Destroy the Social Safety Net!

[easye]

This is a thread to talk about the various Social Safety Net programs in various nations, and the efforts to kill them, keep them going, or expand them!  

This includes things like: 
- National Health Care programs
- Retirement Funding
- Welfare and Food Benefits
- Social Safety Net programs
- Maternity/Paternity Care

I think you get the idea!  Let's kick this off! 

www.npr.org/2023/03/07/1161582417/biden-budget-medicare

Biden says his budget plan would extend Medicare to 2050 without adding to the deficit

President Biden is proposing a tax increase for people who make more than $400,000 to extend the life of Medicare for another 25 years, highlighting a major element of his budget proposal which the White House will release in full on Thursday.



This year, the president's budget — a policy document that usually is largely ignored by Congress, which holds the power of the purse — comes ahead of a deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.



House Republicans have said they won't raise the debt limit without substantive cuts to federal spending. Democrats, including Biden, have accused Republicans of wanting to see cuts to Medicare and Social Security, two massive sources of federal spending.



Biden published an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday laying out his proposal to invest in Medicare's trust fund so that the program can remain solvent into the 2050s, a plan that would increase the Medicare tax rate to 5% from 3.8% on people who make more than $400,000 a year.

[maddocgrotsnik]

I’ll come back to this when I’m sober 😂😂

But to prevent folk hanging on tenterhooks, I’ll be focussing on bogus arguments, the basis of insurance, and how, one way or the other, you will end up paying for someone else’s care. And how indeed Universal Healthcare, when properly funded, is a net gain for society.

[easye]

The global war on workers continues.....

French government forces through higher retirement age, risking fresh protests

www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/europe/france-pension-reform-strikes-intl/index.html

The French government has forced controversial plans to raise the retirement age through parliament, a move likely to provoke further protests and strikes.

The National Assembly – the lower house of the country’s parliament – erupted into chaotic scenes as the French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne fought to be heard over chants from lawmakers calling for the government to stand down.

“We cannot bet on the future of our pensions,” Borne said. “This reform is necessary.”

Lawmakers in France’s lower house were due to vote on the bill Thursday afternoon. However, the session was stopped early for Borne’s announcement.

The government does not have enough support to pass the bill in the lower house, but a clause in the French constitution means it can enact legislation without an outright majority.

Borne singled out far-right lawmakers in the lower house for not backing the legislation, which was voted through by the French senate earlier Thursday.

Reacting to Borne’s move, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party, called for the prime minister to step down.

“After the slap that the Prime Minister just gave the French people, by imposing a reform which they do not want, I think that Elisabeth Borne should go,” tweeted Le Pen on Thursday.

Massive protests have been staged regularly throughout France since mid-January, with millions turning out to voice their opposition to the government’s plan to raise the official retirement age for most workers, part of wider reforms to the government’s pension system, one of Europe’s most generous.


The legislation requires French citizens to work until 64, from 62 currently, to qualify for a full state pension.

Funny how we just had a study showing that working 30 hours was just as if not more productive than 40. We have also seen that workers are just as productive WFH. We also see efforts to keep people working longer at the expense of the younger workers future earnings.

... and yet we keep getting these anti-worker type laws forcing people to work longer?

It is also really strange to me that the "Far-right" is opposed to these efforts. There must be something going on in France that I am unaware of since I am an idiot American.

I really do not understand it all.

[Disciple of Fate]

The reason they keep pushing this through is that people keep living longer and the state needs more money to support them. That part makes sense, the problem is where they think the money should be squeezed from.

The Netherlands is currently pushing for people to work more, because there are currently too few (full-time) workers to cover all the jobs. Apparently the idea that there simply might be too many companies is a hard one to grasp, even here in Europe.

[easye]

Wait, are they actually arguing there are not enough workers?

People are literally dying to get into Europe, and they think there are not enough workers...... I mean.... that is a take. 

[Disciple of Fate]

Well the European right isn't that different from the US on the type of people they want coming in.

Just a few weeks ago one of the right wing parties said we should get people from India, because those trying to get here from Africa or the Middle-East don't share our 'values'.

