2011-01-02

America in Decline: Why Germans Think We're Insane

http://www.alternet.org/world/149324/america_in_decline%3A_why_germans_think_we%27re_insane/

By: Democrats Ramshield
A look at our empire in decline through the eyes of the European media.

As an American expat living in the European Union, I’ve started to see America from a different perspective.

The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less -- right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical -- the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.

The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane.

Der Spiegel has run an interesting feature called "A Superpower in Decline," which attempts to explain to a German audience such odd phenomena as the rise of the Tea Party, without the hedging or attempts at "balance" found in mainstream U.S. media. On the Tea Parties:
Full of Hatred: "The Tea Party, that group of white, older voters who claim that they want their country back, is angry. Fox News host Glenn Beck, a recovering alcoholic who likens Obama to Adolf Hitler, is angry. Beck doesn't quite know what he wants to be -- maybe a politician, maybe president, maybe a preacher -- and he doesn't know what he wants to do, either, or least he hasn't come up with any specific ideas or plans. But he is full of hatred."
The piece continues with the sobering assessment that America’s actual unemployment rate isn’t really 10 percent, but close to 20 percent when we factor in the number of people who have stopped looking for work.
Some social scientists think that making sure large-scale crime or fascism never takes root in Europe again requires a taxpayer investment in a strong social safety net. Can we learn from Europe? Isn't it better to invest in a social safety net than in a large criminal justice system? (In America over 2 million people are incarcerated.)

Jobless Benefits That Never Run Out

Unlike here, in Germany jobless benefits never run out. Not only that -- as part of their social safety net, all job seekers continue to be medically insured, as are their families.

In the German jobless benefit system, when "jobless benefit 1" runs out, "jobless benefit 2," also known as HartzIV, kicks in. That one never gets cut off. The jobless also have contributions made for their pensions. They receive other types of insurance coverage from the state. As you can imagine, the estimated 2 million unemployed Americans who almost had no benefits this Christmas seems a particular horror show to Europeans, made worse by the fact that the U.S. government does not provide any medical insurance to American unemployment recipients. Europeans routinely recoil at that in disbelief and disgust.

In another piece the Spiegel magazine steps away from statistics and tells the story of Pam Brown, who personifies what is coming to be known as the Nouveau American poor. Pam Brown was a former executive assistant on Wall Street, and her shocking decline has become part of the American story:
American society is breaking apart. Millions of people have lost their jobs and fallen into poverty. Among them, for the first time, are many middle-class families. Meet Pam Brown from New York, whose life changed overnight. The crisis caught her unprepared. "It was horrible," Pam Brown remembers. "Overnight I found myself on the wrong side of the fence. It never occurred to me that something like this could happen to me. I got very depressed." Brown sits in a cheap diner on West 14th Street in Manhattan, stirring her $1.35 coffee. That's all she orders -- it's too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. She also needs to save money. Until early 2009, Brown worked as an executive assistant on Wall Street, earning more than $80,000 a year, living in a six-bedroom house with her three sons. Today, she's long-term unemployed and has to make do with a tiny one-bedroom in the Bronx.
It's important to note that no country in the European Union uses food stamps in order to humiliate its disadvantaged citizens in the grocery checkout line. Even worse is the fact that even the humbling food stamp allotment may not provide enough food for America’s jobless families. So it is on a reoccurring basis that some of these families report eating out of garbage cans to the European media.
For Pam Brown, last winter was the worst. One day she ran out of food completely and had to go through trash cans. She fell into a deep depression ... For many, like Brown, the downfall is a Kafkaesque odyssey, a humiliation hard to comprehend. Help is not in sight: their government and their society have abandoned them.
Pam Brown and her children were disturbingly, indeed incomprehensibly, allowed to fall straight to the bottom. The richest country in the world becomes morally bankrupt when someone like Pam Brown and her children have to pick through trash to eat, abandoned with a callous disregard by the American government. People like Brown have found themselves dispossessed due to the robber baron actions of the Wall Street elite.

Hunger in the Land of the Big Mac

A shocking headline from a Swiss newspaper reads (Berner Zeitung) “Hunger in the Land of the Big Mac.” Though the article is in German, the pictures are worth 1,000 words and need no translation. Given the fact that the Swiss virtually eliminated hunger, how do we as Americans think they will view these pictures, to which the American population has apparently been desensitized.


