The European model wouldn't work for the US

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I mean universal health care, free universal quality public education, unemployments benefits, all of that.

Because we seem to be operating on different modes of thought.

European countries emerged from tribes connected by blood and grew into nations. The tribespeople felt responsible for their young and old and weak and expected to be taken care of if in need.

The US emerged from individuals and individual families fighting it out in the wilderness etc. There was always more responsibility towards one’s nuclear family than towards one’s community, which could easily belong to another race/tribe/blood/etc.

Consequently, for Europeans, the country/wider society is important, while for US people the family unit/individual person is more accountable and responsible.

As a European, I feel personally connected with and responsible for all members of my nation. I don’t mind paying taxes so everyone will have free education and health care. I also got a free education and lots of free medical care when I needed it and never felt guilty about it.

In my society, we feel everyone is somehow ‘related’ to everyone and, e.g. all the kids belong to everyone - which is why we have cheap good quality daycare too.

But it is just not the case in the US, right? People feel responsible for themselves and their immediate families, right?

So I think instead of some people trying to push the Euro model on the US, they need to come up with something that will fit the US mindset, but still help the poor people etc… dunno what… any ideas? :o
 
A fellow European, Churchill, said, “Capitalism has as its chief vice that all do not share equally in its blessings. Socialism has as its chief vice that all share equally in its miseries.”

I do not think the cultural differences you cite are sufficiently substantial to establish the result you predict. Aferall, Americans are simply disaffected Brits, Germans, Italians, Irish, etc…

I do think we have a model and a preference for Capitalism that is not shared in Europe, where modern Socialism and COmmunism were born.
 
we have our natonal mythology of being a country of independent minded, self sufficient trail blazers which, I think, has, on balance, served us (and the rest of the world) well. we also pay more or less lip service to the constitutional notion of a limited federal government, which works against national programs that are more common elsewhere. on the other hand, americans are often and extremely charitable people, so long as is not beaten out of us through taxes.
 
Americans are the most charitable people in the world. This fact alone should end any suggestions that Americans don’t like big government because they don’t care for the poor outside their individual families.

Americans in general don’t like big government because of a basic understanding of an economic principle that has been either explicitly or intuitively taught from generation to generation: government can not and will not be more effective or efficient at providing any service or product than private initiatives for the simple reason that it is not profit and result oriented.
The few exceptional situations where government has a chance at doing a better job than business is when business is not interested in providing a specific service or product, because it is not seen as advantageous, such as police and military defense. Example: being the sole hirer of a private security guard to watch my neighborhood is basically benefiting others without their cooperation.

Let me give a real simple example to explain why profit-orientation always has better results: I work at a small company and I seriously trust that the CEO will not fire me to hire any relative with lower skills than me. Don’t take me wrong, he is a nice person, but that’s not the reason why I am so certain. The reason is that I know that he would be personally losing money if he made a stupid decision like this one.
But with government, bankruptcy is not very likely, you always have the option to lie, blame the other party and then tax more out of the rich. And if you abuse your government power so bad that you bring the entire country down to a big depression, you can always hope that the other, competent people, will fix your mess for you.
 
I think the op was saying that he/she thought that, rather than some Americans looking for solutions in the ways of naughty, naughty, naughty, socialistic, tax-euro squandering, big government loving etc, etc, etc Europeans or other Americans spending time listing the faults of naughty, naughty, naughty, socialistic, tax-euro squandering, big government loving etc, etc, etc Europeans, Americans should look to their own devices and desires.

Seems sensible to me.
 
Kaninchen said:
I think the op was saying that he/she thought that, rather than some Americans looking for solutions in the ways of naughty, naughty, naughty, socialistic, tax-euro squandering, big government loving etc, etc, etc Europeans or other Americans spending time listing the faults of naughty, naughty, naughty, socialistic, tax-euro squandering, big government loving etc, etc, etc Europeans, Americans should look to their own devices and desires.

