Why are Bees so Importan?

Sometimes it doesn't look this way but, human society is as complex as it is fragile, built upon several pillars and one of them happens to be the very existence of bees, I mean, 1 out of 3 meals eaten by people is possible because of the honey bees, they are so extremely important that if they die out all out of the sudden, thousands and thousands of plants and crops will follow, which could lead to millions of people starving in the following years. On top of that, honey bees have a tremendous economic impact, since the value of the plants pollinated by them each year is above 260 billion dollars, so all the food we so easily find or buy or in other words, we take for granted, will stop existing if bees were gone forever, or in the best case scenario, there will be a massive decrease in productivity of all crops, including apples, onions, cherries, pumpkins, and plants that are used to feed livestock, this way meat and milk will also be gone forever or at least too expensive for a regular guy to buy.

In Australia, some crops rely completely on honeybees for pollination, the most representative and dependent is the almond. It was estimated that the value of honeybee-reliant agriculture is between $4 - $6 billion American Dollars and rising.

Here is a list of the crops that rely completely or partially (means that would become absurdly expensive if bees weren't around) on honeybees pollination.

Oftenly, Albert Einstein is quoted as having said that "if honeybees died out, humans will follow a few years later". As a matter of fact, he would probably never said that but, this statement is true from top to bottom. Now, nobody knows for a fact why are bees disappearing as the years go by, and this is happening really fast, millions of hives have died in the last few years. Information gathered from beekeepers in the USA would see an annual loss of 30-90% of their colonies. We can see a steadily declining on the honeybees population in the USA since 1988, when there were 5 million hives compare to 2015 with 2.5 million.

Since 2006, a phenomenon called "colony collapse disorder" has affected honeybees in several countries and although nobody knows for sure what is causing it, what we do know us that is pretty serious. This "colony collapse disorder" plus the natural and artificial foes of the honeybees have lessened the bees population greatly. Let's take a closer look at these foes.

Natural Foes

Parasites that look like the monsters of a horror movie have come to destroy as many bees as possible.

Acarapis Woodi

The Acarapis woodi, a microscopic mite that infects the trachea of bees, laying its eggs and feeding on the fluids of its victims, weakening them considerably and spending their whole life inside the bees.

Varroa Destructor

The Varroa destructor gets its name (a very fitting name) because it only reproduces in a honey bee hive, therefore becoming one of the bee's greatest enemies. The female mite enters the honey bee brood cell, laying eggs right on top of the bee's larva before it is about to pupate and before the hive bees cover the cell with wax. Then the eggs hatch and the new-born mite and their mother feed on the developing bee inside the capped cell. Normally, the bee is not killed (they still need it after all), but weakens greatly, leaving it with just enough strength to chew its way out of the wax capping, and release itself from the cell. When the young bee gets out, it releases the mother mite and its new offspring from the cell too, therefore letting them free to spread across the hive, starting the process over and over again in a cycle of approximately 10 days, growing their population exponentially and after a few months, this can lead to the collapse of the entire beehive. But wait, there is more, once, outside the cell, the adult mites can suck the bodily fluids of bees and weaken them severally. Even more, they can also transmit horrible viruses to bees that harm them even more, leading to birth defects like useless wings.

Viruses and Fungi also attack bees, but under normal circumstances, all the above phenomena should be manageable and are clearly not enough to explain the horrendous amount of bees dying every year. This is why we need to take a look at the artificial foes of bees.

Artificial Foes

Insecticides

Over the past years, insecticides have been developed and sold on the agricultural market that are deadly to bees, let's check out the worst.

Neonicotinoids

Yeah, you guessed it, it's from the same family of nicotine which was approved back in the year 1990, as an alternative to DDT. The Neonicotinoids attack the nervous system of insects and today, they are the most widely used insecticides in the world, selling 1.5 billion Euros in more than 120 countries only in 2008 (it constituted back in 2008 nearly 80% of all seed treatment sales). Here are the top 7 most sold nicotinoid insecticides on the market in 2011.

In the US only, back in 2013, 95% of the insecticides used in corn and canola crops were nicotinoids and also in the vast majority of fruits and vegetables such as, tomatoes, leafy greens, apples, cherries, oranges, peaches, berries, potatoes, cereal grains, grapes, rice, nuts and much, much more.