This appears to be a picture of two mothers collecting food boxes from the charity Feed the Children.
Perhaps the only way for us to remember what we really look like in America is to see ourselves through the eyes of others. While it is true that we can all be proud Americans, surely we don't have to be proud of the broken American social safety net. Surely we can do better than that. Can a European-style social safety net rescue the American working and middle classes from GOP and Tea Party warfare?

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8 comments:

Blue Rose said...

The article paints a beneficent picture of European countries all right, but how does this correlate with all the riots we see in most all European countries?

These governments (along with U.S. conservatives) say European governments cannot sustain feeding, housing, clothing, schooling, and giving medical care to the unemployed, let alone all unemployed illegals, and it is just this situation that is causing them to cut back.

When it is then factored in all the illegals entering these European countries, and then getting on the dole themselves, I can definitely see why these European countries are beginning to feel a pinch.

The irony is that apparently the Elites of these European countries welcome with open arms all these illegals (primarily Muslims, I think), furthering the demise of their own European heritage. But often the Elites themselves often point to being called racists when they attempt to limit illegal immigrations and call for a return to nationalism.

I don't know what the average German (or the average of any other European country) really thinks about welcoming all the illegals, though from articles I've read, many average citizens don't like the situation one bit.

When push comes to shove and the well goes dry to even the native citizens Europeans, as goes Europe so goes America. I don't mean to say that poverty in America is a result of mass illegal infiltrations, but I don't think it can be denied illegals use up scare resources.

But what i'm really trying to get at is we do see anarchy in all these European countries due to a beginning scarcity of social resources, so such scarcity must stem from somewhere.

I am not inclined to necessarily blame all Elites on this situation. Some of their politicans have been killed trying to stem the tide of illegals, and for pointing out the dismantling of their own heritage and calling for a return to nationalism, and that this idea of "multiculturalism" doesn't work. Pym Fortuyn was one of these who died trying to speak out in favor of nationalism and against 'multiculturalism'.

I am told by one that one wouldn't know Holland today due to the illegal immigrations, they have so changed the landscape and culture.

I think that in part America's problems are in fact due to multiculturalism, and is at least a factor in its demise.

Ironically, however, the anarchists in Europe themselves are all for illegals and giving them a share in their system of a once secure social safety net.

Whatever is going on -- here, there, or anywhere -- I am not sure can be placed squarely on the doorsteps of the elites. It's hard to think I am saying something in their favor, but it does not appear they are altogether and always to blame.

Vatic said...

Well, thanks for your thoughts on the subject, I hope you don't mind if I pass on a response since this is a way deeper philosophical discussion than I have time for. I wish I did, but I will have to defer to your presentation and let it go at that.

Just a thought for you to ponder though. Using criminal, corrupt practices, seduction, lying and deceiving many third world countries, not even talking about first world countries, we found that the wealthy of this planet, the top 1%, for the first time in the history of the planet now controls over 35% of the planets wealth and increasing daily.

They have privatized the water in these countries, and control the weather through HAARP and other such technology which these poor third world countries do not have access to. They are under attack without notification in their reproductive capacity through the vaccination programs paid for by the Gates, Rockefeller and Ford foundations, etc.

So, keep that in mind when you are considering where the problem is.

There is much more, but then as I said, I honestly don't have the time to get into this one.

Vatic said...

Ok, got a little more time now. Remember DerSpeigel is a neocon publication just like the Wall street journal is here.

They are all coordinating how they are going to try and get a third world war going before the pole shift so they can get part of the depopulation done and then the pole shift will take care of the rest. No links right now cause I don't have time but I do have the links to all of this I just stated.

I don't trust that writer or that publication. And if its an expat writing, then he is where he belongs, some other country since he is apparently a globalizer. We will do just fine without him here.

Blue Rose said...

Thanks for your response, Vatic, and I can well believe that the 1% of the Elites control over 35% of the planet's wealth. I cannot visualize it -- but I can well believe it.

But as to the Third World, I think you can rest easy. There is or will be a wealth transference going on, when it comes to 'global-warming' at least.

There was a recent Cancun climate meeting recently that lasted a week, as I listened to reports on it on the Marxist radio station WBAI-FM.

