During the past decade, bank-loan funds have exhibited a slightly negative correlation with the Barclays Aggregate Index and an even lower correlation (-0.35) with long-term Treasuries. The 10-year correlation with short-term bonds is higher (0.57) and higher still for equities (0.61) and high-yield bonds (0.87).

Zeroes
• Conceptually, the most basic debt instrument is a zero-coupon bond--a security with a single cash flow equal to face value at maturity.
• Cash flow of $1 par of t-year zero: [no cash over time until maturity t-years, then $1]
• It is easy to see that any security with fixed cash flows can be constructed, and thus priced, as a portfolio of these zeroes.
A Coupon Bond as a Portfolio of Zeroes
Consider: $10,000 par of a one and a half year, 8.5% Treasury bond makes the following payments:
[$425 coupon at 0.5 years; $425 coupon at 1.0 year, $10,425 coupon & principal at 1.5 years]
Note that this is the same as a portfolio of three different zeroes:
– $425 par of a 6-month zero
– $425 par of a 1-year zero
– $10425 par of a 1 1/2-year zero

”I have never EVER used Amazon for ANYTHING.”

I do happen to know that when it comes to health care, Ireland's system provides diabetics anything and everything they need, for free to the individual. Of course, taxpayers ultimately "foot the bill." No surprise there. And I don't have the figure memorized, but there is an income limit in order to be eligible for the medical health care card. But even if someone is not eligible, I have to believe costs are much lower than they are in the States. That would make the social safety net more effective from the get-go.
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2019/0415/1042763-how-irelands-spending-on-welfare-compares-to-the-rest-of-europe/

Safetynet Primary Care is a medical charity that delivers quality care to those marginalized in society without access to healthcare, including homeless people, drug users and migrants.

[T]he first colonial pension schemes ... reproduced the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor. Payments were means-tested and subject to a character test. People had to prove they had led ‘a sober and respectable life’. ...
[W]hen the Commonwealth scheme came into effect in July 1909, all non-white residents, even those already naturalised before the racist Naturalisation Act 1903, were formally made ineligible for benefits reserved for white settlers. ...
From 1907, following the Harvester Judgement, employers were bound to pay a male worker a ‘fair and reasonable wage’, sufficient to sustain himself, his wife and their children in ‘a condition of frugal comfort’. The basic male wage became the centrepiece of what has been described as the ‘wage earners’ welfare state’..., but thereafter—in spite of challenging times like the 1930s Great Depression—attempts to extend social protection to those outside the labour market failed.
[Through two world wars and beyond] [t]he basic male wage remained the foundation of social security policy and the Unemployment Benefits resembled a dole more than an earned social entitlement.
The Whitlam government (1972–1975) sought to reform the system along social democratic principles. Social security would no longer be merely a safety net, but a precondition for economic justice. Economic justice demanded that social security should be provided according to need, in recognition of the innate value of every citizen, not an assessment of character. ...
The Poverty Inquiry chaired by Professor Ronald Henderson [in this period] highlighted many systemic problems in the design of social security and put forward a concrete proposal for a basic income scheme , but poor timing meant its recommendations were never realised.
The last forty years of social security reform mark a steady retreat from the principle of universalism and a return to older notions of ’deservingness’.
This has coincided with the dismantling of the regulatory frameworks and institutions put in place to curtail both economic volatility and deep inequality. At the same time as deregulation has markedly increased household exposure to risk ..., the social safety net has become less effective.

Australia and the U.S. are both liberal welfare states. During the past quarter century, they have begun the transition from a welfare to a workfare state, albeit at different rates and through different paths. Social work developed in each country in ways congruent with the local liberal welfare state, and as such, has been destabilized by the transition to the workfare regime