Memo to the authors:
- No one who actually retailed cocaine, etc. to Wall Street's overpaid minions would be sleeping in a homeless shelter. That's a high-end specialty business, more like being a personal trainer than a street thug
- Homelessness, as in people sleeping on the street, is not correlated with foreclosures. Even homelessness, as in people staying on relative's couches, isn't very well correlated with foreclosures. People who end up without somewhere permanent to stay generally have much bigger problems than a sheriff's notice
- The number of Americans receiving food stamps has risen by about 20% since last year. That is a lot of people, and not a number that should make anyone happy. But it hardly heralds the return of "mass poverty"
- Likewise, the number of uninsured Americans has risen modestly. This is not the same as millions standing on breadlines
- It is not true that "Anyone who forgets to lock his car at night" in Georgetown "can expect to see unwanted guests sleeping in it by the next morning. It is not even true that anyone who forgets to lock his car at night can expect to find the radio stolen, although that is a much larger risk--one with which Germans are not altogether unfamiliar, as I recall. I haven't even heard one anecdotal case of this happening, much less a citywide epidemic. Anyone who tried sleeping in someone else's car in my considerably less posh neighborhood is very likely to have the police stop and point out that this is not technically legal.
- While it is probably true that "Nowadays, politicians spend as much time visiting homeless shelters as they once spent at Silicon Valley startups", this was also true two years ago, five years ago, or whatever time period you'd care to name. American politicians, unsurprisingly, like to give the public photographic evidence that they care about the poor.
This is the definition of schadenfreude. Germans and other Europeans love reading about the travails of the United States. It helps quell those nagging doubts about the superiority of their chosen economic system. Yes, they may make less money, enjoy fewer material possessions, live in smaller houses and have typically higher unemployment but at least they are civilized without legions of homeless and the medically uninsured roaming their streets.
Anyone interested in reading more on this topic should check out "Cowboy Capitalism":
http://www.amazon.com/Cowboy-Capitalism-European-American-Reality/dp/1930865627
Yes, schadenfreude. A German word, after all...
This kind of reminds me of the times when the financial crisis finally hit Europe (there was a brief lag), and American journalists barely disguised their joy. Ah ah, take that, you're just as screwed as we are!
Provincialism, in-group bias and need for validation is a very human characteristic, and journalists are far from immune to it.
Listen, there are big differences between European and American economies, but let's not get crazy here. It's the same economic system. The socialism vs. capitalism thing going around is a result of bad press and an Us vs Them mentality. Both are mixed economies. The government does intervene a lot more in Europe, but the difference is in degree.
If you're an European looking for validation, no need for books or crisis to "quell those nagging doubts". Statistics in good times are perfectly sufficient. Europeans are healthier, more educated, happier (granted that intercountry measures of happiness are fishy), have less poverty, don't incarcerate 1% of their own citizens, have higher equality and enjoy longer vacations.
And I don't resist to point out that you're the one reading books by an obscure German right-wing reporter whose achievement in life was pretty much writing that book. A mirror book to "Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century". These authors found the golden goose in readers who suffer from the twin problems of over-identification and high need for validation. Who cares? Most people on both sides of the Atlantic obviously had an education that promoted values that makes them prefer their own particular government role in the economy. Besides, China, India and Brazil are the ones who'll run the show anyway...
Don't get me wrong, there is no shortage of stuff for Europeans to admire (and envy) in Americans. But you're way off. You can keep your noveau riche mcmansions.
Just of the top of my head: try jazz. Stanley Kubrick. The 1st Amendment. New York City. A big, beautiful country not tainted by 3000 years of construction and war.
Oh yes, and a resistance to a certain kind of bullshit in the American spirit. The virus of post-modernism has infected relatively few departments in your universities.
Ouch - that was painful. Unbelievable that it says that "poverty as a mass phenomenon is back" and then gives a series of absolute numbers (the relatively unchanged numbers of uninsured, etc.) before giving its only number with a time series attached by noting the recent rise in foreclosures. Good gracious.
Not the worst of the genre I've read - and the other half of the genre is certainly the American articles that pretend that everything is sclerotic in Europe when times are good here because our system has so much freedom! - but you're Der Spiegel, we expect so much better!
Many of the policies the Germans seem so fond of seem to benifit the middle and upper middle class the most. Admittedly, it sucks to be poor in Germany but perhapse it sucks slightly less than in the US.
However, it's much better to be upper middle class. If you're a partner in a Munich law firm, a finance director in Franfurt, or a marketing VP in Berlin life is grand indeed. You get 6 - 9 weeks of vacation a year, much greater job security, low cost child care, and you can pay for tutors to make sure you kids do well enough to get into one of Germany's free universities.
The system, or at least what I know about it, seems structured to aid the middle and upper middle class much more than it's designed to help the poor.
Megan, you can make fun of the tone of this article, but your arguments rebutting it are lacking.
