While I have not had the same experience I recognize much of the same emotional responses. As a Norwegian I also had starry eyed grand delusions about America.

While I have not had the same experience I recognize much of the same emotional responses. As a Norwegian I also had starry eyed grand delusions about America. A country at the center of innovation, with skylines made of glass high-rises. As a tourist in New York I maintained that illusion. Only when I moved to the US and got to deal with American society and American in an everyday manner did I get a needed reality check. A lot of people live materialistically very good lives in America. But the poverty and social problems so visible even in relatively small towns in America is hard for many Scandinavians to accept. And has the author mentions, it is perhaps not the poverty and social problems themselves but people's attitudes towards them which are most off-putting. While America offers many opportunities for talented people both in terms of jobs you can have, places and climates you can live I find it hard to put in my hard work into a society which has values so opposed to my own. There is this social darwinistic streak. Nobody seems to have any hope of belief that these sorts of problems can be solved. Problem solving seems to simply be about building a wall against the stuff you don't like and hide in your own gated community. It is also bizarre for a Scandinavian to come to the center of tech innovation and see so little usage of technology in everyday life and in the public sector. Frankly America seems extremely backwards when it comes to actually implementing technology in society. We are used to paying pizza on the door with a card reader, fill out taxes and pay them online or through an SMS message. Tax info is automatically collected and filled out so you only need to verify it. Many super markets use LCD displays to update prices across the aisles and people frequently do self checkouts. While things like certainly exists in pockets in the US, it is surprisingly common how manual many tasks are done, and how much paperwork is involved in both private and public sector. Visit a hospital in the US and you have to fill in all sorts of papers. Need a subscription, more papers. And then they got to count the pills. In Norway subscriptions are sent electronically from your doctor to all pharmacies. I can request a new prescription from an iOS app. I suspect a lot of this comes down to that there is no interest in America to improve society as such. One only things in terms of business which can make money and not in terms of how can government be modernized and work better towards it citizens. But in America there is zero faith in government. However that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. How can you expect quality government if you have already decided government is inherently bad? I wish it was different because I really want to live in the US. I hate Norwegian darkness and climate. I also enjoy how much more sociable Americans are. But values of American society is very hard to accept or stay indifferent to.