Last night I met a well spoken, young, energetic Egyptian, working as a taxi driver in New York. He’s looking for where to move next since, he said, “America is going nowhere. It is broken. I need to find someplace that works.”

Apparently the dream of Coming To America has had a rude awakening.

Clearly his experiences are subjective, and he is probably exposed daily to some of the uglier sides of the New York underbelly I am blissfully unaware of. Still, his rational, matter-of-fact indictment gave me pause.

Like me, he had lived for years in Germany, first as as student, then as a worker. “Europeans are different. They are more mature. They realize you need a system. They plan ahead. They respect rules that work. America is just about who’s got the most money, or power.” Although I have vivid memories and current opinions about the pluses and minuses of what can sometimes be Europe’s stifling bureaucracy and roadblocks to change–I understood what he meant.

But he didn’t stop there. His disappointment ran deeper. “Something has changed,” he sadly recounted. “In the last two years it has gotten much worse, people have gotten lazy. It’s like they don’t think they have to do anything to be involved, to fix anything. Everything is just taken for granted.”

“Now I’m looking for somewhere better to go.”

As I got out of the cab, I was remembering how excited I was when I finally came back to the States after my years abroad–how a part of me felt quite strongly that I wanted to raise my children in “the land of the free.” How I felt that ultimately, there was no better place to be.

Even with my defensive skepticism working hard to undermine his perhaps overtly biased viewpoint, my train ride home wasn’t as peaceful as I remembered it used to be.