[finnbow]

His assessment is a bit harsh and sometimes counterfactual (70% of taxes used for the DoD budget???), but there's certainly a ring of truth to much of it. Having lived overseas for 11 years and visited over 60 countries, I'll be the first to say that there are a lot of countries that do a number of things better than we do. However, unlike the author, I also think there are also a number of things we do better.

There are certainly aspects of the northern European social-democratic model that I prefer to ours though. From healthcare to primary education to crime rates to vacation time to the quality of basic foodstuffs, they do a lot of things better than we do. South of the Alps is a different story though (except for the food, which is even better than northern Europe). The "haves" in our country have it as good or better than their northern European counterparts. However, the "have-nots" here aren't even close to having it as good as their northern European counterparts, and our system seems to create a lot more "have-nots" than theirs. What's amazing is that there are so many "have-nots" in the GOP base. Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly must be real good at what they do.