It is true that the US has little pockets of abject poverty, but the nice thing about the US is that there really is a very high degree of class mobility; nobody has to stay poor and it is pretty easy to bootstrap yourself out of it if you aren't a moron. One of the things I noticed in Europe is the systematic structuring of wage with age, essentially forcing young people to start at the bottom of the ladder and stay there, slowly working their way up. It doesn't give a young ambitious European much to look forward to (and hence why so many of them are interested in working in the US). I was one of the "unlucky" folk in the US born into deep poverty; I've lived most of my life well below the poverty line. Nonetheless, I busted my ass for many years and managed to bootstrap myself to real wealth before the age of 30, something that would have been nigh impossible in Europe but not uncommon here. In the US you can climb the ladder as fast as you want. And never mind how horrendously short the ladders are that you are climbing in Europe; it blew me away when I found out that the senior executives from some of the largest companies in the world were getting paid about what a store manager would get paid here. (It was embarrassing to have them all begging a job and a visa from me in private, though I helped the ones that I could. That is a sad state of affairs for executives at companies that have revenue in the tens of billions.)
No, Europe has sucked the life out of its people. This much is obvious. WWII marked the last spasms of greatness in Europe and rigor mortis has long since set in.
Right on target. I have a young Swedish relative who is attending college in the US. This summer, instead of returning to Sweden to work, she is staying in the US where she is not subject to a MAXIMUM wage, and can make more money to buy more American College time. (Working in an upscale US resteraunt as a waitress (+ tips) pays more than ANY job she can obtain back in Sweden.)