Quote from zdreg:
it is tiresome to hear that the war in iraq is responsible for US economic ills. the reality is that the US is becoming more socialist while europe is either maintainting the staus quo or trying to become more capitalistic. The US is burdened with 50 states who think that they are sovereign nations who can burden their residents with taxes to pay off the state's civilian servants with inflated pension promises. then afterwards they expect the federal gov't . tp pay off their obligations. then there are the managers in the private sector who only care aboutmore their obs and negotiate everything away to the unions. the stockholders be damned.
a rotten system of education with overpaid teachers does not help either,
the war in iraq is a very small part of US GDP