You should google "increases in homelessness + foreclosure." Because you'll find there is an increase, particularly for families with children. Now these families may not be sleeping on the street, but that doesn't mean there's no increase in families without homes. I've seen more than a few motels with obvious signs that a family is living in a room there, recently. Is that a home?
A 20% increase in food stamps does indicate a substantial increase in poverty; and you can be certain that the numbers of folks living in poverty are much larger, for many won't ever apply for food stamps. What is certain is that food pantries across the nation cannot keep up with the demand right now.
Looking at the numbers of uninsured as a poverty indicator are meaningless without considering the number of underinsured.
The last two points I'll set slide; I don't live in Georgetown and I don't pay attention to politicians' schedules. But I did once work in information processing for a state welfare dept, responsible for emergency assistance systems, and based on that, all the points you ridicule do indicate a rise in poverty and homelessness for families in this country.
I didn't say that poverty and homelessness--defined as more people living with relatives, etc.--hadn't risen. Obviously, when the economy is bad, more people suffer economic hardship. I said that it was not true that the recession had resulted in a massive exodus of the middle class out of the suburbs and into homeless shelters, fleabag motels, their cars, etc. The one family chronicled in the story is a large family with a single low-wage, at best semi-skilled earner--a working class, marginal family that was high-risk five years ago. And a 20% increase in food stamps obviously signals more economic hardship, but it does not herald some sort of mass descent into desperate poverty--indeed, it signals that the government is giving assistance to people who need money, which is also what happens in Germany, where the unemployment rate is higher than ours.
Megan said
Well, yes you did. You said this:
If people lose their homes, they have to go somewhere. At least some of these people are going to be out in the streets. Foreclosures rise, homelessness rises. Sounds like a positeve correlation. Unemployment, of course, may very well strengthen a previously low correlation.
But if people in the streets aren't increasing, what is this? More importantly, when you casually assert something as counterintuitive as "homelessness is not correlated with foreclosures", would you please point to a source?
Of course assistance is good. But food stamps are, nonetheless, a symptom. And the observation of higher unemployment is very misleading. The unemployment in Germany is always higher than in the U.S. But you can bet that the lower classes in Germany are not going through this kind of hardship. Welfare, you know? If fact, many American critics have pointed out that the relative generosity of unemployment benefits in Germany may disincentivize search for work. Which is a perfectly valid criticism. The upside is, well, there's much less misery and suffering in times of crisis.
As to the larger point that the article provides an exaggerated picture of U.S. difficulties, sure. But the best American newspapers do exactly the same when covering European countries. I have found some remarkable inaccuracies in the New York Times.
I think this is partly a case of foreigners perception. When I arrived to NYC 2 years ago, I couldn't believe the amount of beggars and homeless people in the subway and in some of the poorest parts of Manhattan (like Harlem). After some time losing 10 dollars a day, you get used to it and learn to ignore them. Which may not be exactly a good thing.
Poor families living in motels is hardly a new phenomena - Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, written at least 6 years ago, talked about it. The reason has less to do with the overall economy and more to do with the fact that the poor often don't have things like decent credit and security deposits to rent traditional apartments.
While people who are living in a hotel or with relatives is unfortunate, if they have a place to sleep at night, I have trouble seeing why this should be a high priority, and a significant difference between them and someone who is actually homeless. Nor do I think someone who "loses" the home they bought with no money down and a negative amortization mortgage really lost anything, since they never owned it in the first place.
Well, they did lose a roof over their head, financial realities aside. And that's not nothing...
I found it interesting that the article claims their hotel room is 100 square feet. 1) That's an rather convenient round number, and 2) I've never seen a hotel room that small. Finally, for $870 a month you can get a 800 sq ft apartment as long as you're willing to live in some of the seedier neighborhoods.
I have, not including the restroom, albeit that was a privately owned and operated motel and it was older. Incidentally, 100 square feet is also the minimum code requirement for a bedroom in residential construction (10'x10' or 9'x11' typically), and it will fit a standard double bed and a basic set of bedroom furniture. Not much else, though.
I have. In Germany.
"I don't mean to trivialize the very real increase in suffering, concentrated among those who were already struggling, that this recession has wrought."
Is this a reference to those formerly overworked investment banking analysts who have been getting laid off?
I'd say it's more a general problem with what thinks of 99% of the media of any country, including our own, when they, unfortunately for them if they value one's good opinion as to the value of their work, inadvertently wander onto a topic that one knows about. One shouldn't forget what one thought of them in such an instance when they're writing about a topic that one doesn't know all that much about either.
I think I agree with what you're saying, but I'm having extreme difficulty wading through your largely unintelligible first sentence. Also, your use of the third person pronoun is excessive.
I think it parses as "Journalists sound smart until you actually have knowledge in a field to compare their stories to, in which case they sound way less smart". Complex wording, but that seems the idea.
