Yes. That is certainly true about healthcare, the US government spends comparable amount of EU governments per capita, the issue is basically with higher costs (and holes uninsured people can fall through).
For example, about urban renewal, currently the Austrian government rarely pays 100% of the cost of an apartment house and I think the US government often does, “projects” etc. The Austrian method is to have non-profit co-ops where tenants are members build them and the government pays 30%, gets to hand out 30% of the apartments on a social basis (wohnservice.at) basically mixing poor and non-poor people, to avoid the formation of ghettoes, although they are not the poorest people because they pay full rent. They don’t pay the starting capital. Because the 70%, normal members-tenants need to cough up about 20% of the value of the apartment, roughly $25K to 50$K in advance. This is what the government buys out for 30% who get it socially/are poor, so actually my calculation was wrong, the government does not even pay 30% of the total cost. But they pay normal rents, which means for a two-bedroom roughly 60% of the unofficial monthly minimum wage. This means they are not the poorest poor actually. At any rate, the leverage here is fairly low spending giving a significant hand up to the non-poorest poor and incentivizing these building projects.
To the extent urban renewal projects actually work (they often don’t), I think they mostly move the problem around. The urban core itself may be revitalized, and the poor then move somewhere cheaper as gentrification sets in. I definitely don’t think it is an effective method for fighting poverty or inequality, but it is popular.
As for welfare, I don’t think misspending is the problem per se. One problem is that healthcare is a lot more expensive in the US due to our convoluted healthcare system. I think the main reason life is much worse for America’s poor than Europe’s poor is that America’s poor are harder to live around.
I would not generalize over all of Europe, I generally would not want to live around the Paris poor while the Vienna poor are way more livable. To put it very, very bluntly, Turkish-Albanian-Serbian poor > North African poor. It is an incredibly insensitive way to put it, but this is simply what my experience boils down to. The former countries got historically more “westernized”/secularized/liberal/whatnot. I regularly train with the former types of guys as I go to a fairly cheap boxing gym. They are okay. A bit rough around the edges, may be a tad aggressive, but culturally compatible. Football > religion types of guys. There are places in/near Paris I would not go in, for the police / ambulance does not really dare to go in either.
That would suggest we are misspending compared to Europe if true.
Yes. That is certainly true about healthcare, the US government spends comparable amount of EU governments per capita, the issue is basically with higher costs (and holes uninsured people can fall through).
For example, about urban renewal, currently the Austrian government rarely pays 100% of the cost of an apartment house and I think the US government often does, “projects” etc. The Austrian method is to have non-profit co-ops where tenants are members build them and the government pays 30%, gets to hand out 30% of the apartments on a social basis (wohnservice.at) basically mixing poor and non-poor people, to avoid the formation of ghettoes, although they are not the poorest people because they pay full rent. They don’t pay the starting capital. Because the 70%, normal members-tenants need to cough up about 20% of the value of the apartment, roughly $25K to 50$K in advance. This is what the government buys out for 30% who get it socially/are poor, so actually my calculation was wrong, the government does not even pay 30% of the total cost. But they pay normal rents, which means for a two-bedroom roughly 60% of the unofficial monthly minimum wage. This means they are not the poorest poor actually. At any rate, the leverage here is fairly low spending giving a significant hand up to the non-poorest poor and incentivizing these building projects.
To the extent urban renewal projects actually work (they often don’t), I think they mostly move the problem around. The urban core itself may be revitalized, and the poor then move somewhere cheaper as gentrification sets in. I definitely don’t think it is an effective method for fighting poverty or inequality, but it is popular.
As for welfare, I don’t think misspending is the problem per se. One problem is that healthcare is a lot more expensive in the US due to our convoluted healthcare system. I think the main reason life is much worse for America’s poor than Europe’s poor is that America’s poor are harder to live around.
I would not generalize over all of Europe, I generally would not want to live around the Paris poor while the Vienna poor are way more livable. To put it very, very bluntly, Turkish-Albanian-Serbian poor > North African poor. It is an incredibly insensitive way to put it, but this is simply what my experience boils down to. The former countries got historically more “westernized”/secularized/liberal/whatnot. I regularly train with the former types of guys as I go to a fairly cheap boxing gym. They are okay. A bit rough around the edges, may be a tad aggressive, but culturally compatible. Football > religion types of guys. There are places in/near Paris I would not go in, for the police / ambulance does not really dare to go in either.