Unless you live in a vacuum, which I suppose you do, then you must know just how bad our current state of affairs is. And to think that our current president is doing such marvelous things … how can you look in the mirror and not be embarrassed by your comments? You truly are ignorant on such basic things as economics, which may be why you are so hell-bent on taking everyone else’s money for your personal gain: to gain some education on how society actually works.

Oh, yes, those Danish taxes. Did you ask where they go? Your complaining informant probably did not tell you about the higher education he received as a result of those taxes or the guarantee of housing for all people or all the other benefits that accrue. I know that you likely regard that as the nanny society, but it is a form of solidarity that brings people together rather than setting them at odds — the usual grumbling about taxes not withstanding.

Businesses paying for water in fountains in their neighborhood? Well, it’s not a model I see even here in Madrid. However, it is not without precedent in the US, e.g., in NY where businesses have banned together to pay for additional street cleaning. I don’t know what is happening in Colorado Springs (as I recall) these days now that they are cutting services and turning out street lights . . . .

While you were in European cities, did you take time to seek out the “bad neighborhoods?” The most remarkable thing I found in Madrid — a city in one of the less wealthy western Europen countries — is the safety of the streets and the lack of slums that scar all major US cities. The tax burden is not as heavy here as in Denmark and the social network less well supported, but it still generates remarkably better results than the US approach.

Your comments on Europe reflect both a problem with tourism — processing through a narrow lens with too little information — and with ideology. Your views reflect the predominant ideology that starts from the assumption that all government is bad — and places the facts around that premise. It also repeats a tired falsehood about making people dependent on government — which leads to my second point.

The Great Society, for whatever its flaws, did not do that. I was a researcher in the US and know that the percentage of people with long-term dependence on welfare has always been miniscule. The overwhelming majority use it as it was intended — as a short-term aid. The anti-welfare mindset was reinforced by Reagan’s talk of welfare queens — and resulted in cutbacks, the most severe being signed into law by Clinton. Has that improved the situation? I am further from things now, but there has been no improvement that I have heard of. What is documented is the opposite. Income inequality has been growing in the US and class mobility is now virtually unheard of — it is easier to move up in Germany and Sweden — those socialist or semi-socialist states you would so heartily condemn.

The US remains the wealthiest country in the world, still has some of the best educational institutions, and excels in research. However, how can it tolerate the extreme poverty that exists there? How can it spend so much money on healthcare and not have a correspondingly greater life expectancy? The problem is NOT government, as you would suggest, but the dominant ideology and misplaced spending priorities. Medicare works — and with low administrative costs — yet the passage of a half-baked reform that may improve access to care is generating something akin to open rebellion on the Right. One of the objections was cost — when the US squanders billions and billions on the military which is somehow sacred when it comes to cutbacks?

You are right that things are changing for the worse, but I don’t see responses that will cushion the blow. I had to visit earlier this month (March 2010) where I was greated by the NYC notices about being alert and reporting suspicious activity. The world I entered was exactly like the one we were told growing up existed “behind the Iron Curtain.” The combination of fear and ideology is allowing the US citizenry to passively accept reductions in its personal freedoms and in its freedom of expression, paying ridiculous amounts for “security,” yet willingly allowing people to go without healthcare, to go hungry, and to become increasingly economically, socially, educationally and psychologically separated. Yet where does this fear come from? I live in Madrid, site of a terrorist attack in 2004, with less police state presence, without Guantanamos. Here, just a short distance from North Africa, we still have a society governed by laws that recognizes terrorism as a crime and uses the police and courts to deal with it.

So in the end I agree with you, it’s not simple. It’s not simply that government is bad. It is that the priorities and constraints that US ideology places on government — and the freedom it gives government to restrict fundamental personal liberties — distort the reality — and ideology is not fixed easily — or simply.

My article had nothing to do with the last election; it had to do with the future. Did I vote for OUR current President, you know the one you are so enamored with? No….that’s obvious. I didn’t trust him then, and I don’t trust him now. He never owned a business. He was never responsible for creating a business plan, marketing, or even making a payroll. He didn’t run so much as a donut stand, and “we” put him in charge? Of course, running a real business shouldn’t disqualify him, though I ‘d venture to say that it would enhance his credentials. Did he run a state? No. Was he a mayor? No. How about a City councilman? No. And he was a Senator for exactly 143 voting days before he declared for the most powerful position in the world. Did he do anything to qualify for the job? You bet. He could read the teleprompter, though in my mind that is hardly something to highlight on the resume.

By the way, I think I’ll take your advice, and pull a “Babs and Baldwin”….You know those 2 idiots who threatened to leave if Bush got re-elected. Funny, I never did see their pictures in People magazine, waving to the adoring fans as they boarded the plane to Shangri-La . I don’t want to be here, and I’m one of the 50% who DO pay taxes, because I am unwilling to sign my paycheck over to the bureaucrats. I will not mortgage my children’s future on the decisions of these government morons any longer. You know Alan, the same government morons who have totally abrogated all fiduciary responsibility. If enough of us leave, taking our intellect, entrepreneurship, and dollars with us, you could possibly be the only one left to foot the bills. Ah, then you would have your utopia, wouldn’t you? Good luck with that. It might be a prudent idea to divorce yourself from the love of this one man, or party, and take a step back to view the canvas with a more cirtical eye. You might just see a picture that you had trouble viewing with your nose so close. Good luck, Bob Brown

Alan, I can’t decide whether to be amused or shocked that someone so obviously in favor our country’s direction is commenting about it on a site called “Escape from America.” Que pasa, amigo?

A little socialism is exactly what this country needs; unbridled capitaliism has essentially destroyed our and by extension a lot of the world’s economy. The Republican nominee’s running mate understands this implicitly; Alaskan residents get to take money from a few corporations and REDISTRIBUTE it among themselves every year for no other reason than they are Alaskans.

Taxing a few people at the upper limits of the income levels is appropriate as they have helped destroy the country for regular working folks like the author. Sorry, author, you will never be a multi-100 million non-performance bonus paid CEO, so worrying about tax policy for those who you will never be a part of is a waste of your time and energy and shows that you are more concerned about a class of people you will never be a part of than you are your own family.

Finally, conservative Republican author, may I say a few things that those of us who were opposed to the actions of the previous Administration were told by those like you who favored it?

Here’s the first: Not supporting the President during a time of war is treason. Here’s the other: America: love it or leave it. Please leave, so those of us who want the kind of society where regular middle class people are protected and supported instead of the current one created by conservative Republicans where corporations and wealthy CEOs are treated as victims with special rights that the rest of us must support.