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The US have never invested in social security levels anywhere near the Scandinavian countries. How much spending do you believe is necessary to control crime v

• vidarh 12y ago
  > How much spending do you believe is necessary to control crime via social security/etc? Enough to mostly eradicate poverty. I don't know what the cost of that would be in the US, but as long as you have widespread poverty I don't see a reason to assume you have tested the effect this would have on poverty. At least nothing like Scandinavian levels. The US presently have a poverty rate about 3 times that of Norway (about 15% vs about 4.5%), despite Norway putting the poverty "bar" much higher - in Norway you are officially considered poor if your income is below 50% of the median. In Oslo that currently means about $24k/year. The US official poverty line for a single person in the continental states is $11,670 (which isn't that far from 50% of the median in the US either, but the cost of living in Norway is not twice that of the US), rising to $23,850 for a family of 4. With directly comparable numbers, the difference would be much greater. Then you have to expect to wait at least a generation for reduced poverty to filter through to increased education levels, even assuming you fund the education system well enough that anyone who puts in the work can complete university for free. Then you can start to get an idea whether or not Scandinavian level social security and education would make a difference in the US. > Note that the US currently spends 60% of it's budget on redistribution The problem is that you've created a system that causes so large differences in the first place. 60% to redress that is little more than window dressing. Further, that 60% number is nonsense. A large proportion of that 60% - whichever slices you've added up to get at it - provides benefits for at least parts of those that pay into it in the first place, so the actual amount that is net redistribution is far smaller. > What factors? Most of the obvious ones that I can think of (poverty, government dependence, unemployment) fail for this purpose since blacks do not make up anything close to 50% of people suffering from them. Poverty rate certainly does account for a substantial part of it, with African-Americans being substantially more likely to be poor than non-hispanic whites, at ca. 27.2% and <12% respectively. http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm Tack on education levels, unemployment, family cohesion and you get most of the way there.
  • wyager 12y ago
    >Enough to mostly eradicate poverty. What does that mean? A homeless person today can afford food, often (temporary) shelter, frequently a cell phone... I'd say poverty has effectively been "mostly eradicated" already by production technology.
    • IkmoIkmo 12y ago
      What's your definition of poverty? It's important to be specific in your wording. For example there's absolute poverty (which seems to be what you describe, whether someone has the bare minimum to survive in terms of food, shelter) and relative poverty (which I think everyone can say, there's lots of that.) But even on the first point, I don't think we've really eradicated poverty at all. There are millions of food-challenged people in the US, millions of people without insurance, millions of homeless. To say these people do not live in poverty because not all of them literally die of starvation is extremely myopic in my opinion. And that's in one of the richest and the most powerful country on the planet.
  • yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Until you come up with a consistent definition of poverty, your theory is not even wrong. Recall that a theory is "not even wrong" if it's proponents can't explain a concrete set of steps to falsify it. Now if you take an absolute definition, you need to explain why a lot of countries much poorer than the US (much of Europe) have less crime. Or why Brazil, Mexico and South Africa have far more crime than India. That's a tricky sell. If you want to use a relative definition of poverty (e.g. what Norway does), then you need to postulate that the existence of someone earning more than you do within a national boundary is what causes you to murder people. I.e., the existence of someone with a platinum toilet drives people with gold toilets into a homicidal rage. Poverty rate certainly does account for a substantial part of it, with African-Americans being substantially more likely to be poor than non-hispanic whites, at ca. 27.2% and <12% respectively. Whites make up about 72% of the population, blacks 12%. Assume poverty is the sole cause of homicide, then multiplication suggests 3.25% of America is poor && black while 8.6% is poor && white. In that case, the black murderer:white murderer ratio should be 1:3. It's 1:1. I don't know what you mean by "tack on". Do you have a coherent theory, or are you just hoping?
• Retric 12y ago
  Federal budget is a long way from total government spending. Further the vast majority of that goes to the elderly not the poor. Subsidizing the medical costs for a retired person living on 200k/year is hardly the type of social insurance suggested.
  • yummyfajitas 12y ago
    The link covers all govt spending.
    • Retric 12y ago
      And your link does not support the 60% number for redistribution. For example, you might think pension means SS, but states spend 200B/year on pension bennifits which are simply deferred compensation. When you read medical expenditure you might think Medicare and Medicare but local, state, and federal worker bennifits are limped there as is R&D. Edit: I assumed you got the 60% from the federal numbers aka 24 SS, 22 Medicare Medicare etc, Safety Net 12% = ~58%. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258 http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258