5. Welfare state, low taxes, and inequality, and how to fix welfare.
I choose not to get too deep into addressing Marxism, since history proves that complete command economies do not work.
Healthcare Is Not A Human Right
We already do have a welfare state.
Most of the homeless that you hear about are in a few big cities in the west coast states, with the specific areas being southern California, Portland, Oregon, and to a lesser degree, Seattle, Washington.
Americans are the most charitable on Earth. But I wouldn't say that this is because Europeans and everyone else is more greedy, but that many Americans have more disposable income than almost anyone else in the world, and are not bogged down by the high costs of living in microstates.
Scandinavia (and many European countries), have several advantages that America doesn't, such as:
. Proportional representation. Proportional representation lessens the need for the support of special interest groups , and incompetence and corruption are more likely to be called out by lawmakers. This is a big reason as who why America has more problems with regulatory capture than Europe.
. Smaller populations spread out over a smaller area.
. More homogeneous populations. Some European countries, Denmark and to a lesser degree, Norway, has became somewhat less accepting of immigration. In Denmark's case, they literally have less room to expand than even the mainland United Kingdom. Scandinavia's permafrost and extremely cold winters make developing land difficult and makes people reluctant to move far from the southern coasts.
. Most European countries are not landlocked, and all of the Scandinavian countries have long coast lines, giving them the ability to easily trade with the outside world. 1/3 of America's entire population lives over 100 miles from the coast or international borders, 27 U.S. states are landlocked (that is over half of the states), 16 of them are double landlocked (you need to pass through 2 states to get to the sea), and Nebraska is triple landlocked (no country in the world is triple landlocked). Most of the wealth in the world is concentrated on or near the coastlines, and America is no exception.
In terms of development, Nevada will probably not catch up to California. Oklahoma will probably not catch up to Texas. And West Virginia will probably not catch up to Virginia. Even in Europe, Hungary, Serbia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are all a little poor by European standards. Austria and Switzerland both have populations that are under 9 million people spread out over an area under 84,000 square kilometers, neither of which are particularly large, Austria is mostly homogeneous, and Switzerland is not known for being welcoming to immigrants. Also, most European countries do not border poor, crime-ridden countries the same way that America borders Mexico.
. European countries, especially countries other than the United Kingdom and France, are not involved in geopolitics and war to the same degree America is. America also has a military strong enough to discourage the Soviet Union and now Russia from attacking Europe and Canada and protect Australia and New Zealand from the likes of China. Many European countries also spend little on their military forces, which tend to be far smaller than they were during or before World War 2.
Mutual aid (organization theory)
Milton Friedman - Health, Education And Welfare
In the late 1970's, The United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare once had the largest budget in the whole world, exceeded only the total budgets of the Soviet Union and the United States Federal Government itself. It directly employed approximately 150,000 people full-time, and indirectly and part time employed over 1,000,000 people. It spent more and more on healthcare and education, raising the price without raising the quality of either. The Social Security budget is colossal, but it is still insufficiently funded, the young are taxed to pay for the old, while the old still struggle to maintain the standard of living that they expected. Social Security was supposed to keep the old from becoming charity cases, but more old people go on welfare anyway.
The United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare admitted to, in one year, losing through fraud, abuse, and waste, enough money to build more than 100,000 houses that cost $50,000 each in 1978 dollars, which is over a HALF BILLION dollars.
Today, adjusted for inflation, that is well over 20 BILLION dollars, and WELL OVER 16 BILLION Euros. Imagine if all of the money in Iceland just disappeared. That is to give you an idea of how inefficient the American welfare bureaucracy is.
I would argue that charity is more efficient. 7/10 of the money spent on welfare goes into the pockets of government employees or are lost in bureaucracy, and not poor people in need. Only 30% of the money government spends on welfare actually goes to the people that welfare programs are supposed to help. This is the other way around for private charities.
Statistics - philosophyroundtable.org
How Effective is Government Welfare Compared to Private Charity?
WELFARE AND POVERTY - NCPA POLICY REPORT #107 - NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS
The Wonderful Life of Private Charity
Social security/pension systems require an ever growing population to pay for the elderly, and are ultimately unsustainable, even during peacetime.
In the words of Whatifalthist from his video The Crisis of the 21st Century., "Europe will have to make brutal decisions on whether they maintain ever more burdensome welfare payments and effectively become the world's dying museum, or they restructure their entire worldview and philosophy in order to have more kids and to stop funding the elderly after a certain age. The next few decades will be soul-crushing for Europe." "Europe will have a crisis of identity as the Americans become less willing to militarily and financially them." "It'll absolutely be horrifying for many Europeans to realize how really weak they are on the world stage. There is no way the European Union, a dysfunctional creation of the good times, will survive this".
There are mass differences in economic output across the continent as well. Southern Europe(Portugal, Spain, Southern Italy, and Greece) has collapsed into economic insolvency with unemployment rates rivaling the great depression. Central and Eastern Europe are likely to undergo demographic collapse in the coming decades as well. The parts of Europe with functioning economies have every incentive now to peel away and restructure their economies to the outer world. The UK is doing this with Brexit keeping its relatively competitive economy in tact and reaching out to the US . Germany, the Nordic countries, the low countries, France, Switzerland, Northern Italy, and Austria are the countries on the continent that have good economies. They don't have any incentive to pay for the discord of Spain, Greece, or any in eastern Europe and they won't! You simply can't collectivize the problems of all these diverse regions. Sadly the countries without functioning economies will be demographically shelled out as their young people are incentivized to leave to those with better economic prospects. - YouTube user sigmadeltagamma, from the video Just FEDERALIZE Europe Already!.
When it comes to welfare for able bodied adults do what Japan does; require that people do busy work so that they do not keep their leisure time, and will be incentiveised to find real work. I found that idea through the video Looting why some places and not others answers.
When it comes to social security/pensions, I have two ideas to fix it.
Idea number one is do what Japan is doing, and allow foreigners to work and pay taxes to pay for the welfare of citizens without foreigners receiving welfare themselves. Even foreigners benefit from this, due to high wages in the country that they would be working in with the low cost of living in their poorer home countries.
Idea number two is to have a free market economy with low taxes, and have people put their money into savings accounts and private social security/pensions. Sweden already has partially privatized pensions/social security.