Is America Really That Bad?
Been seeing a lot about how the government passes shitty laws, lot of mass shootings and expensive asf health care. I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot. Are all states is America bad ?
America is a country with over 300 million people and it's bigger than Western Europe. There's going to be a lot of variance. Someone growing up wealthy in San Fransisco is going to live in a different America than someone growing up with a single waitress mother in Louisiana.
The average homicide rate in the US is 5 per 100,000. The town of Boca Raton, FL has a homicide rate of 1 (less than half of the European average of 2.5) and Baltimore / St Louis / New Orleans can sometimes reach 30+ on bad years (worse than some Brazilian and Mexican cities).
When you ask about the shitty laws, we have to remember that the US is almost like 50 different countries in one. Every single state you will have a different experience as well. In Illinois school districts kids in elementary school may take home school laptops free of charge. In Panhandle Florida the kids aren't getting that.
In Florida you can go to a one of the many kava bars or smoke shops and purchase a kilogram of kratom. If you drive through Louisiana with that kratom you can get charged with a felony comparable to being caught with heroin.
Do you get what I'm saying? There are many different Americas - even in the same geographical area. In SE Florida there are a wild mix of different ethnicities and cultures. There are Haitians, Jews, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, Vietnamese, Jamaicans..
You can live in the same city but have a totally different experience. The Brazilians may hang out with mainly other Brazilians and go to the Brazilian restaraunts / clubs / grocery stores and not ever go to the Jewish deli that all the Jews love as a staple of the town. It's like you walk around the same area and depending on the cultural lens you put on, you experience a different reality.
HAVING SAID ALL THAT
I think America is a good country to live in. Why? Because it's better than the vast majority of the world. You earn more money. You are safer. You have more opportunities and there's better infrastructure, healthcare, etc than in vast majority of the world.
Yes, there are serious problems. Wealth inequality is splitting the country in two. Healthcare is expensive. There's an opioid epidemic. We have high rates of gun violence. Etc etc
But having come from a relatively well-off third world country, I've seen the difference in QOL first hand and it's massive. America is a good place to live.
While this is obviously true, it's important to note that the US certainly isn't unique in this regard. Non-Americans often underestimate how diverse the US is. Americans often underestimate how diverse other countries are.
Of course variance in terms of culture, demographics, and industry in even small countries can be massive. My home city in Southern Brazil of almost 1 milliom population has less than 1% black population. Last time I visited for 2 weeks I didn't see a single black person. This surprises some people because of the perception of Brazil and the fact they imported more slaves than any other country in the America's.
So yes, I'm not claiming US is uniquely diverse. It's just unusually large so it has large amounts of diversity due to geographic distance and total population + historic & current immigration.
However what I was trying to say by 50 different countries is that the laws can vary wildly from state to state. It is something that isn't common in other countries. Of course there are other counties with strong federated systems where the provincial-level governments have strong autonomy (Germany and Switzerland come to mind) I think these types of countries are uncommon.
For example in Brazil no state regulates specific substances. That's a power for the federal government. So if you buy a substance that's legal in one state, you can safely bring it anywhere in Brazil. However in US this is not the case. I have the example of kratom, but Marijuana is another one.
This is what I was trying to say by 50 different countries. They aren't actually countries but in some ways they have just as much if not more autonomy than countries, besides of course foreign policy decisions. But look at California for example. It's economy is bigger than most countries in the world.
Off the top of my head and IRC:
Belgium (different languages, laws, educational systems, public broadcasters per language region, taxation, etc.)
UK (different laws in Scotland, different laws in Northern Ireland, education policy, etc.)
Spain (autonomous regions with their own languages, seperate civil law in Catalunya, tax collection in the Basque country, etc.)
Canada (IRC Quebec has a Napoleonic inspired civil law system, whereas the rest of Canada uses common law similar to that found in the US and UK. TLDR one legal system uses precedent, the other doesn't. )
China (the unofficial city tier system, Xinjiang, Tibet, etc.)
Russia (autonomous regions in the far east, Kadyrov/Chechnya: strict alcohol prohibition and possibly years in jail, etc.)
India (IRC autonomous administrative divisions can make their own laws, tribe/caste based laws/tribunals, Jammu and Kashmir which until quite recently had its own seperate consitution and for example Indians from other regions weren't allowed to buy land or property there.)
The problem is that as a foreigner, you're usually ignorant about all these things. Whether it's a Brit who thinks all Americans are Yankees, an American who thinks all Brits are English, a Scotsman who thinks Spanish and Castellano are synonymous, or a Spaniard who goes to Belgium expecting to speak French everywhere.
According to etymonline, Yankee has been used to refer to different sets of Americans by different people for hundreds of years.
The British calling someone from Texas a Yankee isn't really any more right or wrong than someone from Texas calling someone from Pennsylvania a Yankee. Words can have contextual meanings.
This, y'all. One of the things I think a lot of younger travelers fail to realize is that the US is not a meme. It's huge and full of people with thoughts, hopes, regrets etc. just like everyone else.
Maybe there are better places to live or visit, but the US is pretty easy and most folks I've met are genuinely nice when they realize you might need help.
Edit: try to avoid police and if you encounter them play that foreign visitor thing up or make your English really bad. A lot of them are former soldiers that served in the middle east. They default to a pretty aggressive demeanor because that's what we did to them. Your safety won't be a concern, but they can waste lot of your time.
