I am going to start posting interesting graphs from the web and discuss them in a new section called GRAPHS. The first installment comes from The Economist.
Boy, Americans have not felt great about their country's direction for most of the last 8 years. The current economic crisis which could easily last for another two years will only add to people's blues. I think a possible Obama presidency could give this country a mild jolt of happiness and optimism. But, as long as this country remains mired in its unsustainable ways, the blues are here to stay.
I have always wondered if the taxes people pay correlate with the availability of social and economic programs and safety nets, not to mention the military programs that protect them. This idea comes in light of the notion that Europeans are highly taxed compared to their American counterparts, but they seem to have access to free (or almost free) education and health care while the US provides neither. The Europeans live and work at a more leisurely pace than Americans and they have the comfort of knowing that their government has put safety nets in case a disaster. The Europeans do a lot to ensure that all their citizens have comparable opportunities, and thus you are less likely to see a huge gap between the poor and the rich. Perhaps the lack of incentive to excel has stifled entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe to some extent. In fact, Europe has historically high unemployment rates than the US and the size of government there is significantly larger than that of the US....
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