Before I came to Taiwan
America is a sad country full of people who have an undeserved sense of entitlement. The result is our economic recession. How can we have unions in the auto industry "protecting" our uneducated factory workers and their $70K+ a year salaries while a fresh engineering graduate in Japan may make $30k. How can Ford afford to pay so much more and expect to produce the same quality product when our employees will be gone right at 40 hours a week while 40 hrs a week to those same Japanese workers sounds like a holiday. How can the CEO of a company claim a 7 figure salary while the company is not able to earn a profit? I had heard about people working to death in Taiwan and Japan fairly often, but not so much in the US. Why? Too lazy to work to death?
What's more we are far too dependent on credit, especially empty credit. I know plenty of personal examples. What happens when bills come due? Despite learning about the roaring 20's and America's entrance into the great depression, we never really learn.
America thinks they're on top. Wrong. European and Asian fashions are far more trendy. We've been looking up to Japanese technology for the past several years. What do we have? A better economy, well how long can that last with the above mentioned comments? Population power? Not with China and India. If America is number one, they are too fat and dumb to stay there for long and I'm thinking we're not actually number one at all.
After living in Taiwan for four months
I'm proud to be an American. I am proud to be an American. Yes the above comments remain true, but our own arrogance is double sided. We have an over-sized ego and an undeserved sense of entitlement. This drives us to only accept the best, to push ourselves and demand high quality. Even our cheap merchandise is high quality. I'm in Taiwan and when you buy something cheap here... well you better not be attached to it. If you want something good, you can definitely get it, but be prepared to pay as much as, or perhaps more than you would have if you were still in the US (with exceptions of course).
Even as I'm visiting friends and examining lifestyles of some of the more wealthy here in Taiwan, I'm left with a great sense of American pride. Looking at things like how buildings had been built, yea those uneducated workers in the US are doing a much better job than the ones here. Our final products (I'm specifically talking about buildings here) have a different style and, while I prefer the Asian one, it's obvious which has a higher quality.
What about the working conditions? Well, I have Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese friends and I have been exposed to a lot of different opinions towards work. Americans are among the hardest workers in the world. That doesn't mean they spend 100 hours a week working. But perhaps in 40 hours they used more effort than others did in twice that time.
In the West we're more focused on outcomes. Here they are focused on "how hard did you work." Well the most common measure of effort is time. We don't usually say, I burned 10,000 calories working on that report. No, we say I spent all night from 8pm till 7am this morning. We use time, even in the US. But I don't care how long you spent on your report. I care about the content. In the US the focus is on the end product and this is how our hard work is judged. In Asia the focus is more along the duration of work spent and this determines whether or not you are a hard worker.
I want the world to know that I was, and continue to be, a big critic of the US. Despite that I am proud to say that I am an American and I have faith in the future of the US. Can we be number 1 forever, of course not. Maybe we aren't even number 1 right now, but that's not to say we don't have potential.
Even as I'm visiting friends and examining lifestyles of some of the more wealthy here in Taiwan, I'm left with a great sense of American pride. Looking at things like how buildings had been built, yea those uneducated workers in the US are doing a much better job than the ones here. Our final products (I'm specifically talking about buildings here) have a different style and, while I prefer the Asian one, it's obvious which has a higher quality.
What about the working conditions? Well, I have Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese friends and I have been exposed to a lot of different opinions towards work. Americans are among the hardest workers in the world. That doesn't mean they spend 100 hours a week working. But perhaps in 40 hours they used more effort than others did in twice that time.
In the West we're more focused on outcomes. Here they are focused on "how hard did you work." Well the most common measure of effort is time. We don't usually say, I burned 10,000 calories working on that report. No, we say I spent all night from 8pm till 7am this morning. We use time, even in the US. But I don't care how long you spent on your report. I care about the content. In the US the focus is on the end product and this is how our hard work is judged. In Asia the focus is more along the duration of work spent and this determines whether or not you are a hard worker.
I want the world to know that I was, and continue to be, a big critic of the US. Despite that I am proud to say that I am an American and I have faith in the future of the US. Can we be number 1 forever, of course not. Maybe we aren't even number 1 right now, but that's not to say we don't have potential.
