Wow...so many idealogical americans claiming to have knowledge of what makes a country work. I know the following will be flamed, but I thought a few things needed pointing out to some of the news channel educated professors in here...
1) Unions, and better employee working conditions and such.
It's not unreasonable for employees to have good reward and job benefits for their time and effort. It seems that under the american system, employees are as disposable and replaceable as machines, and treated about the same.
Of course owner's should get the biggest share of the profits of the business, because they hold the biggest risk, however they are not alone responsible for the business success, and couldn't do it by themselves. (i won't even mention the disproportionate risk/reward of executives...)
I think that all of the american's in this thread should be aware that the viewpoint that employees aren't entitled to any more is false. There is a spectrum of worker entitlements, and revolutions always happened when it goes too far in one of the directions, but the capitalist forces always push it back there as far as they can...
We live in societies, not economies...
2) Europe is full of socialists and is a generally rubbish place.
It seems that 'socialist' is a word with only negative connotations in the US. Which humorously highlights how a country so preoccupied with freedom of speech can only think in simple ideologies, choking freedom of thought.
Socialism is a perfectly reasonable base for governance of a country. But the socialist references that right-wing americans often refer to are extreme cases, and are flawed as any extreme system is (*cough* unregulated capitalism *cough*).
Also, if you think that Europe is a rubbish place, I won't further distract you from enjoying your world map which sits between Canada (other side of the Canadian border) and Mexico (other side of the Mexican border).
3) I've also read mention of how Europe is dragging the world's economy e.t.c.
Really? I mean, REALLY?!
As a further point, I feel that I should warn american's of feeling like the american system is obviously superior due to economic wealth of the country. Shortly after the American independence, Adam Smith (check him out) predicted that the United States would become the world's largest economy within 200 years due to the size of their population and the amount of arable land (i.e. resources). My point being that america's economic success is not completely resultant on the political/economic system, so don't one to justify the other...