or American?
I can make the same claim.

Ok how about what is the best kind of pie?

I contend that only pumkin pie has the moral fiber to be considered the best kind of pie!    Apple pie is for imperialistic capitalists!

If you have socialized medical care, then it is supply limited.


In the same way that if the sun is overhead, it's day time. It's a QED situation. I can explain what supply limited means if you don't understand it.


That's interesting, but it's not accurate. In the same way that if an article said 15 percent of the swedish population were female... it's just way off.


Perhaps 5 percent are on anti depressants. And that might not even be the case any more. They were a "fad" at one point and there was wide spread prescription of them to deal with emotional, behavioral, and educational issues. But that's largely been discredited.


So your figures might be right but be about 10 years old. There was a spike in their usage that went away about as quickly as it came through.



The south is different from the midwest, the midwest is different from new england, new england is different from the pacific states, the pacific states are different from Alaska, and Alaska is different from the Island territories.


You either under estimate the amount of diversity in the US or over estimate your own.




Every year you become more closely tied. Perhaps the merge is more slow then I think it is, but it is consistent.



Europe was very different before it was weak.


Both europe and Japan decided to go pacifist after WW2 when prior to that point they were anything but.


It is a philosophy born of loss and weakness. Two conditions that will fade with time.




Irrelevant. Modern times please. In WW2 Japan was our bitter enemy and today they are close allies.


You can't reference things that happened in WW2, it's old history now. The world has changed too much since.


Very well, that's why I asked you to correct me if I was wrong.



Very well, then your opinion comes from your underestimation of the differences between different places in the US.

You can either take my word for it, or come to the US and see for yourself... the US is very diverse.



You haven't been paying attention then. New York is very much like that.


As to portugal being religious, are the churches full? Because that's one thing I always notice in europe... empty churches.


In the US... especially in the bible belt, they're full. So full in some places that they build huge 10,000 person super churches.




First, that was my point... you are more similiar to each other then other countries are to you.


Your are more similar to each other then to the US, then to Canada, then to Austrialia, then Israel, then to Japan, or then South Korea. Yet all of those countries are liberal democratic countries that offer as many rights as your own countries or more.

Second, where did you get that number? I count 490 million.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ee.html

That's the whole EU... so where are you getting the other 240 million? The US is 300 million so the EU has 190 million more people in it... or a ratio of 1.63 europeans for every one american. Perhaps of interest, the US has a GDP of 11 trillion and the EU has one of 13 trillion... so 1.18 dollars made in europe for every one in America. So on average a 72.4 percent higher production rate per person...

Not that it matters in this discussion...



That's only if you look at the core of the city. If you take in the larger metropolitan area the number is much higher. LA is about 19 million if you include the FULL city. That's about everything around LA in about 10 miles. There are two very small cities within LA that would be included in that, but those exist within LA. Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Culver City are technically different cities as they have different governments. But they're IN LA like a blueberry is in a blueberry muffin. So they're really part of LA... especially since they both belong to Los Angeles County. LA has defacto control over many of these cities because it controls everything around them. If one of the little cities gets into a big fight with LA, it can change bus routes, traffic laws... or mess with the water and power. It's all one city really.


Not at all... I'm just trying to clear up some common confusions between americans and Europeans. Europeans often think of the US as just another country in the same way that spain or Norway is just another country. But the fact of the matter is that it's a large diverse country with few peers, while most european countries are comparatively small, homogeneous, and have several similar nations within close proximity. The only nation with a similar culture to the US is Canada... and even then they're only similar to ONE part of the US... New England. Their culture is unlike any other culture in the US BUT New England. And there are even variations within New England.

I made a big error in my math back there... production difference is 21 percent... I don't know where I got the 72 percent from...

again... this isn't relevant to the discussion but I felt like playing with the numbers considering I had them all in front of me...

You're right, I haven't looked at the US's GDP in ages... it used to be 11... guess that's inflation or something.

that only makes the relative difference in production per person wider though. Practically a 60 percent difference because the EU has 60 percent more people in it but roughly the same production.

*shrug* even with inflation its more money, although granted the numbers are tricksters.

recent study said that americans are both amongst the top in production-per-hour and hours placed into production. (hah, you myth toting euro/expatriot-xenophobes!) its no real surprise given our market and the trends of our very active populace that our GDP per capita is amongst the best in the world. excluding many european cash-hubs (indeed, I'm hinting something here) US is at the top.

only before you skin them and put on cinnamon.

Only because of Alaska... I don't think we make "that" much money off of things we get from alaska. The lower 48 is almost the exact same size as the EU in raw land mass figures.

Though I grant you have a point there.

No. The total US land mass including alaska is :5,692,943 square miles.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
The factbook puts it in kilometers so you need to convert it.
Alaska further more is 656,400 square miles in size. This link has a nice picture and everything.
http://www.mms.gov/alaska/aboutak/aksize/aksize.htm

So that's 5,692,943-656,400=5,036,543
The EU is:
2,687,289 square miles (Factbook). So the EU is really a little more then half the size of the US.

I'll note as well that Greenland isn't included as part of the EU here even though technically it's owned by Denmark. That alone would add 677,676 square miles to the EU.



Most countries could be self sufficient if they "needed" to be... the EU certainly could be.

As to poor countries in europe, the US has poor states. Michigan for example... old home of the US auto industry is doing very poorly largely because they've systematically killed the one business their state was good at... making cars. Between the executives making bad decisions and the auto workers striking if they don't get paid as much as college graduates for knowing how to weld... the whole thing has fallen apart. To say nothing of many regions in the south that haven't been productive since the civil war. You want to see poor? There are many parts of the US that might surprise you. Now, one the bright side, these people ultimately choose to live as they do because nothing stops them from getting a decent education and moving to some other place where there are good jobs. I'm not feeling sorry for people that flunked high school and then can't be bothered to leave some town that's been dying for 100 years because it's lost it's reason to exist. Quite a few towns in the south should have gone the way of the Western mining towns... abandoned to the tumbleweeds.


As to exploitation, about the only thing europe has exploited more then the US is lumber. Older civilizations in europe were either unaware, uninterested, or unable to exploit most modern resources. I mean, are you going to tell me that ancient people's in europe were mining nickel or aluminum? Sure, they were mining, iron, gold, silver, and copper... but they couldn't have gotten as deep as modern mines... and the US played out that depth of mining by the turn of the century. We caught up with them very quickly.


and lumber... grows back.

Recover from communism? Brother, the south still hasn't recovered fully from slavery, the civil war, and generations of bigotry and racial discrimination. At least in eastern europe they're "one people"... in the south you still have that black v white rivalry bs which makes it very hard to get anything done. To say nothing of a local culture that has so many problems with it I almost don't know where to start.


Again, you want to see poor areas in the US, I can show them to you. Diversity of economic situation is something the US has. In fact, the US is often criticized for having a wider gap between rich and poor then europe.


Well... as we're talking about diversity... there's the gap. Case closed.

This is like saying, guess how much of our government belongs to China?

You are using a false card here. Money doesn't belong to any country really.

it belongs to the country that made it. namely the empire of schod.

my point being that their biggest forms of income are drugs and organized crime, if indirectly. "questionable" dollars pay quite well.

Ireland and Norway have a higher GDP then USA. Don't think any of them have a lot of drug cartels. Or money laundering. Ireland was a surprise to me. Though it was a relatively poor country. Interesting

Either way i prefer to the HDI to GDP to compare countries.