Working Conditions and Benefits

I don't know if envy is the word, but it is obvious that Europeans enjoy a lot more holiday time. Additionally, because European countries are in close proximity to one another, it is not only easy to access multiple countries, but it is also much cheaper. Because Americans are locked in by two huge oceans, leaving the US to go anywhere outside of North America is difficult and expensive.Added to this, Americans on average are compensated with a lot less time off, which means taking extended vacations pretty difficult. I know the Spanish concept of a "siesta" is considered bizarre and lazy by a lot of Americans, but I'm not sure that most Americans would think this way. I think the European system is better. I think it is healthier and will actually increase productivity to have more time off. Americans work too much and as a result, we are burned out. We think the Japanese are workaholics, which is probably true, but we aren't much better. I don't know. But as long as there are American conglomerates that do not value the health of its workforce and try to maximize profits, it is certainly possible.

At-Will states need written documentation to fire someone. They legally can't just fire you for no reason. It could be argued that parasitic Union jobs are one of the reason why jobs are outsourced. Corporate greed being the other.But if you compare how the Japanese automaker market is doing within the US versus domestic manufacturers, the unionized US workers are paid slightly more but the Japanese are outcompeting US car makers and offer more job stability and less layoff's.

Do you mean that the welfare system is so generous that it enables them to sit back and collect an easy check and offers no real incentive to find more work? Well, it's not a constitutional right, so you would have to create another Amendment. On what basis do you think that free housing be supplied and do you know how expensive that would be to house every human being in your country?

I think we're asking the wrong questions and pushing the wrong initiatives to ensure people have decent lives.I'm always amazed how few people see inflation as the real enemy here. You can always pay people more money, and still inflation will outpace "a living wage." So why do we continue with this fiat currency that is constantly depreciating instead of creating a much more stable form of currency that remains largely static?

You said you wanted it to be a constitutional right, which means everyone will be supplied with a flop house, I mean, a bunk house. So why would anyone be purchasing these tiny houses?Also, if rich people are allowed to buy them then that implies they also have the luxury of buying all of them, selling them, and marking up prices to fleece the poor.You would also have the problem of creating ghettos on a scale reminiscent of the Bowery slums, because no one would want a bunk house. They would only do it out of necessity. And poverty and crime go together like butter on toast. If we look at government intervention now, a la Section 8 housing, you have atrocious living conditions and rampant crime. Now extrapolate that disaster a few million times. The housing market is terrible, but I'm failing how to see dropping miniature homes all over the place is somehow going to reverse that. You will still have people who desire more for themselves, and as such you will still have a class divide. Actually, it may even exacerbate the class divide.

That's a fine goal to aspire to, but what kind of plans would you implement it to make it become a reality?

And as save money for retirement, the value of that dollar is constantly devaluing so that a $500K retirement today might be a $250K (or less) retirement amount if we compare 2016 dollars to 2036 dollars.Inflation affects the cost of living which almost always outpaces annual raises. That is problematic for people who cannot make yearly raises that are commensurate with inflation rates.So let's look at California as an example. The wages are higher in some sectors of business to cover the exorbitant cost of living. But what you end up getting is gentrification and a mass exodus of people fleeing the state and heading to cheaper places.So if we were to force businesses to pay everyone more money, should Walmart employees in California make more than a Walmart in the Research Triangle of North Carolina?What if we stabilized the purchasing power of the dollar so that we have apples to apples and not apples to oranges?

I'm using my phone, so I won't be using quotes. I will just address your points in chronological order.The scarcity of personal homes are supplied with apartments and lots of them.As for barracks for homeless people, they often don't use it even when it is available because fights, drugs, thievery, unclean living conditions, etc are rampant in places like that. The homeless go where the money is, and panhandling at a good intersection is incredibly lucrative. Many homeless people prefer homelessness, believe it or not. It's a simpler life with a lot less responsibility and a lot less debt.My issue is with the Constituitonal right you mentioned since it implies that everyone should have access to it. What do you do for homeless people far outside of city limits in small towns? Houston is a major metropolitan center, but what about nowhere North Dakota?Secondly, where does it end? All people need shelter to survive but they also need sustanence. Should it be the responsibility of the federal government to supply food to every American because it should be an inherent right?

Just paying people more is a short term solution, and how does one go about that anyhow? The inflation rates are low now at about .5 but they were as high as 3.8 at the height of the recession which is not just bad for the impoverished but everyone. If interest rates were static and stable, everyone would fare better in the long term.Washington state increased their minimum wage and there unemployment rate is also 15% higher than the national average and according to one study found it to be 42% higher than before they implemented it. Many economists warned that a correlation exists between raising the minimum wage and unemployment rates.

Police and home security systems are anti-social? Can you elaborate?

That's because the jail/bail/prison system is viewed with business interests so they lock people up for minor things. It is a problem, I agree. Yeah, but most people don't steal things or resort to crime so they can get food to eat. They do it because free shit is better than paying for it or they have some kind of addiction to support. There's not too many cases of people stealing loaves of bread for their hungry children but there are plenty of cases of people stealing cars and stripping them for parts. I definitely agree with that last statement. Either we pay more in SNAP or we pay more income. But isn't this substituting one problem for another? The U.S. Congressional Budget Office reports that raising the national minimum wage can and does result in the loss of jobs.Source: The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income | Congressional Budget OfficeAs of now, 1 in 7 Americans are on SNAP. If there was a national increase in minimum wage, we could see that ratio double or even triple.That's my concern. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : Edit to add

I'm not sure I understand the concept fully. Are you referring to an Earned Income Tax Credit that can be done annually, monthly, or bi-weekly?

I agree. Crime and recidivism is a complex issue. I think the assumption is that there is a clear trend between rates of poverty and rates of crime that appear to not only correlate but appear to have a causal relationship. But why there is a relationship is really complex and cannot be explained solely by economics. There are a ton of social factors at play as well (addiction, childhood trauma, bad parenting, de-sensitivity to crime, poor education, lack of opportunities, etc). Money plays a role, I wouldn't discount that, but I think it's too simplistic to assume that paying people more money would necessarily result in an appreciable drop in crime.