How long now before the US will catch up with Europe?

Not in sight. And you left out High Speed Trains, Longer Life Expectancy, Lower Infant Mortality, better education.

1. The only kind of universal health care I'd like to see the US embrace is of the single-payer variety that Sweden has implemented. I'm OK with the government paying for health care, but I certainly don't want the government doling it out like they do in the UK and Germany, where quality sucks (UK), pseudo-science is embraced due to politics (i.e. homeopathy) or physicians are hardly compensated (Germany).

2. I agree with the general tax consensus.

3. AMEN on the abortion note.

4. I don't quite understand your fourth part about replacement rate. You think the US is having a population explosion? I don't believe you're correct here Kevin.

5. The downside to "European style politics" mostly lies with their affinity to diminishing the freedom to speak ones mind. EU hate speech laws, and the frivolous libel suits constantly brought to court and WON are shameful and quite often remind me why I'm glad to be an American.

And yet Europe is moving away from socialism:

"How ironic is it that the U.S. is embracing socialism at the very moment Europe and many other parts of the world are running away from it?

Somebody needs to ask Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi about this.

In the past five years, 33 countries, including 20 in socialist Europe, always held up as the example for a new American economic model by Democrats, have cut their personal income taxes, according to a study by KPMG, the giant accounting firm.

In the past four years, 60 countries have cut their corporate income tax rates."

Notice you don't hear America's Democrats talking about Europe any more. They can't. Europe has abandoned the failed economics of the Democrats. In fact, many European leaders are astonished at the direction of the U.S. Its leaders are openly chastising America for its foolhardy policies of bailouts and government intervention and encouragement of debt."

We also abolished state murder a generation or more ago.

We abolished slavery a lifetime before you did.

And we gave up imperialism long ago, too.

Yes - why don't you catch up with the civilised world?

As Ireland and Poland ban abortion you are at least partially correct.

I'm living in Europe and it sucks. Do you really want to pay a 21% tax on every product you buy as well? Or perhaps the equivillant of $10 a gallon oil?

As for your last point, that's because we are being flooded by muslims and general scum.

If things are so great over there, why did people come to the US?

I like not being a socialist.