America and Europe Are Equally Poor
“Honey, don’t worry,” I said, reassuring myself as much as her. “I see a big crowd up ahead. It’ll be fine.” We were wandering down Market Street in San Francisco, after sundown. Despite the towering buildings looming over us, designed to host tens of thousands of people, the streets were quiet and empty. Except, of course, for the shadowy figure shuffling around without direction on the other side of the street, and the occasional and deeply unnerving scream.
There is no shortage of anecdotes about Americans who visit Europe for the first time and are shocked to discover streets that are safe at night, food that is tastier yet healthier, and large cities that are nonetheless beautiful and walkable. The reverse is much rarer, if only because true Europeans don’t write about their experiences on the internet in English. As a dual European-American citizen from birth, I have spent roughly half my life in North America and half in Europe, so neither continent is capable of giving me culture shock. The same was not true of my wife, a true European whom I was hazing with a not-so-grand tour of the great cities of the United States of America.
“I’ll call an Uber up there, okay?” Even for me, the haunted atmosphere was a bit much and significantly worse than I remembered from just a few years before. But there were clearly people in the distance ahead of us, I thought, so we shouldn’t inordinately frighten ourselves. But, fast-walking forward, it didn’t take us long to realize that those weren’t tourists or late-night shoppers strolling down from Union Square, but what must have been a hundred homeless people hanging out, sprawled out on the pavement, and doing drugs. Many Europeans, my wife included, will gripe incessantly about the alleged lack of public safety and order in Europe. Suffice it to say, she has not mentioned it a single time since visiting San Francisco—on paper, one of the richest cities in the richest country in the world.
