Europe Model Welfare State that American Liberals love can't sustain itself!

[Xavier_Onassis]

I don't think it is accurate to say that European countries have failed. They have a smaller percentage of poor people as well as a much smaller percentage of their citizens in jail than the US. They take often four weeks of vacation each year, and do not have to worry about going bankrupt due to illness.

[Plane]

  Recently they seemed on the verge of collapse, but they did get their act together and tightened up and are much better now. 
   Did they get better through austerity?

    I think that there is a level of Socialism that can be supported by the productive part of society . Europe must be marking the edge between as much socialism as can be supported and the amount that cannot be sustained,

[Xavier_Onassis]

Greece could be an example, but the problem with Greece is not mostly socialism, but tax evasion.

Greece was taking advantage of the Euro being a rather stable currency, and the Greek style of governance has been  pretty much the opposite. The Germans are great admirers of the Greeks, because mostly of ancient history and perhaps being seen as a bulwark against Miuslims in general and Turks in particular. One could argue that Greece was allowed into the EC and the Eurozone for ornamental purposes.

The individual and the family and public services are better and more uniform in the EC if you compare it to the US. We have many times the natural resources in the US,  we have a longer growing season and better weather, and should be ahead of the Europeans in everything, but the fact is that we are not.

[Plane]

We have been subsidizing them for decades.

[Xavier_Onassis]

We have NOT been subsidizing Greece.

We have troops in Germany, and Germany pays the freight.

The entire world pays the US simply because the dollar is the currency of world commerce.
They don't pay you or me, but they do pay American banks.
The Federal Reserve is not exactly a part of government, remember.

[Plane]

  We subsidize all of NATO.

    If the US stops providing military might on their behalf they would have to carry a much bigger load of defense expenditure.

[Xavier_Onassis]

What, precisely, are we defending them against? Putin? The boogieman?

[sirs]

What we are "defending", as per the origination of the thread, is the boogieman referred to as the "modern welfare state", (aka liberalism <--> socialism), specifically the unsustainability of either, as a functional governmental system.  Sure it could, but at the very expense of what this country holds to dearly, freedom.  Be it economic freedom, religious freedom, or political freedom.  And no, that doesn't equate that we, or the European countries are functioning like Stalinist Russia or Fascist Germany, only that those practices and policies that Europe is trying to model is demonstrating its financial unsustainability.  And no amount of "taxing the rich" is going to fix it. 

It's also why the Swiss electorate debunks you're notion that the most conservative of them run left of our DC Democrats, by voting down the very same efforts, the left is trying to push here.  So you can keep the 4wks of vacation a year, and I'll go with the more economic & political freedom here

[Plane]

Yes.


Before there were Americans , how many fifty year periods were there in European history without a land grab between them?

We have protected Europeans from Europeans and from their East for seventy years.

  Soon after we stop , they are very likely to revert to their normal behavior, and if they do not , their Eastern flank will become the growth frontier of the people there.

[Plane]

The entire world pays the US simply because the dollar is the currency of world commerce.
They don't pay you or me, but they do pay American banks.
The Federal Reserve is not exactly a part of government, remember.

   This is not true.
    The dollars that are paid to England are English property until they use it to pay someone else.
    The exchanges of Dollars between third parties pay no American anything.

      When a dollar that has been used in international trade returns to the US it will be in exchange for a service or trade item. Wheat or Chicken or a movie. This is an exchange of value which gives us no advantage over use of Euros or gold or whatever.

     The exception is that inflation is a sort of tax that the government benefits from , but so does anyone who owes a debt in dollars . The reason that the Dollar is so popular is that it is less prone to this sort of inflation than most of the alternatives.

      The Chinese have for several years thought it smart to fix the value of their own currency as a value in  US dollars, but they do not pay any rent for this service. 

[Christians4LessGvt]

What, precisely, are we defending them against? Putin? The boogieman?

Notice the keen change of subject?
Plane says we subsidize Europe via Nato.
Instead of admitting that truth..that the US pays the bill.
XO changes the subject and questions why we do that.
Which is a completely different subject.
The point is Plane was correct,
but rather than admit that...XO changed the subject.

[sirs]

SOP

[Xavier_Onassis]

If we are not defending them against any danger, then we are wasting our money. That is not changing the subject, it is questioning whether what we are doing is even necessary. And no, we are not defending them from one another, that is just stupid. The Europeans learned their lesson in  WWII.

[Plane]

  Piffle

   The Europeans learned in WWI the lesson of how do do it better and faster in wwII!

    What did the Ruyssian Europeans learn in WWII?

   European habits are pretty hard to break , if they have learned that democracy is peace they might have some.

    If they still think wealth is peace they are going to start stealing it from each other again.

[Xavier_Onassis]

So now you are an expert on Europeans.

Europeans manage their own countries in the way that the citizens wish in the countries that have democratic elections (which is most of them).
The Netherlands is apparently managed so well that one never hears the names of the politicians running it, or their political parties.

The economic system of the US cannot sustain itself, nor can that of any country in which stability depends on growth. Eventually the resources top grow are no longer available, or the population has outgrown the resources. This is true of nearly every planet on the globe, but especially those that do not recycle or conserve.

I have no idea of who pays the bill for NATO and neither do you.