That question can't really be answered on its own. If you live in the United States Spanish is probably a solid choice for you. If you live in Finland not so much...

What "powers that be" do you suppose there are who have the wherewithal to move the entire human race to a single language? What do you do with the multitude of words that can't neatly be translated? Words that carry a special meaning for the underlying culture? Your desired future sounds oppressive, monolithic, and dull. And I say that as a native English speaker...

That depends on what breed of dog and how you define 'complex'. Border Collies are well known for their grasp of vocabulary; we could give our BC commands along the lines of "Go into Steve's room and get the red toy." and she'd do it. That sentence is complicated enough to place it out of reach for many humans who have only limited English abilities.

If you seriously pay tax on all of your income you're either lying or insanely anal retentive. Do you pay taxes on lottery winnings <$600? That's income, so if you didn't you're stealing. What about odd jobs you do for friends? Are you going to claim with a straight face that you keep track of such monies to the penny and claim them on your State and Federal taxes? I doubt it very much.

Few people would try to earn a living without paying any taxes whatsoever. But nearly everyone is going to accept cash in lieu of a check when the opportunity presents itself; why should I pay taxes on some extra cash I earned helping the neighbor with their PC? Or watching their kid for them when they were in a jam? You may be retentive enough to track such money to the penny but you're squarely in the minority there my friend.

The "paying the babysitter" scenario was the one I conceded was easier in the EU than the States. It would be nice to have such functionality here but I hardly feel like I'm living the dark ages for not having it. It goes one of two ways:

1) She gets cash. This is usually the preference in the States for such transactions because it's tax free income. I certainly prefer cash for the various side gigs I have.
2) She gets a check. Funds are available next business day 99% of the time.

As I said, it's not as sexy, but it gets the job done. Person-to-person payments are pretty low on the list of things I'd fix with regards to the American financial system. And yes, there are problems with paper checks, and they should go away, but on balance there's not a lot of fraud being committed with them. The bigger fraud issue is cloned credit cards, which I did point out. :)

With the exception of the person-to-person transfer I can do everything you just outlined with the app from my podunk small town community bank. None of what you've discussed is news to people living the States. We've had bill payer services for quite some time. Most venders will be paid electronically and those few that aren't configured for electronic payments will be mailed a physical check by the bill payer service.

Person-to-person transfers aren't quite as seamless in the States but they're not exactly rocket science either. I so choose I can likewise avoid the physical bank; our silly paper checks have been able to be remotely deposited for some time now. I usually choose to walk them down to the bank, since it's an excuse to get out of the house and be sociable, but I can just as easily deposit them with my phone and the funds are available on the same schedule (next business day 99.9% of the time) as they would be if I presented the check in person.

I've never done business with a bank large or small that didn't offer an overdraft line of credit if you asked for it. Overdraft fees are simply a tax on stupidity. Balance your checking account properly and you'll never have one. Get a LOC for those few circumstances that may lie outside your control, like your employer messing up your payroll deposit or some such.

I've had a checking account for 17 years and I've never paid a single overdraft fee....

Was the "dark ages" slam really necessary? I lived in Finland for a spell so I'm familiar with these payment systems. There was nothing I could do over there that I can't do in the States. ACH payments from my US account are processed within 24-48 business hours. That's good enough for recurring monthly bills. ACH deposits are processed on the same business day. That's good enough for my payroll. My debit card transfers money instantly at point-of-sale. That's good enough for day to day retail transactions.

The only thing I kind of miss from Suomi was the ability to quickly transfer money to/from friends for odd jobs but that happens very infrequently; maybe once or twice a month. In the US we do such transfers with a paper check or (gasp) cash, which may not be as sexy, but it gets the job done. If I choose I can deposit the paper check with my smartphone and don't even need to visit the bank; funds are available the next business day.

If you want to slam the US financial system for something that's actually noteworthy hit us for the fact that chip and pin cards are still the minority. Ripping someone off really needs to be more complicated than cloning a magnetic stripe. If the banks or consumers were on the hook for such losses we would have had chip and pin cards decades ago; for better or worse the practice in the US is to stick the merchant with the loss in the scenario of a stolen or cloned card.

Manbearpig.

Tough cookies. A felony conviction also operates as a lifetime prohibition against firearms ownership, even in instances where the felony was not a violent one. I don't see very many people in the mainstream whining about that disability so what's the problem with the loss of the voting franchise?

Are you sure about that? Here's New York State's law:

S 130.05 Sex offenses; lack of consent.
[snip]
2. Lack of consent results from:
(c) Where the offense charged is sexual abuse or forcible touching, any circumstances, in addition to forcible compulsion or incapacity to consent, in which the victim does not expressly or impliedly acquiesce in the actor's conduct; or

S 130.55 Sexual abuse in the third degree.
A person is guilty of sexual abuse in the third degree when he or she subjects another person to sexual contact without the latter`s consent;

Seriously? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and the EU member states are free to leave any time they wish.

Really? All of Europe you say? Even Great Britain? Finland?

Are you an American? If you are I wish you'd STFU; you're making the rest of us look bad. WW2 was a team effort. Could the Allies have beaten the Germans without the Russians? Possibly; we did in WW1 after the Russians quit. The butcher's bill would have been a lot higher though. The west (particularly the United States and Canada) got off pretty easy. As far as "Europe would have been under the Soviets", that's debatable. The example of Finland suggests there are limits to how far Stalin was willing to go to gain strategic depth. Germany certainly would have gotten a much rawer deal without American involvement, though ironically enough it was the United States that originally proposed turning Germany into a pastoral state after the conflict.

Yeah, well, the same problem is brewing in the United States and I haven't heard a single mainstream politician from either party come up with a proactive way of dealing with it. And guess what? There's no provision for a State to file bankruptcy like Detroit did. What happens when one of the 50 can't meet its obligations? Nobody knows but we're apt to find out in the coming decades....

That's because the EU is really an economic concern trying to masquerade as a country. It originally started as the European Coal and Steel Community. It has always been about economics. A handful of rich and powerful countries benefit from a common market and currency. Countries that would probably be better off outside of the Eurozone won't leave it because the rich and powerful therein benefit. Well monied interests calling the shots is hardly a uniquely American phenomenon.

Europe won't truly unite absent some sort of external and existential threat. It took such a threat to unify the United States back in the day and the American colonies had a shared culture, language, and no history of going to war with one another. Even at that there was a rather bloody Civil War and regional tensions that still simmer to this day...

The grandparent, in the stupid pissing contest EU vs. US thread. I really hate these threads; sure, we have quarrels, but we've also got a shared history, culture, and commitment to freedom. People would do well to remember that. They might also wish to remember that countries that share our values are most definitely in the minority on planet Earth; it's really fucking stupid to root for the EU to drag the US down or vice versa.

These idiots should get a bloody passport and go visit the "other side"; you'll find we're/they're not that much different from you.

Devil's advocate, how do you stop Google from operating in the EU? Google does have a physical presence in the EU, data-centers and all that, but strictly speaking they could run the whole operation from outside the EU. What do you do then? Block them at the network edge? Hardly seems compatible with free speech.