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Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

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Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#31

Post by michael1999 »

amazingamazing wrote: post #7
ck2 wrote: post #5

in the US it protects the corporations so they don't have to pay a living wage * https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/07/22/amazon-gi...

Given that you cannot force someone to hire anyone at a given wage what is the solution? At best all you can say is that if you decide to hire, it cannot be lower than some minimum, but often this results in no job at all.

Your "often" is not borne out by actual econometric studies. The actual rate of minimum wage that produces dead-weight loss is much higher than most minimum wages in the USA.

In any market, there is wide range of possible clearing prices with cost of production as a floor, and marginal value as a ceiling. Which price the market settles on is often a function of bargaining power as much as productivity. Minimum wage regulation is a heavy-handed way to change that bargaining relationship.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#32

Post by strictnein »

baggy_trough wrote: post #3

Where is the supposed austerity?

Austerity has become the boogeyman word for anytime a country doesn't increase spending as much as they originally planned or as much as some others think they should. An author who writes for Jacobin probably has a significantly different viewpoint on the term vs someone who works at a central bank.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#33

Post by autoexec »

cwbuilds wrote: post #22
autoexec wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the most massive costs an American has like healthcare, child care, and higher education are free or vastly less expensive in Europe. Americans spend all their time at work for a very impressive number on their paystub while they're still one accident or illness away from homelessness or bankruptcy. Europeans get higher quality of life/happiness scores and spend far less time slaving away for their boss.…

Not sure we do have better quality of life in Europe. We may have in the 2000s, but we're in decline relative to the US. Even if you take things like healthcare into account: US average disposable income is $51,000, while it's $32,000 in the UK (with higher rents in the UK than the US).

The UK is still better a lot of ways but there's a reason it's called "the America of Europe"

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#34

Post by alistairSH »

cwbuilds wrote: post #22
autoexec wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the most massive costs an American has like healthcare, child care, and higher education are free or vastly less expensive in Europe. Americans spend all their time at work for a very impressive number on their paystub while they're still one accident or illness away from homelessness or bankruptcy. Europeans get higher quality of life/happiness scores and spend far less time slaving away for their boss.…

Not sure we do have better quality of life in Europe. We may have in the 2000s, but we're in decline relative to the US. Even if you take things like healthcare into account: US average disposable income is $51,000, while it's $32,000 in the UK (with higher rents in the UK than the US).

Citation? Median earnings is less than that. And median household income is only marginally more.

the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings for all workers (people aged 15 and over with earnings) was $51,370; and more specifically estimates that median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $63,360.

According to the CPS, the median household income was $70,784 in 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#36

Post by bgnn »

kingleopold wrote: post #18
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The ECB could have brought government bond yields down from the beginning and most of the problems could have been avoided. Is that sustainable? Argentina's predicament is basically caused by a variant of this. The Peronists gave handouts to buy votes, funded by money printing (ie. "The ECB could have brought government bond yields down"), but that has consequences and turned Argentina into an economic basket case.…

sorry but whatever Ger/FRA doing right now is %100 not sustainable. Future growth potential is so bleak and so low chance, along with population crisis, aging natives too. They literally need miracle, like one that exist in stories

Germany and France will pull thd other European countries down worh them.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#37

Post by ahartmetz »

mono442 wrote: post #4
alephnerd wrote: post #2

> Where redistribution runs vertically and broadly, the welfare state absorbs global finance shocks... If this was true, then the Eurozone crisis would not have been as severe as it was in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and France - all countries with broad and large social assistance programs. --- Also, the HN title is editorialized, the correct title is "Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial…

The crisis was largely artificially engineered because Germans believed that Southern Europeans were "lazy" and needed to be made an example of. The ECB could have brought government bond yields down from the beginning and most of the problems could have been avoided.

Did anyone say lazy? I think the attitude was more like "irresponsible": Taking on debt with no hope of paying it off.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#38

Post by strictnein »

autoexec wrote: post #17
3748949494 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that why wages in the US are double those in europe or more

It's because the most massive costs an American has like healthcare, child care, and higher education are free or vastly less expensive in Europe. Americans spend all their time at work for a very impressive number on their paystub while they're still one accident or illness away from homelessness or bankruptcy. Europeans get higher quality of life/happiness scores and spend far less time slaving away for their boss.…

> higher education are free

Many of the states[0] have started offering free or low cost tuition for their public community colleges and trade schools, and low cost tuition for their colleges and universities. For example, Minnesota offers tuition at a state college starting at $6k a year[0] and free tuition at community colleges if you're earning under $80k[1]. Those prices are before financial aid, grants, scholarships, etc which are widely available from multiple sources.

[0] https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/states-with-free-tuition/

[1] https://www.minnstate.edu/admissions/affordability.html

[2] https://www.nhcc.edu/free-college-tuition-nhcc

As for the rest of your comment, you have a very distorted of what life in the US is like. Also, nothing you list is "free" in Europe, there's just a lot of rather regressive taxes that are collected to pay for it all. The US federal tax structure is actually rather progressive, but that also means there's less money for the feds to pay for all of those "free" things.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#39

Post by [deleted] »

mono442 wrote: post #4
alephnerd wrote: post #2

> Where redistribution runs vertically and broadly, the welfare state absorbs global finance shocks... If this was true, then the Eurozone crisis would not have been as severe as it was in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and France - all countries with broad and large social assistance programs. --- Also, the HN title is editorialized, the correct title is "Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial…

The crisis was largely artificially engineered because Germans believed that Southern Europeans were "lazy" and needed to be made an example of. The ECB could have brought government bond yields down from the beginning and most of the problems could have been avoided.

[deleted]

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#40

Post by rayiner »

ahartmetz wrote: post #37
mono442 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crisis was largely artificially engineered because Germans believed that Southern Europeans were "lazy" and needed to be made an example of. The ECB could have brought government bond yields down from the beginning and most of the problems could have been avoided.

Did anyone say lazy? I think the attitude was more like "irresponsible": Taking on debt with no hope of paying it off.

And are the Germans wrong?
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