DD writes:
"I am not sure exactly what is happening in this debate. Is someone seriously arguing that several European states don't have significantly better conditions as measured with quite a few different indicators and that life is not as a result on average significantly more agreeable for a higher percentage of the respective populations?"
I think the drift of the convo is that while Europe still offers better living conditions for the working class, the same neo-liberal forces are at work in Europe as in the US & that they are using divide and conquer tactics to make
1. U.S. workers feel that EU workers are lazy and not entitled to anything but the bare subsistence we get
2. European workers feel lucky that they have anything that's a little better than U.S. workers.
In other words, one more race to the bottom.
Joanna