Perpetuating the American dream

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on this blog (over 5 years, in fact). Since then my own life’s journey has been very interesting and I’m quite content … but the world has changed a lot.

After periodic stints working in the USA, I’ve been back at home in Canada lately, which gives me an opportunity to observe America from the outside. For Canadians, witnessing what’s happening south of the border is akin to watching the once-stable home life of your beloved cousins gradually slide into chaos.   

As you can imagine, that can be pretty tough. So, let me try to explain why we care so much.

A friend who was visiting from Chicago recently said to me that Canada seems to follow the Western European model, which I thought was rather perceptive. In some ways, these days we do indeed have more in common with nations like Germany, France and Great Britain than we do with America.

Nevertheless, because of our shared language and history, as well as our close geographic proximity, our exposure to American culture is unparalleled anywhere else.

Although American entertainment is distributed worldwide, we grow up here with ubiquitous access to American TV, music, films and so on.  As a result, unlike much of the world, Canadians tend to have a natural affinity for the United States. We shop there, vacation there, work there and sometimes emigrate there.

However, there is something that Americans do not quite understand about those people from other Western countries who live and work in the States. It’s that we choose to live there, not because we have to, but because we want to. We’re not refugees and we can go home anytime that we want to … yet we often choose to remain in America, simply because we like it.

When people from elsewhere come to Canada or the U.S., they tend to bring with them skills that are in demand.  From migrant workers, to doctors and nurses, to high-tech professionals, the immigrants fill real voids that need to be addressed. Thus, for example, companies in Silicon Valley that can’t bring in software engineers from India will be at a disadvantage to their competitors in countries that welcome those immigrants. 

Likewise, a foreign company that is discouraged from selling its goods in American will just find another market. Meanwhile, consumers abroad who face barriers to buying American goods will just buy those goods from someone else. Thus, to paraphrase a popular saying, this is not your grandfather’s global economy.

Nobody depends on any one source for anything anymore and very few countries are limited in who else they trade with.

So, if we can’t compete, then we lose out to the competition … period, end of story. Because that’s how the world works now, despite the fervent desire of some people to turn back the clock. Canada gets that. Western Europe gets it. So do Australia, New Zealand and most of Asia.

Sure, there are “populist” movements popping up all over the place, but they’re just stalling for time, in the face of the inevitable. After all, globalization is, by definition … well, “global”.

This means that markets can find their own natural course, just like water flowing down a mountainside after a rainfall. This is free-market economics at its finest and it encompasses almost everyone, no matter what their political system. That’s why China and America are the world’s top two economies, despite the vast differences in their political systems.

It hasn’t always been this way, though. I can remember a time when Italy was perpetually flailing in instability, because it seemed like the country could never elect a stable government. Other Western democracies had their post-war growing pains too, but eventually they all flourished and even the Italian system stabilized.

Italy’s Red Brigade came and went, just like the Badder-Meinhof gang in Germany.  Free market economics gradually spread, first all over Western Europe and then to the whole world, until even unlikely places like Vietnam embraced it.          

     

So, the current wave of populism will eventually pass, but the global economy is here to stay. Any country that ignores that and isolates itself will simply be left behind.  Please don’t be left behind, America.

We love you and we want you to prosper. Remember your roots. Remember what made America great in the first place. It wasn’t any one political party or set of beliefs. It was the freedom of expression, the diversity of a land built on the sweat of immigrants and a common belief in the all-inclusive American dream.

Don’t worry, you may have lost your way, but we’ll wait for you. Use your GPS and get back on track. There’ll be a cold beer and some snacks waiting for you when you arrive.