So now we know what the world would be like if The Onion got seasonal affective disorder. A pity those two journalists managed to do that much research and still learn nothing about the subject or its context.
it hardly heralds the return of "mass poverty"
Depends on how you define "poverty", doesn't it? Poverty is one of those words that is completely relative. You can have as many or as few poor as you wish by looking at economic and demographic data first and defining according to your desired result.
Poverty is relative as a practical matter, but for my purposes here, I should have said "definitional".
Heh, I wonder what percentage of Europeans are in "poverty" by U.S. standards. I bet it's at least twice as high as in the U.S.
And the cartoon picture of destitute, formerly middle class Americans making a forced migration to living in their SUVs or fleabag motels is ridiculous.
Well, okay, but the stories about the cowboys and indians out in the Wild West are true, right? I love those stories.
Just some questions I have:
(1) What is Spiegel? Is this a legitimate publication?
(2) I realize we have a lot of people over here who like to rail against the socialism in western europe and despair over how crushing it is for Western Europe's economy and oppresses its people, but do we have a lot of newspapers over here that take part and pretend it's real journalism?
(3) The tone of the article makes it sound like the authors actually visited the U.S., or at least wanted the reader to think they had. But if they did visit the U.S., would they have to be deliberately misleading their readers to write this? Or is it reasonable to think that their perception could be be so warped by their ideological lens that they believe what they wrote?
Just curious.
What is Spiegel? Is this a legitimate publication?
Yes. It is the German equivalent of Time or Newsweek, but is said to have articles with the level of detail of Atlantic Monthly. Wikipedia says circulation is about 1 million, Time and Newsweek are about 3.3 million.
They had a great catalog for a while. :-)
Now the real question - how many of those 3.3 million are dentist offices?
Your tone is just way off, or you might just be delirious today. I guess I just would like to know the sources for your blanket statements. I've added some advice of my own that may help you gain perspective.
About the cocaine trade on Wall St.: Are you speaking from personal experience? Or that of your friends? Ever know anyone that NEEDS the drug and has to get it NOW, no matter how and from whom. Try a few meetings at Narcotics Anonymous as a backgrounder.
About the correlation between homelessness and foreclosures: Can you imagine that people loose their credit first, then their homes and perhaps can no longer find someone willing to rent to them?
Obviously you haven't had the experience and lack any empathy for it.
On the return of "mass poverty": I guess it all matters what you define as 'mass poverty'. In central Europe it means when a significant portion of your population can't feed itself and has to rely on 'charity handouts', with no gurantee that they are available from one day to the other. Try helping at a soup kitchen for a few weeks to see what it makes people feel like, what it does to their dignity.
On the rise of uninsured Americans: Ever meet anyone who was too ashamed to go see a doctor because she couldn't pay for it and let skin cancer on her face grow until it metastasized. I have: A friend of mine from the US visited me in France last year and I felt deep shame for what we let our fellow citizens suffer through no fault of their own.
Try explaining the emotions that go with that experience to people in countries where health care is perceived as a right, and has been for going on 50+ years. I understand why someone might have reporting it accurately, since it is simply so unimaginable in most of the civilized world.
Finally I would just like to add my own experience: we sometimes just loose a sense of reality when we are faced with the same human suffering day in, day out of our lives. When I used to live in San Francisco, I had to somehow develop the ability to not see those homeless people wandering outside the white-tablecloth-restaurant where I had lunch. They were there, in your face all the time. I just managed to not see them anymore - something most American learn to do in order to manage living in a society where there is so much blatant visible suffering. Americans learn to live with 100,000+ gun incidents a year. Americans learn to live with the fear of perhaps themselves ending up on the street some day.
But that doesn't mean it is any prettier to someone who visits the US from the outside. And I don't doubt that the people writing the article know the US very well, from multiple visits. When me and my partner moved to Europe 5 years ago, we spent quite sometime traveling before settling down in France. Homelessness exists, but on a different scale and with a different flavor. When going back to the States to visit the contrasts are startling every time. It's just that we, as opposed to foreigners, know what streets not to drive down, what parts of town not to drive into.
So you might not like what your colleagues from 'The Spiegel' write, you might not agree with their interpretations and conclusions, but please don't close your eyes to the realities they describe. It seems you need to spend some time in the 'other' America for a change. Perhaps you and your boss can come up with a 3 month sabbatical so you can gain some new insights that inform your writing.
On the cocaine: not personal experience taking the drug. But I've worked around Wall Streeters, and count enough of them as personal friends, to know whereof I speak.
On the correlation between homelessness and foreclosures: "homeless" families in the United States do not sleep on the streets. They stay on relative's couches, in cheap motels, or in temporary government shelter. THe people on the streets have a cluster of problems, but the majority of them have the kind of deep mental illness or substance abuse problem that prevents family formation. They were certainly not able to buy a home two years ago. I've worked for an agency that provided transitional assistance to needy families, as you clearly have not. These families were not people who had a single bad turn of luck, like an overpriced mortgage or a job loss; they were people who had been living on the edge for years, and finally pushed over.
