standard of living in the usa is sinking ...., page-9

Skol your argument is laughable. The US is a great country to live in for the minority that are wealthy. For normal people it has so little to offer - health care terrible, schooling system terrible, life expectancy terrible, etc etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Poverty_Index

And that data is from four years ago.

Countries like Australia have a large number of people receiving benefits because you don't need to be in poverty to receive them (baby bonus, student payments, childcare support etc etc), they look after poor and disadvantaged people far better than the US, inevitably those systems are abused by bludgers but that's a better way to do things than have poor an unfortunate people losing every thing and living and dying in poverty due to misfortune.