[lbo-talk] Dispiriting suburbs? Was Let's Build

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Oct 18 06:52:09 PDT 2006


James:

If the US is more suburbanised than Europe,

and if the suburbs are as vile and dispiriting as people say

should that not mean that Americans are more dissatisfied with their lives than Europeans?

But - lo and behold - 64 per cent of Americans are satisfied with their own lives,

compared to just 57 per cent of the French, 54 per cent of Britons, 53 of Italians and 49 of Germans.

[WS:] Wow! Thanks, James, for this revelation. Now that I know better, I am going to mend my evil and ignorant ways. Off I go to buy that suburban dream house and register as a Republican. USA! USA! USA!

PS. I presume that the 64 percent figure comes from a survey. May I ask which one? General questions of this sort are heavily biased by prevailing norms of public expressions of emotional states acceptable in a particular culture, and thus are not comparable. We all know that Americans are expected to display a much higher level of cheerful perkiness than the gloomy "Old Europeans," don't we?

Wojtek



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