Parent summarized well why people like me would never want to spend their lives or raise kids in places like US although we like visiting there, not when I can see in (some parts) of Europe how modern society should work as 1 unit, taking care and helping the weak because its simply the right fucking moral thing to do. It is in some aspects Star Trekkish utopia that actually works long term and improves lives of everybody involved.
Yes it costs money, almost nobody here has comparable US wages, but what are those numbers for when 1 serious visit to emergency can financially wipe out poorer families and good luck sending few kids to university, which are both basically no-topics here. Suddenly that million or two in the bank account seem more like necessary minimal backup rather than actually free usable money. And how many US families actually have those numbers sitting around, its rather mortgages left and right.
The amount of constant backstage stress for endless stream of regular blue and also white collar joes this removes is significant but hard to measure in easy-to-present numbers. I tend to call it one very important part of quality of life.
We can't have a functioning society if people who opt out of paying for it demand to benefit from it anyway. If people could get away with that, nobody would pay for the fire department and it wouldn't exist. By caving in this situation, the fire department would have signaled to everyone else that it's ok to not pay.
Maybe the tax that supports the fire department ought to be mandatory? Sure, that is how it works almost everywhere in the US. People who live in places where that is not the case are doing so on purpose, and they would vote against changing it.
Want to live in the middle of nowhere and depend on the government for little or nothing? Go for it, but don't complain when you want the government's help. Want to live in a city with a lot of government services? You can do that too. At least people have a choice.
We clearly can. Why can't you?
Over here, we help first, figure out who owes who later. In America, first you gotta figure out who's paying, then you get help.
In the last decade you failed to offer help to hundreds of thousands of refugees because nobody could figure out who owed who. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_European_migrant_crisis
In the last year you failed to aid Ukraine in their war against Russia, failing to even provide weapons that you’d agreed to provide (but only agreeing after terms had been reached to make sure you got paid something). https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/16/ukraine-slams-germany-for-fa...
In the last month you failed to provide public transportation because you couldn’t agree on wages. https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/italy-national-general-str...
And that’s just on the continent in the last 20 years. If we were to go back to say around 1945 I’m sure we could find a couple more instances of Europeans being not so helpful.
The public transit point is fair, but my understanding is that that is due to the right wing government, which is also the root problem in America.
Not helping someone until you figure out who’s paying is a way of life for Europeans.
As an ex fireman, in a so-called "3rd world" [1] country, we often got involved in fires "beyond our juristriction". Our job was to put fires out, not worry about insurance or legal liability etc. We were never reprimanded for doing so, and there was never a suggestion of anything other than gratitude.
[1] 3rd world was originally the term for non-aligned nations during the cold War. The West was the "first world" (obviously), the USSR was the second world, and the rest was the 3rd world.
Not surprisingly, since a majority of the unaligned countries were in Africa, South America and Asia, 3rd World became a perjoritive term for "undeveloped" or "backward".
If being "backward" means not having the "money rules everything" approach of the USA, then long may we remain backward.
Instead in Americans are extremely rigid about rules and norms. You never just “not worry” about “legal liability.” It’s a country where criminals can sue you if they injure themselves robbing your house. For the most part, this is a good thing. Americans will also never ask you for a bribe, like is typical in the third world country I’m from.
Medicaid is extremely stringent when it comes to income and asset thresholds for nursing homes (and in many states receiving social security can effectively disqualify you from Medicaid, even though Medicaid would be more helpful). So in many cases that public money is only applied once hospitals and nursing home facilities have plundered the estate of the soon-to-be deceased until the debt is paid or there is nothing left. Something as routine as old age will often wipe out any potential generational wealth building in all but the upper class.
I bring this up because I think this actually goes back to the original argument in the US that money does, in fact, rule everything. That's ultimately why Americans don't question their legal frameworks-- that's what guarantees the liabilities and debts and who keeps what in the end, not the other way around.
You see this all over the place. American schools will spend $50,000/year ensuring a child with dyslexia can get individualized educational support. But they won’t give free lunches to kids whose parents could technically afford them but don’t use their money wisely.
Going thru this now with my own elderly parents - I am perfectly OK with medicare ending up owning the equity left in their house, and meager other assets - to recoup money spent on their care - people should support themselves with whatever resources they have available, before taxpayers are asked to pick up the expense.
The thing is that death is a universal experience; Many, if not most of us, will end up needing some form of late-life care. Private insurance companies often won't cover what is ultimately inevitable. It would make sense for more of our public policy to aid in what is so common.
The average nursing home cost is $7k/mo. The average nursing home stay is 1-2 years. That's enough money to bankrupt most US families entirely yet comparatively little in the public budget. We spend _much_ more public money on incarceration every year.
But why shouldn't they be drained of their life savings if they move into a nursing home and need to pay for care? If they have the money - any money - that is only going to be left to their heirs, why shouldn't it be used to pay for their own care?
It is an honest question - why should I inherit money from my parents estate, and the taxpayers pickup the bill for their care? If they died today, and medicare didn't claw back from their estate, there would maybe be 200K that needs to be split 5 ways - why should my siblings and I get this 'windfall' and expect the taxpayers to fund their nursing home?
I honestly don't understand why this isn't fair.
It's not just a question of money, but legal arrangements. Going into a fire isn't a game--it puts the firefighters and their equipment at risk. What does the firefighters' insurance contract look like? If one of the firefighters gets hurt, is their insurance going to cover it when the fire was outside the jurisdiction of that fire department? Insofar as this illustrates a "problem" it's not a "third-world" one, but a distinctly American one. Americans are the most legalistic people in the world, and reflexively accept the consequences of the legal state of affairs. In many other contexts, that's a strength, not a weakness.
> This whole "unincorporated land" execuse is a sad state of affairs. The whole "You're not with us, so it's not our problem" mindset is really why America is so low down on every single ranking in the world, except for military might.
Even Americans aren't so tribal as to hold grudges between towns and adjacent unincorporated land. The significance of the house being on unincorporated land is that it demarcates the legal boundaries of the fire department's jurisdiction. A public body acting outside its jurisdiction can have all sorts of consequences.