re: Are Americans delusional about the quality and conditions of things in our country?

Quality and conditions are so varied as to almost be meaningless-- if you want to talk about architecture, are you quantifying a 17th century palace versus a skyscraper?


Overall, Americans really don't appreciate the implicit level of limitation that even our greatest 'peers' in the world really have. We take for absolute granted things that simply aren't even on the table somewhere else, even if someone had unlimited resources.

A fantastic example of this is health care; I had two children born abroad in a Western European health care system; even with spending for private care, to ensure the highest standard of maternal care available, my wife spent the night after giving birth in a maternity ward with 6 other women-- no real privacy at all-- and it included women who had lost their babies, in and among new mothers. She did get moved to a private room, on a 2nd day-- one that we had pre-paid extra for, because we had that option, but the entire national maternity hospital had a whopping 2 private rooms, and you only got use of it if one was vacant and you had pre-paid.

I mentioned to the doctor at the time, how difficult it must be for mothers who lost their children, to have to be surrounded by happy mothers and infants, and he simply shrugged it off as 'Nothing we can do about it'.

We take so much shite like that for granted, that its absolutely staggering. Quality and variety of life, its still the US, and an extremely large gap, then everyone else. Travel the world and do something that isn't touristy, if you don't believe it.