On American v. European poverty: You're comparing European poverty after government assistance to American poverty before it. If you call food stamps and like assistance a "handout", a higher percentage of Germans are living on handouts than Americans. Are they facing "mass poverty"?
If you have skin cancer and you don't see a doctor, then when you die it's not "through no fault of your own." There are free clinics, Medicaid, etc.
Ever wonder why San Fran has these homeless people wandering around? It's because they don't have vagrancy laws.
Sleeping bags are scattered on the floor in the abandoned office building in Paris. Other bags filled with clothes and other belongings are strewn around. On the door, a sign reads, "back office."
This is where Hafida Sadek lives with her two children. As a maid, she earns 680 euros per month. That isn't much in Paris. A 10-square-meter apartment in the French capital costs about 500 euros.
"I have been trying for 10 years to get a subsidized apartment but they keep telling me there aren't any available," Sadek said.
It is people like Sadek -- an estimated 100,000 of them in France -- that an organization called the Children of Don Quixote is fighting for.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development the homeless population in the US is 124,000. With a population 1/5 that of the US it would seem their rate of homelessness is 5x worse than the US.
But, I guess you just see what you want to see...
And you just quote what you want to quote... I get your point. But I doubt you've lived in France for over 5 years, or in Germany for 10 years, or visited Europe as widely as I have. The US is notorious for underreporting a number of stats on poverty. Just walk the streets of most American inner cities and then try the same thing in Europe. It is not that there aren't any problems in Europe, it is the degree of the problems that is different.
You must be referring to the fact that the worst US social problems tend to concentrate in some portion of the inner city areas while the suburban regions gentrify, whereas in many European cities the opposite is true.
It's a difference in organization to be sure, but I am not aware that it qualifies as a difference in type or scale.
jmo3, you can't compare those 2 statistcs.
The 124,000 are the number of long-term homeless population. I couldn't find an estimate for France.
The 100,000 are the number of French that went at least once to a soup kitchen or an accommodation service in a week. Many of these are temporary homeless. The number of people (from Wikipedia) who have been homeless in the U.S. according to this definition is 850,000 people. So, when normalizing population, there's about 70% more homeless in the United States. William Will's intuition is correct.
"On the rise of uninsured Americans: Ever meet anyone who was too ashamed to go see a doctor because she couldn't pay for it and let skin cancer on her face grow until it metastasized. I have: A friend of mine from the US visited me in France last year and I felt deep shame for what we let our fellow citizens suffer through no fault of their own."
I may be misreading you here, but your heartless-American-medical-system anecdote seems to indicate that you have a friend who had potential skin cancer on her face but was too ashamed of seeing a doctor, ostensibly because she couldn't pay, to do anything about it until it metastasized.
And you became aware of the gravity of the situation when she visited you in France. Call me crazy, but if you are too poor to see a doctor, you should be too poor to visit Europe. Contrariwise, if you have the money to visit Europe, you have the money to see a doctor.
All of which, of course, is to ignore the medical safety net such as it exists in the US, as TallDave described (Medicaid, Free Clinics, etc.).
Someone who feels they cannot afford medical insurance or doctor's fees but can afford trips to Europe to see friends is someone who is not prioritizing their life appropriately. When tragedy strikes such people -- as it inevitably does -- it's tempting to think of ways we could have saved them from themselves but in reality, they would have merely found some other way to harm themselves through gross irresponsibility.
You read things between the lines you want to read. You could have read: The trip was paid for by me (in frequent flier miles) and the person was taking a break to get away from things and try to figure out a solution to an impossible situation.
Instead you go down the route of 'this is an irresposible person not taking care of themselves'. Is that a stereotype of yours?
By the way, she has been in treatment at a University Medical Center, to the tune of probably upwards of $100,000 in cost, as you point out correctly, covered by the county health system. Unfortunately you too show no empathy for those who fall through the cracks, but you do end up paying for it. guess you prefer it that way.
"Unfortunately you too show no empathy for those who fall through the cracks, but you do end up paying for it. guess you prefer it that way."
Will showing empathy somehow make the medical bill go away? Will my caring somehow make medicine wall out of the sky?
1. How did she end up "falling through the craks?"
2. "but you do end up paying for it. guess you prefer it that way." What other way is there?
Or are you advocating a Massachusettes like system in which all those that can afford to buy insurance are compelled to do so? A plan I support by the way.
And how many anecdotes would you like me to tell about "insured" Canadians suffering and dying as they wait years for routine surgery and tests. Good, hard working people who paid their exorbitant taxes and medical premiums, and were then left to get addicted to pain pills because, after paying once for their "free" and "universal" system they lacked the means to pay again to have the procedure done in the US?
Anyway, as Europe ages, its welfare state becomes more unsustainable and its imported, racially-segregated underclass becomes more restive, expect to see a lot more of these "American" problems cropping up in Europe.
