🚀 go-pugleaf

darrow@oneillaw.com (O'Neill) writes:

> We are discussing, from positions of relative ignorance, extremely
> complex questions that have no real answers.  But let's do it anyway!

 There's no point in discussing simple issues with clear answers :-)
 
> On 13 Oct 1998 22:53:21 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge@wegge.dk>
> wrote:
> 
> >darrow@oneillaw.com (O'Neill) writes:
> >
> >> On 12 Oct 1998 08:46:27 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge@wegge.dk>
> >> wrote:
> >> 
> >> >darrow@oneillaw.com (M O'Neill) writes:
> >> >
> >> >> On 11 Oct 1998 11:40:11 -0600, moore.louis@childrens.tchden.org
> >> >> (Louis B. Moore) wrote:
> >> >
> >> > ...
> >> >> Hey fella, I agree with your comments as well.  Be careful with your
> >> >> attributions.  Don't you think it's possible for a free society to
> >> >> meet its humanitarian obligations?  What country takes better care
> >> >> of its poor than the US?  China?  Iraq?  N. Korea (ha haha,starving
> >> >> its people in order to build nuclear weapons)?
> >> >
> >> > Just about every european country, with the *possible* exception of
> >> >Albania.
> >> >
> >> 
> >> I received a similar comment via email.  I think it's debatable, but
> >> it doesn't really matter.  The point is that it's generally the
> >> "capitalistic" countries that provide the best relief for their poor
> >> and the like.
> >
> > In fact, it does matter. I think that the facts prove that totalt
> >absence of capitalism is not significantly worse that total
> >capitalism. There is a golden average somewhere inbetween those
> >extremes. 
> > 
> 
> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, though I have an idea.  I
> guess I'm unsure about what the golden average is supposed to mean.
> I've heard of the golden mean, which if I haven't forgotten everything
> I learned in classics, is a point at about 35 to 40 percent.  But it
> was a literary term and I don't think it was intended to set economic
> policy.

 Golden average is a direct translation of an Danish saying. It's
normally used to express the fact that there are a perfect solution to 
a given problem within a certain range of possibilities, but it's not
clear where that solution is. In this case, the meaning is that
neither 100% capitalism, nor 100% un-capitalism is perfect, but I'm
not really ready to quantify the optimal proportion.

> >> My understand is that the european countries provide a lot of services
> >> that aren't means tested, i.e., health, education, etc.  I don't know
> >
> > "Means tested"? Could you please elaborate a bit on that. The phrase
> >doesn't mean any more to me than "ankestyrelse" does to you.
> >
> 
> "Means tested" means that the one's entitlement to the benefit depends
> on one's economic circumstances.  For examply, health care is provided
> by the state to persons who meet certain poverty criteria.  it is not
> universally provided, as I understand it is in all or most European
> Countries.

 As before, I can really only say what things are like in Denmark. You
are somewhat right in your understanding, only as long as we're
talking consulting wrt. illnesses or injuries, or hospital
treatments. Medical certificates, like the one required to get a
drivers license, has a cost. Medicine is not free either, although
prescribed medicine isn't paid in full.
 
 However, we do have means tested services as well. People without
jobs, who're not elegible for unemployment compensation, are not left
alone in the darkness, but to qualify for support, one has to have no
money worth speaking off. 

> >> whether payments to the poor (i.e., welfare benefits) as such are more
> >> generous than those provided in the US, which benefits of course vary
> >> from state to state.
> >
> > That depends on how you define poor. I have effectively gotten my CS
> >education, while receiving unemployment compensation. Does that make
> >me poor? 
> > 
> 
> Well this is a difficult subject indeed.  In the U.S., unemployment
> benefits are not to alleviate poverty but to provide payments to
> workers who are temporarily unemployed for reasons beyond their
> control.  It is not means tested, therefore the mere fact that one is
> receiving unemployment tells nothing about the economic circumstances
> of that person, only that he is not presently working.

 That's about the same  as we have around here.
 
> I think when we talk about poverty, we really need to look at whether
> a person's basic needs are provided for.  Food, clothing, shelter, and
> medical care.

 Ok, so one is only poor, if the basic needs cannot be fullfilled
without some sort of public compensation? 

> There is also a big difference between the urban poor and the rural
> poor.  This makes comparing the lot of a poor peasant in Bulgaria with
> someone living in an urban ghetto in the U.S. virtually impossible.

 Try comparing rural vs. rural or urban vs. urban. I'm still convinced 
that in any category, mosyt easter european countries will come out on 
top. 

