Dad - the study compares the USA with the "older", 15-country EU of: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
Luxembourg does very well when looking at the U.S. states, but we are talking about less than 500,000 people, there. The rest do poorly.
These European countries, or "old" Europe, could be directly compared with the U.S., I think. I understand that while the "EU" began as an economic union, lately there has been a drive toward some kind of political union, perhaps as a "counter-weight" to the (political, economic, etc.) power of the U.S.
But Europe has been doing very poorly, of late. The referendum results in France and especially the Netherlands this week show an unhappy population.
All predictions I've come across lately are pessimistic. If you guys have any examples of optimistic results for Europe's future, I'd love to see them...

I've never really understood why people held up Europe as an example for the U.S., and, in my opinion, this is becoming more and more a losing argument.
There have been a lot of opinion pieces on the decline of Europe posted this week... There is even talk of giving up the Euro as currency...

I would love for Europe to turn the corner and have a bright future ahead of it. But I don't think the people of Europe are following a path which would lead to this.
I don't know what would change this...
C
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 6/03/2005 05:38:00 PM