Exploitable and cheap labor was a large part of the push to expand EU free travel into Eastern Europe, but we're running out of available Europe.

[herzlos]

They don't want permanent migrants - those are foreigners that might do better than them. They'd rather make (other) 70 year olds do the work instead.

What they do want is to import foreigners that know their place, and will work for a pittance for a few years before being sent home, and be grateful for it.

If they don't even speak English then that's even better - no risk of them getting ideas above their station.

[easye]

Oddly, I see this as a sign that UBI maybe closer than I thought it was!

www.npr.org/2024/05/03/1248663386/basic-income-ban-poverty-cash-aid-states

After a boom in cash aid to tackle poverty, some states are now banning it

Dozens of cities and counties around the U.S. have been trying to tackle poverty by giving people no-strings cash aid, an idea that gained traction after the success of stimulus checks and other federal relief during the pandemic. But advocates say over the past year, a backlash fueled by a conservative think tank has gained steam.

Iowa is the latest Republican-led state to prohibit the use of public money for so-called guaranteed income. The final vote last month wasn't close, but the debate was heated. Senators who support such programs said it was undemocratic to undermine local governments. One suggested colleagues were being hypocritical, since their own families have received federal farm subsidies for generations.

**************

In Texas a similar bill to ban these programs didn't get far, so state Sen. Paul Bettencourt took a different tack. He persuaded the state attorney general to file suit against a basic income program in Harris County, which includes Houston.

If the R's are this afraid of it, that means the concept is gaining traction and support.

[adurot]

Fucking Iowa…

[Peregrine]

One suggested colleagues were being hypocritical, since their own families have received federal farm subsidies for generations.

Yep. Welfare checks for conservatives are an essential part of society, welfare checks for democrats are evil socialism and theft from hard working Americans.

[easye]

www.npr.org/2024/06/18/g-s1-4991/social-security-ssi-marriage-penalty

Couples say they can't get married because of this government program's outdated rules

It wasn’t until after they married that they learned the federal disability benefits program Amber relied upon penalizes couples who marry. Amber lost her monthly income check and the health care that came with it.

Amber is one of 7.4 million people who rely upon Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, a federal program that provides monthly cash assistance to disabled and older people with little income and resources. And for Amber and others, being on SSI is also the way they get health insurance.

To qualify for SSI, recipients are required to do something that few couples could manage: keep their savings and assets under $3,000.

An NPR investigation of SSI — a program run by the Social Security Administration — found that many disabled people get caught by this “marriage penalty,” a left-over rule from decades ago when government policies didn’t account for disabled people finding love and getting married.

AS a "Job Creator" I have run into many situations where giving people raises or more hours was not possible because it would have conflicted with their SSI or other benefits. The raise or extra hours were usually not enough to off-set the benefits, so the people kind of got stuck in this wage depreciation cycle. The gap between what they would likely make and the benefits they received was too great to cover without a substantial boost to income, but often the loss of childcare or health care was a HUGE deterrent to working.

Therefore, I am not surprised to find it impacting folks getting married too.

[bobtheinquisitor]

Our social safety net is designed like a trap.

[easye]

It is also designed to be counter-productive to its stated goals of getting everyone to work.

[herzlos]

It's similar in the UK. One of the benefits is a carers allowance to supplement people who can't work full time in order to provide care to someone (thus saving the Government from hiring someone to do it), but the amount is too small to live off on it's own and if you work more than about 10 hours a week you lose it. So it's entirely possible that you could make less money working 3 days a week than if you worked 2.

The dreaded Universal Credit (a scheme to try and simplify the benefits system) also means that if you earn over a threshold within a week, you are essentially stripped of the benefits entirely, with something bonkers like a 2 month wait for reinstatement. That means doing too much overtime one week can pretty much bankrupt you.

[skyth]

Not sure if this is the right thread, but seemed appropriate -

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-says-ban-on-homeless-camping-does-not-violate-constitution/ar-BB1p46kC?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=0ba49e719c5040319b6f143c544f21a8&ei=14

So the Supreme Court has ruled that cities can make it a criminal offense to be homeless...