Bryan says Europe is overrated and here is one excerpt from a lengthy post:
…almost no one in Europe lives in places as comfortable and convenient as American suburbs: The houses are spacious, the cars are huge, cheap Big Box stores and chain restaurants are nearby, and (to quote South Park) there's "ample parking day or night.
Bryan suggests that American tourists like Europe so much because they are visiting it with U.S. incomes. I am not sure which PPP calculation he is using but I disagree at a more fundamental level. Bryan gives some good reasons why America is better for 37-year-olds with young children, namely lots of living space and easy shopping. But I view much of Western Europe as better for the elderly, if only because it requires less driving and they are more likely to live close to their children and perhaps also they receive more respect. Western Europe is probably better for children too, for reasons related to safety and health care.
My alternative view is that Americans rate European life so highly (in part) because the buildings from previous eras are so striking and attractive. If all of the U.S. looked like U.S. postwar construction, the country would still impress more or less as it does. If all of Europe looked like its postwar construction, Americans would be less likely to admire European policies and political institutions. Yes I know about Lille, and contemporary Spanish architecture, but in reality most Americans would think of Europe as some kind of dump.
Addendum: Megan McArdle comments.
← Previous Comments
Parke,
Like most other Europhiles here you are just giving lists of adjectives “selfish, pointless, unjust, and unsustainable consequence of American individualism”. What specifically do you disagree with about suburbs?
I can think of a few problems that come along with suburbs (as defined by Americans)
1. Higher per capita energy consumption, on average.
2. Racial segregation
3. Education discrepancies
If you dont believe me, visit Memphis or Detroit. Or Paris for that matter.
Paul: “1. Higher per capita energy consumption, on average.”
Fair enough.
Paul: “2. Racial segregation”
And cities don’t have that? They certainly do.
Paul: “3. Education discrepancies”
Inner Cities have that too.
@Scoop
I’m probably the worst kind of European since I’m French, so of course I disagree with most of what you said.
Yeah, the hotspot of western civilization switched from Europe to the US after WWII (and not WWI as you seem to think), but if you look at the number of Nobel prices per capita you’ll see that the US ranks 11th, after 10 European countries. It’s not a perfect indicator but it probably means something.
What made me laugh is that general claim that the US pays for European security. Wow that’s great. By the way, from whom are you protecting us? Last time I checked the last threat disappeared 20 years ago, and actually you turned Europe in a more dangerous place thanks to your glorious invasion of Iraq.
Last thing: check out the list of most livable cities in the world. Strangely enough, they’re all in Europe, none in the US.
Sheesh, another Europe v. America post. The bottom line is that MOST of the haters on both side of the pond have never stepped foot in either place.
People that have actually lived in Europe (like me) know its good, bad, mundane and great aspects as much those who lived in the States (like me). Going to touristy parts of Paris, Berlin, London, Rome living does not make.
This would cause the most cognitive dissonance to the average American University Social Science/humanities student: There are parts of London, Paris, Berlin that you can get mugged, beat up, stabbed etc and that’s for not being an ugly American or Chav, just for the wrong skin color or looking like you don’t really belong there.
And finally another piece of trite advice: Turkish guys in Germany don’t really like Americans. I know that for a fact. And if the average German could pay the price of gas and afford a SUV, they would actually purchase the thing. People respond to prices world wide!
The Brits are known to be on the heavy side.
But by and large, your are correct. Tourists just don’t see the obese. We don’t let them out. Or rather, they dwell in suburbs, drive cars and hate walking around the kind of places, tourists tend to frequent.
And that is really what settles the suburb vs. city question for me. City dwellers are healthy and good looking. Nothing could possibly matter more.
Safety? I think we Europeans are still much less safety obsessed. Kids and Teenagers enjoy greater freedom in walkable neighborhoods and in places with good public transportation. Our kids are rugged individualists.
True. Our elites have unfortunately bought into modern and later postmodern architecture.
The new buildings are not only unpleasant from the outside, but also from the inside. Most of them have low ceilings and featureless walls and hallways that are designed to meet only the absolute minimum requirements permitted by the law.
My apartment building would need renovation. But I prefer it to anything post-WWII. The high ceilings, doors, windows and wide doors let me breathe. And everytime I walk down the unnecessarily large, curved stairs, with its unnecessarily decorated walls and art nouveau tiling, I feel both alive and connected to a time, when even profit oriented house owners put aesthetics first.