> No one starves in the United States.  This I can say for sure.  Most
> of the other necessities are delivered to the poor as well, in varying
> quantities and with varying degrees of success.  Benefits to the poor
> are not centralized, they depend on the governments of 50 different
> states and within the states many cities have programs as well.  Some
> programs are funded by the federal government.  This patchwork
> approach makes generalizations very difficult to make.

> I have known a great many people who are on welfare.  Most of them
> live what we could consider middle class lifestyles, perhaps lower
> middle class, but middle class nonetheless.  Almost none would
> consider themselves poor.

 Probably not. However, I think that's universally applicable, no
matter where you look. But in general, I think that many refute that
they are poor, if for nothing else, then to keep up their own
illusions. 

> >> Albania is abysmally poor, and I doubt it has any real safety net for
> >> its citizens.  I wonder about other countries in the Balkans as well.
> >> Serbia doesn't seem to be doing much for its ethnic Albanians at the
> >> present apart from trying to kill them.  Maybe they aren't poor, I
> >> don't know.
> >
> > That's still a question of definition. 
> 
> please offer some definitions then.

 I can't. I chickened out, and fell back on relative comparisions:
 
> >I suppose that some Albanians
> >are rich compared to the rest of the country, even if they aren't by
> >western standards. 
> >
> 
> this is always the case.
> 
> >> I think I would rather be poor in the U.S. than in most European
> >> countries.  Perhaps the situation is better in some of the more
> >
> > I wouldn't. Sure, I'm biased, but I still haven't seen people
> >living in the streets around here, even though I live in the seconds 
> >largest city of the country.
> >
> 
> I gather by your email you're in Germany.

 Go away, and do something aggrevating to yourself! .dk is Denmark,
whereas .de is Germany.
 
> In my experience, Europeans have a particular fascination with the
> phenomenon of homelessness here in the U.S.  They see it as
> disgraceful and a badge of shame for what is supposedly the richest
> country on earth.  

 How can it be otherwise? 
 
> The truth is that the homeless are almost without exception mentally
> ill.  They are on the streets because it is constitutionally unlawful
> to commit them to mental institutions against their will unless they
> pose some threat of violence to themselves or others.  These court
> decisions were made about 20 years ago, and as a result many
> institutions literally opened their doors, and people who would
> otherwise be institutionalized are free to fend for themselves.

 You'll have to excuse me, but that sound like a pretty weak excuse in 
my ears. I have no doubt that in some cases, this is the truth, but
not for all. But even if we discount the homeless, voluntary or not,
there are still several cases of sub-standard living conditions, like
apartment complexes with rats running around everywhere. Such cases
would lead to criminal prosecution of the owner in Denmark. 

> I live in New York City, and here we have many shelters for the
> homeless.  But no one can force the homeless to stay in them against
> their will.  This is not a problem of poverty.  It is not a problem of
> jobs.  There are no jobs for the homeless, they are unemployable.
> 
> >> prosperous countries, but I understand that situation is changing as
> >> these countries deal with increasing ethnic minorities.
> >
> > Not really. 
> >
> 
> Hmmm, I wonder.  What about all the incidents of violence toward Turks
> and the like that I have read about.  What is the situation there?

 Something like your habit of terminating precidencies by firearms :-) 
No matter where you look, you'll always find extremists, and
unfortunately not everyone gets stopped (or can be for that matter),
until something bad has happened. 

> >> >> We hardly know what poverty is in this country.  I'm not a right
> >> >> winger, I'm not a republican or anything close to it.  I have real
> >> >> problems with the accumulation of excess wealth, but those are moral
> >> >> problems.  I haven't seen any political system which can deal with
> >> >> those problems.  THey can only be dealt with by an educated public.
> >> >> You can't save people from themselves.  Educate them, and they might
> >> >> be able to make the right decisions though.
> >> >
> >> > Unfortunately not. If that were the case, then the Soviet Union would
> >> >have fared much, much better. The public is what the public is, and is
> >> >impossible to change.
> >> 
> >> The Soviet Union might have fared better if it did not attempt to
> >> impose an artificial economic system and had granted its citizens a
> >> few basic civil liberties.  
> >
> > No. The Soviet Union started out in a transitional phase, where the
> >workers and the peasants supposedly were to receive proper political
> >education. However, far to soon the basic greed took over.
> 
> No doubt, but the country was totally bankrupt as well.

 Financially yes. After all, WVI was pretty expensive for most of the
participants. However, the Soviet Union had tremendous potential,
which could have made the country the worlds richest, if used
properly. The same goes for modern Russia.

-- 
/Wegge