[tylerdurden]

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Seriously, an apophthegm, a maxim, is almost always taken "out of (its original) context". I simply considered the phrase you wrote worthy of that status, and that's how I used it, i.e. "You don't have to be rich to be a success!"

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Whatever. We're talking about countries here, we were talking about individuals there.

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People in Europe have been consistently responding quite positively about their standard of living, in general, when everything is taken into account, i.e. working conditions, environmental conditions, social policies, etc etc etc. Yes, the people of Europe are whining and moaning about the "Brussels bureaucracy" and would dearly love to have their taxes lowered, as everybody would, but they are unwilling to part with what those taxes are providing them for -- no matter how "inefficiently"...

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All of them??? Of course, those that are getting more than they are putting in love the system. And of course, those same people would love to get more "free stuff" at the expense of the producers while putting in even less of their own. These same people don't care if it's inefficient because it's someone else's money.

Unfortunately, those people aren't *everyone* in Europe. You're taking the opinion of some individuals and applying it "the people of Europe" (who don't have a single, unified opinion) - what you should say is "some people in Europe."