En skillnad mellan Amerikaner och Européer?

Amerikanska barn deltar i något som kallas Little League. Det är baseball. I en artikel som diskuterar effekten av tidigt deltagande i sportaktivieter för prognosen i arbetslivet kallad, Little League, Hugh Effects konkluderas bl.a. det följande:

"A recent scholarly paper by economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser of Harvard University and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth College found that countries tend to build large welfare states when citizens believe that success in life is largely determined by luck. When citizens believe that hard work determines success, they tend to build leaner and more economically efficient governments.

Americans are remarkably different from Europeans in this regard. If you ask Americans whether the economically disadvantaged are poor because they are lazy or unlucky, 60 percent say lazy. If you ask Europeans, only 26 percent finger laziness. Alesina and his colleagues argue that these attitudes shape society by shaping governmental and social institutions."

Det heter ju att det i den trans-Atlantiska relationen är det mer som förenar än som skiljer oss åt. Det sagda kanske ändå är värt att tänka på?