Paper assets are fairly unimportant. Most of the amassed wealth of individuals is in the form of real estate or portfolios. In other words, effective control over most of their holdings is exercised by others. Even the business about interlocking directorates, a favorite socialist wheeze, is mainly a crock. Anyone who knows corporate culture knows that boards largely defer to management, that the very fact of sitting on more than one board, in addition to one's regular job, means one has little time to meddle, and that only when the chairman is CEO is there much import to board composition, largely to ensure that the CEO has a free hand. Even then, the president or executive vice president is likely to run day to day operations, as COO.
Thus, nominal ownership through stock has virtually no meaning, except that one can trade the stock for cash, or realize occasional dividends. The underlying enterprises go on, directed by management, and responsive to the marketplace. As it happens, in the United States, the largest investors are not individual anyway, but institutional (pension plans, insurance companies, colleges and universities), and therefore most people are benefiting from capital investment directly or indirectly.
I do not consider the UK socialist, although it is closer to that than the States. And it is too complicated to try to compare amenities point for point. I have not yet been to Britain, so I cannot speak from personal experience. I have been to France, and I can say that, lovely as Paris is, in many ways, an American constantly bumps his shins against the lower standard of living, the tendency to protect producers at the expense of consumers, the standard of budget accommodations making a Day's Inn look opulent, the inability to find a decent supermarket, the queer problem with ice (plenty for chilling wine, practically none for my "iced tea"), and so forth. I have known two groups that have had events in England in the last year, and they had major problems with food or lodging at some point in their stays, so I suspect there are similar problems.
You mention litter in the parks. In Washington, that has never been a major problem, certainly not in the main park areas. Even in New York, in Central Park, it is a lot cleaner than it was 10 years ago, due to Guiliani. In the last year, in Annapolis, I have not happened to encounter a toddler throwing a tantrum. I have looked at the statistics: yes, they have a much lower murder rate, but for some kinds of crime, such a burglary, they have a higher rate. Granted, I would rather be robbed than shot, still, they are not completely well- behaved.
A long while back, I escorted a French couple around Washington, as a favor to a friend. The wife, who had good English, raved about how much "freer" everything was in America. I was inclined to blow it off as a vacation illusion, until we met a woman who had immigrated from France several years before, and opened a boutique. She also had that sense of America as a place that was free in its very atmosphere. When I went to France, I could feel why that might be.
It is possible that social order is better preserved in a country with more "Etatisme". But perhaps personal freedom is not. And, in that case, those with a taste for "free air" will thrive better in the States....... |
