Interesting post on Davids Medienkritik pointing to a Harris poll entitled Americans Remain More Optimistic and Satisfied with Life than Europeans.

Here's the key paragraph from the overview (I've added the numbers for Germany in brackets, emphasis in original):

"Fully 58 percent of Americans are very satisfied with their lives compared to the 15-country European average of 31 percent [Only 21% of Germans feel this way]. Fifty-six percent of Americans think that their lives have improved in the last five years compared to 45 percent of Europeans [Only 26% of Germans feel this way]. Furthermore, 65 percent of Americans expect their personal situation will improve in the next five years compared to only 44 percent of Europeans [Only 23% of Germans feel this way]. However, Europe is not at all homogenous and the mood varies widely from country to country."

I don't draw attention to these numbers because I want to put Germany down. I just get upset by the coverage in Germany of America as a place "increasingly plagued by self-doubts" which is on a downward spiral, with no more options, while the outlook in Western Europe, especially Germany, is far, far more dismal than it is in the U.S.

But it is the nature of politicians of all parties, everywhere, to distract people from their current problems by showcasing the problems of people in other countries... That'll never change...

I'm looking forward to visiting Germany in 2006, because I haven't been there since 1999, and because I want to see how far things have come since we lived there during Germany's peak, its best years in the early 1990s...

C
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 8/12/2005 03:14:00 PM