100-150% debt to GDP, God only know what the unfunded liablilities are....

now this.

Lemme give you a hint, they're not protesting for BIGGGER budget cuts.

http://roarmag.org/2011/05/spanish-revolution-protests-spread-europe-videos-democracia-real-ya/

The funniest thing is that all the young people are demanding a system that is so expensive that they won't be able to get anything when they are older.  The benifits given out now are not sustainable, to the point of even Socialists, once they are in power like in Spain, are saying they have to cut stuff.

Then the people who would get the most out of restructuing the systen, the young people, protest.

EU unemployment rates are even less honest than the U.S. regarding the neglect of counting the "underemployed."

In the EU is is much easier to become part of their permanent underemployed class AND collect government checks. Disability and other payments can be had for many simple reasons that would never be allowed in the U.S. Since it is so much easier to get "on the dole" these rates are naturally higher and thus reduce the unemployment rates.

In the EU certainly more is done by the government to assist people in need for a whole variety of conditions ranging from physical and mental health, drug addiction, financial stress (recent unemployment and debt), housing and food and even other stressors such as divorce and death of family members. But since such assistance is so forthcoming the abuse of the system is high. In many circles it's not even considered abuse anymore. It's very easy to just not work.

In the U.S. I guess we just these people a government job, eh willy?

... people figure out they can use it as a way of using the government as an intermediary to take other people's stuff and give it to themselves. Once that happens, it is only a matter of time before we see governments like those in Europe that are essentially dead men walking.

That is why ideas that were originally in our Constitution but have since been re-interpreted into non-existence were so important.

The idea of a government with strictly limited powers -- powers that most certainly did NOT include the ability to have a social security system, corporate welfare, hire persons on behalf of Monsanto, medicare, medicaid, afdc, etc etc etc -- is a government that cannot be used as a proxy for theft on a grand scale, and hence would never overextend itself into oblivion.

Of course, the powers granted in article 1 section 8 have now been misconstrued to the point of expansive meaninglessness. So we aren't far away from emulating the folks in Europe.

I simply hope that the huge wake-up call we've gotten by seeing the mess we're in (and the bigger mess the Europeans are in) will get us to change course before it's too late.

Human nature is what it is. Though the behavior of any given individual is impossible to predict; aggregate behavior of large groups is pretty predictable and it can be summarized as: gimme gimme what I want right the fuck NOW and I don't give a shit that 6 months from now I'm gonna die or that you had to steal it or kill people to give it to me!

Just look at the spoiled punks in Europe.

If this were not the case here as well, we wouldn't have a 14 trillion dollar debt.

That is, they don't count people on the dole etc.

There are lots of other groups that are not unemployed. Groups like "permanent" students, getting a Ph.D. at age 35 with never having worked are not "unemployed,"  People in dozens of other groups are not "unemployed," even if they are not working.

When people scream for spending cuts right up to the point where it affects them!  Oh, no!  Don't cut Federal and State aid to my school district.  But don't you dare increase local taxes, either!  Just one of many examples of the 'ol NIMBY factor.

The other thing that should be noted is the brain drain from Europe continues.  

Excluding Americans who are working for U.S. countries and are temporarily in Europe and excluding ex pats who are rich and can live anywhere, it is very rare to find Americans who have moved to Europe to live and be part of the working classes.  In the 30 years I have been going there, I have run into a tiny number, and usually they haven't "moved" to Europe, but are living with a boyfriend and working as a waitress, or similar situations.

On the other hand, the talent that moves from Europe to the U.S. continues.

I cannot count the number of talented European business people I know in L.A. alone. Look at the cooking world and that is just the start.  I can't guess at the number of restaurants, bakeries, chocolate shops, specialty food places.

Outside of the cooking world I know scores of Europeans in all fields.  Dentists, doctors, teachers, etc.

I was just talking to a woman from Bologna, who still loves her "homeland," but wants the "opportunity" she finds here.  

Talent gained in the U.S.

I have said a dozen times that the left is always the first one to call Americans dumb, stupid, and other terms.  It is so Obamaesque- clinging to guns and religion.  

It is particularly funny in this post because it has nothing to do with what I said.  I pointed out that Europe is losing many of its talented people, and you reply, "Americans are dumb."  

Even if that insult is true, arguendo, it is a non sequittor and irrelelevant to my post.  Americans may be dumb, but talented Europeans are still moving here.

