America in Decline: Why Germans Think We're Insane

[one...two...tree 2,762]

As an American expat living in the European Union, I’ve started to see America from a different perspective.

The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less -- right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical -- the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.

The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane.

Der Spiegel has run an interesting feature called "A Superpower in Decline," which attempts to explain to a German audience such odd phenomena as the rise of the Tea Party, without the hedging or attempts at "balance" found in mainstream U.S. media. On the Tea Parties:

Full of Hatred: "The Tea Party, that group of white, older voters who claim that they want their country back, is angry. Fox News host

Glenn Beck, a recovering alcoholic who likens Obama to Adolf Hitler, is angry. Beck doesn't quite know what he wants to be -- maybe a politician, maybe president, maybe a preacher -- and he doesn't know what he wants to do, either, or least he hasn't come up with any specific ideas or plans. But he is full of hatred."The piece continues with the sobering assessment that America’s actual unemployment rate isn’t really 10 percent, but close to 20 percent when we factor in the number of people who have stopped looking for work.

Some social scientists think that making sure large-scale crime or fascism never takes root in Europe again requires a taxpayer investment in a strong social safety net. Can we learn from Europe? Isn't it better to invest in a social safety net than in a large criminal justice system? (In America over 2 million people are incarcerated.)

Jobless Benefits That Never Run Out

Unlike here, in Germany jobless benefits never run out. Not only that -- as part of their social safety net, all job seekers continue to be medically insured, as are their families.

In the German jobless benefit system, when "jobless benefit 1" runs out, "jobless benefit 2," also known as HartzIV, kicks in. That one never gets cut off. The jobless also have contributions made for their pensions. They receive other types of insurance coverage from the state. As you can imagine, the estimated 2 million unemployed Americans who almost had no benefits this Christmas seems a particular horror show to Europeans, made worse by the fact that the U.S. government does not provide any medical insurance to American unemployment recipients. Europeans routinely recoil at that in disbelief and disgust.

In another piece the Spiegel magazine steps away from statistics and tells the story of Pam Brown, who personifies what is coming to be known as the Nouveau American poor. Pam Brown was a former executive assistant on Wall Street, and her shocking decline has become part of the American story:

American society is breaking apart. Millions of people have lost their jobs and fallen into poverty. Among them, for the first time, are many middle-class families. Meet Pam Brown from New York, whose life changed overnight. The crisis caught her unprepared. "It was horrible," Pam Brown remembers. "Overnight I found myself on the wrong side of the fence. It never occurred to me that something like this could happen to me. I got very depressed." Brown sits in a cheap diner on West 14th Street in Manhattan, stirring her $1.35 coffee. That's all she orders -- it's too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. She also needs to save money. Until early 2009, Brown worked as an executive assistant on Wall Street, earning more than $80,000 a year, living in a six-bedroom house with her three sons. Today, she's long-term unemployed and has to make do with a tiny one-bedroom in the Bronx.

It's important to note that no country in the European Union uses food stamps in order to humiliate its disadvantaged citizens in the grocery checkout line. Even worse is the fact that even the humbling food stamp allotment may not provide enough food for America’s jobless families. So it is on a reoccurring basis that some of these families report eating out of garbage cans to the European media.

For Pam Brown, last winter was the worst. One day she ran out of food completely and had to go through trash cans. She fell into a deep depression ... For many, like Brown, the downfall is a Kafkaesque odyssey, a humiliation hard to comprehend. Help is not in sight: their government and their society have abandoned them.

Pam Brown and her children were disturbingly, indeed incomprehensibly, allowed to fall straight to the bottom. The richest country in the world becomes morally bankrupt when someone like Pam Brown and her children have to pick through trash to eat, abandoned with a callous disregard by the American government. People like Brown have found themselves dispossessed due to the robber baron actions of the Wall Street elite.

Hunger in the Land of the Big Mac

A shocking headline from a Swiss newspaper reads (Berner Zeitung) “Hunger in the Land of the Big Mac.” Though the article is in German, the pictures are worth 1,000 words and need no translation. Given the fact that the Swiss virtually eliminated hunger, how do we as Americans think they will view these pictures, to which the American population has apparently been desensitized.

This appears to be a picture of two mothers collecting food boxes from the charity Feed the Children.

Perhaps the only way for us to remember what we really look like in America is to see ourselves through the eyes of others. While it is true that we can all be proud Americans, surely we don't have to be proud of the broken American social safety net. Surely we can do better than that. Can a European-style social safety net rescue the American working and middle classes from GOP and Tea Party warfare?

http://www.alternet.org/world/149324/america_in_decline%3A_why_germans_think_we%27re_insane/

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Maybe Germany has jobless people and we have welfare people? By the millions. Generations of people who have been breeding like rabbits and get supported by the public. Not people experiencing a difficult time, but people who have made it a way of life because the government made it so.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Maybe Germany has jobless people and we have welfare people? By the millions. Generations of people who have been breeding like rabbits and get supported by the public. Not people experiencing a difficult time, but people who have made it a way of life because the government made it so.

I think it's a false assumption that welfare demotivates people to find work. There are unmotivated people and there are motivated people. Chances are, the lesser motivated people tend to go through job insecurity more than the those who are more self-motivated, so the cause originates with the person rather than a condition from welfare, IMO.

Edited December 27, 2010 by 8TBVBN

[spookyturtle 9,466]

I think it's a false assumption that welfare demotivates people to find work. There are unmotivated people and there are motivated people. Chances are, the lesser motivated people tend to go through job insecurity more than the those who are more self-motivated, so the cause originates with the person rather than a condition from welfare, IMO.

