Europe is crammed with people, including Americans, making up for lost time. I’m one of them, and like so many others, have doubled-up on trips. When you travel, because you are out of your own comfort zone, you are a lot more observant and open to ideas and different ways of doing things. You are struck by how similar people are everywhere in the world, but also the differences.

That goes not only for the people in these “foreign” countries, but fellow travelers from all points of the United States (travelers in general tend to be open-minded, open to experiences, so a couple from Oklahoma, a doctor and a nurse, made known they were not redneck MAGAs like the majority of their state when I met them on a three-week European trip).

A woman from Munich, Germany, who is more knowledgeable about America than most Americans because she reads The New York Times online, said: “Europeans look to America as a role model, a leader, a savior of democracy, but now that confidence is shaken.”

After hearing about the Buffalo massacre (one of three in a row, and before the May 24 massacre of 19 children and two teachers at Uvalde, Texas, and more than one mass shooting a day every day since) she said Germany doesn’t have 150 people die from guns a year (that is close to what America has each day and a record 45,000 in 2020).

A British man I travelled with on my bike tour from Bruges to Amsterdam said he had no interest in visiting the United States, once the destination highest on global travelers’ bucket list. ”I would not feel comfortable.”

A German woman from Dresden on the bike tour, as we passed the square in Berlin where Nazis burned books pulled from the national library, expressed horror hearing that a Tennessee lawmaker, advocating for banning books, said he wanted them burned.

I saw tremendous outpouring of support for Ukraine in Prague – Czechs clearly have a memory of being under the yoke of the Soviet Union and the Státní secret police of the Communist regime. There was less visible support in Germany, but in Dresden we came upon a refugee aid center and there had just been public demonstrations on what would be Victory Day (interesting, in Germany) when Putin was putting on his own major event hoping to highlight his victory over Ukraine; German authorities were said to have clamped down on demonstrations (we were told it was because of a condition for reunification of East and West Germany that authorities protect Soviet-era monuments). There was less outward display for Ukraine in Belgium and even less in Netherlands.

A conversation around the dinner table aboard the Princesse Royal cruise ship with the medical people from Oklahoma evolved into a discussion of health policy. My position is that because of medical advances being able to keep people alive over 100 years and because equity means that it can’t only be billionaires who can obtain such care (or afford to live so long), society will have to embrace wellness and prevention because society will have more of a stake in keeping people healthy to save money on care and treatment. Indeed, a recent World Health Organization report found that walking and cycling is good for health as well as climate.

And this figures into the importance of implementing Complete Streets concepts as we revitalize and rebuild our downtowns to promote biking and walking in safety, rebuilding bridges and roads with bike/recreational lanes, creating green and open spaces, using trees and building codes to promote cooling and address killing heat waves. (Great Neck missed its opportunity to rebuild Middle Neck Road instead of merely repaving this travesty of a roadway, and probably could have gotten state grants to pay for it.)

Europe, of course, has an astonishing, enviable infrastructure for biking – separate bike roads, paths, lanes that have their own route numbers, signage and traffic signals. In the Netherlands, it seems there are more bicycles than cars.

In Berlin, I saw an experimental self-drive public transportation vehicle and in Amsterdam, three EV-charging stations on a street. Wind turbines lined the route from Prague to Berlin, and from Bruges to Amsterdam.

In three weeks traveling through Europe, I saw tidy neighborhoods – even farm and rural communities were stunning. What I did not see was the poverty or squalor and the obvious massive income disparity you see in the United States.

One night, I wound up debating a “flat taxer” from Michigan who insisted that what this country needs is that everyone – absolutely everyone – pay a flat tax, with no deductions, because everyone should feel “invested” in the nation. I said that it was intrinsically unfair. Let’s say you set the “flat tax” of 10% on a family of four making $20,000. That $2,000 (which comes before the mandatory “flat tax” to pay for Medicare and Social Security), is serious money to a family struggling to pay for rent, food, clothes and transportation, but 10% for a billionaire would be like mad money and hardly missed.

And a flat tax on what? Billionaires already pay hardly any “income” tax (8% is average, half of what a teacher or firefighter pays), because they don’t earn income – they take out loans on anticipated appreciated value of their stock options, pay interest with new loans and get to deduct the interest. Yet they have the funds to buy $500 million super yachts, multiple mega-mansions, and politicians. So how would a flat tax solve the problem now that billionaires and the largest, most profitable corporations pay zero or next to zero in taxes, by taxing the sweat of a worker (who actually produces something) and not the wealth (trading stocks don’t produce a single job)?

In stead of an impractical, improbable “wealth tax,” my idea is to keep the progressive tax structure, but use a smarter, more practical Alternative Minimum Tax combined with a Value Added Tax on spending over a certain amount. Those billionaires may not earn “taxable income,” but they sure as hell spend millions they get from somewhere.

The lessons (even before what these places’ long history teaches): the arrogance (and folly) of American Exceptionalism, the shakiness of America’s global leadership and economic domination, and the fragility of democracy.