as for the "war" argument... you all are stupid.

Europe has fought and lost more wars with itself and in its colonies... its hard to compare a continent with a country.

France got its ass handed to it by Haitians (Napolean no less!), the revolutionary war of the US was fought by colonials for awhile before the French sent any troops or ships. You have to admit that regular Redcoats were quite handily caught with their trousers down against irregular colonials. That much IS true. It was the arrogance of the British not their skill that led to their demise...

As for Vietnam...really? That was a puppet war aided by the Soviets just like the Soviets lost in Afghanistan. We each had our stupid pointless wars to stop and start the Domino Theory.

We did handily beat both the Nazis and the Japanese at the SAME time with minor help from the British and the Australians. Of course there were other players, but you get the idea.

We also developed nuclear power first, went to the moon first, and have been the only enduring superpower.

We may have a lot of idiots, but we also have a lot of geniuses.

Obscurehero,

There's a major misunderstanding about economy by a majority of people.

Economy is in theory made to grow up welfare and happiness of the populations.

So that a country can get in appearance good performances from outside and inside be terrible.

I dont say the germans endure such terrible life conditions as a third world country, it would be insulting these countries and wouldnt be the truth.
But the life conditions in Germany are considerably damaged since several decades though Germany seems to be in excellent health considering a few data. It's just an illusion ! An illusion the germans themselves pay at a terrible price but not only the germans but all european countries as a consequence. Germany is (was ? soon) the first market for the others and follow now a crazy lonely not cooperating way which looks like a pure suicide: it's called "competitive deflation"

I wont go on there in my explanations, because it would be too long and complicated to me (English is not my native language as u can guess)

But a detail more: Germany is NOT the first contributor at all to help Greece by inhabitant. France arrives in front of Germany. Because we're now richest ! And Italy pays even more than Germany by householder.

A few data to keep in mind:
The six first european countries ordered by population:
germany: 81 000 000
france: 65 000 000
UK: 61 000 000
Italy: 60 000 000
Spain: 46 000 000
Polen: 39 000 000

U know what ? In less than 30 years (maybe 25), projections show that Germany will be second (maybe third) for the population behind France and maybe only the third one in GDP.

Concerning the Euro, don't bet on an outburst except if Germany goes on being really completely foolish like their governement was since now. Nobody has an interest to it the germans as the others.
The bankers and the "markets" will just lose a lot cash if they bet on it. Central banks and governments can kill the markets and speculation exactly when they want. The only question is when will they react ? Anyway be sure they will.
(The FT is a rather good newspaper indeed but it's a brit one, they're never objective about the euro. Wall Street Journal and other US also)

Germans become completely crazy when we're talking about inflation and government direct actions in ecnomy in general. Because it reminds them of the terrible 20's in Germany and the nazis access to power finally in the 30's.

But it's insane ! They hate inflation so much (we dont talk about hyperinflation there !) that they even prefer deflation which is even worst !
They're just crazy, literaly crazy, ready for psychiatric hospital.

The Military debate of this thread is actually pretty damn funny. Pat you are a tard muffin and are doing us no justice. the entire basis for your argument is that we spend more money on military therefore ours must be better. Mr. K. you make very valid points and i am sorry that pat couldn't make a good argument. I will try where he failed.

First off i dont think that it can be disputed that in shear fighting ability the U.S. military is unequaled in the world currently.
As far as Military technology goes our airforce is arguably the most advanced in the world, however there are many others that could compete for that tittle (I believe U.K., France, and Israel as well as several other countries probably Norway included all use similar jetcraft and weaponry that we do) However technology is not the only thing you should be concerned with. Training and size ar both very important. China, Russia, and India are all comparable in size with airforce, and actually i believe china and russia both have more sheer numbers then we do. However they dont compare to us in tech or training. I would say that you would be hard pressed to find an airforce that could compete with that of the U.S.. man for man you might find a few but none as a full package.

Navy is an easy win for the U.S. I dont think anybody that is reasonable and knowledgeable will argue against this. basically we have nuclear aircraft carriers which will absolutely destroy anything anybody throws at them. And our vast array of nuclear submarines are the best crewed, and equiped in the world.

This brings us finally to land forces. again as far as tech goes there are a lot of comparable other countries. Some are comparable in numbers. Some are comparable in training (Israel is the only one i would bet on actually having better training then us though). However our nations recent military experience (within 50 years) i would say would give us a significant advantage over most European countries. again if you go man for man you could probably find a few contenders (Again Israel probably the best here man for man) but when you look at ground forces as a whole U.S. wins.

leadership, its hard to make an argument here in any direction. I will say though that our military leadership has more actual war experience then most other nations.

mobilization abilities, well lets just say Iraq found out the hard way that we can get a fighting force anywhere in the world pretty darned quick in the early 90s. then they forgot so we decided to remind them. weather you supported the war against Iraq or not. You kinda got to admit the mobilization effort was quick and the war was quick and clean. (i know some of you are going to say the war is still going on, and you're right the war against insurgents continues> I am merely reffering to the war against the Iraqi government.)

also pat, the revolutionary war was not a tribute to american military superiority. If Britain really really wanted to win that war they could have, but at a certain point its just not worth it anymore to expend resources on a colony that has cause you nothing but problem for 40 years. There where a few battles that the colonies won and we even captured some hessian mercs, but the battles that the brits won. well lets just say the history books call some of those massacres. In short Britain was fighting several opponents at the time and decided it didnt have the resources to qualm a large rebellion on the other side a a big fucking pond.

dete you are a fucking dipshit. every single point you mentioned is a DIRECT result of the fact that we spend more money on our military. please try to argue otherwise. as for the revolutionary war, it is the only war the u.s. has ever fought against great britain and was therefore perfectly relevant to bring up. extenuating circumstances are irrelevent, the simple fact is that we won, and now we are our own country.

LOL my favorite part of your post is when you say the revolutionary war is the only one we fought against Britain. My second favorite part is when you assume that just because we spend more money it means that we have better training, equipment, leadership ect..
Nobody has ever heard of a government (especially the U.S.) being fiscally inefficient.

everyone tends to forget 1812, pretend like it never happened. i mean they burned the white house down, thats pretty huge imo

yeah its unfortunate, because that is a very fascinating war to look at.

"every single point you mentioned is a DIRECT result of the fact that we spend more money on our military. please try to argue otherwise." Even though they are a correlative result, not mentioning them was a massive fail on your part. Spending money can have other effects then creating a good military. On the converse having a good military is the result of more then just spending. Just because you spend a lot of money on your military doesn't mean it is a good fighting force. if you dont believe me look at North Korea. they spend a large amount of their gdp on their army and yet they can't even mobilize for more then 90 days before they run out of fuel.