That's not true.

The push for austerity has very little popular support, it's just that every single party subscribes to it (aka, has been corrupted). You simply can't elect anything with a snowballs chance in hell to actually get into government that does not support austerity. So since that appears to be a given no matter what, people vote based on other differences between parties, small as they may be.

You went to a different school then. I did memorize a poem or two, and vocabulary, of course, but most of my school education was based on understanding, not memorization.

Well, the USA has thrived on draining brain from the rest of the world for most of its existence. Space program? Thank the german rocket engineers...

It's part of the american system - offer really cool universities that are way too large for ourselves (which is why they get filled up with football players and crap) so they attract the brightest minds from elsewhere.

True in parts and yet horribly wrong in others.

Disclaimer: I was a "gifted child" and yes, I was bored in school, so much that my parents sent me to a psychologist (who told them there's nothing wrong with me except that I'm bored) and then to special gifted-child after-school courses. I had my first chemistry course 5 years before I had it in school, and I had computer lessons and shortly after my own computer in 6th grade, at a time when computer stuff was an optional course in high school.

And yet, I don't blame school for ruining my chances. On the contrary, I believe school should be much like it used to, i.e. roll back the dumbing down you've done to it just because you want better PISA scores. Schools purpose is to create a baseline, a solid level of basic education that later on in life you can expect everyone to have. As such, it has to be so that everyone can acquire it. Some easily, some will struggle, but it is a (low) standard and exactly because of that it is useful.

What needs to change is the attitude that school covers everything. These days, not only have people largely stopped understanding that you can (*gasp*!) educate yourself out of school, in addition to whatever you get there, but you should also (*big gasp*!!) let the school do the teaching and keep things like teaching manners and basic social skills at home with the parents who desperately need to stop thinking they can outsource the raising of a child.

If more people understood school correctly as a standardized base-level, less people would send their kids to school and think that covers their parental responsibilities and aside from that it's just feeding and housing the brat.

No, you utter imbecile. The problem of the western culture is not fund distribution. It's attitude.

Our "stars" are musicians, actors and professional athletes. Certainly people who work hard and having natural talent definitely helps - but it's not the smart, gifted people we adore in our culture. There's no science-based equivalent of the Super Bowl. The closest we get is that we sometimes thing astronauts are pretty cool.

You want more smart people in your country? I don't have a magic pill for that, but I can give you an indicator of how close you are: When the sexy girls fuck the geeks instead of the football studs, you're getting somewhere. When this map has more scientists on it than coaches, you're pretty close. When we pay two-digit millions in salary not to people who pretend to be a robot from the future on camera, or throwing an air-filled dead pig gut around, but to people who work on curing cancer or inventing new methods for energy production, then you won't have to worry about not having enough brains in the country.

The funding thing is just a small part of that culture.