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It's not so horrible to make the rich pay higher taxes and it's not bad to take care of your citizens (universal health care). Their economy isn't doing all that great (whose is...?) but we can still learn a lot from them.
The point isn’t that Europe is utopia. Like the United States, it’s having trouble grappling with the current financial crisis. Like the United States, Europe’s big nations face serious long-run fiscal issues — and like some individual U.S. states, some European countries are teetering on the edge of fiscal crisis. (Sacramento is now the Athens of America — in a bad way.) But taking the longer view, the European economy works; it grows; it’s as dynamic, all in all, as our own.
So why do we get such a different picture from many pundits? Because according to the prevailing economic dogma in this country — and I’m talking here about many Democrats as well as essentially all Republicans — European-style social democracy should be an utter disaster. And people tend to see what they want to see.
After all, while reports of Europe’s economic demise are greatly exaggerated, reports of its high taxes and generous benefits aren’t. Taxes in major European nations range from 36 to 44 percent of G.D.P., compared with 28 in the United States. Universal health care is, well, universal. Social expenditure is vastly higher than it is here. So if there were anything to the economic assumptions that dominate U.S. public discussion — above all, the belief that even modestly higher taxes on the rich and benefits for the less well off would drastically undermine incentives to work, invest and innovate — Europe would be the stagnant, decaying economy of legend. But it isn’t. Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they’re down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand.
I noticed the words / phrase "Social Justice" used in the article.
Another name for "Social Justice" (and the more correct) is, "Socialism".
There are some who are trying, desperately, to convert the United States to the European style "Socialism" (Socialistic) - so that they too can be take care of, by the Government - "Cradle to the Grave"
To those who seek "social justice" I say, move to Europe if you like their system so, so much.
Lolz people who say the US can learn from Europe have obviously never been there.
The US isn't nearly as broken as the drama queen libs want people to believe. They want people to think US is going down the tubes so they can advance their fascist/socialist agenda and turn us into Eurolite.
Smart Americans know better. Don't believe the hype.
It's not so horrible to make the rich pay higher taxes and it's not bad to take care of your citizens (universal health care). Their economy isn't doing all that great (whose is...?) but we can still learn a lot from them.
Why do you think these countries farm out their national defense to the US? Who is going to take over our national defense if we become like Europe? China?
Lolz people who say the US can learn from Europe have obviously never been there.
The US isn't nearly as broken as the drama queen libs want people to believe. They want people to think US is going down the tubes so they can advance their fascist/socialist agenda and turn us into Eurolite.
Smart Americans know better. Don't believe the hype.
That is what I have been saying for years. The entire progressive movement is nothing more than making something out to be one way so that they can push their agenda.
Progressives wish to make the US out to be this terrible place, that all the wrongs of the world have bloodied the hands of America.
What other way is their to push change but to first attempt to prove that something is broken? Hope and Change won Barrack Obama the White House, both of those words are exactly what I am talking about.
Fact is... it isn't that bad here. Fact is, Europe has its problems too. Fact is, the agenda to push for a more European type nation is in direct conflict of the society we established for ourselves here. However... if you are hardlined enough to continue to push for that change as the OP is.. first you have to prove how bad it is here and how green the grass is in Europe.
Europe is NOT utopian. If I remember history correctly, wasn't it most parts of Europe that followed us in a capitalistic approach to society? Now that they run off coarse a little, people like the OP want to follow.
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