Seems sensible to me.
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Kaninchen, fancy finding you here. Off posting on another Europe versus American thread again… I thought you didn’t like these discussions…
 
thomfra said:
Kaninchen, fancy finding you here. Off posting on another Europe versus American thread again… I thought you didn’t like these discussions…
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I was merely drawing attention to the op’s argument.
 
Litcrit said:
In my society, we feel everyone is somehow ‘related’ to everyone and, e.g. all the kids belong to everyone - which is why we have cheap good quality daycare too.

But it is just not the case in the US, right? People feel responsible for themselves and their immediate families, right?

So I think instead of some people trying to push the Euro model on the US, they need to come up with something that will fit the US mindset, but still help the poor people etc… dunno what… any ideas? :o
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First,

I think that you’re getting at a very important issue in regard to understanding the relationship between social policy and the cultural/social experience of a society. What works for one culture may be a complete failure in another simply because the underlying social values are incompatible for whatever reason.

I think that you might want to consider what kinds of assumptions you can make about a culture based on how they respond to a particular problem- I think a better starting point might be to examine if and how two cultures understand the same problem.

Europeans, of all people, given their imperialistic heritage, should understand that cross-cultural criticism based on one culture’s failure to adopt the specific practices and policies of another culture is inherently problematic.

Second,
Could you explain your statement that those in your society share a common fraternity and mutual responsibility, while people in the US “feel responsible for themselves and their immediate families.”

Did you mean to say that americans ONLY feel responsible for themselves and their families- to the exclusion of others, such that we don’t care about those outside our immediate family group? I think that this statement is obviously incorrect for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the very large scale of private charities originating in the US, and the large individual charitable activity both at home and abroad by US citizens.

Or were you referring to the general sense of self-reliance and individual liberty held by many people in this country. In this case, I would agree with you. Many Americans are of the opinion that individuals should do everything they can to make their own way- such that many here might agree that there is more dignity in earning something yourself rather than have it handed to you and that it is better to offer someone the opportunity to earn what they need rather than to have it given to them. Of course, many Americans would also agree that those who cannot earn for themselves should certainly be given what they need- but we would probably include “become self-sufficient” as one of their needs right up there with food, shelter, etc.
 
Ok, so forgetting about the OP’s premise and looking at their final question: what other ideas or devices, other than government health care, could fit the US style of doing things?

This article was a short summary of the proposals by some primaries candidates.
usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2007-10-11-mccain-health-care_N.htm

I think basically it should be something that would help the poor with their needs, but still allow them to make a choice on where to go for treatment, including among good quality available private services, enticing competition and lowering prices. Giving them the money or tax credits or whatever is one way.

It goes along with the education issue also. Instead of forcing kids into their closest public school, give away vouchers so the poor also get the choice of putting their kids in whatever school is showing better results, whether public or private.

I also like the idea of the personal medical savings accounts. My husband and I need to take the time to look further into it.
 
I think there are three reasons for the differences.

First, our experience of the Industrial Revolution was different. In Europe, people were forced into cities and were stuck there. In the US, people may have been in the cities, but many of the worked hard to leave. There were more options because there was less crowding.

Secondly, our view of government is different, partly because of our founding: right off the bat we were suspicious of government’s doing too much, having too much control. I think the European view of government is different…

Which leads to my third point: I think that philosophically Europeans have a more utopian view of man, that given the right environment, people will become good. As Catholics, of course, we all know this is not true, but as Americans, we don’t really have that view to the same extent the Europeans do. Unfortunately, more and more we are moving in that direction, tho, and I see that as the evil influence of the French (I’m half-French, so don’t jump all over me). Seriously, have you ever met an American college student who spent a summer in Paris? Ugh, they are so full of themselves and think that they are the only people in the universe who have discovered the so-called Enlightenment. And the French act so superior that these American college students actually fall for it!!! Never noticing the really serious problems in France.

I see Americans who are on the Left as being very European in their outlook, and they are more and more acknowledging their “debt.”
 
I don’t know that the European model works so well for the Europeans, either.