Regarding the main issue: I sure hope that Bryan Caplan is trolling the audience and laughing his ass off right now.
But you can’t really say much about a culture without having studied it closely, including the language. Whenever I tell my middle class and upper middle class friends that I appreciate the cultural output of the United States, they look at me, as if I had said the most absurd thing imaginable to mankind.
They can’t appreciate even the good Hollywood movies. In a dubbed version, there is no discernable difference between Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt. What remains are the visuals. Car chases, explosions and good looking actors.
Monolingual Americans on the other hand are convinced that Europe hasn’t produced anything in terms of culture for some 60 years for the same reason.
Interesting. Most relevant observations/anecdotes have been made. I was born in Europe, and lived in bigger cities (Paris, Amsterdam, NY) and in suburbs on either side of the Atlantic, both single and with a family with young children. My personal experience as well as observing family and friends indicates that quality of life in the US for a family is substantially higher for the same level of educational attainment – and even more so for the same pretax income. A difference that admittedly may well hold only at educational levels and incomes over median.
Onerous visa requirements for immigration from Europe to the US have stopped some potential emigrants – either colleagues or friends of mine -, and they moved to Asia or Australia instead.
Finally, given what happened only 65 years ago, I agree with zz.
5. Would you like to go to college? Better pass your baccalaureate exam, administered when you are 16. Pass it and you get to go to college. Fail and you are tracked into a trade.
I’m American, somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun politically, and I think this is a pretty good idea. It would have the effect of levelling opportunities and incomes far better than any redistribution scheme ever could. I know it does discriminate against ‘late bloomers’, but as I understand the European system, it is possible to get a second chance of sorts by joining the military.
10. Part of the taxes you pay go to subsidize organized religion. Ministers et al are salaried employees of the state.
Not surprising, then, that Americans are more religious than Europeans. Nothing destroys charity like compulsion.
It is a uniquely libertarian form of psychosis that we have three pages of discussion of how one might live in Europe vs. the United States, with no serious examination of health care for the poor or middle class.
A middle class person in the United States lives in daily fear of penury due to illness. A middle class person in Europe does not. Only a libertarian would consider this to the advantage of the US.
Steve, I am an European and I must say that points like 2.4. 8. 9. 10. vary so wildly around the continent that no one can state them as facts. This is not an uniform continent. Far from it. The differences are larger than between states of the Union.
Generally, the greatest problem with living in Europe is that parts of Europe which lie in lowlands and have favorable climate are horribly overcrowded with people and prices of property are sky-high there. Except for Southern California, I cannot think of any similarly crowded region of the USA.
The mountainous and frigid parts of the continent are, on the other hand, almost empty. You can go days in northern Finland and meet no one.
Yes, the overall taxation is high and many people resent it. It is not that bad for employers, however, as there is a lot of exceptions in most of the tax codes. The German tax system is really screwed up, the Estonian is pretty easy.
Nevertheless, the continent seems to be moving from socialism to liberalization in the last 20 years. No one in positions of power attempts to “nationalize” any industries or expand welfare programs. On the other hand, privatization of formerly state-owned enterprises like airlines and railways is underway, and the welfare programs have been tightened since their heyday, because they were obviously too expensive and too abused.
I must admit that I am worried about the fact that the current US administration seems to be persistent in going in the other direction – expanding the federal powers.
I prefer Japan: better behaved than, well, anyone. Outside Amsterdam, I found the Dutch friendly; the Teutons, not (whether I spoke in German or not, unless they were old). Even in crappy Tokyo there is far less graffiti than in the urban US, which has less than in urban Europe. Japan is much safer; crime rates vary widely, but the parts of Europe (and Canada) are on par with the US, if not above. Japan is as monolingual as the US and proudly so as language reflects/is culture; however, given the lack of need to learn an L2, those who do are generally well regarded. Housing in Japanese cities sucks: cramped, mass-produced, shabby, costly, cockroaches, and perhaps as aesthetically pleasing as that in any modern metropolis; Tokyo is endless sprawl as people seek space and affordability (a garden! to see a farm!), but many cities simply can’t sprawl because of mountain ranges. Rather than parks, there are quiet temples and shrines with grounds of varying sizes but always flora and occasionally fauna and plenty of history. Like Europe, there are no children to pay for the national health and pension system. Unlike Western Europe, there’s little anti-Americanism pushed through state-controlled or -assisted media. Moreover, the Japanese government, unlike the EU, doesn’t seek micromanage everyone’s lives to the same degree or demand the world recognize it as The Other Superpower™, although the extent to which licenses and credentials are required is truly ridiculous.
