03/19/2005   English German

  Edition # 54  
San Francisco, 03-19-2005


Figure [1]: An interesting, albeit not entirely truthful, book.

There is actually hardly anyone in Germany who reports on the USA in an informed and balanced way. Two extremes stand out: On the one hand, the "Huzzah!"-shouters, mostly well-situated entrepreneurs, who annoy everyone in Germany and idealize American conditions. At the other end of the scale are the America-haters, who have never been to the USA, but know how to tell horror stories about the "American Way of Life".

Our newsletter is trying to find a balance. We live in the USA, but we're not ignoring the problems.

The book "American Conditions" by Olaf Gersemann, which I recently read in English, where it is called "Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality", can be found on the "Huzzah!"-shouter side of the scale. But Olaf Gersemann has at least tried to gather some interesting facts.

He is analyzing typical German prejudices about the USA and refuting them using interpreted statistics. For example, only 5.3% of the American population have two or more jobs. I also found his perspective that the majority of German tuition fees are paid by people who have never enjoyed higher education interesting. Or that in Germany, the rich surprisingly get a lot back from the state through tax returns, while the redistribution of state revenues in America actually benefits the poor more.

He even admits that about 1% of the US population is incarcerated, that the pharmaceutical industry bribes politicians and makes enormous profits, that the healthcare system is the most expensive and one of the worst in the world, and that the wage gap between the poor and the rich is enormous.

Nevertheless, Gersemann-Olaf is a kind of Michael Moore of financial magnates, who doesn't take the truth too seriously. If he can only refute a prejudice, he bends the statistics according to his wishes. Once he demonstrates a trend with three different income groups, but to show another tendency, he can't take the lowest third, but quickly changes without explanation to the lower "fifth". Or he argues adventurously that it is okay for the pharmaceutical industry to demand excessive prices, because better medicines are created and the gross domestic product increases when people live longer.

Apart from these slips, the book is actually quite interesting, it contains a lot of facts that hardly anyone knows who hasn't lived for a long time in both Germany and the USA. If you are more likely to be found on the left side of the political scale, you will partly rage during the reading, keep valerian drops ready.

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