[lbo-talk] War and Peace (fwd)

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Mon Apr 26 17:19:58 PDT 2004


On Mon, 26 Apr 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:


> >How many Americans even have an international passport? Relatively few.
>
> 50 million is a not unreasonable guess. In a country of 300 million,
> that's a lot more than "relatively few."

Unless your accent is on "relatively" and on the relative percentage. In continental Europe, passport holding is almost universal because (a) they use them the way we use driver's licenses, for ID, and (b) over there, if you travel the distance from New York to Boston, you're usually in another country.

But I'm not at all sure this makes the average European more cosmopolitan, which is what people are usually suggesting when they bring up the passport density index. I think it just makes them different.

Michael



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