lsanderson | More Shameless Stealing (Reply)

McCain scares me too (but not as much as the thought of Palin becoming president: now that's a real nightmare). Considering that he's a four-term senator and former head of the Senate Commerce Committee, I find his ignorance of the most basic economic statistics astonishing. For example, he's constantly declaiming that American workers are the most productive in the world and that the United States is the world's largest exporter. We're not the largest exporter: Germany, a country with a fraction of our population, is, followed by China; we're third. And American workers are the most productive only in terms of total output, because we work far more hours a year than workers of other industrialized countries--which is nothing to crow about; we should be working less, not more. On an hour-for-hour basis, Norwegians are the most productive, Americans are second, and the French are third. Our economy is in serious trouble, but McCain, who's married to a rich woman, has had a government job for his entire life and has never had to pay for his own health care, doesn't have a clue.

— SA, Paris