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The reason is all these European countries rely on the United States military and Bank of USA to support them. Time to abolish NATO. The Soviet Union was disbanded in 1989.
I just spent a month in Europe and I am still amazed that even though their cities are run by woke leftists and suffered through strict lockdowns, their cities are not covered in smash and grabbers or homeless people living in tents or fentanyl addicts. I walked 15 miles a day for 30 days and I saw ONE store in Paris that had its high-value items locked behind a glass case. Meanwhile in America we are locking up the toothpaste and the Kleenex.
Their cities are not dying. Quite the opposite.
While more than 3,000 brick and mortar stores will close in America this year, shops, restaurants, museums and other attractions are jam-packed in Europe. With locals. With tourists. It's not unusual to see lines for entrance into restaurants and shops. It's also not unusual to see 90 year olds strolling down the street at 11 p.m. coming back from dinner, or to see 8 year olds walking to school ALONE in the morning. In large cities like Paris, which has a pop. of 11 million!
There's something wrong in America.
Don't tell me it's the leftists and the lockdowns, b/c that excuse doesn't work in Europe. You can't get any more leftist or locked down than Europe!
I guess the future in America is living in a gated suburb with your house covered in surveillance cameras eating Chick Fil A, Raising Canes or whatever toxic processed chain is located in your suburb.
Concerning the stores, one issue is, the US has been over-retailed for decades. There has been far more retail space per capita in the US than anywhere else in the world for a long, long time. When internet shopping and then Covid (which accelerated internet shopping) struck, the US had a lot more excess retail space to shutter than did other parts of the world. IOW, if 30% of US retail space empties and only 5% in Europe, all that will do is get the US closer to Europe's retail space per capita numbers.
I just spent a month in Europe and I am still amazed that even though their cities are run by woke leftists and suffered through strict lockdowns, their cities are not covered in smash and grabbers or homeless people living in tents or fentanyl addicts. I walked 15 miles a day for 30 days and I saw ONE store in Paris that had its high-value items locked behind a glass case. Meanwhile in America we are locking up the toothpaste and the Kleenex.
Their cities are not dying. Quite the opposite.
While more than 3,000 brick and mortar stores will close in America this year, shops, restaurants, museums and other attractions are jam-packed in Europe. With locals. With tourists. It's not unusual to see lines for entrance into restaurants and shops. It's also not unusual to see 90 year olds strolling down the street at 11 p.m. coming back from dinner, or to see 8 year olds walking to school ALONE in the morning. In large cities like Paris, which has a pop. of 11 million!
There's something wrong in America.
Don't tell me it's the leftists and the lockdowns, b/c that excuse doesn't work in Europe. You can't get any more leftist or locked down than Europe!
I guess the future in America is living in a gated suburb with your house covered in surveillance cameras eating Chick Fil A, Raising Canes or whatever toxic processed chain is located in your suburb.
You didn't see much of Europe. Now they have never had as much violent crime as we have. We just have always been a violent society while they have more stability and tribalism.
But their cities have a lot of decay. I just went after not having been in western Europe in 20 years and the decay was very apparent. Parts of Paris are no go zones now. That certainly wasn't true 20-30 years ago. In orderly, efficient Germany, the train lines were under construction and unpredictable. Buses were unpredictable. Lots of graffiti.
Concerning the stores, one issue is, the US has been over-retailed for decades. There has been far more retail space per capita in the US than anywhere else in the world for a long, long time. When internet shopping and then Covid (which accelerated internet shopping) struck, the US had a lot more excess retail space to shutter than did other parts of the world. IOW, if 30% of US retail space empties and only 5% in Europe, all that will do is get the US closer to Europe's retail space per capita numbers.
The US has more than 5 times the retail space per capita as the UK. No wonder so many US stores are shutting down. To even merely get down to the level of Canada would entail a big chunk of US retail closing.
Last year, my wife toured Budapest, Vienna, & Prague. She said all 3 cities were thriving, spotless, orderly, and safe.
Very few empty stroefronts, no grafitti, no gangs handing out on street corners.
She saw no homeless people, but of course she was in the areas frequesnted by tourists.
She said she hasn't seen any U.S. city looking tht nice, since the 1970's.
That your wife thinks US cities were some sort of clean and nice places in the 70's is a warning flag to take her observations with a massive grain of salt.
US cities were literally at their worst in the 70's.
Last year, my wife toured Budapest, Vienna, & Prague. She said all 3 cities were thriving, spotless, orderly, and safe.
Very few empty stroefronts, no grafitti, no gangs handing out on street corners.
She saw no homeless people, but of course she was in the areas frequesnted by tourists.
She said she hasn't seen any U.S. city looking tht nice, since the 1970's.
