Goob, have you ever traveled outside the USA?  It's a big world out there, and once you've seen part of it you realize there are a lot of things that could be done better in this country.

Actually, I'm a Navy Brat and have lived in over 15 different houses in 6 states and 5 countries on 3 continents, not even including temporary changes of station for 6 months or less. I've traveled for more than a week at a time overseas at least 7 or 8 times as well and never on a package or cruise. I am totally comfortable overseas.

I'm sure that there are a metric tonne of things that are different and better in almost any other country in the world. As long as you are willing to cherry pick your statistics, you could convince people to move to Ethiopia. If they were dumb enough not to see the authors blatant cherry picking.

Places like Greece have excellent school systems. Top notch. They should be, the Greeks drove them selves to bankruptcy buying it and staffing it with expensive teachers that have iron clad socialist contracts. But that doesn't mean that I want to be Greek. They have no rule of law as we know in America, Darrell Gates looks like a girl scout compared to even provincial cops there and the country is so broke they can't even pay Germany to print more monopoly money for them.

A joke so old, the last time I heard it, I fell off my dinosaur and broke my stone underwear wrote:

Heaven Is Where:

The French are the chefs
The Italians are the lovers
The British are the police
The Germans are the mechanics
And the Swiss make everything run on time

Hell is Where:

The British are the chefs
The Swiss are the lovers
The French are the mechanics
The Italians make everything run on time
And the Germans are the police

As Wilber was cruel enough to post earlier...

In "On Being American", H.L. Mencken wrote:

"Here the business of getting a living...is easier than in any other Christian land--so easy, in fact, that an educated and forehanded man who fails in it must actually make deliberate efforts to that end. Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read 50 good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy."
[...]
"The United States is essentially a commonwealth of third-rate men--that distinction is easy here because the general level of culture, of information, of taste and judgement, of ordinary competence is so low.
[...]
Third-rate men, of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in full control of the state, and with it, all of the national standards."