If need be, workers in Michigan can relocate to jobs in New Mexico and capably fit into their new environs using the same language, the same currency, and largely the same culture. Watching World Cup nationalism on display in European cafes, and listening to the burly choruses of patriotic anthems ringing in the streets, this seems unlikely. At least, not any time soon. The rate of homelessness in American cities has reached a Third World scale that Europeans can scarcely imagine. Forty million people, most of them children, are without health care.
Children are the fastest growing poverty sector.
Prisons are one of the fastest growing economic sectors, as relative spending on education decreases. U.S. workers also have less vacation, less parental leave, less affordable daycare and work more hours per week than their European counterparts. These are not coincidences. In the U.S., they are two sides of the same coin. In a highly competitive world, there are winners and losers, just like in the World Cup.