I am not predicting anything, which is the essence of "counting chickens."  I just commented on a trend that has happened and is happening.

It is so much worse here, why to people still flood here?

If you go to London and drive by the U.S. embassy at 4:00 a.m., you see the line around the corner so people can get a number for a visa to move the the US.

If you go to the embassy in Paris, Madrid, or Rome, similar story.  I know people from Germany, Italy, Japan, England, Canada, and Frane JUST AT ONE DANCE STUDIO ALONE.

Cuba - really good there. People get on inner tubes and risk being eaten by sharks to move to the U.S.

Funny, many countries in the world have had to build a fence to keep people in. We have to build one to keep people out.

As I said, I go to another country at least once a year for the last 30 or so years.  The number of Americans who have moved to Europe is statistically insignificant.

The number of Europeans who want to move here fills the quotas 100 times over every year.  

And it is talented Europeans. I know doctors, dentists, accountants, teachers, business people, clothes designers, artists.

The United States has the second largest population for French, German, Poles, Greeks, English.

Santa Monica is called "the Last Outpost of the Empire" because there are so many Brits there.  The number of Finns in Miami is huge.  Funny, they could live so much better for so much less if they moved to Cuba.  Noppsie.  Those leftie Finns like The Good Ol'e USA, not some commie dump, no matter how nice the weather.

The U.S. has a little Tokyon, Little Armenia, and 100 others in 1,000 cities. Paris, Rome, London, Madrid etc do not have a "little NY."

If it is so good there, why do so many people want to live here?

It's Asians, South Americans, Africans, etc.  With all our problems, the opportunities are greater here.  One example: one of the founders of Google is the child of Russian immigrants.

If you read the article carefully, it is full of qualifiers and assumptions, with very few hard statistics.  No doubt a good percentage of foreign graduates always intended to return home.  And it's very believable that more will do so now that their home economies are stronger.  But the article seems to focus only on the graduates.  What about all the others who are coming here as well?  I'd say that, at a minimum, the jury's out.

the impact of US being the place where many, many poor, ie, Central and South America, Asia, etc end up and tax the social services we do have. RE: Education, why is it that few Pols, Obama, Clinton, extol the virtues of public schools yet don't send their own kids? NIMBY indeed.

Try getting on the dole in any Euro zone country....try getting a job....Who is the Zenophobe???

Point is, while Euros have luxuriated in many of the items you mention, it';s time to pay the piper.

Europe has maxed out it's credit card and the bill is coming due.

The Piper is going to be China and all our other creditor nations as they slowly divest from the $$$.

I think I read a few years ago that so many Africans (Haitians, Cubans, etc, included) have immigrated to the U.S. that the majority of people descended from Africans in one way or another are no longer descended from slaves.  

That makes a very interesting question for the reparations crowd.  Do African Americans who were not descended from slaves get reparations?  Does Obama?  Does Sasha, who is descended from slaves on half of her family tree?

Another interesting question:  Why did so many people of color voluntarily move to this racist shit hole?

Students who come to the US on a student visa tend to "overstay" their visas very often.

It is one of the problems from the "mother country," that may pay for the education, and then have the educated grad want to stay in the Oppressive U.S.

My first job was in an immigartion firm and we would get calls all week long, "I am a German student as UCLA. How can I change my student visa into permanent residence?"

Just give everybody an even chance in the here and now.  How many of our relatives were around when slavery existed?  Or even benefitted financially from it?  All I know is, my relatives were being chased around by Cossacks at the time.  I ain't payin'.  It was never going to happen anyway.

You pretend it is just poor from third world. It is Europeans.
I don't know how your life is so narrow that you don't know any Europeans.  Do you never go to restaruants.  There are thousands in LA and SF with European chefs.

Why do they line up in every capital in Europe at 4 a.m. to get a visa.

Yes, 6 weeks vacation and they still flock here and fill the quotas. WHY, WHY, WHY. They got their vacations. Why is the quota fill for the next ten years.

The fact that Americans may not know who the president of Mexico is another non seequitor.  and IRRELEVANT to the topic.  

THe question is not do Americans know Mexico. The question is why do so many French want to move to L.A.

I am not only give "personal antecdotes."  It is full quotas. Lines in London. Students overstaying visas.

You see something in D.C. and say it is a capitol City. The same internationalism affects every city in the US.  It isn't the capital that draws Europeans.

