Cool Older Brother or Crazy Drunk Uncle?

David Vickery writes:

So in a period of just six years America has transformed itself in the eyes of the creative class from the cool older brother who cound initiate you into what is new and exciting to the crazy drunk uncle, who you have to humor in order to minimize the damage he might cause.

The rest is here. Do you agree or disagree?

Comments

[Michele]

America is the Drunk Uncle. And Canada is quickly becoming its Drinking Buddy.

[Wendy]

The problem is the article tends to compare European cities to America as a country. America has some "cool" cities too, it's just that if you don't have US citizenship, you have to survive the US immigration process to get to these cities.

Increasingly there is no reason for the best and brightest to bother.

What this article also doesn't mention is what companies these "creatives" are working for in London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Dublin, etc. Are these Dutch, German or Irish companies -- or Microsoft, eBay, Business Objects, Google, etc.

Are American companies (and global companies) simply locating workplaces where the talent is, globally.

American federal immigration policy (and that of many countries) is a "drunk uncle" that you must tolerate. Meanwhile, certain world cities are the cool older brother whom you want to hang out with.

[Richard]

Trust me: after the fiasco we had yesterday trying to get an health insurance card and driver's license at "Service Ontario" (we spent the day there, running different documents back and forth and ended up with neither), Canadian cities share a modicum of these problems. Though I would add that dealing with the work permitting and customs processes with the feds was a breeze.