> It is however certainly how Russians tend to view the US, because what
> they know of it they get from Hollywood films where everybody has a
> giant house and three cars.
I'm going back to the 16th century. Europeans in the "age of exploration" were mad for riches, and one of the most popular get-rich schemes was to find a sea route to the Spice Islands in the Pacific and cut the Arabs out of the transportation route. When they found that the "Indies" Columbus had bumped into were a completely different, hitherto unknown land mass, they immediately latched onto some rumors about massive quantities of gold and developed completely unrealistic ideas about the "New World," which have pretty much survived to the present in one form or another.
When people go on and on about how much smarter and less materialistic Europeans are than Americans, I have to smile.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ "Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others." -- Groucho