Where is our safety net?

I continually wonder why we reject building a safety net for our people?  Europe is full of successful democracies (despite the spin we hear, they do provide a great standard of living and a lot of security for their populations, they just don't make many billionaires, tough isn't it?) who provide for their own, but we can't have that, because we are all going to be rich tomorrow and won't need it...or something.

Let’s be clear that the subtext of the Spiegel article is that these are the ethics promulgated by a country with the weakest social safety net of any major industrialized country in the world. Let’s think about this, aren’t they in fact right about that? Please consider that the annual income of the wealthiest 12,000 households is bigger than that of the poorest 24 million households. Doesn’t America allow 59 million of its citizens to go without medical insurance; 132 million without a dental plan; 60 millionwithout paid sick leave; and 40 million on food stamps. Let’s please remember that, the wealthiest 1% of American households already have more net worth than the bottom 90% of American households. Is this the American dream or the American nightmare? By contrast, virtually everyone in the European Union has a medical plan, has a dental plan, gets paid sick leave, paid maternity leave; receives paid annual leave. This also includes low wage workers. Now ask yourself who has the moral high ground here? Now while we can all be proud Americans, surely we don’t have to be proud of the broken American social safety net.

What if the Republicans get their way and cause ANOTHER recession?  Will you be OK?  How come we love our billionaires and give them everything they ask for, but can't help our unemployed neighbor?  Are we really the richest country in the world, or do we only have the most rich people?  There is a difference.