What happens is that bees come into contact with this poison while collecting pollen or contaminated water, they bring the contaminating material to the hive, where it accumulates and slowly kill the whole colony.

The toxins harm bees in a variety of ways, in high enough doses, bees convulsion, get paralyzed and finally die. In small doses, it can be fatal too, since it leads to bees forgetting how to navigate the world, therefore flying into the wild, get lost and die alone, far away from the hives.

It is clear by now that we need urgently an alternative to nicotinoids but there are billions of dollars yet to be made, so mass production studies have been delayed. Now what is interesting is that studies carried out and sponsored by major chemical industry giants magically appear to prove that there are alternatives with a much lower toxicity to bees that can be used as an alternative like the Flupyradifurone.

But there are several other factors contributing the demise of bees such as, too much genetic uniformity, crop monocultures, poor nutrition due to overcrowding, strees due to human presence and activities, and pesticides (other than neonicotinoids). Each of this factors is a big problem for bees but if you put them all together, they account for "Colony Collapse Disorder" 

So, what if they lose this fight?. This is a conundrum we have to sort out, that is if we want to continue living on this planet with a relative abundance and diversity of food. Remember that human life is deeply interconnected with other life forms on the planet, no matter how fragile and useless they might appear or even if we pretend that we don't. This is a wake-up call to take better care of our surroundings for the beauty of it, and if we decide that we care not for its beauty, we need to do it for our own survival.

Sorry for the long post, check out this awesome unsettling while illustrative video.

Cheers,

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The 2008 Financial Crisis |How did this Happen?|

Now, we are going to talk about something that you already know and suffered, probably until now, it was a financial earthquake that cost the world tens of trillions of dollars, 30 million jobs around the world, and doubled the US national debt, that is "The 2008 Financial Crisis". But why did this happened, why nobody said anything, why couldn't moody's, Finch or anyone warned us about all that crap that we had coming?. Ok let's start by reviewing what is a mortgage.

So, What is a Mortgage?

IF someone wants to buy a house, often will borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars from a bank. In return, the bank gets a piece of paper called "mortgage". This means that the homeowner has to pay every month a pre-established amount of money that consist, part of the principal, and part accrued interests. If for some reason you don't pay, it is called a default, which is when a debtor is unable to meet the legal obligation of debt repayment, in this case, to "whoever" holds the mortgage, and it is a big ass "whoever" because the original lender often sells the mortgage to some 3rd party, if you own a house, you know what I am saying, because different financial institutions have or have had your mortgage and you have noticed it, and looking back, it was traditionally very hard, or almost impossible to get a mortgage if you had bad credit or did not have a steady job, because banks were just not ready to take the risk that you might default on your loan. But at the beginning of the XXI century, that started to change.

How did Everithing Start?

In the 2000's, everyone (I mean, the banks, US government and abroad) was looking for a low-risk, high return investment, so everyone started to throw money at the US housing market. The plan was to get a better return on the interest rates that the homeowners pay on mortgages instead of investing on treasury bills that pay very low interest. But the huge investors in the US and abroad, wouldn't buy one or two mortgages and deal with us as individuals, it is just too much trouble, instead, they bought investments called "Mortgage Bank Securities (MBS)"  and this is created by large financial institutions that promise to "securitize" mortgages. So, MBS's consist of buying thousands of individual mortgages, bundle them together and sell shares of those bundles to investors, and investors buy this shares because they pay a lot more interests than any other low-risk inversion, looking like very safe bets because, what could go wrong? right?. For once, the home prices in the US are constantly growing, so in the worst case scenario, the borrower defaults on the mortgage, investors are still sitting in a bunch of money (our houses) that they can sell easily and turn into cash really fast and also profiting out of it. At the same time, credit rating's agencies were telling investors that this "MBS's" were rock solid investments, giving lots of these Mortgage Backed Securities AAA ratings. Now, to be fair to this, it is necessary to say that most of this AAA ratings were awarded when mortgages were given only to borrowers with good credit.

