More accurately, we're #1 at being last. One look at our passenger rail
service will tell you everything.
Let's roll back about 55 years, when Detroit was screaming that Americans
would never accept compact cars. So they came up the Pinto, the world's best
known mobile crematorium. Ten year later Japanese compacts were selling like
hotcakes and Detroit was in the toilet. They still are.
>
>I lived in Switzerland in the early 1980s, and I was astounded that, upon
>opening a bank account, I was issued a card with a chip in it that worked
>essentially everywhere! I could insert it to buy groceries, ride public
>transportation, even to pay my rent with a private landlord. Credit cards
>were almost unheard of; people just used their bank cards.
>
>Here in Canada, we regularly "tap" for just about everything. I went into
>a Starbucks for a coffee in the US, and the reader said I could tap, so I
>tapped my Canadian credit card. The person working the till said I had to
>insert it, even as it began to spit out my receipt. He asked me if I could
>wait a minute, then excitedly called co-workers and his manager over to
>look at my credit card. None of them had ever seen a "tap" before.
>
>The US is definitely #1 at thinking they are #1.
>
Chris
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
- Hunter S. Thompson
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