Price of Culture

Today, I had my meeting rearranged with Mr. Strand so I went to my AP Economics class and read another chapter of my book. This chapter was titled “ The price of culture”. Having now lived in the United States; I found this chapter particularly interesting because of being able to compare European mentalities and attitudes to that of Americans. Since I’ve been here, there have been numerous occasions in which people have asked what the main difference between the two are, I have tried my best to explain the difference but never really felt my answer was exactly what I mean While reading this I found the perfect explanation to what I always try to describe.

            “ Europeans believe in the luck of the draw as a defining characteristics of life, and are skeptical of the proposition that the rich deserve their riches. They are unlikely to attribute success to effort – ascribing it instead to serendipity and external social conditions. Believers in the world’s unfairness, they prefer high taxes and aggressive income redistribution to impose justice on an unjust society.”

As negative as that may sound, its pretty much spot on, this may due to the roots of the feudal past when prosperity had nothing to do with effort and much to do with having the right parentage. The American society on the other hand can be best described.

            “Americans tend to believe crime doesn’t pay and honest, hard work is the key to prosperity for the American Dream is available to all. Ten times as many Americans say hard work will lead to a better life as believe success is a matter of luck and connections.”

            Another point of interest this chapter gave me was the topic of tipping. It is very rare is Europe and Asia to the point a waiter would chase after to you to return the change left on the table thinking you just forgot about it. In the United States a 15% tip is customary, making the waiters deploy friendliness to increase their rewards. This difference is due to labor markets. It the US waiter earn little as the minimum wage has risen to $7.25, for waiters it has been stuck at $2.13 since 1991, on the grounds that they can supplement it with tips. But the labor-market pricing differences are themselves rooted in different approaches to economic justice. Europeans believe such wages are unfair, and have thus imposed compulsory service charges to add to the bill instead.