[precisioncoder]

Well it's a huge difference with Europe. Specifically in Austria where I'm living everyone gets an education for free, there's free health care, even menial jobs are well paid. Everyone lives a pretty solid middle class life but there are much fewer people struggling to change the world. Fewer success stories but everyone is taken care of. It's an interesting situation, hell there's not even credit card debt since if your credit isn't paid by the end of the month it's locked until you pay your balance down to zero.

[hga]

Another thing to factor in: for whatever reasons, you aren't reproducing. Per Wikipedia, your fertility rate is 1.42 to 1.44 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...), which is perilously close to the "lowest low" of 1.3 from which societies don't recover from, and certainly isn't even close to the 2.1 needed for steady state replacement.

I.e. absent serious change, your society is doomed, you'll die out in due course; many say the example your and other counties like you provide are object lessons in what not to do.

[precisioncoder]

That's a strawman unless you can produce data that relates the reproduction rate to the standard of living. If you can do that then apparently what you're saying is that a country needs to enforce low standards (or at least wildly differing) standards of living in order to ensure survival. I.e. absent major changes your argument has been refuted; Many say the example your argument and other's like it provide are object lessons in what not to do.