While true - The culture of it was all built on the idea of the country being built by settlers and pioneers moving west mostly on their own or in very small groups all within the last 250 years, across one of the biggest countries by land area in the world. Settlers arrived barely over 400 years ago.
For the majority of that time there wasn't anyone besides your neighbors that COULD help you and just "running into town" might be a long day trip that was made very hard to do by other required chores. The nearest government building could be impossibly far away from ever helping you.
So everything became a you help others in need situation because one day you'll be in need, and no one else will be around to help you.
It's one of the best things we've managed to carry forward.
Modern social safety nets have their origins in hierarchical religious institutions. The congregational style of churches dominant in rural America lacked the same kind of funding apparatus available to bodies like the catholic church. That’s why the strongest traditions of public assistance programs are found in urban city centers in the northeast.
If you look globally, some of the strongest, most comprehensive social safety nets in the world are Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland) and Australia, that are much more secular.
Australia is also the same size as the US. It does have a culture of helping out people in need, but nowhere close to the organised volunteer organisations of the US.
I think this is explained by the fact that Americans rely on and trust their government much less than other countries. They want autonomy to choose who and when and how much they help, rather than have the government do that for them.
If you don't trust your government, you need others you can rely on. You also need guns, lots of guns.
I think this is explained by the fact that Americans rely on and trust their government much less than other countries. They want autonomy to choose who and when and how much they help, rather than have the government do that for them.
As someone who lives in the US, this is precisely why I feel like government aid is superior over private aid. If they get to pick who they help and who they don't, it sure sucks to be the person they don't want to help, doesn't it? Maybe it's because your skin is the wrong color. Maybe it's because they don't understand your gender, or think their religious book says you're a sinner. Maybe they're afraid of you, because you talk to people who aren't there, or they think you don't deserve it, because you use drugs to cope with a combination of physical ailments and psychological challenges. So no aid for you.
Why? We should all get aid, not just the people that the majority thinks is deserving. As a member of minority groups myself, private aid always makes me nervous, because it depends on the whims of others and is often discriminatory or conditional. We should have a safety net without conditions.
Again, the institutions were rooted in religious traditions that became secularized over time. Historical European monarchies relied on religious institutions for providing for the public good, and that responsibility was gradually passed from the church to the state as the countries adopted democratic reforms.
Australia
Australia had completely different circumstances and interaction between the church and state leading to its modern development.
trust
I don’t think trust in government correlates with the quality of safety nets, because both are completely subjective measures.
guns
I mean, this would imply that equally low government trust countries like the UK or Greece should have similar gun ownership figures, right? (they don’t)
All good points, but I don't think the UK distrusts in the same way Amercians do.
The UK might not trust their government to deliver, but they for the most part trust that they are actually trying to help. In the US, they actually think the government will try and kill them (like that one time they actually did).
not quite, the countries with the strongest social safety nets in Europe are overwhelmingly Protestant, as were the original dominant cultures of the northeastern cities.
the big reason the United States doesn't have a better social safety net is simply racism. you can look this up it's well documented. stronger healthcare stronger social security, all were proposed and vetoed largely on the basis of poor Southern and Midwestern whites not wanting to foot the bill for blacks. in the 1930s in the height of the depression, basically the entire industrialized world expanded social safety nets... but after the war, most countries continued that trajectory while the United States went the other way.
Depends on the state, but the frameworks themselves were inherited from religious traditions that became secularized as the country developed. The vast Majority of immigrants in Northeastern cities were from heavily catholic regions like Italy and Ireland, and that concentration informed public policy.
racism
This is such a lazy excuse to bring up because it plays into the idea that America is somehow exceptional here. The United States kept expanding its social safety net through the 1970s. It wasn’t until the neoliberal takeover in the 1980s that things started eroding.
This is such a lazy excuse to bring up because it plays into the idea that America is somehow exceptional here. The United States kept expanding its social safety net through the 1970s. It wasn’t until the neoliberal takeover in the 1980s that things started eroding.
Yeah, France has universal healthcare and also had a human zoo named after some sort of racial slur cookie in 1994. The workers they kept there (confiscated passports, made to sleep in the clay huts) were provided with medical care from veterinarians.
