A bit of pride

Occasionally, it is tough being an American here. And one of the big reasons is because we have such a small representation in this school. I believe there are roughly 5 of us, perhaps as many as 3 more…but that’s it. Compared to the rest of the world we have some of the smallest representation here (there is one kid from Iceland though…and only one from Scotland…so it’s a touch worse for them).

However, what really makes it tough…is that everyone knows America and what we do. Let me rephrase that…everyone thinks they know America and what we do. Sometimes they are spot on the money (perfect saying for describing this situation) and sometimes they are way off base.

Here is a silly example before I get to the meat of my post. We’ll get into discussions about the foods we miss…and often people think I really miss pizza. Yeah, I miss pizza sure…but not as much as other foods. But when they say “pizza”, they mean Domino’s. Yeah…Domino’s…some of the crappiest most synthetic garbage pizza ever made. It seems that most other countries think of America as a giant world of chain restaurants. I could talk about Blondies…but they wouldn’t get it. They struggle with that concept. Strange!

Anyway…back to the matter at hand. I’ve got some people in my class that really irritate me. If I was to make a list of things here that I honestly have issue with, they are number one. It’s two groups of nationalities that have large representations and are just loud in class. Whatever…fine. Be idiots. Just don’t be idiots around me.

Since they do have large representations in class they tend to have strong national pride. Good for them! One should be proud of ones country. But, being an American, and being me, I have pride as well. But since I am such a small percentage of the student body it’s harder for me to brag. You know what I mean?

So today, in Economics, we started working on Macroeconomics. The teacher explained Inflation, Unemployment, GPD and Balance of Trade. After lecturing a bit he came to Balance of Trade, and started listing on the board the different countries represented in the class and their trade surplus or deficit. This quickly became a source of pride for the various nationalities (even though they didn’t quite understand what was going on, or the meaning of the term…but I digress).

The two groups respective trade deficit/surplus was listed…and there was much “yay for us” going on. Then the teacher wrote the figures for the US. We are running very high (obviously). The UK, the 3^rd highest deficit is ~44 billion. Spain, number two, is ~70 billion. The US…gasp…~720 billion. This got a lot of laughs and “US is going DOWN” and other things that annoyed me.

The teacher laughed…and explained further. You see, if other countries slow down or stop buying US Treasury notes, the US will no longer be able to pay off that trade deficit…and we will have to cut back on imports. If we cut back on imports…being the worlds largest importer of goods…those countries we import from will suffer terribly. That quieted them down.

Then…the kicker. The world GDP is roughly 35 trillion dollars. America’s GDP is roughly 13 trillion dollars. That’s nearly 1/3 folks. The next closest two are Japan and Germany at roughly 4 billion each.

Silence.

And then, a single hand raises.

As a joke he says, “So does that mean the US owns the world?”

Laughter

And the teachers response…

“Pretty much.”

Silence.

I love my country.