To: TimF who wrote (359894 ) 11/23/2007 1:58:40 AM From: tejek Read Replies (1) | Respond to Germany is the largest economy in Europe and has performed relatively poorly. Germany reunified over 17 years ago. The only reason not to include Germany is to distort the states in Europe's favor. the average person in Germany or France or Italy is better off as determined by the most important statistic there is.....longevity Americans get in to more fatal accidents (esp. car accidents, which is mainly do to the fact that we drive more), and are more likely to kill each other. We're slightly, but not very less likely to kill ourselves. Strip those out and we have a better life expectancy than many Western European countries. I don't have all the stats in front of me but I've already performed and posted the calculations for the UK and we clearly do better than the UK when you adjust for those factors. The simple facts are that the US has outperformed Europe, in GDP, in GDP per capita, in GDP growth, in GDP growth per capita, in unemployment rates, in median and mean compensation and income, and in many other ways of measuring economic growth and/or well being.
