I have no doubt that occurs in the US although I doubt it happens with as much prevalence. But this is actually neither here nor there as I do not wish to defend the USA's capitalist system and we could argue the Cuban populace suffers more than they should in part due to US sanctions.Actually, a lot of lower income people in the US are indeed forced to turn to sex work by economic hardship.
Sure but Europe has had its fair share of struggles. What bugs me is that the colonial era is often used to entirely dismiss achievements while history is filled with events which both positively and negatively impacted prosperity. I could argue Western and Eastern Germany had a rather similar past and were ripped apart into Capitalist and Communist regions and if Capitalism was so bad why did people risk their lives fleeing from the Socialist Haven?Obviously, I wasn't saying that was the end of the question. There's a lot more to it. But throughout the last several hundred years, Europe has generally been in a stronger financial and geopolitical situation than have South America, Africa, and most of Asia. This isn't seriously debatable. Vast swathes of these (including socialist South and Central America, and "communist" Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba) have only themselves experienced independence and self-determination in the last century. This kind of thing hampers a nation's development.
Economic history is extremely complex and also filled with myths based on people's ideological biases but one thing does remain true: the capitalist west is attracting people from all over the world and no socialist or communist country has had that appeal. So while I'll conceed capitalism has spawned atrocious systems as well, a great deal of bad systems it has also spawned the least bad systems. And as long as anti capitalists cannot give me a better alternative I do not see why Capitalism cannot be considered the superior economic system.
Sounds a lot like something that would come from communist ideologues. But let's stop beating around the bush, what is the superior economic model you propose? If economic inequality is bad regardless of the scale than clearly any capitalist variant is a no-go.?
No. I'm against the principle, though the scale exacerbates it greatly.
I cannot speak for the UK and as I said based on what I know and have heard it doesn't seem to be among the better capitalist systems.This ignores the systemic prejudices within any given employment/ welfare system. A welfare system may be generous on paper, but research into the implementation of the UK welfare system have shown that advisors were heavily incentivised to find reasons to refuse applicants if they could. Then we have the issues of addiction (higher in lower income demographics, resulting from lack of support or opportunity) and outright disownment (there's a reason LGBT youth are far, far more likely to be homeless). Then we have temporary homelessness, owing to a precarious renting market and unstable, unpredictable contracts (like the growth in zero hour contracts here in the UK, providing employment one cannot rely on more than a week in advance.
This problem cannot be explained away through personal choices. It is systemic.
I would also like to add that addiction is a direct consequence of a personal choice to consume addictive substances. And disownment is also an individual's choice (not the individual being disowned obviously). Do note however there are countries which have rendered total disownments illegal and children are de-facto entitled to a part of the inheritance.
So back to square 1: in a country with a generous welfare system (I guess the UK has a fake generous one) homelesness is at the very least mostly a matter of poor personal decisions and not the system.