> a multi-national company that frequently flew people to the United States HQ offices...
> The people that I see day to day are generally extremely fit. (Or is it just students?)
To be fair to your guests, replace "students" with "folks you'll tend to see around the HQ of a multinational / the places those offices tend to be located", and they hit the nail on the head.
The US is interesting because it's a HUUUUGE single market with political power distributed geographically rather than democratically. Have you spent much time in rural MS or WV? There really are huge swaths of the country that, very unfortunately, fit the "third world with cell phones" stereotype. Except actually without real cell phone coverage. And not quite third world because military bases and welfare dollars do a lot to prop up the floor.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that multinational corporate HQ campuses and their surrounding communities definitely aren't Real America (TM)(R).
> I guess what I'm trying to say is that multinational corporate HQ campuses and their surrounding communities definitely aren't Real America (TM)(R).
The company actually moved away from HCOL cities, so this wasn't NYC/SF/Seattle or whatever top-10 city you might be thinking of.
But your comment is precisely the type of Internet comments that create the pessimistic view of the United States: Everything positive is dismissed or downplayed or discounted, while everything negative is brought to the forefront and presented as the norm.
When the topic of the United States comes up, why are you so quick to bring up rural MS or West Virginia? Those locations are notable precisely because they're outliers, not because they're the norm.
You can build a picture of the US based on chunks of similar land area, or on chunks of similar population.
A huge amount of the land area of the US, if visited, very much supports "the pessimistic view of the US". But these are not the parts that most people will tend to visit.
If you focus on the areas where the majority of Americans actually live, you get a fairly different story.
That's not to say that either version is "The Truth About America". Both stories are interwoven and interconnected with each other, and very interdependent.
> or whatever top-10 city you might be thinking of.
I'm actually thinking of literally any metro area with over 2M people, or smaller communities totally dominated by highly educated workers (college towns like Urbana or corporate towns or Moline, for example)
> When the topic of the United States comes up, why are you so quick to bring up rural MS or West Virginia? Those locations are notable precisely because they're outliers, not because they're the norm.
> The people that I see day to day are generally extremely fit. (Or is it just students?)
To be fair to your guests, replace "students" with "folks you'll tend to see around the HQ of a multinational / the places those offices tend to be located", and they hit the nail on the head.
The US is interesting because it's a HUUUUGE single market with political power distributed geographically rather than democratically. Have you spent much time in rural MS or WV? There really are huge swaths of the country that, very unfortunately, fit the "third world with cell phones" stereotype. Except actually without real cell phone coverage. And not quite third world because military bases and welfare dollars do a lot to prop up the floor.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that multinational corporate HQ campuses and their surrounding communities definitely aren't Real America (TM)(R).