The best and worst of the U.S. and how Australia compares - Part 2

In an attempt to measure how well young Americans understand the world around them, the Roper polling organisation last year asked 18-24 year olds in nine countries (not including Australia) a number of questions about geography. They found that:

• In their geography skills, Americans ranked second-last. The only country trailing the U.S. was its considerably poorer neighbour, Mexico.
• Only 36 percent of young Americans speak a second language – well below the rates in mainland Europe
• 11 percent could not find the U.S. on a world map. In no other country were so many young people unable to find their own country. In fact, only half as many French youngsters failed to find the U.S. on a world map.
• Nearly three times as many young Americans knew the region where the last season of the television show “Survivor” was filmed (34 per cent) than could locate either Iraq (13per cent) or Afghanistan (12 per cent).

Much of this ignorance flows from media reporting. As anyone who’s ever visited the U.S. and tried to get some news from home can attest, the American media is firmly focused on America. In an article analysing the media coverage of last year’s Bali bombing, we estimated that a tragedy that takes place outside America is likely to receive somewhere between one-tenth and one-hundredth of the coverage that it would if it happened inside the U.S.

And of course, no discussion of ignorance about the world is complete without a mention of George W. Bush, the President who had only left the U.S. on three occasions before taking office. While on the campaign trail, Bush was left stumbling when asked in an interview to name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan. In another incident, comic Rick Mercer, posing as a journalist, informed Bush that Canadian Prime Minister, “Jean Poutine”, had just endorsed his candidacy for the presidency (poutine is a Quebec dish of potato chips, gravy and cheese curds). Bush said that he was honoured to receive the support.

Of course, Australians shouldn’t laugh too hard. How many of us could name the last three Prime Ministers of New Zealand?

Obesity

America has the highest fraction of fat people of any country in the world – as you might guess if you contemplated the great Southern dish of double fried steak, looked at the size of the seats in the average American car, or spoke with the “International Size Acceptance Association” (slogan: It’s a BIG world, after all!). The obesity problem has become so serious that Americans airlines have developed policies on whether big people should be required to buy two seats; the home stadium of the San Francisco Giants advertises larger seats; and several unhappy burger eaters are suing a fast food giant for not warning them that excess consumption could cause obesity.

But before Australians offer a thin smile to the country that author Eric Schlosser has dubbed “Fast Food Nation”, we should take a moment to reflect on the size of our collective waistlines. There are nearly as many McDonald’s restaurants per capita in Australia as in the U.S. Nearly a fifth of Australians are obese, and across the OECD, only Britain, Germany and the U.S. are weightier countries.

We end on this fat note, not because it is the most important of our ten “best and worst” features, but rather most illustrative of our broader thesis. The McDonald’s-ization of America is an unmistakably ugly part of the country. We often look across the Pacific with disdain for the country that regards the Triple Cheeseburger as a natural culinary evolution. Yet America is a country of many amazing achievements, and not just waistlines. This is the country that won the space race, catalysed the technology boom, and through the Cold War reshaped the world’s economic and political structures. While inequality strains the cohesion of America’s citizenry, she can still boast a powerful set of national values, whose persistent optimism yields thriving philanthropy and education sectors – and where a commitment to equal opportunity still burns bright.

Still, when feasting from the U.S. smorgasbord, it would behove us to be a little pickier. As we look at America’s least attractive features, we see a list from which we have amply sampled. Our waistlines are expanding. Our voters are becoming disengaged from the major parties. Inequality is rising, and healthcare funding is being skewed to the rich. And as our engagement with America has risen, our engagement with our Asian neighbours is withering.

This is not to suggest that the way forward is to set ourselves apart from America, as our friends across the Tasman have done. Greater engagement with the U.S. will help unleash Australia’s dormant innovation. The education imperative will only be enhanced by learning from those who lead the world in so many technological domains. And we hope that careful study will lead our politicians to better understand the best features of the U.S. labour market, while putting her worst features to the side.

Our advice is simple: trade between the nations is a good thing, but we should import only the best from the U.S. Alas, over the past decade, we have systematically embraced the worst. At its heart, perhaps the challenge is one of national values. American values are no substitute for a home-grown sense of identity. But America does provide the evidence that forging our own national ideals will fundamentally affect everything that we do.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Doug Geyser for outstanding research assistance.