As I shared in the last blog, before a people can be seduced by a lie, they must first be convinced that things are really horrific. Change is needed and it is needed last week! In other words, things are so bad we need to act immediately or some greater tragedy will befall us!

Then an alternative is put forward. The current alternative of choice is socialism. For some reason, our liberal elite are infatuated with European politics. Much of what they offer as solutions to our “crisis” are modeled after what is presently in place in the European Union. Wisdom would suggest we compare the lifestyles of Americans with those of our European counterparts to see who is better off economically.

I came across an amazing study by two economists who have done just that. 

Economists Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag point out that if the 15 Western European nations in the European Union together became a U.S. state, it would rank ahead of only four other states in terms of per capita GDP—only slightly ahead of Arkansas but far behind states like Connecticut and Delaware. France and Finland, for instance, both rank below Alabama and Oklahoma. Tiny Luxembourg is the only EU nation that can compete with most U.S. states.

This means that living standards are much higher in the United States, with poor Americans by some measures better off materially than average Europeans. Poor U.S. households, for instance, have more square feet in their dwelling places (1,228, or 438.6 per person) than the average Western European household (976.5, or 395.7 per person).

By European standards, poor U.S. households also have astonishingly high rates of home ownership (45.9 percent), car ownership (72.8 percent), cable or satellite TV hookups (62.6 percent), VCR or DVD player ownership (78 percent), and microwave ownership (73.3 percent). In 1999, only 42 percent of Germans (overall, not just poor Germans) had a VCR and only 31 percent of all Danes had a microwave (see chart).

Money and possessions of themselves don’t bring happiness, of course, and prosperity can bring its own set of problems. But if the discussion is about material well-being, the United States is difficult to match.

“Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near,” Messrs. Bergstrom and Gidehag write. “The really prosperous American regions have nearly twice the affluence of Europe.”

Why in the world would we want to pattern our economy after nations far less prosperous?

Our problem is not a lack of resources or opportunity. We have lost our purpose and direction. We have turned our hearts from the One we were made to enjoy. All the material blessing in the world eventually leads to boredom and dissatisfaction when you lose your vision to serve the Lord and others.