Wojtek S writes:
> Government social spending as percent of the GDP
Funny, that's *exactly* the arguments made by the employers associations, CDU/CSU, FDP, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for **cutting** social spending.
What's your point Wojtek? It's ok for children in Germany to suffer malnutrition as long as total state expenditures are of a sufficient proportion relative to GDP?
Oh, and all of you (rightly) upset by the lack of prospects of implementing some sort of national health care plan in the United States: the FDP health minister has already taken initially steps in the opposite direction, of freezing employer contributions to health care plans but allowing the individual insurance agencies to independently levy additional contributions from workers.
So don't worry, dear Europhile liberals, if its any consolation, you can continue to comfort yourself that it's not "as bad" over here, and you can continue to push the bar downward so that even the worst attacks on the welfare state over here appear "moderate" by comparison.
I wonder how much of this Europhilia among liberal Americans is secretly motivated by the internalized racist assumption that white people just deserve "better" than brown people. Or how else are we to understand Wotjek's lament that the U.S. is closer to Mexico than to Germany?