Well I have not been to Europe in a long long time, so I do not know, first hand, what the standards of living is over there. I do know that things are quite a bit diferent. Streets are much smaller due to the fact that they were built hundreds of years ago. That means cars have to be built smaller too. Homes are smaller too for pretty much the same reason. Really good beer is cheap. What I am getting at is alot of the diference is cultural. Take someone living in NYC, they have to pay a fortune for a small rat trap appartment are they poor? Botton line, Europeans have TVs, homes, cars and computers just like we do. Our life style (culture) might be more fun that stoogy old Europe but that doesn't translate into a big diference in the standard of living.
Maybe I just live in a poor area, but I see people hurting badly around here, no jobs, no money, no hope, lots of young people turn to gangs, durgs and prostitution, this is not the America I remember and it is not the America I grew up in. And I live in a sleepy little Texas town, not the inner city.
you make some good points. "sleepy towns", as you say, used to rely on basic industries and manufacturing to provide their jobs base. but with the shift of those offshore, service jobs are what's left. but its hard to have any kind of service economy in a location that has no jobs base to begin with, employing people who then have disposable income to spend on services, which provide employment for some of their fellow citizens.