As Leonard Cohen rasped "It's coming to America first. The home of the best and of the worst."
This is pretty typical of European coverage of America. Most of Europe is relatively poor by our standards (the poorest U.S. state has a higher PPP GDP per capita than all but a handful of European countries) so their audience tends to like to hear how terrible things are here, and of course the pro-socialist press love to push that line too.
The weirdness of this really came home when France had that heat wave and thousands of people were dying. Even in places where it snows evey year, most Americans have access to central air (and many municpalities set up "cooling centers" for those who don't), so this seemed rather bizarre to us.
Hmm, I don't know where you get your numbers from. According to the GDP per capita stats at Wikipedia (link) the US ranks at position 10, 15 or 17, depending on which data you use with most of the countries with higher GDP in Europe. And even if France or Germany are not higher in one of these rankings they are within a few positions of the US, with differences of only a few thousand dollars. All are in the range of the low $40/K per year. So I disagreee, most of Europe is just as well off as the US, and perhaps better so. Naturally if you include all of the former Soviet Block countires the average goes down into the mid 30K range.
The reason France and other Central European countries were hit by the heat wave, was because it was an anomaly in the evolving weather patterns. The total deaths in France for that heat wave in 2003 were about 14,000+ and there was a lot of public debate about the reasons and how to prevent a similar situation in the future.
I guess we all have our Katrina's in the age of global warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
USA is #6.
Top 5:
1. Qatar
2. Luxembourg
3. Norway
4. Singapore
5. Brunei
The US is about $10,000 higher than Germany and France.
Sorry, the link I used didn't seem to come through. I used the GDP nominal/capita rankings. You show the PPP/capita ranking. Just follow the general Wikipedia GDP page and you can get all the stats you want.
Can you "get all the stats you want"? Sure, but in each situation there is correct statistic to use, and a host of wrong ones. If you're trying to measure standard of living the correct GDP measurement is purchasing power parity, which measures how much stuff people can actually buy with their money. Nominal per capita GDP is the wrong measurement to use.
Peter, I agree. My mistake above. Although even PPP doesn't account correctly for things like healthcare costs. That's why I used some of my own perceptions to argue the point. What one values as important is different from one country to the other.
This again? Sigh...
Income is a function of productivity per worker, which is a function of the number of hours worked. European workers work less hours per week and take longer vacations. This can be seen as Europeans giving a relatively greater value to leisure or other unaccounted activities. Leisure has obvious value but is not captured in GDP per capita.
One more adequate comparison is productivity per hour worked. The U.S. is in 2nd on this list, just behind Norway, but France and Germany are pretty close to these numbers.
Why is the U.S. more productive? Some say this is due to innovation spurred by new technologies. Krugman and Dean Baker have doubts as to whether some part of this productivity is an illusion caused by the expansion of the financial sector.
So I disagreee, most of Europe is just as well off as the US, and perhaps better so.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html
There are a few small outliers like Luxembourg and Norway, but overall even Western Europeans are considerably worse off. Germany is around 30% lower, France is even lower.
Leisure has obvious value but is not captured in GDP per capita.
Leisure also has an opportunity cost. If you work less, you're poorer.
Right, it has an opportunity cost. You "choose" the amount of work hours from which you derive the most utility. So, you get utility from money, which is included in measures like GDP per capita and productivity per worker; and you get utility from leisure, that escapes these measures.
Productivity per hour worked is a much better measure because it avoids the problems of leisure preference.
The reason France and other Central European countries were hit by the heat wave, was because it was an anomaly in the evolving weather patterns.
Utter nonsense. It gets hot in France every year.
I guess we all have our Katrina's in the age of global warming.
You do know hurricane activity is near record lows? Alsohe satellite record suggests that "global warming" is around half a degree per century, so it's hard to blame much of anything on it.
I suppose it only makes sense that the anti-empirical socialism should be supported by anti-empirical environmental scares. But the fact is socialist countries are poorer.
"Most of Europe is relatively poor by our standards (the poorest U.S. state has a higher PPP GDP per capita than all but a handful of European countries)"
Perhaps you would like to go work for Der Spiegel? I understand that they have an outstanding department for the selective misuse of statistics.
See link above. There's nothing misleading about PPP GDP per capita.
Yes, thank you, I saw the link and am also familiar with the statistic.
In calling it a deceptive misuse, I was referring to your using that statistic in a manner very similar to how Der Spiegel used its statistics about America's poverty rate, uninsured, etc. Specifically, you asserted a proposition that we would all agree would be negative (most of Europe being relatively poor by our standards), and then defined it through a very specific set of criteria (a comparison of their national per capita GDP at PPP to the per capita GDP of our poorest state - not median income, not in comparison to the poverty level, but in comparison to the per capita GDP of our poorest state...)
