Question is, how did the US slide down below Russia and Romania? That's not a good sign.

What sort of question is that? Why do you assume that Russia and Romania should rank low in civic honesty?

In Eastern countries, officially things were "cooperative" centric, in reality, breadlines and such meant you looked out for number one.

That's extreme generalization and is not based on reality. I will assume the author never been to Eastern bloc. Breadlines are a thing of just end of 80's. So 5 years max of entire history of the region?

I find the culture was less individualistic. Now of course it shifted but still core values remain. And each part of the bloc has variations of course.

Lines for literal bread were only 80s thing to be sure, but general shortages of everything, bribing officials to be advanced in a queue to get apartment, or a car, or bribing shopkeepers to get dibs on building materials, or bribing doctors to get better care, or bribing nurses to get better rooms and beds, has been a constant throughout most of 20th century.

Russia and Romania, as compared to the US, are known for dishonesty in some other areas: corruption and bribery in the government, cheating in schools and universities, counterfeit goods, financial fraud, tax evasion, etc. So it might be surprising to see honesty when it comes to returning a lost wallet.

(I think the important difference might be "being dishonest to the system" vs. "being dishonest to a concrete individual in your community".)

“Known for” mostly stands for “western media paints them as”.

Romania is very different from Russia

Not sure this "slid" anywhere, selfishness was never a particularly unacceptable character trait culturally in the US...

You can have selfish people that don't share their winnings with others, but who are nonetheless decent and would return another's wallet.

I'd point out selfishness has different dimensions.

When Chinese people get egoism and selfish behavior pointed out (in contexts where this could happen to soneome of any ethnicity) frequently they'll tell you it is oriented around their family and not their "self". That is a circle of concern bigger than your "self" but can also be an extension of the self and certainly can draw people away from being supportive of the community.

That's a bit vague, though. On the one hand, there is most definitely a prioritization of love and concern (close family comes before extended family, and onward, all the way up to the entire human species according to principles of subsidiarity), so you have a moral obligation to prioritize those closer to you, all else remaining equal.

But you don't get to intentionally (undesirable side effects can be permissible) commit evil acts against people of less concern (like robbing your neighbor to send your kid to college) for the sake of people of greater concern (or vice versa, of course). That's how the mafia operates. It's analogous to the difference between patriotism (the healthy and obligatory love of and concern for one's own nation) and chauvinism (the idolatrous and narcissistic "love" of one's own nation coupled with contempt and condescension for other nations).

Honestly USA is seen as an individualistic country and by extension its citizens as selfish. Total opposite of Eastern European countries like Romania and Russia.

It is also a stereotype that doesn't fit most of the US, just like most stereotypes Americans have of Russia and Romania are wildly inaccurate.

On the contrary I think it fits most of the USA save for maybe the Southern States. As an Eastern European myself I'm interested in knowing excactly which stereotypes Americans hold. They might be mostly true as well.

The problem with measuring USA, China, Russia is that they are so large and diverse that you'll get very different results depending on where you are. It would be like saying "Europe". Apparently, they used the largest 5 cities in each country, which I suppose helps make for more comparable results. But for example in Texas I'd expect the results of San Antonio/Austin/Dallas to be significantly different (they are culturally) even though they are only separated by only a few hundred km.

However, I can say in the US one of the biggest differences is just rural vs urban. The likelihood of things disappearing in cities vs towns is higher, I suspect because fewer people know each other. I'd also say that changes over time are fairly dramatic. Many people in the US didn't lock cars or homes until the 80s and 90s or even 00s.

> The problem with measuring USA, China, Russia is that they are so large and diverse that you'll get very different results depending on where you are. It would be like saying "Europe".

No it wouldn’t, not for the US. Europe has 50 different countries and 24 official languages. The US has two widespread languages and apparently has so little cultural variety that you can move across the country without any major culture shocks (at least I haven’t heard any).

It could sometimes make sense to, at a distance, talk about certain regions like a monolith, like for example Scandinavia. But it makes no sense to talk about Belgium and Greece in the same sentence.

> However, I can say in the US one of the biggest differences is just rural vs urban.

Interestingly people often generalize “Europe” based on what happens in the handful of 4 million+ cities.

Hmm, is this why there are subtitles on reality TV shows based in the south? Suburbia is fairly uniform, but not so much the urban or rural areas.

I would expect culture shock between NY and Dallas, Seattle and Atlanta, much less Salt Lake and Boston. I can get Cajun drawl, but not Southie without a fair bit (not quite Glasgow levels) of concentration.

> Hmm, is this why there are subtitles on reality TV shows based in the south?

There are (sometimes, rarely) subtitles on Norwegian TV for Norwegian dialects. Doesn’t make it diverse (homogeneous as Americans like to say).

You should visit. A dialect that millions of people speak separated by thousands of km, income, and livelihood is not equivalent to the language difference between Swiss Cantons, it's closer to the difference between Lombardi and Napoli. Just look at the driving, forget language.

At the same time, we're one of the most volunteering and charitable countries. But, I think civility is decreasing --be that due to economic conditions, mass pop culture or demographics.

I don't think it's 'charitable' when it involves a tax deduction. A lot of private enterprise takes place in 501c3 wrapping.

Perhaps you misunderstand the point of the charitable tax deduction then. Expenditures/investments made in society can easily sidestep the public good if we don’t find a way to tax them. But charitable money has the public good built in (enforced by the specific types of activities that can be registered as 501c3) so the tax is not necessary

Not a good sign for whom exactly?

Good sign for Russia and Romania, a bad trajectory for the US.

As a Romanian, I completely agree. The US does need a bit more civic spirit that can't be generated from market incentives -- it needs to be indoctrinated so to speak from a young age.

I would suspect that choosing five major cities in the US doesn't make for a representative sample, and you could end up with wildly different overall results depending on which five cities you chose.