Then why do we have such a large number of demotivated people? I'm not talking about the jobless from the poor economy the past few years. What about the ones who spit out kid after kid and keep getting a bigger check? And have a 42" flatscreen and buy groceries with food stamps? And believe that this is their right? Why don't any of the other first world countries have this problem to the degree that the US does?

[Obama 2012 1,714]

I think it's a false assumption that welfare demotivates people to find work. There are unmotivated people and there are motivated people. Chances are, the lesser motivated people tend to go through job insecurity more than the those who are more self-motivated, so the cause originates with the person rather than a condition from welfare, IMO.

It's about comfort more than anything.

Some people get comfortable on that income from unemployment or welfare and other aspire for more. There are those who are just lazy of course and part of that symptom comes from knowing they can always be taken care of. You want to motivate someone, take away their lifeline... If they don't get motivated then, #### 'em.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Then why do we have such a large number of demotivated people? I'm not talking about the jobless from the poor economy the past few years. What about the ones who spit out kid after kid and keep getting a bigger check? And have a 42" flatscreen and buy groceries with food stamps? And believe that this is their right? Why don't any of the other first world countries have this problem to the degree that the US does?

Good question. There was a recent study on academics throughout the world. China leads in Math and Science. There is a strong reinforcement culturally, that excellence in Math and Science will lead to a brighter future. We don't have that kind of reinforcement here. I think it will be hard in this country to reinforce such cultural value in Math and Science as long as we have a large section of this country who are suspicious of academics to begin with.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Maybe Germany has jobless people and we have welfare people? By the millions. Generations of people who have been breeding like rabbits and get supported by the public. Not people experiencing a difficult time, but people who have made it a way of life because the government made it so.

Germany has welfare people displaying behaviors as described. They have immigrants that underachieve in school for generations and are on the public teat - for generations. And people there are angry about these things. But that anger doesn't translate into folks there accepting that fellow human beings be tossed onto the streets and left digging in the trash for food. It's all about human dignity which Germany believes is something worth protecting. Hence, the German Constitution starts with this: "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority."

Edited December 27, 2010 by Mr. Big Dog

[one...two...tree 2,762]

It's about comfort more than anything.

Some people get comfortable on that income from unemployment or welfare and other aspire for more. There are those who are just lazy of course and part of that symptom comes from knowing they can always be taken care of. You want to motivate someone, take away their lifeline... If they don't get motivated then, #### 'em.

That's like saying that if every healthy person had access to junk food, they'd stop eating healthy, but that doesn't happen all the time. People who are inclined to behave a certain way (lack of self-motivation, self-discipline) will tend to behave that way. So even if you cut off any assistance for them, they will continue to lack self-motivation.

How do you motivate someone to where they become self-motivated? That's the sixty-four dollar question. I think it starts with early childhood development.

[mawilson 2,133]

So even if you cut off any assistance for them, they will continue to lack self-motivation.

If you cut off assistance, they will have no choice but to work (or lead a life of crime and end up in prison.)

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Good question. There was a recent study on academics throughout the world. China leads in Math and Science. There is a strong reinforcement culturally, that excellence in Math and Science will lead to a brighter future. We don't have that kind of reinforcement here. I think it will be hard in this country to reinforce such cultural value in Math and Science as long as we have a large section of this country who are suspicious of academics to begin with.

Yeah, there was an interesting piece in the St. Pete Times yesterday - originally from the Atlantic, apparently. Education in the US really sucks. Not a single state even made it into the top 10. Massachusetts came in #17 compared internationally. Mississippi - not surprisingly - came in dead last as far as the US states are concerned but actually edged out Chile, Thailand and Romania. What an accomplishment!

Your Child Left Behind

Edited December 27, 2010 by Mr. Big Dog

[one...two...tree 2,762]

If you cut off assistance, they will have no choice but to work (or lead a life of crime and end up in prison.)

And guess how much we spend on keeping one person incarcerated per year?

[mawilson 2,133]

And guess how much we spend on keeping one person incarcerated per year?

The operating expenses for state prisons is something like $30 billion a year. Way less than cradle-to-grave unemployment benefits and welfare.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The operating expenses for state prisons is something like $30 billion a year. Way less than cradle-to-grave unemployment benefits and welfare.

I doubt it. The added security measures combined with housing, food and health care for inmates has got to cost more than welfare. Also, welfare can be adjusted, based on the need, whereas a prisoner is almost completely dependent on the prison system for sustenance.

[faust-yusov 103]

Some people get comfortable on that income from unemployment or welfare and other aspire for more. There are those who are just lazy of course and part of that symptom comes from knowing they can always be taken care of. You want to motivate someone, take away their lifeline... If they don't get motivated then, #### 'em.

Isn't that the status quo as it stands?

"Benefits can be paid for a maximum of 26 weeks in most States."

http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/uifactsheet.asp

[_Simpson_ 250]

Germany has welfare people displaying behaviors as described. They have immigrants that underachieve in school for generations and are on the public teat - for generations. And people there are angry about these things. But that anger doesn't translate into folks there accepting that fellow human beings be tossed onto the streets and left digging in the trash for food. It's all about human dignity which Germany believes is something worth protecting. Hence, the German Constitution starts with this: "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority."

Are you implying that we as a country dont give a dam about certain members of our society? If so take them tinted glasses off and get to know your fellow Americans. There is a lot of big hearted people out there that give a dam and if you ever fall on hard times you will see that.