I'm from the UK and I'm currently travelling the world for a few months. I have been shocked by how different American attitudes to poverty are to European ones. We may not be very good at actually helping people in poverty, but most people accept that poor people are in need of help.
America was founded by people who fled Europe because they didn't fit in there. I have raised two special needs kids. If you have problems other people don't really understand, it is not uncommon for people to try to help you in ways that are incredibly counterproductive. This is why "Please stop helping me!" is (or was) a TV Tropes page.
America has a political tradition of Don't tread on me. This influences our policies and attitudes regarding a great many things, sometimes in ways that are not positive.
I'm a woman who was one of the top high school students of my entire state and I failed to get the two career couple upper class outcome I expected. I spent my twenties reading boatloads of stuff trying to figure out what went wrong.
I concluded that European women asked society to help them carry the burden of being the one who carries a child to term. American women took the Don't tread on me position and basically told men to fuck off and get the fuck out of my way. The European approach has a much better track record of closing the wage gap and raising quality of life for both women and children.
On the other hand, I spent nearly 6 years homeless in order to get healthier when doctors say it cannot be done, so I am pretty Don't tread on me to good effect. So I don't actually think America is simply dysfunctional and needs to give up its silly ways. But we certainly have room for improvement on quite a lot of metrics.
I agree. Was in SF recently and the juxtaposition of extreme wealth and homelessness makes me extremely uncomfortable. I know we have homelessness in the UK but this is just a whole different scale in the US
Oh my, this is what I was saying elsewhere in this thread. San Francisco is probably the most shocking place I've been to in my life. So much poverty and yet so much money. YC should do a push to do something with that with its next start up. But I'm guessing people in SF just got used to the poverty around them at this point and probably think it's normal.
Have you never been to London? There are homeless literally everywhere, and London is one of the wealthiest cities in the world. The money in London is much, much older as well, so if anyone should have it "sorted" it should be London.
There were 1,137 homeless reported in London [0], a city with a population of 8.8 million. SF has 7,499 [1] for a city of 870k. There are actually more homeless in SF than all of England.
> Have you never been to London? There are homeless literally everywhere
I live in London currently. There are almost no homeless people. What are you talking about? It's one of the largest city I've been to where I've seen the least amount of poverty.
I'll also say that London is super safe, you'll almost never see crazy people in the streets or public transport. I regularly take the bus or the subway at late hours and I've never seen anyone dangerous or looking for trouble.
You are right, there are homeless in London of course, as I said in my original comment. I had the impression it was a lot worse in SF. I don't know what the stats are on SF v London but I would be interested. And of course, I think it is a disgrace we have homeless in the UK too
I forgot who it was, but there was a good joke by a comedian on this topic. He was talking about people throwing out that common "we are praying for you" line and he was like "Oh, so you're telling me you're going to sit on the couch and do nothing? Thanks."
The UK has gone off a cliff in recent years in this regard, thanks to constant TV and news propaganda trying to say that poverty is always the fault of irresponsibility and unbourgeoise attitudes.
Honestly, the whole bash-the-poor perception is becoming more prevalent in Australia too (I'm from the UK too), it's becoming more and more the norm but as a whole, I find Australia to be very Americanised.
