I beg to differ. The nordic states do not only have high taxes and welfare programs, they are also intervening into the lives of troubled families early anf heavily. A single teenage mom in Sweden will be monitored while pregnant and during infancy of her kid without something going bad first. Just distributing money (what we have been doing for decades) does not have the same effect. Kids grow up in families where nobody had a steady job for generations and they are lost by the time the German state starts to care about them, when they are 6-7 and need to start school. Our welfare related NGOs have been telling us that poverty is rising since forever and that we should distribute more (half of all state expenses is not sufficient, obviously). They also deliberately obscure how much we pay already (how could somebody live on just a few hundred euros a months??? Ahm, yes, this and having his rent paid, and his heating bills, and health insurance, and all sorts of discounts for e.g. public transport...). Just throwing money at the problem does not help it. And throwing so much money on it that a family of four is better of on welfare than with a minimum wage worker is creating moral hazard on one side and resentment on the other.
Why do you think it is deliberately obscured? You are talking about Hartz-4, right?
Its all written down in your Bescheid. A single gets about 700€ maximum plus 127€ (last time I looked) health insurance. That btw. should be the same rate you get if you earn the same money through working.
2 person household its 2x120€ rent for example.
And I dont think there is a single country (with a meaningful welfare system) on the whole earth where a single minimum wage earner gets more money then welfare for 4.
Of course Hartz-4 does not not elevate people above the poverty treshold. Again looking at the whole world there is no welfare system that does it, I am quite sure. Apart from where the people are the problem, it
does give everyone a warm place and food, even if it is not enough for the "socio cultural minimum" that it is supposed to give. (And here is really a lot of work gone into obscuration and statistical trickery)
Or what did you mean with problem?
55% of African Americans were in poverty in 1959 and by 2009 that had dropped to 25.9%.
I beg to differ ^^ But with due respect to the "ethnic" problem, I dont think it is fair to compare numbers from before race seggregation (still was 1959, right? But even if not, it was not long ago.) and after. The reason of poverty are more based in race problem that then in welfare problem. I would even go so far to say that it is still the case. We just had a comic on this, right? lol