Bill Nelson Right on Healthcare 4 All: 91,000 Americans won't Die Unnecessarily!

[FayeforCure]

Europe is starting to do things better, no doubt.  Took them 30 years of screwing up to finally figure things out.

Europe consists of many different countries. Those in western Europe have consistently prospered while taking care of their own, which is the ultimate goal of a civilized society.

If you are talking about Spain, Greece and Italy screwing up.........well, those were just vacation destinations for the western European middle class.

No, those countries are screwing up now and can't print their own money.  Basically, in the 70s - late 90s, Europe was not business friendly and they wealthy were leaving in droves to escape 75% personal tax rates.

What countries are you talking about? Europe has always been far more business friendly to small businesses than the US has:

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2010/sb20101210_839038.htm

I know, I know........not exactly what you've been told by the US Propagandists aka Republican Party.

always?  Then you link something from 2010?  Article seems to confirm what I said, they lowered business taxes in many Euro countries betoween 1998 and 2008.

Only supposed regulatory barriers were reduced during that time in Europe. Business and personal taxes have continued to be lower than the US, which is counter intuitive to what Republicans always hear about Europe:

Despite the rhetoric extolling small business in this country, the small-company share of the U.S. economy has been gradually shrinking. Big Business's share of employment now accounts for 50.4 percent of private-sector jobs, as compared with 45.5 percent in 1988. Similarly, Big Business's share of revenue was higher in 2007 than it was in 1997, according to the latest available data from the Small Business Administration.

The rate at which Americans have been founding small businesses has also been falling. Between 1998 and 2009, the number of self-employed people, the per capita rate at which new employer businesses are established, and the number of establishments created per thousand people have all declined. Currently, small business accounts for less of total economic activity in the U.S. than in many European nations. The latest available data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that in 2008 the self-employment rate in 25 European countries was higher than in the U.S. and was lower only in tiny Luxembourg. The OECD also finds 22 of these countries have a larger share of businesses with fewer than 250 employees than the U.S.

What's Different in Europe

So what's different in Europe that might account for the better relative performance of small business? First, taxes are lower. After Japan, the U.S. has the next highest corporate tax rate among industrialized nations and a higher rate than all of Europe. Compared with some countries, the gap is huge. Ireland's corporate rate is less than one-third the combined state and federal rate in the U.S. Rates in Poland, Iceland, and Slovakia are less than half of ours. Personal taxes, which affect small businesses set up as sole proprietorships and subchapter S corporations, are also higher in the U.S. than in much of Europe.

But again......the danger is that western European nations cannot be compared to former east block countries or southern Europe.

generally speaking the more business regulation, the higher the growth:

Using objective measures of business regulations in 135 countries, we establish that countries
with better regulations grow faster.

http://www.doingbusiness.org/about-us/~/media/fpdkm/doing%20business/documents/methodology/supporting-papers/growthpaper_03_17.pdf