From the Brochure Counter at Constantly Amazing Airlines

The following excerpts are taken more or less at random from this article:

The EU has 87 prisoners per 100,000 people; America has 685.

Americans work longer hours and take fewer vacations.

Back in 1980 the average American chief executive earned forty times the average manufacturing employee. For the top tier of American CEOs, the ratio is now 475:1 and would be vastly greater if assets, not income, were taken into account. By way of comparison, the ratio in Britain is 24:1, in France 15:1, in Sweden 13:1.

A privileged minority in America has access to the best medical treatment in the world. But 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all (of the world's developed countries only the US and South Africa offer no universal medical coverage).

According to the World Health Organization the United States is number one in health spending per capita -- and thirty-seventh in the quality of its service. As a consequence, Americans live shorter lives than West Europeans. Their children are more likely to die in infancy: the US ranks twenty-sixth among industrial nations in infant mortality, with a rate double that of Sweden, higher than Slovenia's, and only just ahead of Lithuania's and this despite spending 15 percent of US gross domestic product on "health care" (much of it administrative costs of for-profit private networks). Sweden devotes just 8 percent of its GDP to health.

The United States spends much more on education than the nations of Western Europe; and it has by far the best research universities in the world. Yet a recent study suggests that for every dollar the US spends on education it gets worse results than any other industrial nation. American children consistently underperform their European peers in both literacy and numeracy.

US is outperformed in worker productivity by Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, and France.

The modern American economy is in hock to international bankers with a foreign debt of $3.3 trillion (28 percent of GDP).

Europeans even appear to be better at generating small and medium-size businesses. There are more small businesses in the EU than in the United States, and they create more employment (65 percent of European jobs in 2002 were in small and medium-sized firms, compared with just 46 percent in the US). And they look after their employees much better. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights promises the "right to parental leave following the birth or adoption of a child" and every West European country provides salary support during that leave. In Sweden women get sixty-four weeks off and two thirds of their wages. Even Portugal guarantees maternity leave for three months on 100 percent salary. The US federal government guarantees nothing. In the words of Valgard Haugland, Norway's Christian Democratic minister for children and family: "Americans like to talk about family values. We have decided to do more than talk; we use our tax revenues to pay for family values."

In the US today the richest 1 percent holds 38 percent of the wealth and they are redistributing it ever more to their advantage. Meanwhile one American adult in five is in poverty, compared with one in fifteen in Italy. The countries of the EU also provide the largest share of the world's peacekeepers and international policemen.

Just a little something for the "America is better than everyone" crowd. I dare them to come up with something besides, "if you like it so much there, then leave!" or, "if you hate it so much here, then leave!"