...Moosejay, turn off the FOX News and try thinking for yourself.
Ask yourself, where in the world would I most want to live if I was disadvantaged: homeless, a widow with young children or severely disabled... that is the measure of a society's quality, not how it treats billionaires.
This is a serious question... can you answer it without dismissal; evasion or cliched catchphrases?
The Luke
I love how you Euros are so smug and self righteous about how moral your societies allegedly are. Really, you guys should feel free to turn your countries into havens for those you deem to be "disadvantaged". Open the floodgates to angry Muslims and sub-Saharan Africans who will sap your beloved social welfare systems.
In America we give people economic freedom. This allows those among us with a lot of drive and ambition the potential to amass a lot of wealth. That doesn't mean that people who can't or won't pull their own weight are thrown overboard. America is actually a very generous society, with the average American donating a lot more money than the average European.
"Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7%. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73%, while France, with a 0.14% rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-06-25-charitable_N.htmAnother thing to take into consideration is that America in effect heavily subsidizes the defense of Europe with our military presence. So your governments can use some of the money that otherwise would have been allocated for defense and spend it on the social programs you like so much. This is not going to last forever and when we stop subsidizing your defense your nations' funding priorities are going to change dramatically.
