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

  • Thread starter Thread starter RCIAGraduate
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
The US has great quality, access and ok affordability. Its health care system is a middle class and upper middle class jobs program, though, and no longer primarily a vehicle to provide health care. This was an unforeseen side effect of educated women entering the workforce and wanting the salaries to match their credentials and of the struggle to replace middle class manufacturing jobs with something else that could keep families middle class. As more and more other industries disappear, men have joined on in much larger numbers and additional new upper middle class jobs are being generated that require less than a full MD or nursing path, but pay six figure salaries or very close to it.

It’s also, again as a side effect, a path to the lowest tier of the middle class for single parents, especially single mothers. The lower-middle of health care jobs generally pays what amounts to a good wage if you’re scrambling after a divorce or as a never-married mother and you don’t have to rack up a huge debt to pick up the necessary 1-3 year credential.

Replacing a doctor who might have once gotten 250k with three people who get 90k is, ultimately more expensive, especially since it’s triple the lavish benefits upper middle earners receive. But it creates three solidly middle class jobs, and puts three families instead of just one into the six figure club once the other parent’s salary is added in.

Mysteriously, nobody complaining about how much America sucks at everything (but yet it needs to let lots more people in, especially if they aren’t educated or trained in rare skills) ever think about the overall structure of the American economy and how desk jobs have to be devised to replace “dirty” jobs given political and social realities.
 
This is an interesting question.

First, I wonder how far we should go in alleviating people’s miseriy, etc.? For example, the issue of education has come up. We require that children go to school, we find out why they are not if they don’t. But what can we do about the children who good off? Should we put them in jail?
(Good off in previous paragraph is supposed to be goofffff off, but this won’t let me correct it, or even let me write the word.)

Should we remove from the hope all children who experience the slightest misery at home? Should we remove all children whose parents are not tiger mom’s? See what I mean? When you have the goal of alleviating misery, you don’t have any boundaries as to where to stop. (CS Lewis’s idea, not mine 😉 )

What about health care? It seems like a lot of the nationalized care in Europe started shortly after WW 2. Could that have been because so many people were suffering physical health problems as a result of the war? ?aybe European nations would not have developed socialized medicine had it not been for the war?

OTOH, there used to be medical care and care for the poor for all at convents and monasteries before the Reformation. The princes then stole the property of the religious for their own use, and the people were left with no help, so they naturally looked to the government for help, since it was the government which had taken the help.

These are difficult questions to answer.
 
Last edited:
Jan, to concede your side. Do you think limited government could lead to a flourishing of civil society and revitalizing our country’s social fabric?

Ideally, a strong and vibrant economy would provide work for all those who can, and help for those who can’t (sorry Luigi, I’m stealing from you). Meanwhile, in lieu of “big government” there would be families, communities, charities and associations like mutual aid societies, and service organizations and of course local and state governments who can meet the needs of our communities and great society?
 
Why would we want to follow Greece, Spain, Italy? Places like Sweden are starting to suffer under the redistributive model.

I believe it was Thatcher who said that the problem with socialism is that, eventually, you run out of other people’s money.

Annie… pretty sure Catholic royalty did some stealing from Christian entities too. Various merchant princes and the Fourth Crusade (St. Sophia was never quite the same after that), Phillip the Fair and the Knights Templar. Government looting isn’t an issue with just one group of people. Also, how do you explain Lutheran Social Services, etc.?

Think of this in terms of socialized medicine: all goods and services are rationed, it’s just a question of how. At least with non-socialized <insert good/service here>, you have some control over whether or not you have access to that good or service, and the quality of that good or service. You can make life decisions that make it more or less likely that you can obtain certain goods/services.

Sorry, but I’d rather see limited goods/services go to productive members of society instead of the drug using hobo on the street corner whose sole contribution to the community is leaving human waste on the sidewalk. Perhaps he could/should be exported to North Korea to help them produce more “night soil.”
 
Seeksadvice said:
Sorry, but I’d rather see limited goods/services go to productive members of society instead of the drug using hobo on the street corner whose sole contribution to the community is leaving human waste on the sidewalk. Perhaps he could/should be exported to North Korea to help them produce more “night soil.”
Click to expand...
What about building models and initiatives which seek to aid those least among us? I’m not saying, I’d support this model perse, but wouldn’t it be a beautiful thing if our social infrastructure was reoriented towards our lowest like the downtrodden and marginalized? Yes, I understand I sound a tad bit idealistic (and unrealistic)?

Yes, there are practical concerns and models like the UK NHS are likely facing pressures which could be learned from, but European models seem to work. Perhaps we can learn from such models?
 
Last edited:
So does the American model. All health care models work in that most people get health care most of the time. The American model isn’t broken, it’s just not a European one. All we can “learn” from the numerous European models is that they are numerous (which never seems to be worth discussing, although it renders a joke the entire idea of America “being like Europe on health care!”) and that they serve small, dense populations in ways that satisfy small, dense populations.
 
But what about issues like racial disparities (yes, I went there and yes Europe has its own gaps but could things single payer provide more equity and support for those in need of all classes and colors?) and health issues like the millions who suffer from mental illness and the family members and friends who suffer with them?

