Zvone Radikalni

One-third of the faculty of Harvard University’s economics department hails from Europe. At the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, half of the finance department’s faculty is European.

Getting a doctorate in her native Belgium was unappealing, she explains, because students were left on their own, with little academic support or oversight; many Ph.D. candidates she knew became discouraged after a few years and gave up. In the U.S., by contrast, the university was geared toward the student. Professors were approachable; research facilities, including libraries, were first-rate; and financial and other assistance was readily available.

Nor did Europe offer much appeal once the doctorate was in hand. Zingales tried to return to Italy in 1984, after completing his degree at MIT, but the best job offer he could get was a mediocre research assistantship at a second-rate university. Twenty years later, he might have won tenure at the school, he says, but only if he had the right connections. Even the best Italian universities—and this was true of European schools in general—were dominated by autocratic and hierarchical traditions.

Another comparative advantage of top-tier U.S. departments is their comprehensive quality. “There is not one field,” says Alesina, “where you could not meet a leading expert right there on campus.” This holds only for the leading schools, of course—maybe 20 have reached the critical mass of students and faculty to cover the whole range of economic research—but for fertile concentrations of talent, nothing beats them. Small wonder that since 1980, 39 of the 47 Nobel Prize winners in economics were professors at American schools.

Academic life in the U.S. is determined by competition at all levels, he adds. “It’s often said that American universities recruit only the best among the Europeans. I would say instead that we become better because we are immersed in permanent competition. I would have been better at what I do if only I had come earlier to the U.S.”

One more benefit of American universities is competent administration. Economists don’t require equipment as sophisticated as biologists’ or physicists’, but they do need working computers. “When my computer is down at Columbia, it gets repaired in an hour,” Chiappori tells me. “In Paris, it would take a month.” Efficient management also helps secure the research grants that are seminal to cutting-edge academic work. “In France, I could get grants, but it would require weeks of bureaucratic work,” he explains. “In the U.S., one can focus on the substance of the research request, and the administration then takes over and smooths the bureaucratic process for you.”

The leading American universities may have the edge that Chiappori and others describe, but they are losing it,” Hellwig claims. A well-regarded scholar of monetary and financial institutions, Hellwig has decided to leave UCLA and return to Europe—not to his native Germany, however, but to Toulouse University’s department of economics in southern France. “We Europeans look at a global map,” he says, “and we see new centers of excellence emerging in Europe, though not necessarily in our countries of origin.”

“It will take years before European universities can really compete,” he says. “The mistake in Europe is to try to improve mediocre existing universities,” Zingales believes. “It would be more efficient to create brand-new elite institutions.” But this would collide with the European passion for equality, which has kept universities open to every student, regardless of ability, and made “selection” a dirty word—a major stumbling block on the path of higher academic achievement.

Why would we? we have a stronger currency, universal health care, better social protection, better living standards, better prevention, faster and cheaper access to Internet/cellphones, a flurry of different culture and languages to discover, a richer historic background, the European Parliament is much less corrupt compared to the US Senate, also our porn is waaaaay freakier.

Nobody cares about that shit.

Here's what we got: money and options.

Money pours out of every fucking orifice and there are even more things to spend all of that money on and the tolerance for any kind of lifestyle, normal and bizarre that you want to indulge. You don't have to be smart, just be willing to work hard and you can rake cash in. Don't have cash now? Fear not, there's plenty of cheap credit available for you to hang yourself with.

Immigrants come from the world over to bust their asses, with no written English skills and set up small businesses that cater our every whim and perversion and they make fortunes.

Or you can be smart and work a little and still earn a fortune too. Whatever.

Our cars are fast and dangerous and spacious and we give licenses to anyone. Or maybe you don't want to drive ever. There are farmers that drive everywhere and city-slickers that walk everywhere. And everything in between.

Want to own a farm? Sure, have ten thousand acres and host your own demolition derbys with the rest of your redneck neighbors in Alabama. Want a shoebox apartment and a sex and the city, fashion and trendy restaurant obsessed heroin chic lifestyle? Oh man do we have a place for you.

Want to be a single mom? Nobody even notices. Want to start a family with two moms and two dads and have twisted four-somes? You don't get lynched, surprisingly.

Want to not spend your Sunday in church or at home with nothing to do because everything's closed? Welcome, sinner, the bars open at 8am. We only pretend to be religious.

Our pro-family values Republicans are all closet ass-pounding homosexuals and our moralist whining environmentalist crybaby Democrats have mansions with heated pools. TV coverage of all of this hypocrisy is endless and hilarious.

Want to name your children retarded names, yeah, we'll let you name your idiot kids Dweezil and Guthrie. Go nuts.

Want to be gay? Have we got the places for you. New York, San Francisco, Austin, TX (or San Antonio, or Dallas, etc.) will all let you get your freak on.

Want to sleep during the day and work nights? Sure, enjoy 24 hour dry-cleaning in Vegas.

Jewish? No sweat. Chinese restaurants are open on Christmas.

Concerned about the coming alien transmutation event foretold by the voices in your head? Start your doomsday cult today! Not only won't we interfere, we'll give you tax breaks.

Like Carribean warm? Live in Florida. Like the freezing cold for some reason? Live in Minneapolis.

Too lazy to get out of your air conditioned SUV? No sweat. Drive-throughs are everywhere.

Vegetarian? Yeah, not only won't we murder you for being a retard, we'll cater to your needs by selling you $15 mushroom burgers. And they'll be delicious.

America: FUCK YEAH

Nemam volje više, samo čestitke izbornom stožeru Milana Bandica.

Divim vam se ljudi iskreno, ovakvog kretena dogurat u drugi krug i držat ga preko 40%

Tako se vodi kampanja, detektirali ste da vam je kandidat čimpanza i uspjeli ste 40% ljudi uvjerit da je za predsjednika države najbitnije znat ogulit bananu.

Jos jednom iskrene čestitke!

I ne ne za*ebavam se, ovo je najbolja kampanja u povijesti Hrvatske, putem ste detektirali gdje možete ubrat glasove, tako ste okretali kampanju i tako se to radi.
Ak slučajno dobijete izbore onda vam *ebem sve po spisku.