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In fairness, there is such a thing as the "handicap of the head start". Legolas Send a noteboard - 27/08/2013 06:56:29 PM

View original postI just came back from an awesome, epic 2 week vacation in Asia. And yes, for us poor Americans, taken 12 days off work is a BIG deal. The last two days were in Bangkok, a city that I desperately wanted to avoid in my trip planning based on some stereotypes and that unfortunate movie. On the last night, I was, as it tends to happen on vacations abroad, depressed. Depressed to be returning to the US. And also ashamed. Because apparently, it's possible to have modern, quiet trains that run every 3 minutes on the weekend, spotless mall food courts, really clean bathrooms, courteous security guards, streets without piles of trash and cat-sized rats. Even for a country with only 1/5 of our GDP per capita.

When it come to fancy new public transport or malls or other infrastructure, it's normal enough that countries that have been prosperous for a long time have less of the super-modern stuff than the newly developing countries - since those prosperous countries got all these things decades ago, and as long as it's relatively functional it isn't worth replacing by brand new stuff (especially since replacing such things often creates a great deal of discomfort while the replacing is under way).

That, and not all of the US is as dirty as NYC. It's an amazing city in many ways, but most of the returning tourists do comment on that aspect of it...

And lastly, when it comes to the extensiveness of public services (be it the regularity of trash collecting, the number of trains per hour or the amount of cleaners in a mall), low-wage countries do have a considerable advantage in making these things much more affordable (in much the same way that in the US countless stores can afford 24/7 opening hours while in Europe it's much rarer - while American wages are more likely to be higher than lower, American labour does tend to be cheaper due to lower taxes, social security etc.).

View original postEvery time I go abroad, I become less and less patriotic. Something is seriously wrong with American values, with our interaction and understanding of the public sphere. It's like we only value things which can be measured with money, and that is just... shameful.

Of course, I do agree that some differences are really cultural and not so easily explained by simple economics - people in some countries are simply nicer and more courteous than others, and any tourist will notice the difference. Though in that regard I've never had any reason to complain about the States; the good much outweighs the bad. Perhaps slightly less so in NYC, though.

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In fairness, there is such a thing as the "handicap of the head start". - 27/08/2013 06:56:29 PM 699 Views
Hmm...so one clean city somehow indicts the US? - 27/08/2013 08:27:15 PM 608 Views
To put it another way - 28/08/2013 02:13:04 AM 507 Views
Grass is always greener and all that *NM* - 28/08/2013 03:40:11 AM 241 Views
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Tourism is a bad method for country comparison - 29/08/2013 05:24:58 AM 719 Views
This was my thought - 30/08/2013 05:12:56 PM 582 Views

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