In the United States, we often hear that the U.S. is the world’s greatest place to live.  There is still much good to be said about the United States, but there is also increasing dysfunction.

In his 2004 article, “The European Dream,”  Jeremy Rifkin dared to compare the U.S. way of life to that of the European Union.  He wrote “[I]t saddens me to say that America is no longer a great country. Yes, it’s still the most powerful economy in the world, with a military presence unmatched in all of history. But to be a great country, it is necessary to be a good country.”

Many other people have expressed concerns with the direction of the U.S., of course. Rifkin’s article goes further by letting the objective facts do most of the talking:

[The European Union’s] $10.5 trillion gross domestic product now eclipses the U.S. GDP, making it the world’s largest economy. The European Union is already the world’s leading exporter and largest internal trading market. Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies.

[I]n the European Union, there are approximately 322 physicians per 100,000 people, whereas in the United States there are only 279. The United States ranks 26th among the industrial nations in infant mortality, well below the EU average. The average life span in the 15 most developed EU countries is now 78.01 years, compared to 76.9 years in the United States.

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