There are some highly distinctive social differences. I don't know if I'd describe them as "cultural" or not. For instance, I was on a typical inebriated sabbatical in Europe , and I can't remember if it was Croatia or Prague, but the level of services expected, even DEMANDED by these people from their government is just unthinkable by american standards. I overheard a conversation whereby people were talking about demonstrating and rioting because the government was considering cutting the 2-3x per year visit to a HEALTH SPA where they get mineral baths and mud baths and so forth. In America, people would be rioting if the government DID want to take public funds to do some shit like that. There, they protest if the government doesn't want to do such things. Our culture is one distinctive to nations formed by the WASP new worlders, the Anglo diaspora, and is distinctive from even other Western Euros in many ways. America share far more in common socially/culturally/etc with Australia, New Zealand, and Canada than even the rest of Western Europe. Also, many nations of Europe have debt/gdp ratios which are far more fucked than ours, at least for now... http://blog.wallstreetgrand.com/tag/debt-to-gdp-ratio/ Of course, the fact that we indiscriminately print our debt payments makes direct comparisons a bit more complicated...
Ya, they do. In fact, America is worse off because a huge portion of its debt is held externally and the dollar is the reserve currency, which the market will test, once the FED resorts to the printing press to absolve our commitments. A printing press you likely assume differentiates our problems from Europes, when it doesn't. If you'd like to argue the finer points when it's more convenient, that's fine with me. I'd love to hear why we're not facing down the barrel of a gun. But I think it's pretty obvious we are....