[handrous]

The US provides EU-level social safety net benefits (healthcare, housing) to the lower classes—via employment in the military, which is in part a stealth jobs program that both major political parties support paying for.

We provide a jobs program for white-collar folks through our excessively-large and exceptionally expensive healthcare system. We pay for whole categories of jobs that don't need to exist and are only adding costs. A double-digit percentage of our healthcare costs are a white-collar jobs program paying people to do nothing useful whatsoever, and we spend a lot on healthcare so even 10% makes it a fairly big program.

[jannes]

That’s not really a safety net, because not everybody is physically fit to join the military.

[handrous]

Yeah, I'm aware. It's a really sick way to give working-poor families access to universal healthcare, housing, and free education, which other OECD states mostly manage to do without that. But, it's what we've got.