Why are our cities a mess? Democrats mostly. The crappy parts of Republican cities & states, are Dem controlled. There are very few exceptions, but if it makes you feel good to point them out, have at it.
Don't know about Austria or Hungary, but the Czech Republic has a cradle to grave welfare system. We have a different system in the US of welfare for the rich.
I just spent a month in Europe and I am still amazed that even though their cities are run by woke leftists and suffered through strict lockdowns, their cities are not covered in smash and grabbers or homeless people living in tents or fentanyl addicts. I walked 15 miles a day for 30 days and I saw ONE store in Paris that had its high-value items locked behind a glass case. Meanwhile in America we are locking up the toothpaste and the Kleenex.
Their cities are not dying. Quite the opposite.
While more than 3,000 brick and mortar stores will close in America this year, shops, restaurants, museums and other attractions are jam-packed in Europe. With locals. With tourists. It's not unusual to see lines for entrance into restaurants and shops. It's also not unusual to see 90 year olds strolling down the street at 11 p.m. coming back from dinner, or to see 8 year olds walking to school ALONE in the morning. In large cities like Paris, which has a pop. of 11 million!
There's something wrong in America.
Don't tell me it's the leftists and the lockdowns, b/c that excuse doesn't work in Europe. You can't get any more leftist or locked down than Europe!
I guess the future in America is living in a gated suburb with your house covered in surveillance cameras eating Chick Fil A, Raising Canes or whatever toxic processed chain is located in your suburb.
Racial demographics of US cities combined with Woke policies of refusing to prosecute criminals with a side order of Chinese fentanyl through an open border.
I was born and raised in Europe. The whole idea expressed here is pretty silly. European cities developed differently after WW2 because they never had the 'inner city' with all the problems it entails or the available space for affordable development outside the cities that allowed others to leave the cities en masse.
But many European cities are basically little islands of quirky bars, endearing restaurants, parks with statues and the like, cute old houses etc. surrounded by oceans of brutalist apartment tower blocs in which thousands are squeezed into tiny apartments. People living in those can console themselves that they can occasionally go eat in one of those charming restaurants and go hike in the undisturbed countryside that legally isn't open to development. Of course, if your particular apartment bloc is also in the middle of an emerging migrant ghetto increasingly under the thumb of organized crime then you may find that a not especially rewarding trade-off.
This ^
There is no room to "build [Levittown] in England's green and pleasant land." Or McLean, Needham, San Fernando Valley, etc. At least not to the extent in North America, where there is much more land and lower costs. Thus, many European cities resemble how it was in the States before mass suburbanization.
Not boasting. Urban living in Berlin, Rome, Vienna, etc, etc can be pretty cool.
Plus I hate to come off as racist, but do they have as many blacks as we do? I believe there may be actual genetic differences in ability to sustain a civilization that "whites" developed greater levels of intelligence and lower levels of aggression that were necessary to adapt in cold climates after they migrated out of Africa. When you compare African cultures and nations to just about every other culture on the planet, they seem incapable of sustaining a modern democratic nation without outside help. I'm just being objective here. I've met some amazing African people, but as a whole their IQ's do seem to be lower, their aggression level higher. It's nothing to be ashamed of, when evolution and natural selection provide an explanation. However what do most run down areas have in common? Not just run down, but violent? There are run down white areas, but they are typically not nearly as violent. Instead it's just a bunch of meth addicts and drug users, like we have in South Dakota.
You are claiming that whites are genetically superior in intelligence and levels of aggression. I think you'll find there is no factual basis for that presumption. The majority of anthropologists today consider race to be a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one. Similarly, there is no accepted definition of intelligence. Finding that whites score better on a so-called IQ test that was designed by whites is not very convincing. As for aggression - the history of white Europeans is a history of aggression, from the Romans to the Nazis.
You didn't see much of Europe. Now they have never had as much violent crime as we have. We just have always been a violent society while they have more stability and tribalism.
But their cities have a lot of decay. I just went after not having been in western Europe in 20 years and the decay was very apparent. Parts of Paris are no go zones now. That certainly wasn't true 20-30 years ago. In orderly, efficient Germany, the train lines were under construction and unpredictable. Buses were unpredictable. Lots of graffiti.
I spend months in France every year (with jaunts to other countries during that time) and every year France seems more and more light years ahead of the USA.
This year it was extremely apparent to me that France does not have a smash and grab problem; nobody has to ask anyone to unlock the toothpaste in France!
I also did not have to walk around any homeless people sleeping in tents or campers.
Am I saying this does not exist in France? No. But it does not exist to the extent that it exists here. In fact, Paris, with its crowded shops and restaurants and streets chock full of life, makes NYC, Chicago and SF look like ghost towns.
The French are doing a MUCH better job at capitalism than we are.
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