Perhaps that's the first definition of relatively poor by our standards that came to your mind. As it exactly matched the criteria of a much touted press release put out by a free market think tank a couple of years back, I assumed that you had read it there and were parroting it here. If this is wrong, I apologize.
In any case, statistically speaking I do regard it as at least a little bit deceptive. I fail to see the difference between declaring most Europeans relatively poor and, well, what Der Spiegel did. One can quite easily imagine a German reading your post and remarking about us that "they are just miserable and 'their audience tends to like to hear how terrible things are here.'" (quoting you).
We are both very prosperous countries who have made different decisions about how to structure our lives and distribute our resources. I think that we're better off if we are content with those choices and don't try to convince ourselves that those who made different choices are not doing as well as us.
But, that's just my philosophy. There are also statistical reasons I think it's a deceptive stat (not inaccurate, just selectively deceptive in the same way Der Spiegel's mostly accurate statistics about the uninsured, homeless, etc. were):
Reason 1) "Achieving real gains in household income can be very difficult. Since 1980, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has increased 67%, while median household income has only increased by 15%."
In other words, a relationship between GDP and a country's prosperity exists but is tenuous. We spend a truckload on military spending, the war on drugs, and prisons. The Netherlands doesn't. Maybe it's the right choice, but they're richer for it. It also says nothing about GDP distribution, obviously a major component of most people's definition of relative poverty.
What's the other option besides GDP? How about PPP adjusted household income - the amount that households actually have to spend on themselves? Nope:
2) "Common misunderstandings
It is also erroneous to use PPP-adjusted household income as the sole metric to compare actual household relative prosperity/buying power across countries. That's because different governments subsidize different services. ... So the effective buying power, even of $1 of PPP-adjusted income, is very different. As an example, if both a American household and a Canadian household make $10,000 in PPP-adjusted household income, the median Canadian household is actually better off based on median spending on healthcare in the U.S."
This one seems to speak for itself, and it seems to push us back to GDP, the statistic you cited which we've already seen is imperfect.
Why can't these measurement difficulties ultimately be overcome except on a rough level? Because these statistics generally reflect genuine differences in preferences with regards to lifestyle and public policy which PPP and GDP distribution can only very imperfectly even out.
As easy examples, suppose you're a French guy and you want to live in a country with a truly world-class military - I know that's something I like about living in the States, wouldn't it be great to have that in Paris? Sorry, not possible and not purchasable at any price in France. On the other hand, suppose you're an American and want to take a high speed train for a business trip. Whoops - also not possible and not purchasable, gotta move to France for that.
Those are easy examples, but you get the idea - real differences in quality of life, usually reflective of preferences and choices, exist between countries. Summing everything up and dividing it by a PPP number obviously does not capture this picture.
Of course, the U.S. is, on average, richer than Europe by GDP measurements, and this bears some relationship with individual wealth. Does this mean that I would describe Europe as relatively impoverished by our standards though? No. Why? Because we can both be rich, we can just make different choices about how rich we want to be.
What's my support for this? Well, even very successful people get more vacation time in Europe and have far more opportunities to work part-time than do their counterparts in the States. I think it's safe to assume that this is not because Goldman and McKinsey have always found it necessary to furlough their employees in Milan and Amsterdam.
More to the point, statistically, as I'm sure you're aware, Europe's comparative GDP statistics, the ones you trot out so conclusively, compare quite favorably once you break them down for amount of time worked. The Netherlands, Belgium, and France, for instance, are all more productive than we are on a per hour basis. Now, this does not mean that they are or could be richer than we are - marginal earnings could drop once hours increase past their current levels, such that even if they worked as much as we do they would still be less rich.
Still, if they were really what we would consider impoverished, they could increase their hours a bit and earn a bit more at a level close to our marginal productivity level. Yet, they don't. What does this suggest? That they're probably not really impoverished by our standards. Maybe things aren't really so bad in our poorest states (I grew up in Louisiana and liked my childhood quite a lot, thank you very much), or maybe the PPP and GDP to income conversions do throw things off enough to make all those "relatively impoverished by our standards" Europeans demand more vacation time instead of extra shifts. I don't know, but I never would have thought of using such an odd and deceptively misleading statistic to begin with. Perhaps since it popped into your mind all of a sudden you can explain its relevance to us.
I originally found it sad that Der Spiegel had written this article, seemingly to satisfy some need to hear that the guys who had made the choices they hadn't weren't doing so well. I find it equally sad that we apparently find the need to do the same. Neither of us is in any way impoverished by the other's standards. Geographically speaking, we are all very blessed to have been born where we were.
Will,
As I recall the poor don't congregate in the inner city in France - they move them to the suburbs. You aren't comparing inner city USA to the 16th arrondissement are you? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare the inner city US to a place like Villiers-le-Bel or Clichy-sous-Bois
Yeah. Looking out the train on my way from Paris to CDG last year I thought I'd been transported to a Brazillian favela.