At the beginning it was, like they say, "rock solid" investments, but investors have got hungry for more and more of these securities, so lenders did their very best to help create more of them, but to create more, they were going to have to create more mortgages, and in order to do so, they had to loosen their standards and make loans to people with low income and/or poor credit history. This is called "Subprime Mortgages"  and next thing you know, most institutions started to use what is called "Predatory Lending Practices" in order to generate more and more mortgages. Soon, almost every financial institution was generating loans without verifying income and offered absurd adjustable rate mortgages with payments that people could afford at first but quickly ballooned beyond their means.

This brand new subprime lending practices, although dangerous as hell, were keep of being awarded AAA ratings by all credit rating's agencies. They didn't take the time to check how loans were really granted, so as the time went by, these subprime mortgage investments became more and more dangerous and unstable, but since investors trusted the ratings and kept on pouring their money. Traders also started to sell an even more dangerous product called "Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO)" with some of these junk were given the highest credit ratings from the rating agencies, even though they were made of these incredible risky loans.

While investors, banks, traders and everyone else were crazy, throwing money into the housing market, the price of homes in the US was going up and up, mainly because of the lax lending requirements and low-interest rates, which made the MBS's and the CDO's look like an even better investment, because, if the borrower default, the bank will still have this super valuable house, right? Well, no, wrong from head to tail. This is just where the problem starts.

You can call this many names but the one that better explains this is "bubble", yeah, it is a bubble since it is a rapid price increase driven by irrational decisions, and the worst thing about bubbles is that they have the annoying tendency to burst, and this one did, because people could no longer pay for their incredibly expensive houses, or keep up with their ballooning mortgage payments, so borrowers started defaulting, so more houses were put back on the market for sale, but they weren't any buyers left so supply was up to the top, demmand was dirt low, and the home prices started to collapse. As prices fell, some borrowers suddenly had a mortgage way more than their house was worth, some stopped paying, which led to even more defaults, therefore, pushing houses prices even lower.

As this was happening to all of us, financial institutions stopped buying subprime mortgages and subprime lenders were getting stuck with bad loans. Finally, big lenders, really big ones had declared bankruptcy by 2007.

The problem spread to the big investors that pour tons of money into this securities and CDO's and they started to lose money on their investments, but there was more. There is another financial instrument that financial institutions had on their books, that exacerbated all these problems, those are the over-the-counter, unregulated, derivatives, including the so-called, "Credit Default Swaps" which were basically sold as insurance against the default mortgages backed securities, and that is when AIG dropped to the ground by selling tens of billions of dollars worth of these insurance policies without money to back them up if things went wrong, and they did, so they broke.

Some major financial players declared bankruptcy, like Lehman Brothers, while others were forced into mergings and needed to be bailed out, like Bear Sterns. No one knew exactly how bad the financial statements of these big financial institutions were because of the complexity of these unregulated and complicated financial instruments.

Panic set in, trading and the credit market froze, the stock market crashed, and the US economy suddenly found itself in a disaster zone.

So, after the bailout program (it was actually called TARP-Troubled Assets Relief Program) the cascade of panic seems to weakening as the time passes by and in 2010, Congress passed a financial reform called the DODD-FRANK Law which took steps to increase transparency and to prevent banks from taking on so much risk by setting a consumer protection bureau to reduce predatory lending, requiere that financial derivatives to be traded in exchanges that all market participants can access and observe, and it put mechanisms in place for large banks to carry out their operations in a controlled and predictable manner.

But we seem to have a very bad memory because, as is from today, the Senate passed a bill to ease the DODD-FRANK Law on banks and that was to be expected since today's president Donald Trump promised this when he was in campaing. 

Now we are getting back where everything started, on the way of another and much bigger train-wreck, so the question is. Would the world get back on its feet again? What if we learn from our mistakes. What if my friend, what if.

Check this video out, it will explain alot, I am sure that you are going to love it.

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World's Population |What if Never Stops Growing?|

If you ask your mother or maybe a grandparent or anyone that went to school in 1960, they might remember when they were told that the world's population has reached 3 billion people, which compared to today's number (reaching 7.8 billion in 2018) seems not so bad, but let's see how this 3 billion people break, 1 billion in the most rich and healthy west, with an average of 2 children per women and the other 2 billion in the rest of the world, with an average of 8 children per wonan.

