BBF, Europe is NOT doing better than the US. Our standard of living is about 1/3 higher than Europes. Poor American families have what AVERAGE Europeans have. Homes are larger, more TV's, more cars, more appliances like washers, dryers. Need to check your statistics. Better in that their governments aren't operating in deficits. But they have had consistantly higher unemployment over the last 20-30 years. Americans were the most productive in the world, don't know about now, but probably still are. What European country can afford a huge military, space exploration, etc. Even combined they can't do it. The EU is about = to us in GNP, but they have far more mouths to feed, thus the less available per person. True they are becoming more capitalist with conservative governments recently and the governments are divesting themselves of certain sectors of the economy creating more competition, thus more work and better products.
