What's wrong with America?

NICK VENTER - stuff.co.nz - 27/03/2012

PHIL REID/Fairfax NZ

Thomas Friedman connects the dots and spots a difference in New Zealand politics.

In the summer of 2010, Thomas Friedman sat down for breakfast with a friend at his favourite Minneapolis restaurant. He ordered three buttermilk pancakes with scrambled eggs. His friend ordered three buttermilk pancakes with fruit. When the waitress put down his friend's plate and said "I gave you extra fruit", Friedman and his friend gave her a 50 per cent tip.

Why? Because she had found a way to distinguish herself from her competition and had furnished Friedman with an anecdote for his latest book, 'That Used to Be Us': What Went Wrong With America - And How It Can Come Back.
"That waitress didn't control much," Friedman says sipping a cappuccino in Wellington, "but she controlled the fruit ladle, and that was her extra, that was her way of doing her extra thing."
It is the morning after Friedman has enthralled an audience of 1500 people in Wellington with a talk on the subject of 'That Used To Be Us', the United States' economic decline. Small and dapper, with a bushy, neatly groomed moustache, greying hair and brown eyes that miss nothing, he is gracious and helpful.
Full story at stuff.co.nz