Plunging Dollar Makes US a Bargain Destination for Others

When any country's balance of payments is so out of balance that one end of the economic seesaw seems mired in the muck, imports are expensive and makes travel to other countries expensive. The plunging dollar has put all but the most well-off American travelers in the unaccustomed situation of having fewer affordable options. On the other hand, the US is now a very, very attractive travel destination for many foreigners -- except, of course, for the visa hassles they have to endure just to be allowed to come and spend their money here.

Yet visiting the US is such a fantastic bargain for Canadians, South Americans, Brits, Germans and other western Europeans and the growing class of wealthy Russians, Poles and assorted others from once-Communist eastern Europe that they are putting up with US red tape and coming here in record droves. People from some of the places have traditionally visited the US, but some are new.

My observation is not statistical but empirical. We are at Snowmass near Aspen now (which we can only afford at the highest of high seasons because we have friends who had the foresight to build a house here in the 1970s). On chairlifts and in liftlines, on the street and in stores, we hear a variety of languages. We stopped to chat with a veteran Aspen Realtor (a longtime friend of our host) who told us that real estate sales in the Roaring Fork Valley -- a high-rent district if ever there was one -- have finally tapered off, except for foreign buyers.

I love the internationalism. I like it when others can come here and see our beautiful land and get to know Americans other than through newspaper headlines and television news reports. But I regret the fact that many middle-class Americans, financially squeezed now in so many ways, will no longer find foreign travel affordable or even feasible.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime," wrote Mark Twain in Innocents Abroad. It is gratifying that thousands of others are able to experience our little corner of the earth but sad that due to the declining dollar, many Americans are stuck in it.