Ok, I’m being dramatic in my rhetoric but what about those who cannot access needed psychiatric care and community supports? Federal community health centers seem to fulfill a gap for some in terms of undeserved and disadvantaged groups but I feel the system could be built up.
 
Last edited:
They say that youth is wasted on the young.

Well, The US is wasted on Americans.
 
It’s worth pointing out that the rate of mental illness among the homeless is extremely high.

I know when I was at my worst, I displayed a lot of behavior that many people would consider “lazy” or “uncooperative.” The truth was, I was suffering from some pretty serious mental illness. It wasn’t a matter that I didn’t want to work or support myself, it was a matter that I couldn’t. I struggled to even take proper steps to get better (a few bad panic attacks can put a serious dent in your ability to get help). Even once I got to where I could get a job, I was expected to work my way up to one that was willing to even hire me full time - which of course meant I wasn’t eligible for health insurance through my employer that would provide for the care I needed to continue working. I did in fact have designer clothes and an iphone, too. 😉

I do think that’s a large part of our problem in this country, perhaps a larger part than the actual systems in place. The dark side of the American Dream is the idea that if someone fails to achieve it, it must be their own fault and they deserve to suffer. If we get the idea that most poor people are poor because they won’t put in the effort to be rich, we don’t see the need to support the poor, whether that be through the government or through charity. You also end up with less people looking for causes of poverty if people assume the primary cause is moral failings.

You hear a lot of that sort of thing with what’s called “invisible disabilities”, for example - people who have major health problems that aren’t immediately obvious. It’s easy to accuse someone of faking it if you can’t see what’s wrong with them, and especially if the disorder has a lot of self-reported symptoms. (An easy example - one of my college friends got a lot of harassment for having her service dog with her, because she’s a pretty young blonde who looks completely healthy most of the time, so people would just assume she was faking to keep a dog with her.)
 
Oh, sure, Catholic rulers weren’t exempt from greed, but they were held back. They didn’t have full-scale closing of the monasteries like England did.

And the Lutheran Social Services, est. 1997, is a good thing, but what was destroyed in Europe was the network, the infrastructure of the social safety net.

It would be as if the feds suddenly closed all the limited-access highways. Kansas might be ok, but the big cities, esp. DC, would be unnavigable.

The monastic aid given was supplied by people who dedicated their entire lives to service; they didn’t go home at 5 o’clock, they didn’t ask for raises in their salaries.
 
RCIAGraduate said:
Instead of pursuing the common good in social spending initiatives or even spending and tax cuts which could redirected resources towards private initiatives like charities and non-profits, it seems like congress has been more interested in feeding the corporate good such as the military industrial complex.
Click to expand...
Yes. Why does the USA need 7000 nuclear bombs? Do Americans want to use them to destroy everyone on earth 50 times? Why do Americans feel the need to have so many nuclear bombs which could kill so many people, actually they could kill everyone on earth fifty times over? And all these weapons of war are so ridiculously expensive. The Vietnam War, the Iraq war, the war in Afghanistan, the war against Libya, Somali war, American intervention in Syria giving weapons to the rebels, the Yemeni civil war,US troops in Haiti, Invasion of Panama, Invasion of Grenada, Lebanese civil war, war in south Zaire, will it ever end? How many thousands of lives were lost in these wars and how much money was spent? Take for example the Vietnamese war. What did the war in Vietnam ever accomplish except the death of so many and the enriching of the weapons manufacturers? Children were firebombed with napalm, they were screaming, running on fire from the napalm bombs of the Americans. There are even photos of such, but no one seems to care about it. In all the Americans dropped eight million tons of bombs over Vietnam from 1965 to 1973. Who profited from this bombing of children in Vietnam? Why not use some of this money spent on wars for charity instead of killing so many innocent children?
 
I think it would be easier to implement on a state by state level than anything federal. The United States is so large in comparison to European nations that any federal healthcare system is always going to be plagued with massive bureaucracy.
 
👍

And counties too! Although it might have its own obstacles, in theory states could do more to address many such issues. It seems to be comparatively easier to instigate local change by getting involved with one’s community or cause rather than lobbying for a national change.

Still, I see so much capacity at the national level. In my mind, it plays out, if only we spent “x” amount on “y” cause, in relative terms its small yet program after program does add up.
 
Annie said:
The monastic aid given was supplied by people who dedicated their entire lives to service; they didn’t go home at 5 o’clock, they didn’t ask for raises in their salaries.
Click to expand...
It was also supplied by tithes that were very much not optional.
 
Short answer, yes. And history backs it up.

19th century America had low taxation, limited government, and the post civil war was the largest leap in economic productivity, standard of living, and technology in history.
 
They also had some pretty horrible factories, massively unfair employment opportunities depending on your ethnic background, and so forth.
 
Why should we want to adopt European-style social systems? If we wanted to do that, we as a people would have stayed in Europe instead of leaving for a new country where we didn’t have to be ruled but could govern ourselves.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top