Luney Tune said:
This is even more true in the rest of the developed world. It's *easier* to become whatever you want in a welfare state. The drawback is that the "reward" is marginally smaller. I prefer that. You don't. Now stop lying about the work ethic in welfare states. |
A quick google resulted in the following:
"..."
"Ah, but, we can always find something nasty in the woodpile. The US has the most unequal distribution of income of all the countries studied. Using the Gini coefficients as our measurement in America it was 0.338 in 1989 and 0.368 in 200, while in Finland on the same dates it was 0.210 and 0.247. Perhaps worth noting that this increasing inequality of income distribution is not exclusive to the US though, it appears to be a more international occurrence than that."
"Now if the equality of income distribution is something you worry about this is of course a troubling fact. It is what leads to the statement that while the US might be richer, the poor do worse, that in fact the poor in America are worse off than the poor in Europe. Which leads us to this highly informative little picture."
"Now given all the adjustments that have been made to the figures this is actually showing us something very interesting indeed. The use of PPP means that we've adjusted for price differences, by using US median income as our measuring stick we've given ourselves a view of the actual incomes, not just the relative incomes, of the poor and the rich in each country."
"How we're supposed to read this is that the USA has a very uneven income distribution, that the poorest 10% only get 39% of the median income, that the richest 10% get 210%. Compare and contrast that with the most egalitarian society amongst those studied, Finland, where the rich get 111% and the poor get 38%. Shown this undoubted fact we are therefore to don sackcloth and ashes, promise to do better and tax the heck out of everybody to rectify this appalling situation."
"But hang on a minute, that's not quite what is being shown. In the USA the poor get 39% of the US median income and in Finland (and Sweden) the poor get 38% of the US median income. It's not worth quibbling over 1% so let's take it as read that the poor in America have exactly the same standard of living as the poor in Finland (and Sweden). Which is really a rather revealing number don't you think? All those punitive tax rates, all that redistribution, that blessed egalitarianism, the flatter distribution of income, leads to a change in the living standards of the poor of precisely ... nothing."
"..."
What could (easily) be argued from the data is that, while the GINI co-efficient is "Better" in many welfare states, is that the "Poor" receive no real benefit from a welfare state all that happens is that the "Rich" are worse off and the system on the whole is worse off ...
To look at things another way ...
If you have a society where there is perfect equality, and earns a uniform wage, then there is no incentive to invest your resources (physical, emotional, intellectual or financial) towards making society better because there is no reward. On the other hand, if you have a society where there is perfect inequlity, and your wage is entirely based on arbitrary considerations (race, class, caste, or political connections), then there is no incentive to invest your resources (physical, emotional, intellectual or financial) towards making society better because there is (once again) no reward.
What society needs is a good balance of equality (an elimination of arbitrary barriers that prevent people from achieving their goals) and inequality (a reward system which benefits those people who make personal sacrifices in order to benefit society). The best way to measure whether one system was "Better" than another at achieving this would be to determine where the economic growth was the fastest, because that would mean that there was the greatest incentive for people (on the whole) to benefit society.
I have yet to see any statistics that demonstrate that over a reasonable period of time (20+ years) a welfare state can produce faster economic growth, unless the welfare state began at a much lower economic level.
Is the USA's economic system ideal? Probably not being that there is still a high number of people who drop out of highschool, choose a life of crime, or otherwise choose a path that does not encourage the benefit of society on the whole.
Is the USA's economic system one of the best in the world? If you look at long term growth trends the answer is (probably) yes.
