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my family was on welfare in Canada when we immigrated 20 years ago or so. it was just for a year though - then they found okay jobs and we scraped by until my brother and i finished university and got well-paying jobs.

the "they don't wanna work because they rather stay on welfare" thing is a myth. i can't reference it here but i recall seeing research studies to prove this. most people would much rather prefer to work and pay for themselves than rely on government welfare. working full time on minimum wage here still lands you in a much more comfortable quality of life than living on welfare. and I'm pretty sure US welfare is @#(!tier than ours.

that said, there are always the outliers, like Metz's mom, that prefer to do nothing with their lives. at least people like that can still live on like proper human beings rather than ending up homeless on the street. (quite a few still do, even here in Canada, and it amazes me... say no to drugs, kids).

Terran wrote:QUOTE (Terran @ Aug 11 2018, 02:00 PM) my family was on welfare in Canada when we immigrated 20 years ago or so. it was just for a year though - then they found okay jobs and we scraped by until my brother and i finished university and got well-paying jobs.

the "they don't wanna work because they rather stay on welfare" thing is a myth. i can't reference it here but i recall seeing research studies to prove this. most people would much rather prefer to work and pay for themselves than rely on government welfare. working full time on minimum wage here still lands you in a much more comfortable quality of life than living on welfare. and I'm pretty sure US welfare is @#(!tier than ours.

that said, there are always the outliers, like Metz's mom, that prefer to do nothing with their lives. at least people like that can still live on like proper human beings rather than ending up homeless on the street. (quite a few still do, even here in Canada, and it amazes me... say no to drugs, kids).

Shutup freeloading immigrant, your well payed job is doing nothing in a uniform and cash in the taxpayers money.

Terran wrote:QUOTE (Terran @ Aug 11 2018, 11:00 AM) my family was on welfare in Canada when we immigrated 20 years ago or so. it was just for a year though - then they found okay jobs and we scraped by until my brother and i finished university and got well-paying jobs.

the "they don't wanna work because they rather stay on welfare" thing is a myth. i can't reference it here but i recall seeing research studies to prove this. most people would much rather prefer to work and pay for themselves than rely on government welfare. working full time on minimum wage here still lands you in a much more comfortable quality of life than living on welfare. and I'm pretty sure US welfare is @#(!tier than ours.

that said, there are always the outliers, like Metz's mom, that prefer to do nothing with their lives. at least people like that can still live on like proper human beings rather than ending up homeless on the street. (quite a few still do, even here in Canada, and it amazes me... say no to drugs, kids).

Results vary by location. Some places you do have a higher standard of living on welfare than working for minimum wage. Where I live you can barely afford to rent a studio apt+ pay your other bills if you're making minimum wage (unless you get into subsidized housing but they're always in very high demand, with long wait lists, and are just full of gang bangers and drug addicts anyway)

i think King County in WA is now more expensive than Orange County in CA. Try paying 2000-4000 a month for a 1 bdr apartment on $11/hour.

(I live in the neighboring Snohomish county which isn't quite as bad but still pretty pricey)

So let's run the numbers, shall we?

If you make $110,000 a year, you pay about $30,000 in state and federal taxes if you live in the "absurdly high tax" California. Under the ACA, we have plans that cost about $4k per year per person. Some 15% of Americans are on Medicare. 15% is about 1/7th. The total medicare taxes you would pay off $110,000 a year is $2000.

NHS insures and cares for about 66 million people on an annual budget of 116.4 billion pounds, which is 148.6 billion USD. That means the NHS is currently funding itself at a rate of $2250 per person. Taxes on that same person makeing 110 USD are going to come to about 30,000 GBP which is approximately $38,000. The take-home pay of the equivalently wealthy UKer is therefore the UKer is taking home $71,000 instead of a Californian's... $80,000. If the Californian has a kid they're insuring, they will piss out another $8k in healthcare for themselves and their kid.

California has it's own Healthcare plan. You can't get ACA in Cali.

anyway I think my point is how welfare programs with hard income caps are terrible. every time always. Even if I were a huge promoter of these socialized programs the only sensible thing to do would to offer them on sliding scale where you are eligible for a certain percentage of a maximum potential benefit based on your income - not having hard thresholds like YOU MADE 1 DOLLAR UNDER THE CAP SO NOW YOU GET COMPLETELY FREE INSURANCE or YOU MADE 1 DOLLAR UNDER THE NEXT CAP SO NOW YOU GET THE SUBSIDIZED RATE which of course leaves for the opposite situation YOU MADE 1 DOLLAR MORE THAN ALLOWED SO YOU ACTUALLY ARE AT A NET LOSS ON YOU SPENDING POWER/COST OF LIVING/QUALITY OF LIFE FOR THE YEAR BECAUSE YOU MADE 2 DOLLARS MORE THAN THE PREVIOUS YEAR WHEN YOU WERE UNDER THE CAP

this very explicitly discourages people from making an effort to earn progressively more income, because it basically makes it impossible to afford to ever work your way out of the poverty because you take a HUGE NET LOSS when you make SLIGHTLY MORE MONEY so it's not actually equitable to earn more money when you're on welfare unless you can suddenly jump into a DRASTIC income increase straight away

I absolutely HATE IT when I AGREE with METZ.
why am I YELLING?

Duckwarrior wrote:QUOTE (Duckwarrior @ Aug 11 2018, 04:34 AM) My neighbours are Lithuanian and their daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at two years old.

There is some evidence, that can be caused by unhealthy habits of their parents. A child's health is already influenced before sperm meets egg, certainly during pregnancy, and so on.

So probably due to failing parents, we got a perpetually sick person to subsidize for their entire life. With a health system that focuses almost entirely on hiding symptoms, no matter the cost or side-effects, while ignoring the cause.

It may be a bit of a dilemma as the child itself is not at any fault, but anyway those are edge cases. The majority of costs are indeed caused by unhealthy/irresponsible behavior of people and I don't care to pay for that.

PS: I recently gifted a not insignificant amount of money to the parents of a perfectly healthy child. How about we reward people who are smart enough to care for their offspring properly?

:V

Radulfr wrote:QUOTE (Radulfr @ Aug 12 2018, 02:39 AM) So probably due to failing parents, we got a perpetually sick person to subsidize for their entire life.

Another possible cause for Diabetes I are vaccinations and antipyretic medications. So the health system we are all paying into is creating its own patients.
(Yes, I may not have enough studies to back this up, so do your worst.)