| As the country with the fourth largest nominal GDP [1], we are doing quite well, thank you, although we have to work a little harder to deal with all that "innovation" that came from the US before and in 2008. Look, I'm not saying that the US is not wonderful - but there are a couple of areas where it just isn't wonderful at all. I have no idea why you quote that text related to the Laffer Curve [2] (please learn to cite your sources). After all, it seems that Germany has adopted some of its principles [3] and numbers like that do not happen in a vaccuum as the text seems to suggest. But there is still nobody in this thread arguing for excessive or unreasonable taxation. It is still about companies being asked to pay their fair share. That being said, I don't believe in money as much as I believe in human progress and quoting numbers like that isn't really helping - the social situation in the US and the impact that your "strong" corporate culture has on the world are areas that speak a much clearer language. There are perfectly reasonable arguments why the US is the worst place to start a company in (Immigration Policy and Software Patents would be on the top of my list), but at 300m people compared to our 80m at a similar HDI, I just don't think that the two countries are that comparable. You won the war and it took us 40 years to reunite our own country, for crying out loud! Everybody has their own set of challenges. It would be incredibly arrogant to respond to another person trying to suggest lessons that they have learned simply by parroting their challenges or solutions that simply don't follow the discussion. Then again, you start out by asking me how I like you being the center of the universe. Well - I like to understand myself as a citizen of the world and find little use in pissing matches. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...
[2] http://brookesnews.com/072409laffercurve.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#Outside_the_United... |
then our discussion is over.