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Europe is vast, culturally much more diverse than US for better and worse. States have almost absolute independence, so they don't adapt to rules from above if they don't want to, there is no easy 'federal' lever to ie enforce laws everywhere, voting is democratic and representatives are very diverse, nothing like 2-party US system.

Economy in the west is not that stellar mainly due to much more focus on social aspects, more paid time off, free education including universities, free healthcare, we take care of the poor, disabled etc. Of course none of this is free, we all pay for it. Economies in the east have their own issues, relatively poor and corrupt is never a good mix.

Some people don't give a fuck about anybody else, its just me or just the closest ones, and for those US system looks much better and numbers alone do support it. Only to the point when societal issues hit back. Or you want to raise kids, and they want to study on university. Or not to worry about your health issues, which will inevitably come to all of us unless you die suddenly without any prior health issues.

So yes its by choice, but I don't think most folks understand that choice, done for them in the past, without them having a say.




Yeah well said. But I wonder if the choice would continue to look good to Europeans if the economic consequences continue as in the article I mentioned for another 15, 30, 45 years etc.


Pretty much impossible to forecast.

There's a thing I remember but not well enough to search for, where someone was asked to forecast the challenges the UK was about to face, and they went through the decades of the 20th century showing how the biggest and most obvious fears of each period had basically nothing to with how events actually unfolded.





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