Why can't the US adopt European-Style Social Systems?

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The Church is supposed to be a bastion of intellectual discourse as well as the Mother to over 1,400,000,000 human beings… this forum is a pretty good microcosm of the Church in the English speaking world.
 
Where the money goes is “need to know.” So they can’t tell us.
 
It’s actually public record for the vast majority of it.
 
Actually, it isn’t. Based on recently declassified information from the 1950s, money for various defense projects was hidden in benign, unconnected budget items. And that does not includes things that remain classified or partly revealed but with no “how much did it cost to build that” figures included.
 
Not that hard to find.

"In fact, the Pentagon is exempt from a federal law that requires all federal agencies to complete annual audits.

"In 2000, the GAO found that nearly one third of the accounting entries in the Pentagon’s budget were untraceable.

"In 2009, the GAO said its auditors “have continued to report significant weaknesses in the department’s ability to provide timely, reliable, consistent, and accurate information for management analysis, decision-making, and reporting.”

"The next year, the GAO found that half of the Pentagon’s $366 billion in contract awards were never even completed.

"And in yet another 2010 report, the GAO found that the Pentagon’s effort to install a system to make itself “auditable” were taking on the personality of a new weapons system - over budget and behind schedule. In this case, the GAO said that two-thirds of the systems the Department of Defense is putting in place to make its budget auditable have slipped years in implementation and doubled in cost – to more than $13 billion.

"The GAO also showed why the ability of the Pentagon to audit itself is important. Among the problems:
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The Army can’t be sure that it doesn’t overdraw its personnel expenditures account, which funds soldier pay, enlistment bonuses and other benefits;
The Defense Department still can’t "reliably identify, aggregate and report the full cost of its investment" in weapons systems — currently estimated at more than $1 trillion — and doesn’t have enough information to manage and reduce the billions it spends each year on weapons operations and support costs;
Databases tracking hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Army property are improperly managed.
“The Pentagon does not dispute DeFazio’s claim.”

But, things may change this year. Maybe.

 
JanSobieskiIII said:
And keeping the population healthy and educated is a part of that job. - I disagree
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No education = no workforce = no business = crashed economy = extinction

More and more U.S. employers are raising the alarm that they can’t find enough trained, qualified workers to fill job vacancies.
 
Looking back on the 1960s, it was not that hard to find a good-paying, no or little skills needed job. But you had to have a strong work ethic. As time went on, specialized training schools could help get you into electronics, nursing and later, IT jobs. Sadly, what is the reading level of many who finish High School or when starting College? I watched as our schools turned away from the basics and became experimental labs designed by people with nothing better to do. And there’s always not enough money for schools.

Anyway, I suggest the following:
  1. On the job training. I’ve gotten plenty over the years. It increases my value as an employee and I like to learn, as opposed to “Underachiever and Proud Of It.”
  2. Mentorship. Some people looking for a better paying job sometimes need someone who’s been in their shoes to give them some guidance and encouragement.
  3. Apprenticeships. We’ve had apprentices give our place of business a try to see if it was a good fit for them, to get college credit and real-life work experience.
To some corporations, I say: Quit being greedy. No one in the US is owed a living but quit sending jobs overseas.

And there is a growing mindset among some people that a “get by” job is all they need. No real direction from anybody. Mom and dad don’t matter after “I” turn 18. Fine. Do what you want, but consider the consequences.

Being ambitious, having plans, goals, and a job straight out of High School (sometimes sooner but that High School diploma is required). That was my mindset, and that of my friends.

My boss was once asked what his “secret” was. Reply: A lot of hard work. Then he was asked the same question and gave the same answer. I was there from day one.
 
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edwest211 said:
And there is a growing mindset among some people that a “get by” job is all they need. No real direction from anybody. Mom and dad don’t matter after “I” turn 18. Fine. Do what you want, but consider the consequences.
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Honestly, part of the problem is that most poverty relief stuff in the U.S. tends to take this attitude too. When I looked for help and said “I have a job, but it doesn’t pay enough to make ends meet and I’ll lose too many hours if I try to get another job,” I just got flat-out confusion. I had a job, why was I trying to get help getting a different job? All they had was more of the same type of job.

