When it comes to homeless, don't say things you don't know, as the numbers of homeless people were spoken about on the Dutch news yesterday and they appear to be at an alarming rate... Het Leger Des Heils, a charity organization who takes care of homeless people simply can't handle the demand anymore, and let me tell you that I pay over a hundred of euros for healthcare a month, while I am officially (according to Dutch standards) poor, also having one of the cheaper insurances... Healthcare insurances are quite often a nightmare to people, and keeping the insurance prices under control is something that our government often has headaches about... And left and right are not of one mind here, and that also puts pressure on things...
Even in a country like the Netherlands, known for it's high standards of social security (only outranked by Sweden, Denmark and Norway, as far as I know), the situation is far from ideal. And the gorge between rich and poor is getting more and more visible here... It's not as huge as in the U.S., but still... We've had a liberal government for many years now, and it may sound strange, but due to them on the right (and not the left) side, things are going this way... Well, that and more complicated issues...
And to tell you an amusing anecdote about the homeless in the Netherlands. In the theme park "De Efteling" there's a dark ride called "Carnaval Festival". The music played there is hated as once you hear it, it never gets out of your head ever again. At the central station of Utrecht (the countries biggest railway station) they had a lot of homeless people for whom the place was good shelter for the night, and they used the tune from Carnaval Festival to scare them away (which actually worked, or so they told me).
But all-in-all, living in the Netherlands, has a lot of benefits, I'll be the first to admit that, but it does have a price... a high one... But I know that the U.S. does have a lot of trouble on this, and that working hard will get you a good life, the core point of the American Dream, doesn't work out fully the way they'd like the world to think...
The problem in the U.S. is also that as soon as you come up with the "secret" of the Dutch model, progressive taxes, and a better healthcare system and a system that can reduce poor and homeless people, you're name and picture will circle all around the country with a hammer and a scythe, and the discussion is over... Oh well..