[Villages Kahuna]

You assert,” We are in fact better off then people in any other country as large as ours. The problem is, as any economist will tell you, the result of rampant capitalism is socialism.”

Of course there is only one other country “as large as ours”, so your “survey” is badly flawed. In fact there are other countries that if not actually socialist are so heavily taxed that they operate like socialist countries. Various polls and interviews of residents of Scandinavian countries consistently show that they are very happy, trust their governments to provide a much wider variety of social services than are provided to Americans, and almost always reject the idea of moving to the U.S. as being undesirable to them.

Claims that U.S. capitalism and that our style of democracy are the best systems in the world are nowhere near as widely accepted throughout the world as many Americans assert.

As a matter of fact, the way our democracy is currently operating and my perception of the chances that it will change doesn’t tempt me to be an unfettered proponent for our systems. Finns, Swedes, Danes and Norwegians respond to surveys saying that they like the services and policies of their democratically-elected governments and would have little interest in moving to the U.S. They understand that they are paying taxes to support the government policies and programs offered to them and find that quite acceptable.

As far as I’m concerned saying that I am happy with the breadth and quality of governmentally-provided programs here in the U.S. is incorrect. Saying that I actually trust my elected representatives couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m too old to move to another country to achieve such satisfactions and trust and I fear for what the U.S. will become for my grandchildren. I wish I could have higher hopes.