There’s very much an attitude that if you’re poor, you should be grateful to have any job at all, even if it’s a job you can’t actually afford to live on.
 
There are the working poor, or people who work 7 days a week to make ends meet. In California, housing prices are such that some people are living in their vans or RVs. Growing up, and watching my neighbors and how they lived, my financial expectations were low, aside from essentials. If I wanted more money, I took our snow shovel and went door to door, but I don’t know if that’s even safe anymore, or cut grass in the summer. I was taught to save. Sure, I had a little money for a few things but generally did without as far as non-essentials. My neighbors had something - they were content with what they had. A wood-frame house and little that could fall under the ‘luxury item’ label. The people I knew worked at factories and related businesses. I didn’t have a bat or ball but between the kids I knew, we had enough between us to play a little ball at the local playground, under supervision.

 
The US doesn’t have these programs because, quite simply, they’re not the government’s responsibility. The government has no business (and, in the US, no right) to be so deeply involved in these matters. Our nation was built on the ideal of small government. I wonder if there’s a reason for that?

To suggest that the US needs to adopt these programs is to ignore the vast differences between us and Europe, and disregard the limits of government our country put in place. Sure, healthcare for all sounds nice, but it simply isn’t achievable (save if one wants to take around 60-70% of everyone’s income and not concern themselves with how effective- or ineffective- the system would be).
 
One of the other things I got caught on is that, if you can work something like 30 hours a week or more at some job, you’re defined as “healthy.” Not everyone can do 60 hours a week of shiftwork. I know if you’ve got 2 shift jobs it can often be hard to get any sort of decent sleep schedule; a lot of people I’ve known who do that end up with a lot of things like getting off one job at midnight and having to be at a second at 5 or 6 in the morning. Some people can manage that, but a lot of people can’t. I know when I’ve tried to function like that I end up getting in trouble at work because I can’t focus well enough to do my job accurately.

And that’s not healthy for families either. It’s not good for children to have parents who are constantly absent because they have to work all the time. I do think one part of being a Catholic is that people should not be unreasonably restricted from marrying and having families - adults ought to be able to marry and have children and be part of their children’s lives, not be working such long hours that they barely get to see them.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
they rely on their big buddy the US
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Yup. Many outside the US tend to forget this. We Canadians depend heavily on the US for security and many of us unfortunately return the favour by lecturing Americans on military spending. We also forget that our country is quite dispensable in this partnership.
And let’s not forget the whole NATO 2% thing over the last year.
 
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I showed pie charts that gives you (among other things) the military budget as a percentage of the full government’s budget. That’s the proper way to represent a particular government’s priorities.
I also gave you a comparison with the UK.

You guys are all talking about the US coming to the aid of other countries, but… think of what happens when the US is the one attacking other countries, and everyone else needs to defend themselves.
With a Trump in charge, I can totally see that happening. (my button is bigger than yours… 🤦‍♂️ )
 
I’d get banned if I gave you the full answer, so I’ll give you a half answer.

We are not a homogenous nation, we don’t have a population roughly the size of New York City, we don’t have free military protection umbrella (we provide it).

Also, our poor aren’t especially poor or destitute when compared to many European countries.

Basically, you can point to Nordic countries that are literally nothing like this nation, but when you add in the larger, more ‘diverse’ nations you end up with a different picture.
 
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“Also, our poor aren’t especially poor or destitute”

This to me is especially important. The poor in America are still richer than the majority of people in the world.

http://www.oregonlive.com/hovde/index.ssf/2012/08/income_in_perspective_americas.html

“If your family income is $10,000 a year, you are wealthier than 84 percent of the world. If it’s $50,000 or more a year, you make more than 99 percent of the world.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timwor...an-most-of-the-rest-of-humanity/#1a31622a54ef
 
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