are Europeans poorer/less modern/less developped than the US ?
543965
Western Europe is as developed, if not more, than the US. If you take a look at Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland or Austria (to name a few), you will see that, even though they have a different style of living, their "modernity" is similar, if not more advanced, than that of the US. There are also South-Eastern countries who are just developing, due to having been occupied or influenced by the Communist regime. Anyway, most of them are preparing to join the European Union, which will help them reach the modern European and American standard. I believe the old continent is evolving at a very fast pace.
150072
No, because the European economy is basically socialist in structure. Take a look at the countries there. Most are in double-digit unemployment. Inflation is spiraling out of control.\n\nHere is an example of what is happening: The government of Germany raises taxes to raise revenue. Helmut, the owner of a bicycle shop, lays off Gerhard to be able to afford to pay those taxes. Gerhard goes on the government roles and gets a decent welfare check because Germany offers cradle to grave care. Now the government has to pay out more money to pay for Gerhard and raises taxes again to do it. Now, Helmut (the owner of the bicycle shop - remember) has to lay off Dieter to pay for those new taxes. Dieter goes on the government roles and gets a decent welfare check ... and so on, and so on, and so on ...\n\nThe greatness America achieved at such a rapid pace can only be achieved through democracy and capitalism.
116021
Low standard of living, under developed industrial base, low HDI... a lot of developing countries also tend to have large amounts of cheap labor (india for call centers, malasia for computer parts) which, despite common misconception, is actually very good for the developing countries.
316473
This is a sad observation mostly about poorer Americans (1), a distinction in the gap between the poor and the wealthy in the United States.  The poorer individuals in America have a larger tendency towards obesity, and wealth is very much correlated to obesity, as shown in this study (2).  Speaking anecdotally, you see alot of overweight individuals in urban areas and in immigrant neighborhoods, which are generally less well off than white suburban neighborhoods (3).\n\nThis is actually very odd, in less developed nations you see the reverse: the poor are starving and thin, and the rich are obese.  Often obesity is a sign of wealth and status in cultures where food is scarce (1).\n\nWhy is it that in the US, the wealthier you are, the less likely you are to be overweight?  From what I have seen, wealthier individuals have muchy better diets.  They do not eat cheap junk food like McDonalds or frozen burritos.  They also have the money to join health clubs, go to spas, and basically they can afford to lead healthier lives.
377956
By definition, those on the lowest incomes are poor - this is true for all countries.\n\nHow poor - well, if peoples' income is insufficient to buy the very basic food, shelter, healthcare, education and clothes then those people are in poverty. And most countries would 'step in' at this level to ensure that these basic needs are met and citizens do not die of starvation, primary illness or exposure\n\nHistorically, the US has relied on immigrants arriving and working in poverty as a base and not supported these people as they are not in the truest sense citizens. As the US restricts immigration, more of its own citizens are in poverty. Which then presents a dilemma - does the US let its own citizens die of poverty? Given the TV footage of people requiring 2+ jobs and charity food aid just to survive, the US answer is yes\n\nSo a mixed economy (some socialism, some capitalism) is the preferred model in Europe where the appalling poverty of the post WW2 years are still more than a memory\n\nBTW - France has the best medical care system in the world according to most measures - the US varies between 4th and 10th
494960
This big difference is only one face of a completely different fiscal and welfare system. Taxation is heavier in Europe because it serves also to pay many public services which are freely granted (such as high-quality health care and education). America can tax citizens less than Europe because they prefer to pay directly when accessing services ("why should I pay hospitals when I don't use them?").\nWhatever is our opinion on the two systems, they are too different for being comparable and it's not easy deciding which is better.