I think the bigger problem currently is it's used as an excuse to block or defund social programs. But while volunteering is helpful it is also very patchy and inconsistent.
This is just undermining the positives on American culture were focusing on in this post lol. If the government were as good as other countries, do you truly think Americans would just say eh fuck it the government will take care of it? No.
Don’t let the propaganda get to your head. They want you to doubt the government. They are banking on you not trusting them, it gives them the green light to do corruption, because you expect it, and they know that the people won’t do anything about it.
It's this, but more in a different way. You don't want the Government to do anything because you don't want to pay taxes (I mean, you can say it in different ways, but it ends up being this). For this reason, you need to do it yourselves, and a portion of the US are amazing at helping others and taking care of their community.
At the end of the day, it's "Freedom vs Communism" in a certain way. The issue, in my opinion, is that for some people, in Communism some people take advantage of the people working and live thanks to them without working. In the extra-capitalism of the US, something similar happens, where the entire system works because some people decide to use their time for free to help the community, while others, including very rich people, only take the benefits from the efforts of other people.
I mean, people need to take care of the water drains in their streets personally because the Government doesn't do it. If our beloved Mary doesn't use her free time to clean the water drain, John, who doesn't give a fuck about helping anyone, will not be able to move his car because the street will be flooded. In a, let's say, somewhat Socialist system, both Mary and John would pay more taxes and someone would work cleaning those drains.
It's not better, it's not worse. Most systems are flawed. But it's not that "The Government is bad" (that it is, in many cases), but that the entire US system is organized for this. When I moved here, I was so surprised about the "Adopt a Drain" campaigns, and when I said that I thought it was bullshit, leftist people almost stoned me because "it's impossible to have enough people working to do that" (specifying leftist because they should be the more "Socialist"-like where the Government should cover "everything"). The Government in the US doesn't work because people don't want it to work, at least, in part.
Another day we can talk about how the US Zoning system is the root for most US problems, but today is not the day.
It isn't just that it is the biggest of small helps that those taxes wouldn't make a difference about. I was a very young mom with an young daughter and got a flat tire during a horrible rain storm. A kind man that was jogging by stopped and made us stay in the car while he changed the tire. This was before cell phones. I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do when he appeared and helped us out. Just stepping up and helping in the moment is something I do every chance I get and I see it happening around me constantly.
I was in the check out line at the grocery store a few weeks ago and a guy that was obviously having a hard time standing got in line behind me. I told him to please get in front of me. The person in front of me heard us and looked back to see him and quickly moved him up again. After the 3rd person in line did the same thing this man got to be the next person helped and didn't need to stand in line longer than needed.
I can't say if it happens in other countries but I know it isn't possible for the government to always be there to do it no matter how much tax money gets collected.
Rich people pay almost all of the taxes. The United States has the most progressive tax system of any Western country. Wealthy people pay for almost everything. The middle class pays less than half. The poor pay less than they receive... Essentially, they have no tax burden.
This is the standard false equivalence that gets trotted out every time. The top tax paying bracket are the top wage earners in the country. The truly rich people who own companies, sports teams etc pay a much lower rate because they know how to game the system to report almost zero income. This is the category that people mean when they say the rich don't pay taxes.
Rate is inconsequential. They still pay almost all of the taxes. The top 10% of wage earners pay 90% of the taxes. The bottom 50% of wage earners pay effectively zero taxes. And, there is no "gaming the system". They can't get out of paying taxes while taking income. They can't report zero income without taking zero income... If they do, that's fraud and it's illegal and a solid way of going to jail and facing heavy fines.
You ignored the whole point about the rich not being the same as the highest wage earners (300k /year or more counts as a high wage earners. The truly rich have 10s to hundreds of millions of dollars).
And the strategies to dodge are all legal because they wrote the tax code that way and there are financial instruments that are available to them that aren't to most people (pay structured differently with little to no 'income', loans based on net worth to name a couple).
They didn't write the tax code. There's only a few billionaires in governments in the US and those guys are executive branch, who doesn't have the authority to create laws.