But if I am to believe what the opposition (Republicans, the Capitalists) has to say, it appears that 'global-warming', environmental toxins and greenhouse gases, etc., will be the rationale for a transference of wealth from rich nations to the poor nations.

I received the following email today. I won't copy all of it, but just the pertinent part. I'll let you decide what to think. Things are such that that things are getting way too complicated to know what's what for sure for me anyway:


" Weeks ago warming scientists, including some caught lying in "climategate," and radical activists convened in Cancun, Mexico, [This part is true. I did listen to talks about it on the Marxist radio station--BR] and felt record cold in this tropical resort.

" But the failure of their predictions led to no recantation of their dogma. What emerged instead from Cancun was a recommendation that by 2020 the world's rich nations should transfer $100 billion per year to poorer nations to "mitigate" the harm they will suffer from global warming we purportedly have caused. [See below how the wealth transference will be distributed. --BR]

" 'This is what global warming is really about,' said IBD, 'wealth redistribution by people whose beliefs are basically socialist. It has little or nothing to do with climate.'

" And the largest share of wealth redistribution these climarxists intend via the pretext of global warming will go not from rich to poor, but from the private sector to the public sector, from private property and capitalists to socialists who control government and are eager to grab control over everything. "

Well, maybe Capitalism has it coming.

Vatic said...

Yeah, Blue Rose, what that means is you and I get to pay it out of the remaining 65% of the remaining wealth and the 1% will skate as usual.

No thanks, they are not getting a penny from me and probably no one else either. We go after that 1% not because they "earned" that 35%, but because WE EARNED IT AND THEY STOLE IT. SO SCREW THEM, WE WILL SIMPLY TAKE IT BACK. Then they can go live in Iceland where they are waiting for them with tar and feathers.

Blue Rose said...

Yes, I understand. This business of privatizing water and these Monsanto seeds are surely changing the way of life of some of these Third World countries.

I saw a documentary on TV recently, about some community in Arizona that were trying to fight off realty investors from coming in and changing the landscape -- specifically taking away a community lake of some kind. At first the community won against the realty investors. But with sleight-of-hand the investors got their way in the end, and the community no longer has its natural lake.

This documentary explored how realty investors (these groups with LL or LLD after their name -- limited liability, or investor groups) invest in an area, put up MALLS and cookie-cutter houses and are doing this all over the country in America. In a place where I lived once I paid rent to one of those nameless limited liability investors. My feeling is these people are making PROFITS measured in the BILLIONS. Or else they wouldn't be investors.

Personally, I am not at all sure that 'Love' is going to be the answer. Not on these multi-dimensional levels. Or any quantum discovery this or quantum energy that.

Growing up in the 1950's I never dreamed I would see a world such as this. I guess people still have to try to fight, but I suspect in the end it's a losing battle.

Ah well...a little glass of wine and a cigarette....

Vatic said...

Hahhaa,I like that "little glass of wine and a cigarette.....", that was cute. HOwever, if I had not done all this research and all those scientists from around the world plus this gutt feeling I have that the evil ones are not going to win this thing. I keep going back to those riots and to the major population of everyone saying 'NO COOPERATION IN ANYTHING THEY WANT US TO DO'. and that is recipe for disaster for them. They need, must have our coooperation for any of their agenda to work. So keep the faith and you have nothing to lose by believing we can do it.

Blue Rose said...

But Vatic, what will be the tipping point? I keep waiting for it. All I ever see is happy face compliance. Maybe some grumbling at best -- but compliance nonetheless.

I read somewhere of a UN global-warming tax. Will that be the tipping point for Americans? All the MSM has to do is spin the hell out of it, and Americans will gladly pay it. The young have no thoughts in their heads -- they are too busy voting on American Idol and running after their corporate-created fads.

And if politicans know an outright UN tax on Americans might spark a revolution or something, then the tax can be imbedded in something like a higher federal tax rate or something. Americans seem to believe anything they are told, especially when accompanied by some extravaganza public display of some kind, with movie stars and pop singers thrown in.

I just got one parking ticket denied, after calling them unprincipled, no morals mafia and everything -- $115 and cough it up or else they will confiscate my car. The bastards. I have the money, but $115 is onerous. Many got these tickets, but there is no outcry over such onerous made-up "fines". Where does it end?