Berlesconi, the leader of Italia is on trial for tax evasion. He says he's innocent but he understands why people might evade paying taxes when the government wants 50-60% of their income. Its a part of the culture their to evade taxes if you can. Does anyone disagree with this guy? Who would want to pay that much? Virtually everyone can rationalize skimming 20% off your taxes so that you 'only' pay 30-40%. Maybe if everyone there is attempting to crack down on tax evasion since most of europe has a rediculous amount of debt, they might become more capitalistic to lower their taxes. Something's gotta give.... Here people complain about high taxes, europeans complain about really high taxes. Seems so obvious a large fraction of europeans would want to be capitalists but it never happens. The continent just keeps growing slower than everyone else. Their EU-stint is riddled with inefficiency and arguements. It only recently got big enough to merely cover half of europe and they seem to barely handle this 'big recession' at their current size. Some parts are lowering in population which would help some but overpopulation is not the problem there. Over-taxation is the problem cuz people have little motivaiton to create and work more. Considering all this and the fact that our country purposely keeps the dollar a little weak means european companies make even less money from selling their precious "benzes and land rovers" as well as spending more on ads for their Tresemme and parfumes. Something's gotta give eventually. We are basically steadily conquering the socialistic pride of europe so i think eventually they will be more like us and then everyone would make more money. Cuba should turn into a capitalistic vacation paradise once castro's brother dies off. North Korea should gradually turn into another hong kong/canton area if they had any sense but that one's iffy. UAE is an attempt at building up the middle east but i just see lots of money wasted on stuff 'out in the middle of nowhere' for the super rich. Those are some of my thoughts of the current world, then end.