I just got back from a long trip to Europe. Mostly, I’ve been visiting friends, cycling in Portugal, hiking in the English countryside, walking around Berlin, etc. I also forgot that Berlin is home to a huge monument to the glory of the Soviet Army. I came back from this trip with the special impression that America no longer seemed ahead of other rich countries. I must admit it’s hard not to have the feeling that in some important respects, we’ve fallen increasingly to the back of the group.
Let’s start with an example that might surprise you: road safety. When I started my career, the roads in the United States were safer than anywhere else. This was especially true when it came to the roads of southern Europe. The three months I worked in Portugal in 1976 were as fun as they were helpful, but driving there was a terrifying experience. However, the number of road accident victims per capita today is much lower than in the United States.
There has been a sharp increase in road traffic deaths since 2019 in the United States. Admittedly, this is partly due to the fact that we use our car quite often. But that doesn’t explain everything. Even when you adjust numbers for miles, America has a high rate of road deaths, apparently because we’re more reluctant to wear seat belts than we tend to get drunk and drive too fast.
This is part of a larger framework. This increase – like murders – contributes to the relatively high level of US deaths. I still meet people who believe that the United States has the longest life expectancy in the world. In fact, we are far from it, and we are constantly being overtaken by similar countries.
Of course, life is not just about not dying. The problem is that we don’t live any better in the United States. Take the technologies and the general standard of living. Well, it doesn’t seem like we’re far behind in this regard – but we’re not far ahead either.
At the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, we saw a great American triumph over technology: we seemed far ahead of other countries in exploiting the potential of networks and the Internet. This is no longer true.
I have personally seen that the speed of access and internet connection in Europe is quite comparable to what we know in the United States.
It is true that America’s GDP per capita is higher than that of European countries, but much of the difference is due to the fact that we retire later and take fewer vacations. No matter what you think of these options, they are not an essential feature of the skill. So, as I said, America today does not appear to be advanced, and in some respects it is lagging behind other Western countries.
I do not want to give a romantic picture of Europe, whose many problems coincide with those we know – regions in decline, the rise of far-right extremism, etc. But we used to be ahead, while today we seem to be a little behind. so what happened?
The answer that immediately comes to mind is that in some ways America has forgotten how to behave as a society.
We’ve gotten into the bad habit of stopping to act in a way that protects us and others, in everything from getting the shots to driving safely.
I love my country. I share some of his behaviour. New York is probably more European than any other American city, but even I’m not ready to act like Berliners, who take red pedestrian lights as commands, while New Yorkers view them as simple suggestions. But this trip reinforced my feeling that something was wrong with what is still (for now) the land of freedom.
Paul Krugman, 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics
© New York Times 2022
