And if you are poor and United States, just don't be to disorganized to be able to make use of all the government programs to support you.

Sadly, there are a large number of people who cannot do that whether from drugs, trauma, natural inability, etc.

Have you ever actually tried to make use of those programs? You're not going to be living a comfortable happy healthy life on those programs. Relying on them for your survival is a pretty miserable existence.

Same is true for most social programs in Europe

Arguably it's probably worse to be poor in Europe than in the US. The amount of cash assistance a homeless, jobless person gets in France is almost half of the same benefit in the US.

But it's hard to get a 1:1 comparison because the data in Europe on things like homelessness is shockingly poor. Most of the major European cities have strong dispersion/anti-camping laws. Because homelessness is kept more out of sight in Europe, it doesn't draw as much attention.

A very interesting angle, you don't read this often though it seems there is something to it and for some time now I had a quite similar impression. It's almost as if the US are doing specifically better with border cases and "extremes", on both ends that is. For that reason I'm not sure if it holds water if or as long as you're "just poor"; very poor is a different story though. Especially in the case of homelessness it seems to me like at least the big cities (even in not so blue states..) are _way_ more active on that front, also proactive, aggressive in the good sense, and there's lot more opportunity to get assistance or advice. More often than not privately based of course, something in particular we hardly know over here (where it's gonne be the churches, at best). Apropos kept out of sight: true, but that is also changing and noticeably so. Living in a rather smallish town in Germany, just recently I ran across something you might as well expect somewhere in the rundown parts of LA, I've never seen it round here before: a person, mid-aged male, that apparently had "moved into" my bank; which has a lobby that's (well, was^^) kept open overnight for the ATM service and stuff. Even used it as a toilet, obviously. Why? Well again, I just don't think there are too many options. And coming to think of it I could even understand it: 24/7 CCTV, certainly doesn't subtract from your safety (subjective or not), there's light, air-conditioning (we too are having a heat wave), any more wishes? This indeed is Germany, 2023.