{"id":181452,"date":"2010-01-14T18:07:49","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T23:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.33555"},"modified":"2010-01-14T18:13:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T23:13:53","slug":"the-difference-between-the-us-and-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/181452","title":{"rendered":"The Difference Between the US and Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Paul Krugman said “Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it.” I had roughly the same reaction that Matt Welch<\/a> did:  having lived in London for intermittent (short) periods, I found it noticeably poorer than the United States.<\/p>\n

It is not noticeable to tourists, mind you.  London, like any
\nEuropean city that wasn’t actually flattened in the war, is rich in
\narchitectural assets that make it feel very posh–low rise buildings
\nolder than thirty or forty years are a luxury in most American cities. 
\nWalking around a European city, the diversity and beauty of the
\narchitecture is dazzling.<\/p>\n

But the standard of living in any
\ngiven profession is much lower.  Preserving London’s dazzling antique
\narchitecture has meant that most of the people I knew had much longer
\nand more expensive commutes than their American counterparts would. 
\nThey lived in smaller quarters that were hotter in summer and colder in
\nwinter.  At any given professional level, you found British people
\ndoing things that only much poorer Americans would do, like bringing
\nlunch, hanging their clothes to dry, or going without cable (though the
\nAmericans I knew said the cable wasn’t worth it anyway).  People in
\nBritain are not poor.  But they have a noticeably lower standard of
\nliving than Americans do.  If they were doing it in 1960’s vintage
\napartment buildings and tract homes, it would be quite obvious.  When I
\nlived there, I literally could not afford to eat meat regularly or take
\nthe tube to work, and as a consequence wore holes in my shoes.  (In
\nfairness, I was being paid in dollars and the exchange rate was
\nawful–but I wasn’t the only one walking to save money.) <\/p>\n

I
\ndon’t want to sound as if I’m saying Britain’s a terrible place–it’s
\nlovely, and I miss it.  But the amount that people are able to consume
\nis much less than the amount Americans are able to consume, and many of
\nthe things they forego make real difference in things like personal
\ncomfort.  (Based on my admittedly limited sample of British mattresses,
\nthey must be unimaginably hardy sleepers).  Consumption isn’t
\neverything.  But it is something, and that is what’s being captured in
\nthe GDP differences.

\n

\n Email this Article<\/a>
\n Add to digg<\/a>
\n Add to Reddit<\/a>
\n Add to Twitter<\/a>
\n Add to del.icio.us<\/a>
\n Add to StumbleUpon<\/a>
\n Add to Facebook<\/a>
\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Paul Krugman said “Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}