So the industrialized world had 1 billion people back in 1960, and the developing world had 2 billion people, and you could tell a big gap between the 1 billion in the industrialized world and the 2 billion in the developing world. In the industrialized world, people were healthy, educated, rich, and they had small families, and their aspiration was to buy a car. In contrast to this, people in the developing world, far away, their aspiration for the average family was to buy food for the day, and they were saving to buy a pair of shoes, so as you can see, there was an enormous gap in the world back then, and this gap between the west and the rest has created a mindset of the world, that we still use linguistically, that is when we are to talk about the west and the developing world. Now, the world has changed, and that mindset has to change, let's take 2010 when 4 billion people had been added to the world's population, this means that the world's population has more than doubled since 1960, plus, we have seen economic growth in the west, now they are only not saving for a car, they also want to have a holiday in a remote destination and they want to fly (driving just doesn't cut it no more), but also, the most successful billions in the developing world are aiming for the same, and they are now refered to as emerging economies, and they are now buying cars, that counts for 1 billion of the world's population, now let's see how we looked at the world back in 2010, 2 billion were still saving money to buy shoes and still struggling to buy food, almost as poor as they were 50 years ago (developing world). 3 billion is getting a lot more healthy, relatively more educated, and they are already having 2 or 3 children per woman, and their aspiration now is to buy a bicycle and probably a motorcycle one day., while the industrialized world has already worn out the dream of a car, which is no longer a dream (average people in America and other industrialized locations own at least a car), now they are thinking of vacations in some exotic destination, traveling by air. 

And this is the world today, not very different from the picture of 2010, the gap is no longer in sight, but the distance from the very poorest to the very richest is wider than ever, although we are seen the picture of a continuous world, whose aspiration go from walking (pair of shoes, poorest 2 billion), biking (3 billion in the developing world), driving (1 billion in the top of the developing world), and flying (1 billion in the industrilized world), and most people tend to be somewhere in the middle. 

But what will happen in the future, let's move forward into the year 2050, if you are going to China or know someone who has, you'd agree with that they will catch up with the industrialized countries, yes, their families will be as rich as their pairs in the west. And the old lower-middle-income countries (3 billion people) will also forge forward their economic growth and if, and only if, we invest in the right green technology so we can avoid severe climate change, and energy can still be relatively cheap, these 3 billion people will move to where the USA was in 1960, this means, they will start buying electric cars. Now, what about the poorest 2 billion of 2010? because all put together, the emerging economies and the industrialized world are already having from 1 to 2 children per woman, family planning is a constant in all homes, therefore, population growth is coming to an end. In the poorest places on earth, the population will still grow, turning the 2 billion of 1960 into 4 billion in 2050, and there is nothing but a nuclear war of the kind we have never seen before that can stop this from happening, but if and only if, this 4 billion get out of poverty, get education, improve child survival, they can buy a bicycle and a cellphone, then and only then, the world's population will stop growing, that is, if we are lucky and not so selfish, 11 billion humans in 2050. We cannot have people living in a world struggling for food and shoes, because then we will get continuous population growth and let's remember that we call the developing world the third world, but the truth is that there is only one world, and what happens somewhere, will have consecuences somewhere else, I mean, there is not such a thing as Chinese air, if you live in America, eventually you will get to breathe that "Chinese air", the same, and even more, goes for water, and since we are flying so much now, well, exotic sickness and viruses are also a threat.

