Читать книгу Land of the Free - David A. Bedford - Страница 9

III. America the Unsustainable

According to what my parents told me as I grew up in Argentina, the US was a great place to shop. You could get all kinds of machines, clothes, shoes, gadgets for the kitchen, fabrics, and so on, all at reasonable prices. They were of course absolutely right about this. Argentina also had wares aplenty to offer, but many machines were expensive and not of the same quality available in the US. The people always complained about what was available, deploring its cost and quality. It was an article of faith there that anything foreign made had to be better than anything Industria Argentina, the label put on all Argentine manufactured goods as required by law.

When my family spent a furlough in the US in the early 60s, I was impressed by the quality, size, and comfort of the cars, the air conditioning available everywhere, and the entertainment on television. We returned to Argentina at a time when it had reached its highest economic level before or since, with a burgeoning middle class, traffic jams, and slick advertising. The quality of life for many people was not appreciably less than that of the US. Living space was smaller and so were the cars. The currency was not as strong or as stable as the dollar, but in general life was similar in most respects.