If yo think it is "personal anectdodes" googel you local French Association, Italian association.  Compare numbers of the L.A. Italian association to the Milan American association, if there is one.

You really have to live in a narrow world not to see the flood from Europe.

First, you give a personal anecdote about N. VA and then say they don't mean much.  Go figure. As to the rest:

The Europeans in line in London to get visas are not at all like Americans getting passports.  Americans getting passports are planning on going to Paris for a week or a short trip.  Europeans lining up for visas are seeking to move.

It isn't that Europeans are multi-cultural so they want to travel here.  It is they see life in both places and want to LIVE here.  In fact, that is why American's "ignorance" is even more irrelevant.  It is the fact that Europeans see both and still want to move.  It is not Europeans "exloring' other lands.  They do that in Turkey and China and Cuba and places like that.  That is their vacation.  They go to Cuba for vacation, but  don't want to live there.  They come to the US and want to stay.

Europeans speak other languages because they have to. If you want to become a doctor in Greece, you HAVE to learn English because the medical texts are not printed in Greece.  It is to expensive to print text books in Swedish, Greek, Norwegian, etc., so they learn English.  I read a few years ago that the Pastuer Institute in France no longer prints its cardiology texts in French.  They just don't have enough cardiologists to make it cost effective, unless they can sell them overseas as well.  They use English not because they are more cosmopolitan, but because they have to.

Same with other professions in Europe. When China and Germany entered a deal to make cars, they needed ONE language so there would be no conflict in interpretations.  They used English, not Chinese or German.

They learn other languages because if you live in Oslo your world is less than half the size of Los Angeles (in terms of population), unless you learn another language.  There are only about 8 millions Sweedes.  If they limited their life to Swedish, they would be so limited it would make you cry.  If we had to learn another language to go from CA to AZ, we would be multilingual also.

Bottom line - We will never convince each other. But if you haven't met anyone from Europe living in the US since high school, I think you said, let's see what the rest of the board thinks.  Who out there has never met a European living in the United States?  Who knows more than 5?

Finally, if you really have met so few people from Western Europe, I really feel sorry for you. You must live in a narrow world of DC pencil pushers.  I cannot go to dance class, the garden club, my cafe in the morning, the deli I go to, or a dozen other places without meeting Germans, Italians, etc.

How do you live so narrow.

Ex-pats are a different issue, and I think in my first post I excluded them.  A lot are retired, many "live" there, but haven't emigrated.  It is one thing to move to Lake Como when you are George Clooney. It is another to emigrate to NYC if you are 30 years old and are planning to start a business.

Also, ex-pats live in places like San Miguel de Alende. The fact that 500 (pure guess) Americans who are retired to go live in a place like that is a world away from people who emigrate to the US from anywhere.

It is not surprising that European countries are not in the top 10.  Mexico is 100 million people, a river away, where there are millions of poor.  Sweden is 8 million.  And you think it means something that Mexico has more people coming to the US.  Yeah, there are 12 times as many, living 100 times worse off an are 1,000 miles closer.

Italy is an ocean away, without the probems of Mexico, and only has 60 million.  It doesn't exactly show anything that Mexico has more immigrants.  The same for China - a billion people in poverty.  The fact that there are more Chinese immigrants numerically is not much of a surprise.

Whites may be a minority in 2050 because 100 million Mexicans live next door, when they come here they average more kids than whites.  Even Eropeans don't have that many kids. My friends who are an English/Swedish couple have one kid.  The Italian/Canadian couple same.  The English couples I know all have one or two.  And when someone from China has 3 or 4 you think that the end result means Europeans aren't coming here???

Your neck of the words sounds very sad.  I am not surprised that the owner of my fav tratoria is Italian.  What is surprising is that most of his waiters are also Italians, not related. My poutlry guy is Irish.  

You say personal antecdotes don't mean anything. That isn't really true.  If you told me 50% of the people living in L.A. were amputees below the knee, I would know it is false only because I see people. I don't need a study.  

If I can't go a week without seeing European immigrants, it means something.  You tell me what it means.

It isn't only L.A. that has lots of Europeans.  SF, San Diego, Monterey have a lot Europeans.  I will let you know who the Brit's garden party is this Sunday. (And she isn't even in Santa Monica.)  Try Chicago.   Try Atlana. Try Miami.

Get out more.