Download or read book Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? written by Thomas Geoghegan and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Try to imagine your life in a full-blown European social democracy, especially the German version. Free public goods, a bit of worker control, and whopping trade surpluses? Social democracy doesn’t sound too bad. Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? reveals where you might have been happier—or at least had time off to be unhappy properly. It explains why Americans should pay attention to Germany, where ordinary people can work three hundred to four hundred hours a year less than we do and still have one of the most competitive economies in the world.