A majority of people know how to significantly reduce poverty caused by such things as unwanted pregnancies, high cost of education and medical care, poor child nutrition, poor education and/or job training, etc., because our highly developed, sister countries have shown us how. So these are not problems we don't know how to solve. Is our inaction excused by our blaming the victims? I don't think so. To justify ourselves, we commonly fall back on political rhetoric that has little or no basis in fact. It is a testament to a defect in the human brain when we engage in the cognitive dissonance of claiming we live in a democracy while blaming government for societies problems. We'll have begun to show evolutionary progress once we start blaming ourselves.
Really? Which are those great countries you speak thereof? Would love to get an idea how to solve addiction and mental issues, homelessness, complacency, the craze for immediate gratification, hopelessness. I would claim there is not a single society that has solved those issues. But there are policy decisions that can be made on a grand scale that inform and direct decision making of individuals that are more responsible than what we currently see. The healthy can moan and bitch about the weakest links of society all day long but in the end of the day they change nothing. A society only moves as fast or slow as its weakest links. We need to get down from our high horses and start listening and observing to learn what the root causes are. All else is pure hypocrisy and empty words. It's stupid and useless to say that we know that addiction leads to poor decision making and outcomes. Everyone knows that. What we don't know are all the variables and their interaction with each other that make up the root causes that lead to addiction, for example. As long as we don't dig deeper and explore those root causes and make adjustments to our policies that prevent those root causes from occurring not much will change.
Thanks for responding to my post, although I didn't mention specifically any of those societal problems you've brought up. The problems I mentioned are ones that do have workable solutions that have been implemented in countries other than the U.S.
If you speak of Germany and Japan I might agree, but any other "sister countries" you refer to did not implement it right at all. I hope you don't consider the health care systems in Canada, NZ, or AUS, or the UK developed or of satisfactory standard by any means.
Oh come on now Canada definitely sets a decent standard on health care as evidenced by a life expectancy 3+ years longer then the US. In terms of a social safety net Canada has done an excellent job. Not perfect but a darn sight better then the US. There is no use in just constantly being cynical and negative on here your takes on things are frequently flawed.
Planned paernthoods are mostly in low income area’s where birth control is free and yet the out of wedlock birth rate in the black community for example is about 75%. This is a cultural issues and community leaders say nothing. The problem isnt so much poverty but the cause- No family structure.
The real reason why everyone is so poor in the USA is beacause all of us traders are taking their money !
I live in BC (northern health region) and the medical care system here sucks dicks. Period. I don't care how it compares to inferior medical systems, but its below any reasonable standard for sure.