Quote:
Originally Posted by smc
These people in France didn't feel burdened by taxes. People throughout Europe gladly pay for the social welfare systems they have. Denmark has enormously high taxes and, by nearly every scientific study, the most content and happy people in the developed world. Why? Because they enjoy lives absent from most of the financial stressors that make Americans unhappy (such as having to worry about paying for healthcare, or college, or whatever). The happiness of everyone around them turns into a generalized societal happiness.
No one in France I've ever spoken to thinks of things as "entitlements" the way you use the word. They think of what we call "entitlements" in the United States as willing purchases they and their society have made for the good of all. That's why they protest so vehemently against changes in the social welfare system pushed by the wealthy. It's because they realize that the "individual liberty" that so many in America think Americans possess can be a catchphrase for something quite insidious.
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There are a wide spectrum of people. Some like to live completely alone with no one telling them what to do, and they hunt their own food etc. They are perfectly happy like that. At the other end of the spectrum are the French. Like I said, individual freedom isn't for everyone. May everyone find the country that is suited for them.