What does cultural homogeneity have anything to do with the way a country treats its homeless?
Also, while Norway may be rich in natural resources, so is the USA. So I'm not entirely certain how that matters either.
Also, while Norway may be rich in natural resources, so is the USA. So I'm not entirely certain how that matters either.
It's easier to be generous to people who are more like oneself, and who are physically closer to oneself.
Consider all the people in Europe right now who may be perfectly happy to support generous welfare for homeless people who happen to have been born on the same side of their borders, but who are hostile to homeless people who just fled Syria.
Or consider the difficulty of scrapping every national welfare system in Europe and uniting them under a single EU government. I contend that would be very difficult. America is more like the EU than it is like Norway. Norway is much more like Massachusetts, which has very Norway-like quality-of-life metrics.
Families in rural areas can thrive with a knife, saw and shotgun, drinking from clean lakes, growing food and living healthy, aerobic lifestyles. They see little need for government intervention. They barter and travel on unimproved roads with horses and all-terrain vehicles, even making their own fuel. Even in the event of a fire disaster, they can quickly rebuild on their own vast property.
In denser urban areas, housing codes and other cultural laws, like riding horses, drying clothes on a line, noise and land use restrictions and sleeping in public spaces make living close to the land impractical and/or illegal. Collusion with the developed world and its government is mandatory. People in these areas are happy to invest in personal radios transmitting their consumption habits and private conversations in exchange for access to the benefits of mass production, including remedies for their own sacrificed health. In these areas, those with the ability to generate for the system do just fine or excellent.
Families with cultural lag, such as the poor, badly educated and immigrants - voluntary and involuntary - have to get up to pace, learning the unintuitive ways of the modern, urban jungle. It's hard work, yet with all the access to information, it remains largely possible. The bottom layers who can't keep up get minimal assistance from the government to figure out how to get back into the system or move out to the rural areas.
America is all about navigating the 1,000 shades between these two extremes.
It effectively means: "Our country is fundamentally different from your country, so what works for you won't necessarily work for us. Your success or failure is no reason for us to follow your example."
Often this card is played despite the "fundamental differences" not necessarily being all that pronounced, or all that relevant. No two countries on this planet are identical, yet an astounding number of policies translate generally well despite that.
How having a population of 60+ times higher and oil revenues 10 times lower as a percentage of GDP is not a relevant difference when discussing the amounts being spent per person on a a social safety net?
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
Norway is #11 with $68k, the U.S. is #19 with $55k, Canada is #32 with $45k.
Also, oil revenue as a percentage of GDP is hardly relevant. It's not like you're only allowed to spend Oil money on social security.
Why are you so caught up on the idea that the money can only come from oil
Think again on the similar GDP Per Capita rankings, and review this: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG
Norway only spends about 22% of it's GDP on Social Benefits. The U.S. spends 19.2%. Breaking that down into dollars does tell a different story: Norway spends about 50% more on social benefits than the U.S. does, but you can hardly argue that the U.S. cannot afford it.
To throw Canada into the mix, it spends about 17%. That's a lower percentage of a lower GDP. In fact that would imply that Canada spends approximately 25% LESS on social benefits than the U.S. and has still has free healthcare.
One caveat to this is that I am comparing social benefit percentages from 2014 and comparing them to GDP Per Capita data from 2015, so take the exact numbers with a grain of salt.
The argument I'm trying to make is that it's political, not economic.