Would you mind if we re-published your comment at our political and social opinion website (we can link back to the comment here in this Steemit article)?:
As you probably know the government does give financial assistance to the poor in the US though, but it's not the same as European welfare systems and mostly seems to be time limited as far as I can find out, e.g. the SNAP program. From wikipedia:
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Quote:
SNAP benefits cost $70.9 billion in fiscal year 2016 and supplied roughly 44.2 million Americans (14% of the population)[2] with an average of $125.51 for each person per month in food assistance
Also this:
21.3 Percent of U.S. Population Participates in Government Assistance Programs Each Month
On your demographics point yes there is a big problem in that the number of white European women still of child bearing age is not encouraging. The exact number may be hard to find thanks to the suppression of such data, I have not found any info. on that. I have come across some gloomy assessments that the population won't ever recover, and it's certainly looking bleak today.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people living in the United States. It is a federal aid program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), though benefits are distributed by each U.S. state's Division of Social Services or Children and Family Services.
SNAP benefits cost $70.9 billion in fiscal year 2016 and supplied roughly 44.2 million Americans (14% of the population) with an average of $125.51 for each person per month in food assistance. Beneficiaries and costs increased sharply with the Great Recession, peaked in 2013 and have declined through 2016 as the economy recovered.
Sure, you can go ahead and re-publish my comments where ever and whenever you please. You might have to proofread them though, since English is not my native language.
And I'd like to have a look at those "gloomy assessments that the population won't ever recover", because I completely agree with that. There is no realistic way Western Europe's population could recover under today's circumstances. That would take at least 100 years, nut there are no 100 years left.
The combination of the faster generational change of the people with lower education and the influx of those people into the welfare systems makes this enterprise impossible. The breeding age of a normal middle class European woman has continuously gone up in the past 50 years, and the fact of the matter is this: If a middle class woman decides to break this rule and to start breeding in her early 20s instead of finishing her studies, then she will no longer belong to the middle class.