Will,
I'd also like you thoughts on this: http://www.has-sante.fr/portail/upload/docs/application/pdf/emergency_involuntary_commitment_guidelines.pdf
In France it is much easier to have someone involuntarily committed than in the US. I'm sure you would agree that upwards of 85% of those homeless in the US are on the streets due to a uncontrolled mental illness or substance abuse problem.
It's not that their aren't group homes and numerous service to help these people in the US - it's just that in the US we can't compel people to use them - as you can in France.
JMO3,
I appreciate the link. I had never seen any detailed info on this. And yes, the longterm homeless in the US are always people with more severe problems. I used to know a couple of guys in my neighborhood in SF. They would always be in the same spots, in front of the local Peet's coffee until they opened at 6 o'clock, on the benches that used to exist in the neighborhood, but have now been removed because they attract homeless people.
I remember someone who was a dear friend: he had a suicide attempt and was out after 72 hours in a fourth rate psyche ward (you can't hold anyone longer than that in CA). He had a few follow-ups on the phone from a social worker. Nothing else. I would think you give someone like that a break: put him in an inpatient setting for a few weeks, 'til he sorts things out. No such luck in the US. Luckily he had people that watched out for him, and he had the means to pay for private therapy at the rate of $5000+ a year. Some don't have access to that. Some of them try again and end up jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge...
The legal systems are different, and even though you might not be able to force anyone in the US, you could give them a lot more help and incentive than we do to get mental treatment. But that costs public money. Something we don't want to spend in the US if it causes us not to be able to afford that Lexus or BMW.
On the other hand the short term homeless often are just the sort of people who come out of a downward spiral, that may include foreclosure. I disagree when Megan thinks that because you owned a home last year, you might not be on the streets this year. People often experience a sequence of events that cumulates. Often a foreclosure, a divorce, the loss of a job and other events may occur together.
More on Spiegel's brand of journalism:
http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2008/11/stefan-aust-denies-antiamerican-populism-in-der-spiegel.html
At jmo: "Or are you advocating a Massachusettes like system in which all those that can afford to buy insurance are compelled to do so? A plan I support by the way."
The healthcare systems in France and Germany are the best systems I've seen anywhere in the world. They are privately based but highly regulated. They have a large segment that is run by non-profit entities, but they also allow private insurance for profit, as in the US.
Insurance is mandatory and based on a percentage of your wages. In Germany the percentage is around 15%, in France much lower, towards 10%, I think. There is a cap on the max one must pay. Overall very similar to how Social Security or Medicare is deducted from your tax. 50% is paid by the employer, 50% is deducted from your payroll and everything shows up on your W2.
You can opt out of the employment based system only after you hit a certain minimum income. Then you can go private, otherwise not - but you need to prove it. No one can just not pay. People on unemployment, or on social security, are all covered. No one falls through the cracks. No one fears for not getting medical treatment.
There are co-payments, as a disincentive to get unneeded meds or treatment, but they are very low. The more ill you are the lower your co-payments, or none. For all chronic illnesses you are covered 100%.
To answer your other question: Falling through the cracks in the US healthcare system means: putting treatment off because you can't afford the copay, hoping you will get a better job with insurance next year, not knowing how to go about getting county assistance, being ashamed of needing to apply for charity care... the list is endless. We don't talk about people who are 'delayed' and therefor get worse. Some of them become very expensive to society and die anyway.
The worst has been my experience with people that during the process 'rationalize' some other way out: they go herbal or chinese or something else, just to do something. I think 'alternative care' has its place and I've used some of it in my life. The problem is that very often it becomes a way of doing something one can afford and have control over, even though medical standard intervention was badly needed. I think very few people are entirely rational about these things...
Well, that sounds a hell of a lot better than Canada's system - hell, it is downright free market compared to the travesty that even "conservative" Canadians (claim to) support. I still don't know if you could import it to the US, unless you could massively re-align people's expectations with respect to expensive/exotic care.
The legal systems are different, and even though you might not be able to force anyone in the US, you could give them a lot more help and incentive than we do to get mental treatment. But that costs public money. Something we don't want to spend in the US if it causes us not to be able to afford that Lexus or BMW.
I'd venture to say you don't know what you're talking about. I've worked with "safety net" facilities in both Massachusettes and California and there are programs to numerous to mention designed to help these people. The problem is we can't force people to take advantage of them.
I think you wildly under-estimate the programs available at both the state and local level designed to help these people.
You mentioned California:
http://www.dmh.ca.gov/
Again programs too numerous to mention, most of them free.
Will,
More specifically please refer to the section reguarding Prop 63:
http://www.dmh.ca.gov/Prop_63/MHSA/default.asp
I spent many years living in Germany and the tone of this article is pretty representative of Germans' picture of the U.S. Seeing a nation's press work so hard to fufill its readers prejudices about other countries makes one wonder about, say, stories about life is Saudi Arabia in the U.S. press.
