Here is an interesting bit I found, written by a Swedish economist comparing the U.S and the E.U on this issue.

"If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA..."

Given, this report is from 2004...but a look at the CIA World Factbook shows very few countries (3-4, and the majority of which are not in Europe) that beat the U.S in per capita GDP. Also...GDP per capita seems to be calculated for the most part...by dividing total per capita by population. Thus...both population and GDP cause the per capita to fluctuate. So...Norway(who isn't part of the E.U) for instance..that beats the U.S in per capita GDP...also has a much smaller population than the U.S (4,610,820 in Norway and around 300,000,000 in the United States). Thus...if the U.S has a per capita GDP of $43,500 with a population of 300 million...and Norway beat us at 47,800 with a population of less than my state of Virginia (7.5 million here and a little over 4.5 million there), it seems to indicate that we must be doing very well when we are only beaten by $4,300 with 65 times thier population.

I got all of this info from the CIA World Factbook by the way. So..I don't seem to see a difference here. In fact it seems as if this data actually widens the gap between the U.S and European countries in terms of economy. Also for the record...the E.U's GDP per capita is $29,400 and the U.S's is $43,500. They do have a higher population than we do...but again...we should be comparing individual countries here..not a "conglomerate". It seem strange to me that one would have to group up all the nations of Europe to beat or come close to beating the economy of just one country.

Anyways...this topic isn't about this..and as I said..I'm not trying to bash Europe just for the sake of doing so. Sorry to interrupt the topic.

~Kiva