I was perusing Borders yesterday and came across the book The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe are Alike. It’s packed with graphs, rivaling Andrew Gelman’s Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State on that score.
Some factoids, drawn from my own reading and this blog post by ParaPundit: US employment of civil servants is equal to about the median for European countries; The US is less prudish than any European country save for Iceland (gleaned from surveys on kinky activities in the bedroom); and Americans have better cancer survival rates than their European counterparts.
I’m a little surprised by the Iceland bit, as I was under the impression that the culture there was very similar to that of Scandinavia. I’ve got anecdotal evidence, drawn from the observations of a Danish woman I once knew, that northern European males are withdrawn and not very assertive on the sexual front. And as Conan O’Brien once joked, Sweden’s coin currency boasts that it is the home of the world’s most melancholy orgy. Maybe it’s hard for people of the ice to get hot and bothered.
It’s been some time since I’ve been in a mainstream bookstore with popular new releases, as University and used book stores have become my usual literary haunts in the last couple of years, living in the bay area. I even spotted John Derbyshire’s We Are Doomed, which for some reason I assumed had very limited distribution.
March 20, 2010 at 3:24 pm
What’s odd isn’t that America and Europe are broadly similar–which they are. The issue is that America has such high rates of single parenthood, such high incarceration statistics; and with the diffusion of technology, any country can catch up just by copying the best. Given all of this, you would expect Europe to be better off.
But it’s not. America’s living standards are ~30 percent better.
I’m not sure what this book does; but it’s the case that aggregate US spending on education, etc. isn’t so different from Europe. It’s the public/private mix that’s skewed here; and that (in my view) contributes to the surprising fact above.
March 20, 2010 at 3:54 pm
My impression is that there is a lot more corporatism in Europe, which presumably would make it less productive. I am a freelance copywriter doing a lot of PR and promotional stuff, and it seems like I spend a huge amount of time crowing for pay about public-private partnerships and politically determined deals. I have spent almost all my working life in Europe, however, so I don’t actually know from experience how things really work in America.
Oh, and as a long-time resident of Sweden, I have no idea what the melancholy coin orgy joke refers to.
March 23, 2010 at 12:46 am
http://anderslovesmaria.reneengstrom.com/
March 21, 2010 at 12:23 pm
[...] Mupetblast – “Again, Europe vs. America” [...]
March 21, 2010 at 7:46 pm
I remember in a forum I used to inhabit one rather neoconservative poster who had studied French said the reason the two countries despise each other is because they recognize their own reflection in each other.
I had heard about the Iceland thing before. I assume the Swedish joke is a reference to their depressing Bergman movies, death metal or whatnot. n/a claims the Swedish stereotype of promiscuity is wrong, which goes against my stereotype of stereotypes as being correct.
March 22, 2010 at 9:18 pm
What about the stereotype that the exception proves the rule?
March 23, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Would that qualify as a stereotype or more of an idiom?
March 22, 2010 at 10:46 am
What’s this shit about you living in the bay area. I thought you lived in Chicago. I can see you in Chicago; I can’t quite picture you in or around SF. Not your kind of scene, or so I imagined.
March 22, 2010 at 11:40 am
The author of this post is me, Mupetblast (Dain Fitzgerald).
March 23, 2010 at 11:48 am
My mistake . . . wanna get some pizza? ( Seinfeld)
March 23, 2010 at 8:05 pm
I was angling for a job with a Bay Area company for a little while, but I wound up with a Chicago one instead. I don’t live in the city though, I take the train.
March 22, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Americans have better cancer survival rates than their European counterparts.
The reason for this is the cultural American way (helped along by self-interested medical professionals, no doubt) of spending large amounts to keep old people alive. 1k a day to keep people in a vegetative state hooked to a machine, 10k a month chemotherapeutics that are only effective 30% of the time, and so forth. Ultimately, we all pay for it. Be it through increased taxes for Medicare/Medicaid or increased insurance premiums; hence, our large spending on healthcare as a percentage of gdp relative to the rest of the world.
The policy of letting old people die unless they can foot the bill for those incredibly expensive medicines themselves, like school tracking, really epitomizes my personal view of northern Europe – so heartless, yet so efficient and ultimately prudent.
March 24, 2010 at 9:02 am
“Would that qualify as a stereotype or more of an idiom?”
TGGP’s “stereotype about stereotypes” seemed like an amusing stretch, so I thought I would stretch it a bit further. You’re right that “the exception proves the rule” is more of an idiom (or axiom, according to some), but linguistically I don’t see why one can’t make stereotypical assumptions about exceptions always going around proving rules.