Came here from Michael Totten, and now I remember why I don’t read this blog any more. Great, interesting posts, followed by snobbish, ignorant, asinine comments.
Current, while that is true, the situation is worse in the US according to OECD statistics. And that’s a problem of diet and poverty, it has little to with the NHS.
As for which is better. Depends what you value. If you’re an American and you want to replicate your US lifestyle in Europe you’re probably not going to be able to as easily (though its certainly possible on an upper middle class income). As for independent restaurants vs US chains. Depends upon where you are in Europe. The idea that the restaurant chains in the US rival your average Italian restaurant is laughable. There are cities in the UK that have excellent and very affordable restaurants – others that don’t.
Current, if there’s one thing this health care debate has taught those who actually care, it’s that even if you have insurance, if you get sick, you will die bankrupt.
“Is it certain that the difference in the US isn’t related to diet and poverty? I think it probably is.”
You seemed to be suggesting that these health problems were related to the NHS. If you weren’t that’s fine, though its not clear what your point is. The UK, perhaps unsurprisingly given its similarities (for Europe) to the US shares many of the US’ problems, albeit to a lesser degree.
Well thank you for shooting that strawman argument down.
3: The people who bash suburbs have genuine preferences against suburbs and for urban living. I like being able to walk everywhere, working exercise into my daily routine and not having to bear the stress of not-dying-while-driving. For longer distances, I like taking good public transit, and getting to read along the way, rather than wasting much of my life on attending to getting from point A to point B. These are real preferences, not status signals. If you put higher value on having a quarter acre of land, then that’s a different preference. Yay for diversity and getting to make choices — though in the US, the suburban lifestyle is more subsidized than the urban one. (Home mortgage backing, lower accounting of environmental costs…)
Joe: maybe everything you want to eat is in Naperville; I’d be surprised if that’s true for me. Dim sum, cheap sushi, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Brazilian, Thai, Arab, etc. As for museums, lower costs can lead to more frequent usage: when I lived in SF, going to the science and some of the art museums was a casual act, thanks to walking distance and annual membership; I could go on a whim, picking out whatever I wanted, rather than making an expedition and having to squeeze amortized value out of gas, toll, and parking costs.
From what I’ve heard, a lot of suburb-hating probably also dates to when suburbs were more hatable, when good food was scarcer and good bookstores almost non-existent outside the big cities. Borders and Barnes and increases in immigration have done a lot for that. But I still enjoy not having to drive — and if we’re talking revealed preferences, look at gentrification. Many Americans with money move *into* the city.
I would agree that for the upper middle class family America would be a better place to live than Europe and that the reverse is true for the old. I would also point out that it would be nicer to be a young person in Europe. The universities aren’t as good but they are very cheap. The drinking age is 18 or lower and there are all sorts of clubs, and other fun attractions available. You will learn more than one language. And best of all you’re only a train ride away from all the other european countries.
Impressions of a long time traveler… Culture – Europe, Housing – US, Health & Longevity – Europe, Higher Education – US, Intelligence – Europe… really it’s all apples and oranges
Most Americans would be surprised to know that the average French or German middle class family has just under $100k in the bank. Europeans are much better savers than Americans. Plus twice as many have their homes paid for in full.
This is obviously a question of personal preferences. Here are a few subjective trends, some of which happen to be well-known stereotypes, from someone who has lived in several urban regions in both the US and continental Western Europe:
* The US is more economically liberal: Risk-taking and ambition are respected and encouraged, wealth is admired. This makes for a more dynamic economy. Europeans are risk-averse combined with a strong sense of peer solidarity. They demand strong welfare systems and broad public services.
* Europe is more socially liberal: relaxed attitudes towards nudity, alcohol and other drugs, gay rights, stronger data privacy, … The work life balance is more on the life side as manifested, e.g., by generous vacation-day budgets.
