it's the same ole argument

yeah they all sound like good ideas. But as a middle class slug I have to ask, who the fyck is going to pay for that? Not me. Your Euro friends who get all those entitlements may have left in disgust but where did they go? Back to the economically crippled continent of Europe? Where income tax rates aren't in the 20's but 50% or better. For what? to pay for immigrants to have shyt they never worked for?

Sorry, all this entitlement stuff is for the birds. I think you fail to notice that working hard is part of the American Culture itself. Minimum wage never solved anything, except help someone's teenager have gas money for the weekend. By forcing companies to pay more at the minimum it increases wages across the board. Thats how someone loses a job, they are the minimum wage sacrificial lamb who pays for the increase all the way up the ladder. Almost always a lesser skilled slug who now will become even more of a burden to society.

If England, France and Italy all jumped off the Matterhorn, it doesn't mean the US should as well. The key to those arguments is that all the examples you gave excluded the wealthiest nation of the bunch. It did none of this and continues to be the richest. So honestly, which example would you really want to follow? Pull the American Military out of most of those welfare states and watch them choke to death on their own red ink.

Here's the bottomline that I think most Americans already understand. We can't all be rich, we can't all have the best jobs, some of us are going to be dregs some of us aren't. But with hardwork it doesn't have to be us. That's the American Dream, to work your ass off for what you want. Not to be given it. To own up to your mistakes, learn from them and become better for having experienced it. Not to have the government wipe your ass everytime you mess up. If vacations galore are what you want, go to work for someone who offers them. Otherwise shut the hell up and get back to work. We're not entitled to shyt in this country, it's always been that way. It's what seperated us from the British in the first place. To avoid a situation whereby people due to a certain lot in life are entitled to everything while others got zilch. You want to work you can make it, you want to sit on your ass you won't. It's natural selection on an economic scale and to me it's the natural order of things.

As for a left vs right thing, I disagree. This is exactly the kind of leftist, socialist bs that strangles nations currently and is trying to get a foothold here. As citizens of this nation we are not entitled to anything except the inalienable rights handed down. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.