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I don’t mean just the salary: in America the safety net is very poor, medical insurance is an issue, transportation and social services aren’t uniform like they
by Annatar 8y ago
I don’t mean just the salary: in America the safety net is very poor, medical insurance is an issue, transportation and social services aren’t uniform like they are in Europe; everything is spotty at best.
- dogma1138 8y agoThe safety net in Europe isn’t that great either as far as poor people go, the best I can say is that it’s better for the middle / lower middle class but the poor are just as poor. Social services in Europe aren’t uniform either they vary greatly between states and between cities and regions within states, food, housing and transportation is much more expensive, the availability of benefits is often overblown with the only caveat being universal health care which isn’t that different for people who cannot afford it in the US if we are all honest at this point and for the middle classes private medical insurance is still the way to go for most member states. Whoever thinks that Europe is some socialist welfare dream state is quite wrong about it. Being poor in Europe is quite bad and I’m not sure it’s actually any better than being poor in the US. And the lack of social mobility for the middle classes as well as the suppression of personal agency as far as financial independence goes might blow back and blow back hard. Europe has a big problem with government income as more than 50% of it comes from taxes which means that any crisis and any issue with the tax base tends to ripple much harder over here and as far as retirement goes then it’s quite likely that most people like myself won’t be able to retire despite paying very high amounts into the retirement fund because the government keeps raising the retirement age and there is no guarantee of that our funds would even be available to us. This is the reason why I’m currently looking for a way to completely privatize my entire retirement savings plan, I work hard I earn very well and I deposit 24% into retirement with zero guarantee of seeing anything beyond the bare minimum when I finally will be allowed to retire which at this point is probjected to be at 75-77. So sorry fuck that I rather take more risk and be able to retire at say 50 than having to work my ass off until I can see my 80s around the corner with no guarantee of getting anything remotely close to what I put in because sharing is caring.