{"id":7481,"date":"2010-12-28T03:00:03","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T08:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=7481"},"modified":"2010-12-28T03:00:03","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T08:00:03","slug":"that-unfortunate-negative-slope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/7481","title":{"rendered":"That Unfortunate Negative Slope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/module\/printversion\/149324\">America in Decline: Why Germans Think We&#8217;re Insane<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As an American expat living in the European Union, I\u2019ve started to see America from a different perspective.<\/p>\n<p>The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less &#8212; right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical &#8212; the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The description of Glenn Beck is spot-on, and as to the question of how people can fall so far, so fast owing to our deficient social safety net, I think it has to do with the too-widespread misconception that &#8220;unadulterated capitalism&#8221; is somehow imbedded in our constitution.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America in Decline: Why Germans Think We&#8217;re Insane As an American expat living in the European Union, I\u2019ve started to see America from a different perspective. The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/7481\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}