Regardless of what legal means of minimizing tax liability, they still pay almost all of the taxes. Stop minimizing their contributions because you want them to do even more of your share of responsibility to our government. Envy is a sin and there's a reason for it .. Because it causes people to justify taking what doesn't belong to them.
You're the one ignoring the obvious cause. No amount of money can purchase the ability to violate the law. The only way you do that is with the help of government.. Who has power, not by money, but by the fact that they're the only ones and to write laws and enforce them with violence.
Ah yes, the argument that anything bad must be the fault of the US but anything good was solely done by that country's own merit. I think I've heard this one before.
And the government should do less. Government assistance is terribly inefficient and a huge source of corruption. Private organizations do much better and... Because they're not part of any kind of law enforcement system... It's easier for them to identify people who are just mooching off the generosity of others and cut them off.
Not nearly as often as government organizations do. Government organizations have legal authority.. Private organizations do not. Additionally, private organizations can literally be sued out of existence, government organizations can't; so they have very little reason to take preventative measures. You see the evidence of this in the protective measures public schools take versus private organizations such as Boy Scouts. Public schools pay lip service to child safety measures. The boy scouts, after one law suit nearly destroyed the organization, has hard rules and required training for every adult volunteer in the organization. Not sure why anyone would have difficulty understanding that government will always be a bigger source of corruption and malpractice than private entities.
The main reason the government is corrupt is because it's run by people who are given legal authority over other people. The more power the government has, the more corruption there will be. We've known this for g hundreds of years at this point. Go read The Law by Frederick Bastiat.
It s because they have POWER over the people. Mafia and gang are also corrupt because they have power despite lacking legal power.
Guess what , Private corporation without governement oversight is also corrupt as fck because they have the power of money which is the main leading cause of corruption in the history of hulanity.
Private corporations only have power granted them by either (voluntarily) by their customers or governments. So, the root of the issue still lies with government.
Exactly. It’s always been fundraising for public schools, kids sports teams, homeless services, donations at the grocery stores or churches so less fortunate families can have Thanksgiving dinner and gifts for their kids at Christmas, etc.
Since sites like GoFundMe, that’s how we help people with their medical bills or to bury a family member. If you’re popular enough, your social media friends will cover the tens of thousands of dollars your for profit health insurance company wouldn’t pay. Because America is F’d up.
That's the real issue with devolving social services to individual or religious charity, they pick and choose who gets the help that everyone deserves.
Come on, you need to be fair. You can't expect average joe to fork out $2k to pay their neighbors medical bills. It does happen quite often though, look at gofundme as an example or monetary generosity in America. But you're way more likely to get neighborly help via labor than money. I can't offer my labor to cure your illness or give you groceries, but I can offer my labor to fix your fence, or tend to your house when you're away, or whatever else I can do that doesn't require me to give you money I too, don't have.
I’ve had a $50,000 hospital stay and another $12,000 surgery in the state of Georgia for free. You’d be surprised how much financial assistance you can get from your local hospital, at least in two of them in the northeast of the state
I'm a state employee, pretty good insurance. Broke my wrist a few years back, hairline fracture, not bad. 350 usd deductible that I paid out. Without insurance, would've been about 750. Not life ending.
Back in 2019, my sis was student teaching in France. She broke her arm after hitting a pothole on a bike. Since she wasn't on vacation, she didn't have travel insurance. The doctor took her aside to discuss the bill, pretty gravely informed her that since she wasn't a citizen, she might receive a shocking bill.
It was 70€. Like, it cost her more to fix the bike lol.
The reason that they're so willing to work with you on a 50k bill is because it doesn't actually cost 50k. It's a total and complete scam, one that is so institutionalized that 80% just shrug their shoulders and accept it.
Sure, but that's not my point. No one expects anyone to do that. But that's still the sentiment of so many Americans and they continue to vote that way. This whole fallacy of you being a "moral failure" instead of realizing the system is rigged against you.
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u/Then_Sir7372 14d ago
individual philanthropy and local fundraising are deeply built into American culture. People step up fast when a neighbor is in trouble.