Item — HN Reader

>That's a really heartwarming story. Unfortunately, it's a single data point. We certainly can't expand that to cover all poor people

Sit quietly and really ask yourself if you think that was my point. Dan posted something that put the poor into three categories, all of which said, "You can't really help them." And that's a bullshit rationalization. America has little in the way of economic safety nets compared to most western industrialized countries and it shows. America also spends more on defense than every other nation in the world -- combined -- and it shows.

If you change your priorities, you change your results.

1 comments

Yes. Thank you. You covered everything I wanted to express, but better, and calmer.

Everyone arguing in these threads on HN - a bastion of privilege - should come live in a place like Vienna for a couple months. I've always been an advocate of the idea that a society is only as strong as its weakest member, but you can't know what you're missing in the US until you really experience it.

See the lack of fear in the cashier's eyes. Experience what a society is like when not a single person in it is worrying that he or she might get fired if they miss days of work due to sickness or a child's sickness.

See the total lack of homeless people.

See how it can be when all the sick are cared for, and the poor have good housing -- very nice community housing, that anyone in the country can live in, with a waiting list (poor and needy have priority), keeping them from being slums.

Everything here is better. Everyone here may live with dignity. That makes an enormous difference.

I'm an American a few hours North in Prague. Drop me an email if you come up this way; it's in my profile.