227284
It mostly has to do with (1) US seclusion from the world political scene until the early/mid 1900s,(2) US Self-Sufficiency that was established as a result of that seclusion and (3) The fact that no one ever imagined something such as globalization a couple centuries back.\n\nSpecifically, the US was able to grow and prosper (although not without occasional difficulty) in a geographic location that was significantly distant (and difficult to reach; crossing an ocean on flimsy sailboats is not at all simple) from continental Europe, where people, nations, rulers, etc. were battling a huge amount of surmounting problems all brought along with things such as the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, Nationalism, Socialism, Liberalism, riots and revolutions, wars, famines, and urbanization. The difficulty of dealing with such new ideas, developments, etc. was heightened by the fact that Europe had had a long established system of doing/seeing things.\n\nThe US, however, was mostly distant to all these developments, and not having a long established system that was being challanged, it was easier for America to go along with what they were used to. Ultimately, this "being distant from trouble" helped the US establish its own system, grow, and of course, prosper. Thus, there came a time when people did not see what the advantage of changing systems would be when their system was clearly good enough to bring about such prosperity.\n\nThe metric system was established to bring unity to science, and thus to make it more "scientific" (for example, the meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second, the denominator of that fraction being the speed of light in a vacuum: 299792458 meters per second.). Countries outside Europe that adopted this system chose it, beacause they had no other choice. They were not significant contributers to science, and thus had to accept the established SI system, which was, not only practical, but also more precise and effective, and allowed scientists to draw conclusions, make hypotheses and establish relations more easily. The US, however, was a growing and potentially powerful country and did not necessarily need to "conform".\n\nAlthough the US scientific institutions do use the metric system today, the SI system is not widely established outside universities, institutions, etc.. Milk is still sold in gallons, and shoes in inches, for example.\n\nAt any rate, although it would theoretically be much easier for the American people to live with a system based on multiles of 10 and direct relations between units (1 liter of water is 1 kilogram, etc.), the US is now at a position where it is a world leader with an established system. It is now too late to change everything from road signs to education systems. The only link the general US has to the metric system is the fact that one yard pretty much equals one meter.\n\nBesides, like I have mentioned before, no one a couple centuries ago had or could have had imagined a phenomenon that we take for granted today: globalization. US businessmen, landowners, government, etc. probably just thought "I'm well enough the way I am, there is no need to rock the boat by forcing a new system, everyone that I do business with uses my system anyway, so what's the point?".\n\nAnyway, hope this answers your question.
605274
People from Western Europe/US tend to think of Eastern Europe and former Soviet countries as "not European" I have noticed....I guess because those countries were closed off for so long? Or they're arrogant? I don't know. Lame but true!
978045
US: greater dividion between rich and poor... but better economy at the same time.\n\nEurope: popular votes actually count vs. repeat election fraud and unaccountable electonic machines.\n\nUS: more tolerance of foreign cultures, but declining acceptance of civil liberties.
153360
America is as poor as any other developing country.
895244
I hope it's true. If that would be true, then it would prove that the ego of the Americans is too big and it deflates as soon as they see that others know how to do certain stuff, like race cars, way better than they do.\n\nToo bad they removed your question before. They didn't bare being reminded that Europeans create much better race cars.\nThat Lotus 7 was just the start. Today, there are sooooooooo many cars that are made in Europe and are way better. American cars are designed for long straight roads. European cars are designed for both that and the twistiest roads in the mountains.\n\n\nUK is still good in motor racing. The Renault chassis has been manufactured from 2002 onwards at Enstone, and looking on the map, you might find out it's in Oxfordshire.
613892
Europeans don't hate Americans so much as they believe they're getting a distorted view of what America really is, whether it be by media or other sources.  It is hard for many in the world to understand how American soldiers in Iraq, for example, can at one time hunt down insurgents, yet be so kind as to hand out candy and medical supplies to kids in the street.  Few other cultures act that way. \nI don't believe Europeans are jealous of America, because their standard of living is close to that of Americans. But European children are taught to be much more questioning about the world than their American counterparts. Sometimes they are frustrated by the seeming inanity of America's answers.
