Italy, France, even Germany that you mention as “healthy capitalist” countries with strong social programs have been facing for some years now several kinds of crises, economic, social, political and other. It might seem like if a country has a strong industry of some sort it must be taking good care of its citizens but that is a leap of logic these days and that is exactly the problem with capitalism and how it has been manipulated for years in order to make the rich richer and as a result the poor poorer when things in the global economy get bad. The countries you mentioned are gradually taking away from the people more and more, both in terms of money and social “privileges” like free education and healthcare. At the same time, capitalism (while trying desperately to hang on to it’s former glory) and the people who have eventually profited from it, and the people who think that this is the only situation possible, and the people who are scared and have become desperate and lazily comfort themselves with the idea that this is just a rough patch and capitalism will make things right again if they keep enduring stoically their further personal impoverishment, all of those people and companies and states keep recycling loopholes, legal and mental, in the education system, in the employment system etc, to make things appear as if they are under control. To put it simply, you can reduce your unemployment numbers if you make it legal for people to work part-time for 2euros per hour and apply a hundred ethical violations of worker’s rights. People who can barely feed themselves will run for a job like that. Then the state can say “we reduced unemployment” and the companies can say “we give job opportunities” and it all sounds good and peachy in the world, people are still poor, they get evicted from their houses, they start living in their cars and when winter comes they die from the cold or if they are lucky enough to pay rent, they can’t afford to pay for their heating so they burn whatever wood and plastic they can find in the trash and they get suffocated by the fumes. God, I love capitalism.