-My French friend sent all her [dual citizenship] kids to US universities: she said the ‘free’ universities there wern’t worth attending and dissapproves of the way the French system sorts kids into ‘laborers or intellectuals’ at a very early age.

-Though divorced from her American husband, she still spends a month here every year or two, having her teeth cleaned [French dentists aren’t big on preventative care] and filled [they’d rather just pull 'em]; getting a mamogram and pap smear [her friends at home can’t believe you can just call and get an appointment for such things].

-She’s a business woman who works solo in the architectural antiques trade-- very successful, could be more so if she kept an office staff so that she could better use her own valuable time. She doesn’t, because empolyees there cost between 70 and 90% more than their takehome pay [that is, if she paid $100 a day to the employee, she’d have to send up to $90 additional dollars to the gov’t for pension, etc.] Plus, 8 weeks of paid vacation, etc. Result: high unemployment and a lack of work ethic, especially among the young.

-Additionally, the Euro welfare state seems responsible for the Euro population collapse. When the government and the benefits it can provide becomes your primary concern, there really isn’t much point in building a good marriage or happy family.

In an odd way, the Europeans are more selfish than Americans, not less: They are very jealous of their benefits, fight tooth and nail to protect them. Far more interested in preserving their ‘slice of the pie’ than baking a bigger one. Less prone to have families, too busy looking out for themselves.

I’ve lifted this paragraph from National Review, an admittedly consevative American publication, but not one prone to making up statistics:
“Around the world, single-payer systems keep costs down by rationing care. A Cato Institute study found that in Norway, health care is funded through general tax revenues (taxes consume 45 percent of GDP). But Norwegians commonly travel abroad to avoid long waits. “Approximately 280,000 Norwegians are estimated to be waiting for care on any given day (out of a population of just 4.6 million).” In Britain, “delays in receiving treatment are often so long that nearly 20 percent of colon cancer patients considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered.” Even in France, whose system gets high marks from international raters, bureaucratic rigidity contributed to the deaths of 15,000 elderly people in the heatwave of 2003.”

I’ll take our broken system over their broken system anyday…
 
If it would help reduce bias suspicion against my other 2 posts, let me just tell you that I am not European and I am not a US citizen either. I am a lawful (and have never been unlawful, by the way) permanent resident in the US from Brazil. 😉
 
I think it might be erroneous to draw such a “bright line” between how Europeans think and how Americans think. If a lot of, say, Brits, didn’t think like a lot of Americans, Margaret Thatcher would never have held office.

I think it’s reasonable to say that about 25% of Americans are every bit as socialistic as European socialists. About that same number are extremely conservative. Everybody else is in between, and the sentiments shift at the margins, with maybe 10% or so more or less in flux all the time.

I will say, though, that compared to Europe, the U.S. is greatly underpopulated, with enormous swaths of the country being very thinly populated. That does tend to affect a person’s sense of his own responsibility for himself. If one lives on the plains of Montana, ten miles from the nearest neighbor, one does not think of himself as self-reliant, he IS self-reliant.
 
“The European model wouldn’t work for the US”

It doesn’t work in Europe either.
 
The economic growth rate in Europe over the long haul is way behind the US, despite the pipe dreams of Krugman and others.

Far more importantly, their birth rate has also collapsed: the future belongs to the breeders, they say, and the Europeans [at least, the ethnicly European who still live there] have at most a tiny part in the future of the world.

They are importing middle easterners and north africans at a terrific rate to provide labor.

Accross the continent, in almost every major city, the most popular name for boys isn’t Bob, Jaque or Hans, its Mohamed.

In more than a few places, the deserted church is being raized to make way for the new village mosque.

Lepanto was only a temporary victory.
 
I think that what’s obviously wrong with the op is the presumption that there could be anything vaguely wrong with the American way of doing anything that would conjure up a need to find any kind of answer whatsoever, never mind in the silly and very, very naughty ways of Europeans - which American contributors to the thread have so generously reiterated . . . . . where, indeed, would we naughty and very, very silly Europeans be without such sage observations?
 
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