[toyg]

> Nobody on HN is tripping over themselves to compare the US to Italy, Greece or even Spain

I disagree. Italy is typically included everywhere - it's a G7/G8 country, with a GDP bigger than Canada or Australia, and trumps Spain on pretty much any indicator (let alone Greece). It has its problems but it's not a poor or bankrupt country by any means.

> At that point why compare to the US though? If the comparisons exclude former communist Europe and poor Mediterranean Europe

In terms of population, the EU as a whole is 30% larger than the US. It's somewhat inevitable that there will be some pruning when trying to compare apples to apples. It's just a fact that Eastern Europe is not representative of the larger Union any more than, say, Mississipi, Oklahoma or Alaska are fundamentally representative of the whole US.

[emteycz]

We're talking about half of the EU population, not some pruning. And still, people from Mississippi or Oklahoma at least have the US market around them.