It would have been a continent and a whatever Central America was when I was in school but the younguns nowadays tell me that Central America is included in North America now. And most of South America seems to think that North and South America are all one continent. If we went with that we could make a really long transcontinental path.
Continents are inherently arbitrary and have always been so. We divide north and south America by an impenetrable jungle that even drug smugglers cross by boat. Similarly, for the last few hundred years Europe doesn't think that they can get past the Turks.
Someone show this pale blue dot to Isreal, Palestine, Russia, and Ukraine, stat! /s
All I'm saying is, if we're comparing data we gotta at least keep the confounding variables consistent. Not that it matters, it's literally a bean meme lol.
Counterpoint: all countries in the European case are in the Schengen area, and you can make the entire journey without ever having to take your passport out of your pocket. The same cannot be said in the American case.
The EU is not at all equivalent to the USA. The US federal government has a looot more power than the EU and the states a lot less autonomy than EU countries. Also, culture is more homogeneous across the US than across the EU.
But the main reason the US can't handle the same stuff at a federal level that the EU can is population density. The US government can't afford to nationalize rural healthcare given how rural the US can be--especially with their debt/GDP at the moment. Give it another few hundred years and the US might catch up to Europe in that respect.
That's fascinating, and I agree with you. Why the US hates the idea of high-speed rail is beyond me, especially because they prided themselves so much on the rail system they put together earlier in their development. In any case, the US can't do much of anything with its debt-to-GDP as high as it is right now. They can hardly keep from shutting the government down entirely because they won't even agree to a government budget.
People have certainly done it. You can ship a vehicle around the Darien gap. Or potentially sell one car and buy another one (probably pay some customs duties).
No they don’t. It’s super far. If one did it would be to move but without paying for a moving service or for some very long road trip like an entire summer
If we're staying on land within the Schengen Area, from the sea in southwest Portugal, all the way to just before the Estonian-Russian border at Narva is 2 days. And it's Schengen the whole way there, so no border checks anywhere on the way.