Reply #38: "Canada spends 26% of their GDP on social programs." "United States spends currently only 7.2%". [View All]

[pampango]

The only good news in this is that it is something that Americans are doing to themselves (or, more accurately, that some Americans are doing to other Americans). It is not something that is forced on us by foreigners or other countries, but is something that we can change if we have the political will to do so.

The 33 OECD countries that spend more on their own people than the US, are all democracies in which the people have forced their governments to adopt progressive social spending policies in the face of past (and current) conservative opposition. These OECD countries are not run by benevolent dictators who magically keep conservative in place. Conservatives never stop fighting to lower social spending. (Indeed they are enjoying some success at it in Europe now largely due to effects of the economic crisis that Bush inflicted on the world.) So progressives can never stop fighting for our vision of society even in countries that have achieved much more in terms of a fairer society (like Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe) than we have.