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0 pointsanamax14y ago0 comments

> But the language is the same,

Umm, sort-of. I have relatives whose local dialect is almost incomprensible to me. (They can understand me because they can understand "TV American".)

> Compare that to Europe where there are, what ? 23 languages for 27 countries

How many of them have a significant number of people who are monolingual? To put it another way, how many languages do I need to know to talk to 95% of Europeans?

> the newspapers are the same,

No, they aren't.

> the political parties are the same.

Nope. They merely have the same names, and sometimes not even that. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Democratic%E2%80%93Fa... .)

Yes, there is a national Democrat party, but there are also 50 state parties and they don't take orders.

There are "national coalitions" that don't cover all states.

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Iv14y ago· 3 in thread

> How many of them have a significant number of people who are monolingual? To put it another way, how many languages do I need to know to talk to 95% of Europeans?

You would be surprised. Half the people in France speak only French (and maybe one local dialect). And it is far from being the worst country. So with English, French, German and maybe Russian you would maybe get close to 80% but far away from 95%

By "newspaper are the same" I meant that you have national newspaper that one can find everywhere. I didn't travel a lot in USA, but I remember that USA today was available everywhere I went to (mainly west coast I admit) I doubt it is the only newspaper in that case. Science, National Geographic are two publication that I believe must be nation wide. There is no EU-wide publication.

By "same political parties", I mean that you know which is rep and which is dem. Which one will support your current president and which won't. Arguably, we begin to have a similar structure appearing in EU. It is recent and still approximate, but EU MPs now try to share some labels.

anamaxOP14y ago

> I didn't travel a lot in USA, but I remember that USA today was available everywhere I went to

"everywhere I went to" is a long way from "find everywhere".

I've only seen USA Today in hotels and airports that were in fairly major cities. Outside of travel, most folks don't see them.

> Science, National Geographic are two publication that I believe must be nation wide.

The Financial Times is available by subscription, just like those pubs. Does that make it national? How about the Bolivar Herald Free Press (from Bolivar Missouri)? Like every small town newspaper, it's available by subscription. Are they all national?

Heck, I can even get the London Times by subscription anywhere in the US. Is it a national newspaper of the US?

Your definition of "nation wide" is absurd.

> There is no EU-wide publication.

What? I can't get the London times throughout the EU by subscription?

Not only is your definition absurd, but you're not even applying it consistently.

bane14y ago

>By "newspaper are the same" I meant that you have national newspaper that one can find everywhere.

Actually there are about 5. But 3 are really local metropolitan papers that happen to cover cities that are of interest to the rest of the country (New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post).

But to give you an idea of perspective, USA Today, which circulates nationally, only moves about 1.8 million copies a day (in a country of over 300 million people). Local papers are far more important to most people and circulate many more copies than any of the national papers touch.

>By "same political parties", I mean that you know which is rep and which is dem. Which one will support your current president and which won't.

At the local level this isn't always true. Local politics in the U.S. can be tremendously parochial and can often not map well to national platforms. For example, in my area the local Republicans have been more focused on raising tax revenues to fund mass transit expansion than the Democrats -- almost the exact opposite of the National parties' focus. And I'm not talking about State level. County and District politics are local...or in cities districts or wards. It can be maddening to try and explain local or national political behavior by using one to explain the other.

waterlesscloud14y ago

There's a big difference between an Alabama Democrat and a Massachusetts Democrat. You certainly could not always count on them to vote the same way.

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