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You'll see a lot of empty claims that the US has practically no social safety net. That's plainly false. That it's not as good/effective as eg France, Sweden, D

You'll see a lot of empty claims that the US has practically no social safety net. That's plainly false. That it's not as good/effective as eg France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, etc., that much is true. Poor Americans get free healthcare, around just over 1/4 of all Americans receive free healthcare. ~24% of Americans are receiving Medicaid. The US spends more on its social welfare programs, as a share of GDP, than Canada does, and it matches what Australia and Switzerland are spending. The US is close to the OECD middle and a bit behind the UK (OECD figures below): https://i.imgur.com/5GnDdTp.png https://i.imgur.com/5GnDdTp.png And when it comes to improvements in poverty thanks to our vastly expanded social safety net, you can see that very strikingly represented when you drop out those programs from the calculations (childhood poverty shown below, with and without government aid): https://i.imgur.com/hqTS3Ck.png https://i.imgur.com/hqTS3Ck.png https://i.imgur.com/9aEi2sL.png https://i.imgur.com/9aEi2sL.png The same thing shows up in our homelessness improvement figures from the past 20 years. The housing first program implemented by the Bush Administration and sustained by the Obama Administration - aka a government program - was almost solely responsible for the huge decrease in US homelessness. The US social safety net has expanded rather massively in the past 40 years. Structurally the biggest problem the US has when it comes to its social safety net, is it's all haphazard and often poorly administered. The US isn't very good at running social safety nets, it's chaotic and critical parts of it are managed in very different ways state to state. We're not getting enough bang for our buck on that spending, we need to do better. We're spending a lot of money and the results are often not good enough (which we frequently see with government spending in the US). For example, if the US were spending per capita on our healthcare system what the UK is, we could nearly double - maybe up to 40%-45% - the number of people we're covering with free healthcare at minimal additional cost.

rayiner 6y ago
It’s telling that your well sourced and cited post is getting downvoted.
- altcognito 6y ago
  "well sourced" would be linking to the actual source with the citation, not expecting us to dig out the information. I'm not sure how they got to near 20% of US gdp being spent on social programs. US GDP is 21 trillion, social program spending is under a trillion.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    The images say the source is OECD data. The OECD tracks various indicators like this in a comprehensive database: https://data.oecd.org/ https://data.oecd.org/ Social expenditures are here: http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2016-Social-Expenditure-Update.pdf http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2016-Social-Expenditure-Upda... As defined by the OECD, social program spending includes social security, Medicare, and education (each of which are $700-900 billion expenses).
andi999 6y ago
Third diagramm: how can it be below 0% before 1970?
- refurb 6y ago
  That is confusing, but it’s before and after “benefits and taxes”. So I assume back then some families didn’t qualify for benefits (but were above the poverty line), but after accounting for taxes, they slipped below the poverty line.
refurb 6y ago
This is a very accurate summary of the US social safety net. It’s very large, but some European countries spend more. But it’s also a bit of a bureaucratic mess and not that easy to navigate. Not sure why you’re getting downvoted.
webmaven 6y ago
> The US isn't very good at running social safety nets, it's chaotic and critical parts of it are managed in very different ways state to state. We're not getting enough bang for our buck on that spending, we need to do better. We're spending a lot of money and the results are often not good enough Typically, when someone is complaining about the lack of a social safety net in the US, they mean in terms of services received, rather than money spent. As the above quote shows, you obviously know that because of various insane inefficiencies (often caused or abetted by perverse incentives at the interface between the public and private sectors) the point you're making of how much is spent in terms of % of GDP doesn't actually refute the complaints (about how little is being done for those in need) that you are objecting to. So. We spend a heck of a lot, and we don't have a decent social safety net. It's also worth noting that where social safety net programs are being poorly run by the government, this can sometimes be traced to politically motivated shenanigans and deliberate mismanagement.

rayiner 6y ago

It’s telling that your well sourced and cited post is getting downvoted.

altcognito 6y ago
"well sourced" would be linking to the actual source with the citation, not expecting us to dig out the information. I'm not sure how they got to near 20% of US gdp being spent on social programs. US GDP is 21 trillion, social program spending is under a trillion.
- rayiner 6y ago
  The images say the source is OECD data. The OECD tracks various indicators like this in a comprehensive database: https://data.oecd.org/ https://data.oecd.org/ Social expenditures are here: http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2016-Social-Expenditure-Update.pdf http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2016-Social-Expenditure-Upda... As defined by the OECD, social program spending includes social security, Medicare, and education (each of which are $700-900 billion expenses).

andi999 6y ago

Third diagramm: how can it be below 0% before 1970?

refurb 6y ago
That is confusing, but it’s before and after “benefits and taxes”. So I assume back then some families didn’t qualify for benefits (but were above the poverty line), but after accounting for taxes, they slipped below the poverty line.

refurb 6y ago

This is a very accurate summary of the US social safety net. It’s very large, but some European countries spend more. But it’s also a bit of a bureaucratic mess and not that easy to navigate. Not sure why you’re getting downvoted.

webmaven 6y ago

> The US isn't very good at running social safety nets, it's chaotic and critical parts of it are managed in very different ways state to state. We're not getting enough bang for our buck on that spending, we need to do better. We're spending a lot of money and the results are often not good enough Typically, when someone is complaining about the lack of a social safety net in the US, they mean in terms of services received, rather than money spent. As the above quote shows, you obviously know that because of various insane inefficiencies (often caused or abetted by perverse incentives at the interface between the public and private sectors) the point you're making of how much is spent in terms of % of GDP doesn't actually refute the complaints (about how little is being done for those in need) that you are objecting to. So. We spend a heck of a lot, and we don't have a decent social safety net. It's also worth noting that where social safety net programs are being poorly run by the government, this can sometimes be traced to politically motivated shenanigans and deliberate mismanagement.