* Europe still exhibits residual chauvinism and relatively widespread xenophobia. Americans, in contrast, generally welcome foreigners with open arms, exceptions not withstanding.
* Americans are right not to trust government agencies: The public servants they deal with as individuals are too often incompetent and arrogant. Their European counterparts are better trained.
* A lot of US public infrastructure is in a pitiful condition.
* Filing an income tax return in the US is almost as much of a mess as in Germany which has the worst of all.
* In the US people commute over long distances but there is hardly any public transport, resulting in a lot of time wasted behind the wheel.
* For some reason Europeans tend to build homes to last for generations and rather compromise on size than on the building standards of their houses. From an individual perspective this looks irrational to me. The more more pragmatic American approach comes at the price of lower building quality. This also holds for household appliances. (‘Miele’ anyone?)
* Promotions tend to be more merit-based in the US whereas in Europe seniority still plays a role. Hierarchy is more important in Europe. The working atmosphere is more relaxed in corporate America. The pervasive first-name basis helps.
* The service attitude in shops and restaurants is much better in the US. Shop assistants are much more competent in Europe.
* etc.
Depending on how an individual weighs these properties they may like better here or there. Personally, I appreciate both sides.
Dear Steve C.
I came across your trash post today, and I have to say: Wow. Congrats, you really took this whole America is Awesome thing to a whole new level!
As an American living in The Netherlands for about year now, let me just clarify a few of your talking points..
“1. A single family home is a luxury. Most homes under construction were actually being built by the eventual occupants and their friends in a sort of Habitat for Humanity co-operative means. Contractors would be hired for specialized work but the dumb labor, such as laying cinder blocks and interior finishing were done in free time by the owners.”
WHAT? What planet are you actually from? Lots of people in the U.S. build their own homes, in this way. Of course lots of people move into pre-built “new” homes in the U.S… and of course, they do the same here! I can think of tons of smaller suburban cities around Amsterdam like this: Almere is a good example. Single family, and very… unluxurious… homes included!
“2. The countryside, which is in many cases quite bucolic, is filled with small farms. And they are small, a dozen acres or less. How can they do it? Easy, government subsidies for agriculture. I learned to love Danish butter, easily 50% cheaper than US butter.”
Yeaaaah subsidies for ag.. no one subsidizes agriculture more than America. Of course, only Big Ag gets a bulk of those subsidies, which in America we like something more bull-shitty like: Agricultural Development Funding Facility.
“4. Don’t drink the water. In larger urban areas it’s safe, but tastes horrid.”
That has to be my favorite comment of all. As if it is like Mexico here out in the small villages. The water here tastes BETTER than it does back home. In Holland they have some of the best tap water in the world. And when I go back to Chicago I can taste the chlorine in the water. When I visit my parents out west, I can taste the sulfur in their well.
5. Would you like to go to college? Better pass your baccalaureate exam, administered when you are 16. Pass it and you get to go to college. Fail and you are tracked into a trade.
If you are stupid enough to fail this exam at 16, you can take another year of school and then go to college. So no, your entire life doesn’t come down to one test. And, by the way, ever take the ACT? The SAT?????
6. Most European countries have an underclass of immigrant workers imported to do the nasty jobs like picking up trash, cleaning the streets etc. They are not citizens and they are treated like “the hired help”. The live in slums. Most countries do not grant birthright citizenship like the US.
People here are treated far better than they are back in America, especially the lower class. No, they are not treated exactly like everyone else, but are they treated like everyone else back home in the U.S.? Have you ever seen a slum in Western Europe? Compare it to a slum in Detroit, Chicago, or Phoenix!
8. If you are an employer and you have to let someone go because your business falls off, you get to pay them 80% of their salary for the next two years.
That’s not exactly true either. It is true that there are more protections for workers than there are in America. But is that actually bad?
9. Unions generally have a voting representative on the board of large firms.
Not sure about that, but there are representatives of the workers and large firms need to pay heed to them. In general most European workers are much happier, work less hours, and in many cases are more productive than American workers. Why is this bad?
10. Part of the taxes you pay go to subsidize organized religion. Ministers et al are salaried employees of the state.
That is such an outrageous mischaracterization of fact I can’t even begin to describe how completely outrageous it really is.
Compared to Europe, the US is a corrupted corporatocracy with a government ran by special interests hell bent on the pursuit of profit at any cost.
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed.