Living Simply

Based on some news accounts available on the Internet, about 13 million Americans visited Europe in 2006, about 4% of the population. If you take away business travelers and people who went more than once, the number of regular travelers is less than that.


Many people cannot afford the airfare or hotel rates (especially right now) or simply want a different kind of vacation. That's fine. I love beaches, too. The reason I cite the statistic is because I think we could learn a great deal more about different, less expensive and appealing approaches to daily living by actually witnessing how many Europeans live. While I am not advocating confiscatory income taxes or value-added taxes that are common in Europe, I do think that our quest for energy independence and a "greener" way to live starts by learning from people who have been doing it for far longer than we have. I know that many people will immediately shun this as emulating "socialism" but if we could suspend judgment and labels for just a few minutes we could take some ideas - cafeteria style - and make them as American as apple pie.

To start off, most Europeans live in dwellings considerably smaller than most Americans. Unless they are farmers, Europeans tend to live much closer to one another, at walkable distances to markets for fresh food and when they want to travel, they have invested in rail systems that will take you practically anywhere on the continent in far less time and far more efficiently than it would take to drive. They don't tend to tear down and throw away perfectly good buildings in favor of building 5,000 square foot houses where half the house is never used but has to be heated and cooled. They shop for food on a daily basis in many cases, often in farmer's markets, buying only what they need for a day or two instead of stockpiling food and other items as if the world were coming to an end.

The differences between rich and poor are far less stark. That does not necessarily mean that there are not super-rich people and very poor people but the homeless plague that exists in many American cities and towns is much less a problem in Europe than it is here. Their universal health care systems are not exactly what they are cracked up to be - long waits for elective surgery, etc. - but life expectancy is at or above what we have. On the other hand, their obesity rates are lower; their heart disease rates are lower.


I have no interest in copying everything Europeans do. There is a good case to be made that our brand of capitalism with a less generous social safety net does a better job at rewarding creativity and entrepreneurs that invent things that make life more pleasant. It is easier here to move from one economic stratum to another but the likelihood that most people of my generation will do better economically than their parents is pretty low.

If you get the chance to visit, give it a shot. I think most people will come away from the experience with a better sense of how to live well without landing in bankruptcy court or being perpetually dependent on nations that hate us to supply us with petroleum and credit.