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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (135985)	4/8/2001 9:52:54 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572510

"then why do you never see ghettos as bad as ours nor as proliferate when you are in the member nations of the EU?" Because in the US it is more important to have the very rich instead of a large middle class. The percentage of the wealth controlled by the upper 5% is the US is more like a 3rd world country than it is like the other industrialized countries. Of course, cutting taxes will only make this worse, but at least we won't be socialist. On the otherhand, we will need more gated communities, probably need a military presence in the inner cities, and more prisons. A small price to pay to avoid socialism though...

To: tejek who wrote (135985)	4/8/2001 4:33:04 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572510

So I can only conclude that if we are the richest and everyone is poorer than we are...then why do you never see ghettos as bad as ours nor as proliferate when you are in the member nations of the EU? The averarage American is richer but our wealth is more concentrated. If you look at the whole of the EU compared to the US the typical American is also richer then the typical person in a memberstate of the EU, and we have a lower unemployment rate then Europe, but if you don't have a job in Western Europe you probably are better off then if you live in the US and are unemployed. Also what countries in the Europe have you been in or researched? You mentioned a few of the richer countries before but Europe includes countries like Albania, and even the EU includes countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece, and regions like southern Italy and Eastern Germany which are much poorer then Scaninavia, Western Germany and Luxembourg, or any region in the US. Here a link from the EUs web site (resumably they are not biased against the EU). It doesn't mention GDP per capita but it does have figures for total GDP and population. Using the EU's own 1999 figures US GDP per capita is $33,838 and that of the EU is $22,501. At the time the EU had a 4.2% unemployment rate and and the EU has 9.2%. eurunion.org Another thing to consider is that you are talking about "standard of living". I am specifically focuseing on per capita wealth. I do so because it is eaiser to break down to concrete easy to understand facts, but most people wouldn't consider wealth to be the only part of standard of living. Tim