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Notes -
The last gasp of the europoor
For years, I've been treated to a steady diet of smug elitism coming from effete liberal Europeans laughing at obese, gun-toting and bible-thumpin' Americans. This reached its crescendo during the George W. Bush administration, took a lull during the Obama years and was resurrected after Trump took office.
The American was an ignoramus, a loud-mouth, a religious fundamentalist and irreversibly stupid. Hopelessly inferior to us sophisticated and cosmopolitan Europeans. Did you know half of Americans don't even own a passport? Most don't even know a second language!? Ha! And don't get me started on their healthcare, their gun crime and all other sorts of social pathologies. America, you see, is a third world nation masquerading as a first world one.
But as the years went by, these smirks felt increasingly hollow. The economic distance - and with it, standard of living - between the two major partners is growing wider by the day. A young French econ professor at Wharton lays out the bad news over just how deluded his fellow Europeans are on this question. Prominent FT columnists have noted the same.
Yet, perhaps there is still time to save the last shreds of honor for us poor Europeans. For one, the gap in PPP terms doesn't seem to be changing much. Europe has been behind for a long time. In terms of total GDP, the situation is much the same. Another aspect is that Europeans tend to work fewer hours.
While some of these arguments may have some validity, they all feel like desperate excuses. I for one am very much happy to see the insufferable elitism of Europeans slowly being wiped off our collective smug faces. The uncouth and primitive barbarian across the ocean turned out to be smarter and harder-working all along.
Perhaps this can also lead to a more pro-capitalist liberalism in the US. For much of my upbringing, liberal Americans were typified by folks such as Michael Moore and his obsessive admiration of the European welfare state. Colbert's snark about the embarrassing Red State American always felt like an underhanded way to gain favor with declassé elites across the ocean. Ann Coulter's observation that liberal elites in the US loved soccer because it is European surely hit closer to home than many in the media were willing to admit.
Of course, there is still some amount of liberal American simping left in the bag. This is perhaps most obvious whenever there are discussions on urban policy and the words "walkable city" invariably comes up. (To be clear, I actually think Europe gets this part better than the US).
Outside of an increasingly narrowing set of areas where Europe still outperforms, we are slowly witnessing a reshuffling of the deck. The old illusions are slowly coming undone and reddit-tier arguments about the US being a third world hellhole are convincing fewer by the day. At long last, after years of insufferable and unjustified smug elitism, the europoor is finally unmasked as the sham living on a lie that he always was. And I couldn't be happier.
I think am in rough agreement (though I cannot assume how willing you would be to "trade off" economic prosperity for a more difficult-to-quantify social and individual wellbeing).
In my view, a comparative advantage in economic power means jack shit to me when my options are to spend that wealth living in a city full of people I loathe for various reasons, or live in a rural area full of people I loathe for various reasons; most of those reasons have to do with continuously-declining standards of basic physical fitness, though in the case of cities (even some medium-sized midwest cities) I also struggle with constant pressure to kowtow to the left-wing zeitgeist.
With the current trajectory, I am left having to choose between (please pardon the hyperbole, but I am now speaking even deeper from the heart; to put a fig leaf of Motte-ness onto this rant, look at these CDC stats: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html) living alongside painfully dull and severely obese ambiguously "conservative" rurals whose only redeeming characteristic is a radical "live and let live" attitude that at least leaves me unmolested but who as a result are also bereft of care for the appearance of themselves or their property, or else living in close-quarters with packs of (also increasingly obese) vipers caught up in masturbatory, self-flagellating purity spirals driven by self-serving crybullies and useful idiots.
Suburbs I exclude from possibility as, like the scoffing masses referenced in Lovecraft novels by their traumatized protagonists, I refuse to even credit suburban life with serious consideration. This is not borne from mere meme: I have multiple acquaintances who regaled me with HOA horror-stories that make city-dwelling sound downright pleasant.
Please forgive me for being uncharitable, but as an outlier in all sections of the modern United States social landscape I am frustrated with it.
I'm sort of in the same boat. I live downtown in a big American city, and I know I should probably get out before it is too late ...
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