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alex ,

Every day I appreciate how lucky I am that my country knows the concept of social security.

centof OP , (edited )

I’m curious what the social security system is like in your country(France?). The US theoretically has a safety net for people but it is sabotaged by 1/3 of the population and businesses to make it ineffective.

flipht ,

Since so much of our social safety net is run by states, and since so much is based on poverty numbers, it's interesting to learn how that poverty threshold was originally calculated

Spoiler alert, it was just made up by some bureaucrat's personal beliefs about "expected costs" for a "normal family."

https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/about/history-of-the-poverty-measure.html#:~:text=The%20current%20official%20poverty%20measure,account%20for%20other%20family%20expenses.

It hasn't been adjusted for the insanity of today's expenses, not even counting inflation. In the 60s, they didn't have the same medical, educational, or transportation costs we do, let alone other stuff like rent and daycare.

It's literally a meaningless figure that is kept artificially low to limit who is eligible for assistance.

centof OP ,

Your link says its based on the cost of food for 3 people in a family at the 1960s . Surely there is nothing else you need in life besides food. /s It didn’t account for anything besides food cost. Not housing, vehicle, or gas cost.

Here’s a good read by about how ineffective the US’s safety net is https://www.scottsantens.com/the-progressive-case-for-replacing-the-welfare-state-with-universal-basic-income/ . TLDR Only 25% of those eligible actually use it.

Side note: this site was unfindable on google even when searching “scott santens welfare progressive” in google. Interesting.

alex ,

It’s very, very hard to get laid off / fired in France if you haven’t done a major fuckup. It’s possible, but the notice period is 3 months during which you’re legally entitled to spend one or two working hours per day actually job hunting.

Unless you voluntarily quit, you get ~50% of your old salary for up to 18 months (unemployment benefits last for the same duration as your latest work contract, with an 18 month cap) as long as you can prove you’re job searching. If you exceed the duration you get an insufficient, but non-zero, financial help of ~500€/month (which would cover a 2 bedroom rental in any small city and one bedroom in a mid-sized city, but not housing for a major city like Paris or Marseille).

Families get extra subsidies based on the number of children, and for long-term issues you can apply for subsidized housing, etc.

Also, healthcare is very cheap (and many emergency care things are free, as well as all prescription medicine), which means that if you can cover room and board you’ll survive. You may have bad surprises but not “lifetime debt” bad surprises - that’s why whereas the US financial planning advice is to have 3-6 months of living costs saved, the French advice is 1-3 months.

centof OP ,

I see so basically strong worker and family protections, and healthcare not being treated as a extortion scheme. If only the US government wasn’t filled with bad actors who are basically unaccountable to the people.

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