[cdoxsey]

The US has social safety nets.

Nearly half the federal budget is spent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And there are numerous other programs: unemployment, housing assistance, snap, etc.

There are also state and local programs as well as private charities.

[uncletaco]

Social security and Medicare are both social safety nets that one cannot take advantage of while they're working in most cases, and everything else you've mentioned either requires a person to be in extreme poverty or severely disabled.

Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits.

Mentioning them the way you have requires a very uncharitable interpretation of the previous posters point.

[nsxwolf]

The American system sounds like what something called a “safety net” should provide. Why would someone actually need to use a safety net while they are healthy, young, and gainfully employed?

[grumple]

I should have said "socialized services" in my original post. Sorry, I've been brainwashed by years of American right-wing owned media to call it a safety net.

[RestlessMind]

> Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits.

If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting[1]? And why do so many recent French presidents have abysmal approval ratings[2]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr...

[2] Macron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanue...

Hollande: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande#Approva...

Sarkozy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Nicolas_Sarkozy#...

[laurencerowe]

The French have a strong welfare system precisely because they are willing to take action and forcefully protest when it is threatened.

[SolaceQuantum]

The approval rating doesn't seem to be much better than US Gov't[0].

Also, the US is also constantly protesting too. What do you think Black Lives Matter, the Google Walkout, the Amazon protests in NYC, the current and ongoing unrest surrounding ICE camps, and the teachers union strike in LA are?

0. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx

[RestlessMind]

But the GP was trying to point out how France is much better than the US. With a better system, I would expect less protests and better approval ratings.

[SolaceQuantum]

And I am arguing that approval ratings and protests may not be highly correlated or have causational relationships with the amount of social services.

[bobwaycott]

> I would expect less protests and better approval ratings.

You must not know the French very well, or you wouldn’t expect this. :)

[chinesempire]

> If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting

because they are alive and free.

[scarface74]

Unemployment insurance is state based and usually somewhere between $300 - $500 a week. The waiting list for housing assistance is years long in some places.

[adamsea]

We definitely have safety nets. Ours just cost more and give less.

To be fair we are also a much larger country with more diversity (especially of culture) than many countries with robust social safety nets.

Basically what I want to know is, if I don’t have health insurance through my employer, make $50K a year, and get cancer, what happens? I don’t know for sure but here in the US I’m guessing the answer would be mountains of debt.

[unishark]

> Basically what I want to know is, if I don’t have health insurance through my employer, make $50K a year, and get cancer, what happens? I don’t know for sure but here in the US I’m guessing the answer would be mountains of debt.

You must apply to a charity such as a catholic hospital that provides care for such cases. I know people with expensive conditions that have done this.

If it gets so bad that you become disabled, you can get social security.

If you run up a mountain of debt you can get rid of it (and your credit rating) via bankruptcy.