I love this sentence: "The government's social safety net is insufficient to allow people who have lost their jobs to continue living their lives as if little or nothing had happened." The implicit supposition is that a "sufficient" social safety net would hold people's standard of living constant independent of whether they worked or not. For many years, the unemployment system in Germany nearly did this. Unemployment would pay most of your previous salary, indefinitely, and would not require you to accept a new job if it required you to change professions, take a pay cut, or move. Unsurprisingly, unemployment in Germany was not only high but tended to be very long-term. And as previous commenters have pointed out, this was not so great a benefit for the working poor as it was for the middle class, who could spend years living a perfectly enjoyable middle-class lifestyle without working at all. The Harz IV reforms finally eliminated this, but their justice is still hotly debated.
The fact that the ultimate horror story is having someone mess with your car is also hilariously German.
LOL
Great post, Wright. But I suppose you could have a lower welfare that, while it wouldn't pay you as if you're employed, would still be able to get you through a rough time avoiding needless suffering.
We left California at the end of 2004 and I've had no related personal experiences since then. The case I mentioned was a personal friend, with multiple suicide attempts. After his emergency room visits there were no follow-ups. None after his 72 hour hospitalization either.
I hope things might have changed in California since then. I do believe that California and Massachusetts both try to provide services and are two of the few states with a taxation structure and financial means to achieve progress. But then in those two States things are easy, almost 'socialist' (just kidding). I have also advocated for mandatory treatment in many settings, and think it is something we need to consider more openly in the US.
The reaction I get is very often: 'You can't force someone into treatment.' I believe you can, but the subject is hopelessly complicated by civil libertarians. There is always the option: treatment or jail time. I don't think this is appropriate for many mental health cases, but it has been used with some success in drug addiction.
I'm not sure what the legal rational for refusing treatment is. But one could argue that I can't force meds on people, but I can force them off the street, into institutional housing. Most homeless people commit a long list of small offenses, and the police is obviously quite heavy handed in cleaning up all the 'nice areas'. Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Franciso has made some progress in SF by replacing cash handouts with services.
In finding help for my friend with skin cancer I did find that there were too many programs and entry points to the system. In an ideal world you would just go to a doctor and get treated. While you or I might not have problems finding our way through 'the system' many people with limited life skills do.
Will,
What do you call your politics? You're strong on social welfare to the point of being weak on civil liberties...?
"I believe you can, but the subject is hopelessly complicated by civil libertarians."
You seem to be arguing that people should be compelled, on threat of incarceration, to do what society thinks is best for them. You want to be a homeless guy in San Diego and hang out and get drunk/high? - Sorry, that is not a valid life choice and the state will compel you into treatment?
Spiegel has been banging the anti-American drum for a long time now. Everything you read there should be seen through that filter.
Sometimes I really don't understand how Europeans can look at the world and see the things they see. Then I read their media, and it all makes sense. Wonder what I'd think if I got a look at their school books.
And these are cultures that are relatively close to ours!
Right. Well, I suppose you can expect a filter from any national press, and that you are more acutely aware of biases when you're reading/watching foreign media reporting on your country. But you dismiss this feedback at your own peril.
From the middle of 2002 up to 2006, you could read the perplexed European press reporting and questioning the Bush administration actions, first beating the war drums, then denying further inspections to Hans Blix, and then rushing to invade Iraq, all without any significant resistance form anybody. The Europe, as the rest of the world, were quick to criticize, not so much the idea of a war (after all, Saddam could have had nukes), but the amazing pace of the Bush administration.
The collective failure of the U.S. press is now famous. Few have been on the right side of the Iraq question. Many people who have supported the war have done a mea culpa, others talked about collective madness, etc. You know the story.
Most could have used some of that "European filter". An outsider's perspective may get most details wrong while being wright on the big picture.
The best example I can think of is Italy's prime-minister Silvio Berlusconi. That guy is definitely worse than Bush. A walking disaster. More than a few times suspect of corruption. His policies fail. His diplomatic behavior is a constant embarrassment to Italy. Unfortunately, Italians voted for the guy. Twice. It may help that, between TV stations, magazines and newspapers, he owns half of the Italian media.
So maybe the rest of the world, shaking its head in disapproval of the Italians, is being too hard on Berlusconi. Maybe we, the outsiders, are missing something. I doubt it.
What's the deal with the ACORN activists phoning stuff? Has ACORN actually done something like this before? This sounds like Fox News material.
Not that I'm aware of, it was just a sarcastic reference to the bizarre "facts", which sound activist-generated.
Oh?... SWell, I knew that!
:)
This article is actually fairly typical of the German media. When you're in the mood for a good laugh check out David's Medienkritik. The Germans do seem to get their American news from back issues of the Daily Worker.
If you are uninsured and does not have insurance, you should check out the website http://UninsuredAmerica.blogspot.com - John Mayer, California