But why is this happening, I mean, wouldn't be more accurate to think that not saving poor children will avoid overpopulation?. Well, the good news is that the answer to that horrible thought is a big ass NOOOO. It is a common misunderstanding to think that if we save all the poor children, the world will become overpopulated. As logical as this might sound, it is totally wrong, is the other way around, in fact, it is required to save the poor children's lives to stop overpopulation. Let's check out the UN numbers. Poor families have an average of 5 children, and one dies (that is an average too), so we get, 2 parents that are replaced by the 4 surviving children in the next generation, this means that population is growing really fast among the poorest, this happens in the worst of places, like in Congo or Afganistan. Today, where child mortality is highest, those are the places where the population is growing faster than anywhere else, but How many people live like this? Well, that is the poorest 2 billion, the other 5 billion are living in homes with only 2 children and very few child deaths. This goes for the majority of the world's population, this is not only Europe and the USA, this is throughout religions and cultures, regions and countries, China, Iran, Mexico, in all big cities around the world, including Africa today. In most populations, children just replace parents, and the population numbers no longer increase. And why so many people ended up with such small families? well, children stop dying, as they left extreme poverty and got a better education, parents no longer have to compensate for child death by having many babies, and the large family stopped being an economic necessity or a social state symbol, and with more accessible contraceptives, parents around the world decided to have a small families. So, by saving the lives of poor children, and helping the poorest 2 billion humans out of poverty, they will no longer wish for a family with a large number of children, eventually, reaching the 2 children family. That is the UN forecast for families to the end of the century, this is when the population of the world is expected to stop growing, but before it stops, another 4 billion will be added to the world's population count, and that is a lot of people, but like I said before, there is almost nothing to prevent this from happening, so, the longer poor children keep dying and this change is delayed, the more billions will be added to the population count before it stops growing.

What if we take conscience of the problem we are facing right now, what if we never help and always look the other way when poor people asks for help. Is it finally good for our future, our children's future or even anyone's or anything's future?. 

What if we start from today doing individual efforts, baby steps if you wish, to help someone somewhere far away from your comfortable life, expecting nothing in return (not even a heartfelt thank you), being you, the only one that knows, what you are doing for the rest of the humankind. Wouldn't it feel like you are some kind of hero, the best kind, the unknown kind? How awesome is that? I've tried it, it does feel great.

What if my friend, what if.

Sorry for the long post, here is an awesome video.

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Average Americans Vs. Average Europeans |How Different are they|

The United States of America was officially formed on July 4th, 1776, when 13 states declared their independence from the kingdom of Great Britain, this was centuries after this region, which was part of what they called, "the new world", was officially discovered by  Christopher Colombus. In the centuries that followed, European settlers will arrive with many of the first expeditions arriving from Spain, France, Germany, Holland, Scottland, and England, among other European nations claiming some slice of the American pie.

Today, many Americans have European ancestors, while not necessarily sharing much in common with their ancestors. Thomas Jefferson mentioned in America's declaration of independence that "all men are created equal" but what if we explore how equal Americans and Europeans really are.

Ok, first, let's take a look at how much European is flowing through the American's bloodstream, but before we get into that, let's take a look at the whole picture.

According to the Census Bureau, approximately:

49 million Americans affirm to have German Ancestry (Famous Americans of German descent:  Sandra Bullock, John Steinbeck, Ben Affleck, Jessica Biel, Tom Cruise, Uma Thurman, David Letterman, Walt Disney, Henry J. Heinz, and Oscar Mayer).

36 million Irish Ancestry (Notable Americans of Irish descent include John F. Kennedy, Neil Armstrong, Henry Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Conan O'Brien, Derek Jeter, Elvis Presley, and Bruce Springsteen)

27 million English Ancestry (Notable Americans with English ancestry include Justin Timberlake, Clint Eastwood, Orson Welles, Seth MacFarlane, George Clooney, Cher, Liza Minnelli, Ernest Hemingway, and Bill Gates)

18 million, Italian Ancestry (Famous Americans of Italian descent include Maria Bartiromo, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, and Madonna)

10 million Polish Ancestry (Notable Americans of Polish ancestry include John Krasinski, Lisa Kudrow, Frank Gehry, Gloria Steinem, and Richie Sambora)

9 million French Ancestry (Notable Americans of French descent include Warren Buffett, Louis Chevrolet, Zooey Deschanel, Ellen DeGeneres, Paul Revere, Henry David Thoreau, and Anthony Bourdain).

