ability to walk, and it's used like an electric wheelchair, but is built for outdoor use. One reason you may not see them a lot in Europe is because imagine using one on uneven sidewalks or cobblestone ones. Also accessibility is more limited, especially in Italy. If I remember your transit buses don't accommodate wheelchairs?
So instead of assuming these people are just lazy and eat bad food, so use an expensive scooter to get around so much that they lose the ability to walk, you should of thought " wow, are we really behind in Italy, getting our handicapped people the infrastructure they need to get around ".
Someone in an electric scooter here can practically go anywhere using transit, or riding on the sidewalks in Canada.
Well I guess if you look for something you will find it. Your experience is totally different than what Montreal is actually about, and totally different from anything that I have ever experienced in Montreal.
As for the electric scooters, you are assuming a lot. People use them because they do have a limited ability to walk, and it's used like an electric wheelchair, but is built for outdoor use. One reason you may not see them a lot in Europe is because imagine using one on uneven sidewalks or cobblestone ones. Also accessibility is more limited, especially in Italy. If I remember your transit buses don't accommodate wheelchairs?
So instead of assuming these people are just lazy and eat bad food, so use an expensive scooter to get around so much that they lose the ability to walk, you should of thought " wow, are we really behind in Italy, getting our handicapped people the infrastructure they need to get around ".
Someone in an electric scooter here can practically go anywhere using transit, or riding on the sidewalks in Canada.
sorry, I wasn't trying to be offensive, just reporting something I saw and gave my opinion. Sorry that you don't like it but I still think some aspects are true. Or maybe the percentage of walking impaired people in Canada is much higher than here for some reason.
As to buses in Italy, not every bus accomodates wheelchairs, but a certain percentage do. To be fair there are probably vast differences between cities too, buses in the south leave a lot to be desired, when they actually exist. Not to mention the metro in Rome.
Also, not easy to renovate urbanism in cities that are several hundred years old (and more), but every country has its issues I guess.
So instead of assuming these people are just lazy and eat bad food, so use an expensive scooter to get around so much that they lose the ability to walk, you should of thought " wow, are we really behind in Italy, getting our handicapped people the infrastructure they need to get around ".
He does have a point there though. It's not disabled people riding these scooters but mainly obese lazy people who don't or can't walk anymore because of their weight issues. These people are less common in Italy compared to North America because Italians have a much more healthy lifestyle than Canadians and especially Americans. Not because there is no infrastructure for disabled people.
And it's a bit annoying for other shoppers they block the aisles in the Walmart all the time.
I hope I'm not derailing the thread by posting this , but isn't this question based on a false dichotomy ? I mean can the middle class of an EU country like Sweden be put into the same category as the middle class of an EU country like Bulgaria ? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare the middle class of the United States with the middle class of individual EU countries as opposed to the EU middle class as a whole ?
Location: God's Gift to Mankind for flying anything
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Originally Posted by drro
And it's a bit annoying for other shoppers they block the aisles in the Walmart all the time.
The electric wheelchairs offered by Walmart are not any wider than their shopping carts!
My electric wheelchair (I am truly handicapped, and NOT overweight) is actually the same length as a shopping cart and even slightly narrower ... (actually as big as a small hand-operated wheelchair!)
Maybe the old ones (older than let's say 10-15 years) are bigger, but the newer ones are super light and much smaller!
Perhaps if one looks just at income and taxes he could think that but once you check the commutin time, the walkability of cities, the universal heathcare, the public education, the cheapness of biils, transport, phones, the fact we have not to do 2 jobs for a living...after all here middle class is better placed.
Perhaps if one looks just at income and taxes he could think that but once you check the commutin time, the walkability of cities, the universal heathcare, the public education, the cheapness of biils, transport, phones, the fact we have not to do 2 jobs for a living...after all here middle class is better placed.
If you go back to the OP, the comparison was between the poor of the US and the middle class of Europe. Having been recently to the US and having just returned from Europe, I would say there is no way that the US poor are better off than the European middle class. However I suppose it depends on how you define poor. I never cease to get a shock when I see the homeless situation in places like San Francisco but I imagine people are defining poor as wider than that.
This is true. Our debt is out of control paying for entitlements for the underclass. If America was a person they would’ve declared bankruptcy forever.
Is that you Kanye?
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