[quote=CONCHO]I’ve done a lot of travel in Europe – except for the filthy rich – people live smaller… smaller houses and apartments, smaller cars, less stuff… We could learn a lesson.

Sounds good to me as long as we get all the nice stuff they enjoy like quality public transport, medical care, free university, pensions, 4+ weeks vacation mandatory, labor rights, etc…

People there basically make a deal to live with less in exchange for a tremendous amount of benefits. Here we’ll be living with less and no benefits at all. France probably isn’t a good example of what the future US will be like, but Mexico might not be too far off the mark…[/quote]
Sounds good to me. I would love to have 6-8 weeks of vacation and 1 year of paternity/maternity leave. I’d love to have pensions and all the other good stuff you just stated too. I can be sitting on my lazy a$$ and enjoy all these great benefits.