Quote Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit View Post
And I could have listed many personal examples that proved that, but I didn't want to make such an effort to refute a claim that he clearly hasn't researched or thought about, but just repeated after reading it in Socialist Fancy or whatever.
Who cares about personal examples? I've been to the US for 14 days and I could have listed many personal examples that proved that social mobility is quite low, as in, lower than in most western Europe, despite all the 'American dream' mumbo jumbo.

Quote Originally Posted by SFTS
All Europeans live off the welfare system and Americas defense systems
This is something I can somewhat agree with. Although most europeans don't live off the welfare system (in which case Europe would be a third word area by now), it's quite true that said welfare system could only become possible because the US funded the defense of western Europe.
Europeans could never have afforded to defend themselves against a possible soviet invasion while setting up workable welfare states.
This is often forgotten by Europeans and Canadians.

To say the USA (a country of 300 million mind you) has much less mobility than the rest of the west is disingenous at best.
Now I don't see how the population is relevant. I'm not sure it has much less mobility than the rest of Europe, but I think the 'american dream' is kind of a fairy tale now.

Quote Originally Posted by EMFM
Ostalgia. Lots of people in the East are incapable of looking back and seeing just how much worse off they were. That and the SPD is weak in many places in the East, making Die Linke the go-to leftist party.
I don't see how having a state-guaranteed job, a monthly income and living in a decent appartement is 'much worse' than being unemployed. Not to mention that East Germany had a disproportionnate weight on the international scene (being the showoff of USSR), while reunited Germany used to be pretty much nonexistant (things are changing lately, mostly because Germany decided to loosen its ties with France). Then again, there's the fact that social and economical inequalities were not nearly as bad as they are now (even though Germany is doing fine on that departement). You don't really care if you're poor, as long as you still can live decently, and as long as your neighbour isn't 10 times wealthier than you.