Erik is quite right and I feel no hurt for what he has to say.

Not as a rebuke but as a point of information. America is so diverse that some of what he has to say it correct some places and not correct in others. It has been an effort to use zoning to make mixed income communities in some parts of the U.S. because like he indicates it is better. To often Europeans look at the U.S. as a single country like say France when in fact the U.S. is more like the European Union with each state being like France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece etc.

We in the U.S. have lingering resentments between states that are worse than the relations between German and France. We also have strong aversions to monarchy and dictatorship that prevents giving too much power to the Federal Government. Much power is reserved for state and local government. Sadly that leads to or, facilitates depending on your outlook, discrimination against the poor.

We have many individual states in the U.S. that are bigger than the biggest European Countries. Not just size but population and economic output.

It would by comparison be so easy to run a country like Norway or Denmark well. Actually my home state of Maine seems by comparison to be nicely run. My current state of residence Louisiana is very much a mess. I have also live in Florida and California. Maine and Florida are about the same distance from California that Paris is from Tehran but we are ruled by the same Federal government.

I am not repudiating Erik or even intending to be critical what he writes is great, I am just trying like I also think he is trying to do is be informative.

Norway has huge advantages that make it much easier for the government to not make a mess of things and even with that it still has suffered tragedy.

Erik thanks for your writing and the readers for reading.

TEK