Tudi Paul Krugman je opazil, da so ZDA izgubile svojo prednost pred Evropo. Statistično imajo sicer še vedno višji BDP na prebivalca (čeprav iz razlogov, da delajo dlje časa in imajo krajše dopuste), toda po ostalih kazalcih – od tehnološke razvitosti, življenjskega pričakovanja, smrtnosti, varnosti itd. – je Evropa že močno prehitela ZDA. In ko gledamo te grozne prizore masovnih streljanj in razširjenega kriminala, ki izvirata iz dediščine “divjega Zahoda” ter “ekonomske svobode” in posledične velike razslojenosti, je dokaj jasno, zakaj ZDA nazadujejo (tja proti ravni držav Latinske Amerike): ker so razpadle kot družba, so zgolj združba posameznikov, ki se vsak zase borijo za preživetje.

True, America still has a higher gross domestic product per capita than European nations, but a large part of the difference is that we retire later and take less vacation. Whatever you think of those choices, they don’t represent a fundamental advantage in competence.

So as I said, these days America seems no more advanced, and in some ways less so, than other Western nations. I don’t want to romanticize Europe, which has many of the same problems we do — declining regions, growing right-wing radicalization, and so on. But we used to be well ahead, and now we seem slightly behind. So what happened?

My quick, casual take is that in some ways America has been forgetting how to be a society. We’ve gotten worse at acting in ways that protect ourselves and others, in everything from getting vaccinated to driving at responsible speeds.

I love my country. And I share some of my nation’s attitudes. New York City is arguably more European than any other place in America, but even I am not willing to start behaving like people in Berlin, who treat “Don’t Walk” signs as instructions, not what they are in New York: suggestions.

But this trip reinforced my sense that something is going wrong in what is still (for the moment) the land of the free.

Vir: Paul Krugman, NY Times