1064086
obviously Europeans\nthey are more civilized\nu av a dinner wiv an American family and an European family u would knw\nAmerican knot is different den European\nEuropeans use the two buttons on shirts cuff closer one for winters and other for summer, \nbut I think Americans are funny, talkitive, and more open hearted
345157
There are rich and there are poor, and it is like most of the world. However Germany is ecomonically strong in western Europe.
870096
YES\nthey do its on media everyday brainwashing them\nthey have less freedom of speech and actions than euro's
675345
Two Economists Look at Europe's Economic Slowdown\nEconomic growth and labor productivity have been slowing in Europe as workers take more leisure time. Two experts look at why.\n\nBy Leslie Evans\n\n\n\nFor thirty years Western Europe has consistently turned out a Gross Domestic Product 70% that of the United States. Why hasn't Europe caught up? And curiously, European hourly productivity is much higher than GDP figures would imply, at 90% or better of that of American workers. Why the gap, and why did labor productivity, Europe's best indicator, begin to slide after 1995? Two economists, one from Europe and one from the United States, probed the persistent thirty-year differences between living and earning patterns in Western Europe and the United States at a November 4 UCLA forum.\n\nGianni Toniolo of the University of Rome, who holds a joint appointment at Duke University, was joined by Barry Eichengreen of the University of California at Berkeley in the History Conference Room of UCLA's Bunche Hall for a discussion on "Europe in the Age of Globalization." The meeting was sponsored by the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies and chaired by the center's director, historian Ivan Berend. Both speakers compared the United States to the EU-15, the original 15 Western European members of the European Union before the accession of 10 East and Central European states to the EU last May.\n\nGianni Toniolo: Europeans Place a Higher Value on Leisure\nGianni Toniolo began by lamenting the growing rift between America under the Bush presidency and the European Union. "The Atlantic has never been as wide as it is now, at least in my lifetime, which is postwar. And I am deeply concerned about that. I am deeply concerned about the cultural, political misunderstandings, the lack of understanding that seems to appear on the two sides of the Atlantic."\n\nA History of Economic Convergence -- Followed by Economic Divergences\nBack in 1820, Toniolo said, Western Europe and the United States had about the same per capita GDP. "By 1870 the Americans were ahead of Europe and the gap in GDP per capita continued to grow all the way until 1950." In 1870 Europe produced 82% of the U.S. per capita GDP. After the ravages of two world wars this fell to only 50% in 1950. But in the rebuilding and modernization of European industrial plant from the 1950s onward Europe took large strides toward closing the gap. By 1970 Western European per capita GDP reached 70% of the U.S. and has pretty much frozen there.\n\nBut this did not mean that European industry was as far behind as those numbers suggested, both economists agreed. Productivity, or output per hour worked, has come much closer to U.S. rates. Barry Eichengreen in his presentation reported that the EU-15 average GDP per hour worked in 2000 was 90.7% of the United States and four of the fifteen, Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, have higher labor productivity than the U.S.\n\nGianni Toniolo summarized some of the institutional arguments used by various economists to explain why the U.S. has remained ahead. These include a history of cheap land but expensive labor, which encouraged investment in labor-saving machinery; a more technically oriented educational system; and the unified American market compared to the multiple smaller states of Europe. Most of these U.S. advantages were strongly reduced after World War II, by the end of the American frontier, moves toward European economic unification, and common advances in technology.\n\nEuropeans Begin to Work Fewer Hours\n"The story, however, becomes interesting when we look at why, in spite of being so productive or equally productive as America we poor Europeans are 30% poorer that you Americans," he said. "And the answer is very simple. From the mid-seventies onward Europeans began to work fewer and fewer hours over the life cycle. There was less participation in the
762544
It just depends on where you are and how you've been raised! I know plenty of europeans, and they seem just fine. Go any where in the u.s. and i'm sure that some state will have an issue with another state. Like kansas and arkansas. Now they don't think to highly of each other. It's not about the country, but the people and how they've been raised.