Local social spending and political dissatisfaction of the economically deprived

We've seen for centuries what bored oligarchs do - they lead crusades across nations states for one bullshit reason or another with an legion of people who need to work with them for money, entering into indebted servitude agreements. They get bored and go to war. Apparently building and inventing isn't another - I suppose because most of them are incabable of doing that due to a lack of talent. It's not so fulfilling being the moneybank with other people do the hard and interesting work. Probably why billionaires like Gates are midly normal compared to most - he's talented enough to do the building himself if needed. Same can't be same for Musk and Trump.

Most Americans don't have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1000 bill [0], and poverty is increasingly becoming criminalized, as evidenced by the recent SCOTUS rulings outlawing sleeping outside. If you aren't already financially stable, the system is already actively working against you.

Having to compare America, one of the richest nations in the world, to a generic developing nation is proof enough that something is very imbalanced. Compare the USA to Switzerland or New Zealand?

0 - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saving-money-emergency-expenses...

They're only in real danger once the average person is hungry or fails to be distracted - bread and circuses. So far it's still just a small percentage.

> 2. Any statistics you look at, the median and average american citizen is far from being impoverished even by rich developed country western standards. I recommend people visit some developing countries to get a perspective on what true poverty looks like.

I understand what you're getting at here, but this misses the point. If people are used to a decent quality of life, and that quality of life declines, they're going to be miserable. It doesn't matter what other countries are like.

It's really in the same vein of "clean your plate because there are people starving who'd love to be in your shoes", which has never been a good argument.

More importantly, if a lot of people are miserable, especially if they think some other group of people is the reason, it's going to cause civil unrest. Right now, the billionaires have been successful at tricking people into thinking it's immigrants or some other group, but that won't always be the case.

If you average Musk, Bezos, me and 997 other people, we are all billionaires with 0.004 private jets each.

How does this framing explain/handle widening wealth inequality?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43191284&goto=item%3Fid...

^ links to FRED

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN40188 # Share of Total Net Worth Held by the 50th to 90th Wealth Percentiles

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134 # Share of Total Net Worth Held by the Top 1% (99th to 100th Wealth Percentiles)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA # GINI Index for the United States

Because there's been significant neoliberal policy capture which has reduced worker wealth and security.

Meanwhile anti-immigration narratives are being heavily propagandised by mainstream and social media as a wedge issue.

It's very hard to compare like for like with taxation. For example health care costs in the US are effectively privatised taxation. So are the wildly inflated utility prices that the UK has developed.

Newspaper articles debate proposed tax changes worth a couple of hundred pounds a year, while electricity costs have gone up by thousands.

> I've never seen it framed like this before

Because it's wrong.

Welfarism has always had strong support from the right and the left in Europe.

Bismarck himself co-opted the term "Socialism" to build the German welfare state while undermining his political opponents, and the Catholic Church supported Christian Democracy movement was always a major proponent for welfare support.

> It's always been portrayed as "Europe so enlightened" and "guilletine goes brr"

There is a deeply sad irony in watching someone mock the left for historically inaccurate takes while simultaneously falling hook, line, and sinker for a very historically incorrect alt-right talking point about Hitler.

I don’t think you realize that you have become the very thing you mock, just on the other side of the political spectrum: Someone who accepts edgy, historically inaccurate propaganda as ground truth as long as it reinforces what you want to believe.

In a bit more nuanced view, the pre-war (WW1) and inter-war (WW1 to WW2) both liberal and conservative parties didn't really care about either social or nationalist stuff and because of that got nearly wiped out by nationalist and socialist parties. To survive, they had to heavily borrow from both. Which they duly did after WW2 in the spectre of Hitler and Stalin.

In an even more nuanced view, Hitler was also supported by many rich people and high taxes and nationalisations served to cut their power. And in most countries, the means of propaganda was also nationalized and/or heavily regulated. So it was about much more than just the poor masses.

> no amount of vacation days or social safety net is stopping it

Yeah, there's only one way to deal with people who want to violently oppress others, no matter their ilk (religious, political, ethnic, ...).

> Europe so enlightened

Yeah, if you talked with my GOP-aligned family, your appraisal of Europe would reach new dizzying heights. They're so stupid I feel bad for the word "stupid", as it's clearly inadequate as a description.

I agree those shallow analysis are pointless. We can observe that the far right is also rising in the US, which isn’t too hot on vacation days or a social safety net!

I guess I’d just say that people don’t like when everything is shitty and you keep telling them it’s great, and when that happens they turn to the person who says “everything is shitty and I’ll make it great again” even though they won’t - because what have you got to lose, really?

The welfare state works when there is a clearly defined "us".

When people think of "European welfare state", they tend to mean one of Germany, France, the UK, or the Nordic states. At the time of peak support for the welfare state, immediately after the war, these were pretty much mono-ethnic states.

The modern erosion of social cohesion is because there's enough non-white people around to be visible, and this makes some people really mad. As it does in America.

> The far right is rising in Europe and no amount of vacation days or social safety net is stopping it.

Same reason as last time: people want to do some ethnic cleansing.

The missing link between material conditions and overt racism is probably housing. It consumes a huge fraction of income in places where the good jobs are, which makes people feel very in competition with those getting social housing for free.

(the meaning of "welfare state" varies a lot depending where you are: old age pensions were usually the first part to be implemented, from Bismarck onwards. Health benefit systems vary and usually include some elements of insurance and co-pays, the UK single monolithic free-at-point-of-use provider is actually very unusual)