Measuring the Quality of Life in the U.S.: Political Reflections

Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 7, No. 4, pg. .

Jacob Hacker

A review of The Measure of America: American Human Development Report, 2008-2009, by Sarah Burd-Sharps, Kristen Lewis, and Eduardo Borges Martins. Reports from abroad on the American condition have a special place in the canon of social commentary. There is Lord Bryce's American Commonwealth (1888), Gunnar Myrdal's American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944), Werner Sombart's Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (1906) and, of course—the standard setter—Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America in 1835. What makes these works touchstones is not just the quality of the analysis or the fame of their authors but the privileged status they have come to enjoy as works of external reflection and criticism. For a people prone to ignore the rest of the world or see abroad only a mirror image of themselves, Americans have always had a surprisingly soft spot for the foreign observer willing to discourse on what makes their nation unique.

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