Regarding your first point: I’m in the US, and in my previous job I did get five full weeks of vacation a year. But I had been working in the same company for more than ten years to get to that level of seniority. I know that I was definitely the exception. I took advantage of it, and did a lot of travelling. Now I’m at a new job and I only have three weeks vacation, because I’m starting at the bottom again, seniority-wise.
I do agree that going to Canada or Mexio ‘counts’ (especially if it’s not Cancun). But my impression was that far more Europeans travel out of Europe than USians travel out of the USA?
pdts
I grew up in east Tennessee in the US. There are only two foreign countries within 1000 miles of my hometown - Canada and The Bahamas.
For someone growing up in Frankfort , Germany there are about 33 foreign countries within that same 1000 mile radius.
Not hard to see how proximity would make a huge difference to the frequency of international travel.
Yes, I agree with your point. Comparing the US to any EU country is not a good match. However, how do you account for Canadians having about double the % of passport holders as the US? Same distance issue. And what about Australians - there seems to be a culture of travel there - and every destination is far for them, too. And they cannot drive to any other country, either - it always involves airfare.
I want to thank everyone for the interesting perspectives. I see better now how economic status will have a big impact on deciding to get a passport, not just political lean. I think availability of vacation time is also a big factor. The point above about being a poor backpacker but having a safety net is important as well.
Prices of goods in the U.S. are cheaper, sometimes far, far, cheaper, even for identical goods than in Canada, especially when the Canadian dollar is at par with the U.S. dollar or above it, instead of the 85 to 90 cents it used to be, from food staples and clothes to tens of thousands of dollars less for luxury cars, even with any conversions that may have to be made to them before they’re legal to drive here, any loss of new-car warranties that are dismissed because of the cash saved and paying the federal and provincial sales taxes. (The same model car made in Ontario is cheaper to buy in the U.S. than in Canada.)
The value of goods we bring back without having to pay duty recently doubled I think, or close to it (I’m too sleepy to look it up), depending on the time spent in the U.S.
While I think this is a perfectly logical, reasonable answer, I have a feeling that many will reject it out of hand, preferring to believe that the discrepancy in the percentage of Canadians with passports VS Americans with passports is more likely due to the well known fact that all Canadians are open-minded, intrepid travelers at heart, brimming with insatiable curiosity about the world at large and the multitude of wonderful, exotic cultures that are just waiting to be explored and celebrated, while Americans are insular, fear-mongering xenophobes, preferring to stay home and watch their teevee sets and fondle their machine guns, while swilling vile, watered down “beer” that is so devoid of taste and flavor that a dehydrated Dutchman on death row would refuse to drink a frosty cold one.
That and the price of a bag of chips.
Canada doesn’t have the same distance issues. The overwhelming majority of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border.
And they say Americans are defensive…
Besides, machine guns are prohibitively expensive in today’s economy. They eat ammo like it’s going out of style. Most of us settle for a pair of revolvers and a double-barrel shotgun.
My 76 year old Republican mother travels all over the world along with her 79 year old Democrat bf. Quite often with other family members who are a mix of Democrats and Republicans.
I think that being Democrat or Republican has nothing to do with it, it comes from being retired and having the money and time to travel. As well as their health.
I get dizzy looking at the pics of my mother (then 68) and her aunt (80+) hang gliding or para sailing or whatever you call it in the Alps. So she isn’t some Republican staying in 5 star hotels and eating at the best restaurants. Although she was a bit put out in Greece when the pack donkeys loaded with luggage were brought into the hotel lobby.
Sometimes they go with a travel group, so yeah all the Americans are hanging out together, sometimes they go with family, sometimes it’s just the two of them.
I don’t get all this Democrat vs. Republican stuff. I know rich Democrats and poor Democrats and black Democrats and white Democrats and rich Republicans and poor Republicans and black Republicans and white Republicans, and some of them are religious and some of them aren’t, some of them are educated and some of them aren’t. Some of the Dems used to be Pubs and some of the Pubs used to be Dems. Most of them are so sick of politics they just want the damn election to be over so they don’t have to hear about it anymore.
