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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.
Some of this does seem to culture warry.
And I have a different thought is this actually controversial or just a truth everyone knows and you just built a strawman?
There was a period when this was less truthy and I’d guess 1980-2008. And then Europeans did have a bit of looking down on us as close to economic equals and better lifestyles.
Since then two big things happened. Shale oil happened making America no longer a petro beggar and a big terms of trade change when you’re not shipping off a few billion a day to import oil and big tech took off. I think shale oil is extremely underrated for boosting American wealth.
Also, everyone in the world sees Americans middle/lower class. We export voyeurship of that. Americans see pretty European capitals. I assume there are more but off the top of my head I only know of two media properties that show Europeans underclass. Trainspotting I forgot the whole plot but something something Edinburgh and Heroin. And Gomorrah shows a lot of Italian slums in Naples and poverty. Poverty America doesn’t have with white people.
Passport stuff anyone smart realized at some point going to France from Germany is just going to Pennsylvania from NY and same with languages.
America has a white underclass. The difference in wealth manifests in the middle classes, so a doctor or department or region-level manager or independent tradesman in the US is quite a lot better off than his counterpart in the UK, who makes less money, is less likely to have a car or big house.
Do we? Do we have white people living in projects like naples with violence etc? We have poor people in West Virginia that do too much heroin but without crime or projects.
Someone else replied with this
https://www.boredpanda.com/roleplaying-4th-of-july-larp-poland/
That’s what the west of the world thinks our poor white underclass looks like. It’s not the same as the stuff seen in southern Italy.
You know euro crime rates are way lower than American white crime rates, right? Same for illegitimacy and divorce.
There’s lots of 100% white trailer parks full of dysfunction and welfare fraud. It’s not something unique to Italy.
People are pushing back on this point. But media wise America shows a lot. I don’t know anything like Gomorrah in America and public housing for whites. Maybe it’s just media. But usually America shows more.
We have Appalachia. They do a lot of heroin etc but crime isn’t a problem. Like white corner boys don’t exists but Italian media showed that in Naples.
Because they’ve been inducted into drug gangs. Americans are the most down to business people in the world, even when it comes to crime.
We do have gangs. These gangs are LARPers. Claims of gang membership from the white underclass in Appalachia are the number one way to separate the wheat from the chaff so far as who is a legitimately dangerous criminal and who is a degenerate with delusions of grandeur. These 'gangs' rarely create many social problems in Appalachia relative to other, more serious criminals.
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