6 million Scottish Ancestry (Notable Americans with Scottish heritage include Reese Witherspoon, Lucille Ball, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Cash, Lyndon B. Johnson, Edgar Allen Poe, and Malcolm X)

5 million Scotch-Irish Ancestry (Famous Americans of Scotch-Irish descent include Ulysses S. Grant, Elvis Presley, and Andrew Jackson)

5 million Dutch Ancestry (Notable Americans of Dutch ancestry include Thomas Edison, Walt Whitman, and Theodore Roosevelt)

4 million Swedish Ancestry (Notable Americans of Swedish descent include Mark Wahlberg, Buzz Aldrin, Matt Damon, Phil Mickelson, Mamie Eisenhower, and Charles Lindbergh)

4 million Norwegian Ancestry (Famous Americans of Norwegian descent include Lance Armstrong, Sally Ride, Michelle Williams, and Renée Zellweger).

3 million Russian Ancestry (Notable Americans with Russian ancestry include Michael Bloomberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, Milla Jovovich, Sean Penn, Natalie Portman, Joan Rivers, and Michelle Trachtenberg).

2 million Welsh Ancestry (Notable Americans of Welsh descent include Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and J.P. Morgan)

1.5 million Czech Ancestry (Notable Americans of Hungarian descent include Milton Friedman, John Kerry, Paul Simon, Paul Newman, Louis CK, Kate Hudson, Steven Spielberg, Drew Barrymore, and Calvin Klein)

1.4 million Portuguese Ancestry (Famous Americans of Portuguese descent include Teresa Heinz Kerry, Tony Coelho, Katy Perry, Tom Hanks, and James Franco)

1.4 Danish Ancestry (Famous Americans of Danish descent include Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen, Scarlet Johansson, Lars Ulrich of Metallica, the Hanson brothers, and Iggy Pop)

1.2 Greek Ancestry (Americans with Greek ancestry include Jennifer Aniston; Bob Costas; Tina Fey; John Stamos; Frank Zappa; and George Papanicolaou, creator of the Pap smear)

So, with this Euro connection in mind, how much does the average American have in common with the average European citizen.

The median age, that means when half the population is younger and half the population is older, is 42.7 years for the EU and 37.9 years in the US, life expectancy in the EU is for women 82.4 years and 76.6 years for men, the American women will live in average 81.9 years and American men 77.1 years, that is, in the case of the Americans that if you are a man reaching 65 years of age, you can expect to live until you are 84.3. If you are a woman that is turning 65 years old today, you can expect to live until you are 86.6 years old.

When it comes to making babies, American women are slightly more active than European women, with an average number of births per women of 1.84 and European women giving birth to an average of 1.56. Just for clarification purposes, this does not mean that women miraculously bearing partial 0.84 or 0.56 human, this is rather an average taking from the average of the female population and the number of births.

Now, let's get some physical factors.

The height of American vs. Europeans.

 the average height for an American man is 5 foot and 9.5 inches (which is 176.4 cm) while collective data from the whole EU is pretty hard to come by, however, we are talking about a continent with the highest people of the world, with the Dutch coming in first, at an average height of 6 feet (182.6 cm) for men. Dutch women are also at the top, with an average height of nearly 5.7 feet (169.9 cm) whereas American women are on average 5.4 feet (162.9 cm) tall. Just to get it right, most European countries have an average height for men and women higher than the American average.

Body Weight: American vs. European

We know Europeans beat us at height, but that cannot be said when it comes to weight, with America regularly coming at the top 5 countries of the world for average weight. The average male in the US weights 191 pounds (87 Kg) while the average women weights 164 pounds (74.4 Kg). In Europe the heaviest men average is found in the UK, weighing 185 pouns (84 Kg) and 152 pounds (69 Kg) for women.

Penis Size: American vs. European...and Let's Mention Africa

Why is this relevant enough to spend time and money to carry out studies? I don't know (in a medical or demographic point of view) but somehow we all would get curious about this whenever someone talks about this topic, so here are the results.

Although there is evident variation between individuals from different countries, this variation is completely within the normal range. So, American's best friend is 12.9 cm (5.08 inch) long on average when erect while Europe average is 14.31 cm (5.63 inches), and Africa, well the smallest guy on average is 14.9 cm (5.87 inches) and the average guy is roughly 32.73 cm (12.9 inches), I mean...we better go to Asia to be seen as Greek gods.

