From the Pew Research Center and John Hively
“As has long been the case, American values differ from those of Western Europeans in many important ways. Most notably, a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project finds that Americans are more individualistic and are less supportive of a strong safety net than are the people of Spain, Britain, France and Germany.”
There’s a reason for this. In the USA, there was always amble land to obtain a livelihood as a farmer until about a hundred years ago. Plus, between the founding of the USA in 1776 or anywhere around that time, wages were higher here than in Europe. Europeans didn’t have that western frontier to farm, so they organized into labor unions, which worked together to get what the people wanted. Now the people of the United States find ourselves culturally behind in this regard. But that is changing, hopefully, thanks to the Occupy Movement.
According to Pew, “Americans also are somewhat more inclined than Western Europeans to say that it is sometimes necessary to use military force to maintain order in the world. Moreover, Americans more often than their Western European allies believe that obtaining UN approval before their country uses military force would make it too difficult to deal with an international threat. And Americans are less inclined than the Western Europeans, with the exception of the French, to help other nations.”
These differences between Americans and Western Europeans echo findings from other surveys by the Pew Research Center. However, the current polling shows the American public is coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as superior to that of other nations.
