From The Economist, Sept 8, 2012:

This gives a whole new meaning to the scary world of “European Socialism” that we’re threatened with here in America.

I don’t know how the Germans get away with this submissive attitude and still maintain a comparatively strong economy. Suggesting that the government has a right to dip into your pocket as it pleases, while it bothers the 1 percenters, is actually quite acceptable to the general public. Perhaps this happens when generations upon generations are told that success, satisfaction and happiness are limited to a middle-class lifestyle and a sufficient retirement salary – as long as life comes with 6 week vacations in July and August:

• Panem et circenses (Latin)
• Brot und Spiele (German)
• Bread and circuses (English)

This would never work in America, and that’s what America is all about. Americans need more than bread and circuses. That’s why I am here doing what I am doing, and not in Germany (or France, or England, or Switzerland….)

Let’s watch the slippery slope of redistribution, since it sucks the life out of the people, slowly, surely until their most motivated leave for more prosperous and exciting shores. These shores were in America for more than a century.

I, for one, would like to keep it that way.