A Smug American am I

Another good chart in The World in 2006 that I've been meaning to post.

Of course, the knee jerk reaction and retorts to this are;

1. GDP is not a measure of happiness, health, standards of living, candle light vigils, and fluffy good feelings.
2. Europe has free health care and education
3. George Bush sucks
4. This doesn't account for intangible extenalities like pollution, scenery and that George Bush sucks.
5. But the wealth is distributed insanely unequally and you have a very high Gini Coefficient...even though your "poor" is wealthier than the average Frenchman.
6. "Oh yeah, well, did you know that more people in the world watch soccer than American football??? Yeah, that's right!"

All those things being said, we know deep down inside, you're jealous.

And that's OK, because the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. And once you admit you have a problem, then the road to capitalistic recovery and higher standards of living can take place.