Except that isn't true. Every Dutch person has access to healthcare, social security, justice, competent policing, clean food etc. Whereas in the US many many people don't have those basic things, as often they are only available to the rich. This is a more fundamental understanding of inequality.
San Franciscans, including the homeless, already have access to free healthcare[0]. California also has free, universal healthcare[1], and there are more people in California than all of Canada.
Not universal - you have to meet eligibility criteria (i.e. be rather poor) to use it - it is California's Medicade it appears.
My understanding is that the worst difficulties (bankruptcy, avoiding care, crippling premiums, large out of pocket) are in fact experienced by middle income people who don't qualify for Medicaid/Medicare. There is none of that in the Netherlands.
It is true. It is a fact that the Netherlands has one of the highest levels of wealth inequality in the world, including higher than that if the US.
The things you’ve listed aren’t income inequality, they are a social safety net. Having access to healthcare doesn’t put you much closer to a billionaire in terms of wealth. Perhaps a weak social safety net is to blame, but given that SF has some of the most extensive social services of any city in the US, that also seems unlikely.
As Europeans, each of us is born into so much real wealth - the things I've listed are just the beginning - that trinkets like cars and TVs and so forth really aren't significant. Some people drive Ferraris, some take the bus - but in terms of meaningful wealth we are all pretty much the same. We are all free in a way that Americans, though they talk much about freedom, can never really grasp. We are free from fear.
What a joke. I moved from europe (eastern europe but still eu) to the us after my parents died in a hospital because of the incredible quality of “free healthcare” which didn’t want to pay for their treatment and often forgot to feed the in the hospital.
If I had the money I made in the us then I could have maybe put them in a private hospital. You’re only as free as how much money you have in your pocket, nothing else matters.
