Wong on both counts. The EU is proud to call itself a Social Democracy. The definition of which is: Note the key words "capitalist mixed-economy". The desire for Europe to avoid waring was to put together the EU. That effort started with a Common Market and a great many years later became the European Union. It resembles the US in many ways, as it should. Because after the war, and having learned the lessons of both German Nazism and Russian Communism, its peoples (plural) wanted to avoid utmost another war. (War and its attendant great number of deaths are etched deeply in the history of Europe.) Eastern Europe turned to Socialism and Western Europe to American capitalism. The answer for the Europeans however was the European Union - similar to the US in many ways but very different in a highly singular way. When the words "social" is applied, Europeans have no fear of the word. Whereas in the US it seems to stimulate fears because most people confuse it with Communism. Socialism exists nowhere in the world anymore. But the EU considers itself a Social Democracy, as defined above ...
Exactly which country in the European Union? Why that specific country and not some other country that is a part of the union? Beyond that specific matter, the united states is not like any other country in the entire world. Therefore no accurate comparisons can actually be made from the position of intellectual honesty.
Lol, the EU is falling apart. Everyone hates it. It was just a few months ago it was talking about building a military force just to keep its members from ditching. It would seem europeans are no more willing to be ruled by a faraway alien culture than americans are. Democracy just doesnt work on a scale that requires so much bureaucracy. The bureaucracy makes it too easy to protect the corruption with red tape and unaccountability.
Human nature IS A REASON. It is shared by all humans. An excuse would be something that sets criminals apart, such as 'they are oppressed'.
Well then, America has 14% of the population incarcerated below the Poverty Threshold. That's about 45 million! A total population greater than that of California and Minnesota combined ...
Actually the total number of Americans imprisoned is about 2.2 million. If you want to count the people on probation or parole, that would be about 4.8 more. Not even close to the 45 mill you claim. If you care to claim that poverty is a prison, I beg to differ. Prison is much worse. Or are you trying to claim that the poor actually have a reason to commit crimes, being oppressed? They wouldn't think so. Criminologists ran a study which concluded that the root cause for most crimes is greed, not oppression or lack of opportunity. As most crime is unpunished, it is easy to see that crime is both lucrative and relatively safe.
Nobody is forced into poverty. But they can be born into it. And the only way out of poverty in a market-economy is to seek a better payscale. But, market-economies have evolved very quickly since the advent of the Internet. And one of those evolutions to have hit hardest the US is the rise of China as an industrial-power. Take a look at the employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and note that only 12% of American jobs are located in "Industry". We have become overwhelmingly a "Services" economy in the past 20 years. And so? For which the skills necessary are very much at a higher scale of educational performance than in the past. Namely, it is necessary to obtain a postsecondary degree to obtain the necessary talents. Most developed countries have understood that evolution and adapted to it by making a tertiary-level degree almost free, gratis and for nothing. One country has not. Guess which one! That country (the US of A), at local state-schools of higher education, still has an annual cost of instruction of $14K per year, which any poor family finds impossible to finance! Moreover, from here: The US is the only developed country on earth where students must bear such a financial burden! In Europe, access to Tertiary Education costs a family not more than $1K in euros! (But Europe - to pay for such a freebee - does not have a massive military budget. See an international comparisons of military budgets here.) And so, I say we lower the humongous cost of the DoD, which is almost half of the total Discretionary Expenditure of the US government at $600B - see that fact here); and we invest that money in educating our children. Now show me how I got that all wrong ...