Money: Americans vs. Europeans

Now that we have looked at mortality and the body, let's get into some money matters. Americans  are traditionally thought as a hard-working bunch of people, culturally ambitious, with our pension coming first, this might be reflected by the fact that the USA is the country with more multi-millionaires in the entire world with a number of 565, one of them, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates being the richest of them all, with a fortune around 91.2 billion dollars, in comparison, Europe has 489 multi-millionaires, with the richest being the Spanish magnate Amancio Ortega with 71.4 billion

dollars. 

But that elite of people is way out of our league, how about the average Joe?, well the average American gross wage per household for the workers in the US is 43,585 dollars per year, wich is the 6th highest in the world, In the case of Europe, the highest average gross wage per household was found in Luxemburg, that is 52,493 dollars per year, followed with other higher averages than the US in Sweden and Danmark.

In terms of income tax, the US is below most of the EU countries with an average income tax paid in the US of 22.7%. In Europe, the highest tax rate was found in Belgium with a 42.8%, and of course, this affects the quality of life, although this is a difficult thing to judge, and where ever you look, is measured in a different way, for example, the US says that the national income, which is the spending power of the individual is only behind the Europe country of Luxemburg. The standard of living is another matter, it lists different since the top 10 highest standards of living is dominated by Europe countries, Canada, Australia and New Zeland. Europe countries are also ranking higher on the world's happiness report where 7 European states being in front of 13th place America. Many of these countries rank higher in spite their higher cost of living, which may seem confusing given that they report being so happy. Some factors may help explain this.

The highest cost of the world in terms of healthcare is, yeah, in the USA, also, for being a highly developed country, Americans work really hard, with the US ranking in the 13th place for working the most hours and, although some EU members are above the US, they rank lower in the world's happiness report. 

Taking annually paid vacations into account, in Europe, the law states that every worker should have at least 4 weeks of vacation every year, while there is a non-paid vacation for Americans (by law). This decision is left to the employer. This decision means that on average, Americans take 10 days of vacation every year, which is far lower than in the EU. The average paid vacation time for 20 years of services in the US is 20 days.

Education: American vs. European

America is a fairly an expensive place to receive University education since the average student's debt in America is  $29,000, but still, this is much lower than England where students owe almost double that amount ($ 56,000) after graduation. Other EU countries like Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Czchec Republic, have extremely low tuition fees to none, while in Finland, Sweden and Danmark, the University is free.

Household

The US has a lower household Debt/GDP than most Europe nations, including the big borrowers, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweeden, and Belgium. This puts the USA in 10th place on the Household debt/GDP rank.

And this is what these countries get for their money.

Houses

American live in much bigger houses than Europeans, with the average house size iquals to 2000 square feet (186 square meters), compared to houses in Europe, where you can find the biggest houses of all EU in Denmark with an area of 1500square feet (139 square meters), while in the UK, the area of an average house is 800 square feet (74 square meters).

Cars

Americans also have more motor vehicles per person, being the third biggest owners of vehicles in the world, according to a 2015 report, with 797 vehicles owned by 1000 people, when compared with Europeans that are being really far behind.

Drinking Habits

When it comes to entertaining, lots of money are spent on alchool. The Europeans are by far the world's most formidable drinkers with the biggest alcohol consumption per capita in the world and almost all the EU countries drinking more than the USA. One of the most relevant factors for this is the cost of drinks, in Slovakia and the Czche Republic, beer costs around $1.5 on bars or supermarket, compared to US average that more than double that amount.

And Finally, There is Love...Aside from Penis Sizes.

The average age of men and women in the US getting married is 29 and 27 respectively, which is much lower than about all the countries in the European Union, whose couples often wait until well after 30 years of age. 

The divorce rate in 2015 was 2.0 for the EU, almost half of the marriage rate. The US had a similar rate of marriage to divorce rate at 3.6.

The most sexually satisfied countries in the EU were Spain, Italy, Greece, The Netherlands, and Germany. In the case of the USA, sexual satisfaction is showing a lower rate when compared to most EU countries.

So, all comes to money, winky size, and education, but what if we start being more confortamble with what we have, even penis size, in case you have not notice it yet, it is a lot what we have, we should not complain so much and start living happier.

Sorry for the long post, here is a German Sausage and a pretty cool video. Cheers.

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