I couldn’t tell you the political affiliation of most of my friends anymore than I could tell you their religion or economic status or even if they do or don’t own a gun.
Isn’t it possible that regularly or extensively traveling abroad tends to make a person more liberal, being ignorance-fighting and all that?
I seriously don’t get this assumption that business travellers are more likely to be Republican. Care to explain that further?
Because in my experience Democrats like making money just as much as Republicans, and they’re more willing to experience a different culture in pursuit of that goal.
Well, that assumes that you have to be ignorant to be conservative, which isn’t necessarily the case. That also assumes that there is a necessary correlation between being liberal or conservative and being either Democrat or Republican, which there isn’t.
Can’t get away with that dodge in Canada.
If you’re politically conservative, you’re Conservative. If you’re liberal, you’re Liberal. If you’re even more liberal, you’re of the New Democratic Party, or NDP, persuasion.
Unless, of course, you’re the erstwhile Liberal premier of Quebec, which means you’re a true blue Mulroney cash-in-the-bag Conservative, or a Liberal voter in Quebec, which means you’re a Conservative who has to vote Liberal because the only option would be to vote for the separatists.
If you’re a conservative in B.C. you have to vote Liberal because the Socreds, meaning the Social Credit Party, which contrary to its name was everything but social and liberal, was wiped out decades ago and the only alternative would be to vote NDP or demand recalls of Liberal politicians you helped vote into office, because now they aren’t conservative enough.
Alberta is conservative, Conservative and CONSERVATIVE. Federally, though, it’s CONSERVATIVE. So you vote Conservative or you’re a satan worshipper, and no amount of lamb’s blood over the door would protect you from the vengeance of Yaweh and the latest oil company to be bought out by China. Unless you’re in Edmonton and vote NDP, but that never counts, least of all in the legislature.
The idea of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans would be anathema here. We like our politics clear cut, thank you very much.
Really? It’s pretty standard in the software industry to offer 15 days/year, and then 1 day/year extra for the next 5 years of employment. So that’s 4 weeks after achieving a modest level of seniority. That doesn’t count holidays, of course. It’s still not on par with most European nations, but it’s certainly enough for a decent international vacation.
Could we please get this straight? Yes, on average Republicans tend to be noticeably richer than Democrats. Here are the statistics:
There’s really no dispute among demographers about this. Notice that the pattern is slightly more complicated for education. If you look just at the people who are at a given income level, there is a smaller tendency for people with more education (with one exception) to be Democrats than to be Republicans. It looks to me like they split the population up into five equal groups. In each income group, people with just a high school education tended to be more Republican than those with some college (but not a degre), who were more Republican than those with a college degree but no graduate degree, who were more Republican than those with a graduate degree. The one exception is that people with no high school degree in any income group tended to be more Democratic than those with a high school degree.
I have no idea how much this affects owning a passport. I don’t know of any surveys that have been made of whether people owning a passport are more likely to be Democrats or Republicans. On the other hand, many surveys have been made of how income and education affect one’s party choice, and they all agree on the statements made in the link above.
I know a lot of Americans with more than 20 days of leave per year. It takes working for a good company (or agovernment agency) and generally it’s necessary to work there for a while before you get that much leave, but it’s certainly not that rare.
That’s true. In my previous job I had worked there long enough to get 25 days of vacation a year. But then I got layed off.
I had the same responses in these boards, even though I hadn’t even said I couldn’t find the stuff I was looking for in all of the US; I’d said I couldn’t find it in the supermarket and that some of it I was able to find elsewhere. The stuff I couldn’t find in the supermarket, according to my respondents I hadn’t looked correctly; the stuff I couldn’t find at all, I hadn’t looked in the right stores. Note that even the people sending me to little stores in specific parts of town did not admit that this item which gets sold by the box-of-cans in Spain might be somewhat of a specialty item in the US: if I hadn’t found it, it was because I don’t know how to look for things.