[Magdalen] immigration / migrant situation --->Re: Professionalpanhandlers; was Loaned out.

[Jim Guthrie]

>So many of the stories we hear in the US  about how balanced some of the W 
>European and Scandinavian countries are with employment, social structure are 
>wonderful, but they are also much smaller countries than the US with perhaps 
>more government control of many aspects of society in regard to wager, medical 
>costs, pensions, etc.

Small doesn’t mean much. What is important is the social and economic benefits 
derived from a far more concentrated population. Dense population lowers things 
like infrastructure costs (which allows better infrastructure) for example. That 
leaves far more money for the social programs we all admire.

But that better and more concentrated infrastructure also makes it easier to 
take in migrations as we're seeing, because the costs of taking them in are 
intrinsically lower than they would be in the U.S.

And the U.S. (and our citizens) pay a steep price for the inability to recognize 
that most Americans live in cities (and true since the 1920s) and the general 
failure to support urban infrastructure. It should be noted also that cities 
that  have taken it upon themselves to improve infrastructure tend to grow and 
get richer nowadays, while those that have not grow poorer.

Even helping the poor costs less and offers more benefits with highly 
concentrated populations, such as found in Europe. In rural America, it costs 
far more to feed the poor than it does in the cities because the costs of 
running a true feeding program (like, say Holy Apostles in NYC feeding 1300 
people a day in a cafeteria-like setting) is far more efficient than the out of 
pocket transportation costs of trying to feed people living in widely scattered 
places.

And being able to walk to a doctor or clinic is far cheaper than, say, requiring 
people to own a car (or supplying individual transportation), or more commonly, 
letting people suffer and die for lack of transportation in rural areas.

The American mythology regarding rural living costs lives, and belies our good 
and charitable  intentions

Cheers,
Jim