I thought this line was particularly telling: "Although America remains near the top of the world in terms of entrepreneurial aspirations - that is, the percentage of people who want to start new things-in terms of actual start-up activity, our country has fallen behind not just Norway but also Canada, Denmark and Switzerland."

Yet any mention of figuring out what they're doing right (and what we're doing wrong) is SOCIALISM

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Reading this also reminded me of an interview I'd heard a few months ago: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/29/pm...

QUIGGIN: After I wrote the book, I saw the movie "Zombieland," and rule number two is double tap. You always have to hit them twice. I talk about the trickle down theory, that when you help the rich that helps everybody. I think a theory so convenient to powerful people is never going to be cured permanently.

RYSSDAL: And the theory about trickle-down economics is in some way coming back to the United States in this debate we're having about the Bush era tax cuts.

QUIGGIN: Absolutely. It's suggesting that keeping on giving tax cuts to the top 1 or 5 percent of the population is going to help everybody else. The evidence is very clear that that's not the case. That the vast majority of benefits of economic growth have gone to people in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. Within that 10 percent, the top 1 percent has done much better than the remaining 9 percent, and within that 1 percent, the top tenth of a percent has done even better.

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Moral of the story?: We've been had.