Although I agree with most of your comment, saying your safety won't be a concern when dealing with the police is flat out wrong.
I think the main thing is that people often hear bad things about the US because they're comparing it to other developed countries. Like I wouldn't want to live there because I live in a different developed country, but I would take living in the US over a good 80% of other countries.
Umm....
Think of most of the world. We're talking Africa, India, China, Ukraine, Russia, Middle East, South America, etc.
Obviously Europe has a one-up on healthcare and infrastructure and probably China has a one-up on infrastructure... but generally speaking it is still a 1st world country.
Americans underestimate the rest of the world quite a bit huh?
I'm not American if you're trying to imply I don't know the names of most countries in the world.
It varies from person to person and place to place. But generally, I would say that America is a pretty good place, but not perfect and has a lot of room for improvement.
Yes, healthcare is expensive, but we have some government programs to provide cheaper care for certain groups, like the very poor, the elderly, and veterans.
Violence varies from place to place, but I feel like I live in a safe area, and I have never seen or heard a gun fired at someone in a public place.
A lot of the bad laws typically involve disenfranchising certain minority groups. I am lucky enough to not be affected by most of this, and a lot of people are fighting back against it by trying to vote in better politicians.
Feels weird you have to specify "at someone" and "in a public place". I've never heard a gun fired outside of firing ranges (EU)
Live in a suburban area. Several of my neighbors have 5+ acres of land. One of them has a makeshift range, so I hear someone shooting all the time, sometimes for hours on end day after day. I'm not thrilled by it.
Your neighbor must be rich.
Them being loaded in more ways than one doesn't make me feel any better about it. This coming from a gun owning liberal. I don't just go around shooting it off in my back yard several times a week.
This would cover things like hunting and/or target practice at a home or private property, so not entirely that weird.
American here. Lived in California most of my life just outside LA in suburbs. Ventura as well. Lived in Tennessee for 2 years and Idaho 2. I've seen people open carry a few times. I own a gun and I've never seen or heard a gun fired outside of a gun range. I'm 40 btw. It's not that bad here. It's big and there are a lot of people so the news has tons of opportunities to present the worst of humanity which makes up a small percentage.
There's also the fact that US media wants to show this bad stuff because it helps keep people afraid of the world around them and makes them easier to manipulate.
I live in a small city about an hour away from a major city. I'm also an hour away from what I would call the boonies -- rural, remote areas where owning guns and open carrying is normal. In fact, I've seen open carry around here, in the city, quite a bit. It's pretty normal around here.
I heard a shooting happen in the suburbs near my house when I was a kid. It's what's considered the "nice" part of town. An old woman walking her dog was killed. I heard the shot through my bedroom window. Only til I moved into the inner part of the city did I witness guns being shot in the city more often. Most of the times you hear pops, it's fireworks. A couple times, it's been guns. Those couple times are pretty freaky.
Every once in awhile I'll walk past a crime scene downtown, usually something happened like a stabbing the night before. One day I scrolled through reddit and saw a video -- a point-blank execution had occured outside the club down the road. That one was disturbing. I think the kid is going to jail for a long time.
The inner part of this particular city is not as safe as the suburbs, but for the most part you should be okay, as long as you're not looking to start trouble. When I'm walking around town, especially the immediate area I live, my eyes are open. At night, they're wide open.
America is harder to live in the poorer you are, and it’s on a steeper scale than in other industrialized nations because there are fewer and less robust social services, especially health and child care, and declines in union membership have paired with a rapid increase in wealth inequality that is forcing the shrinking middle class downward and stomping on the poor even harder.
You can live a comfortable life (for now…) if you are firmly middle class and up. Your higher salary than your counterparts in Europe is eaten away at by higher costs, and you deal with risks that they don’t in the form of transportation being car dominated (more accidents and less walking exercise) easy access to guns (the most dangerous being the one in your own home, to you) and less strict food safety laws. Compared to those in Eastern Europe, however, your likelihood of suffering from a foreign attack is drastically lower, not that it was ever very high to begin with.
One thing that Americans take pride in (and rightly, mind you) and full advantage of is our First Amendment right to not have our speech be curtailed, so a large amount of the bitching about America, and especially in English, is Americans bitching about America(ns). So there’s a cultural element to it that may or may not exceed the truth.
Absolutely.
J.J. McCullough did a really good video about this fact, I'd definitely recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCVQKD3jH2M&ab_channel=J.J.McCullough
Fantastic video. J.J. completely nails it on multiple topics.
I would also add that the capitalist class loves to promote the idea if America as the greatest nation on earth because that storyline benefits them. They've already won the game and are benefiting from our current system. They don't want it to change.
If we admit we have shortcomings--large gap in wealth equality, lack of accessible and affordible health services, piss poor public transportation, unaffordable child care paired with living costs so large 2 incomes are required, poor school funding, pervasive gun violence, and Policing that emphasizes violence, just to name a few-- then we are also acknowedging that we have to change things. Why would those who greatly benefit from our current system want change?
Why are there "removed" words in your comment?
I have heard lemmy.ml blocks curse words. My account is on lemmy.world and I see no removeds.
Quite ironic.
Poetic really. A meme is born.
You can't be serious. I am using lemmy.ml.
Can you see the word "bitch"?
If you're saying "the B word," then no, I can't.
The lemmy.ml server even rejected a post I attempted that addressed this:
I can't upload another photo, because Connect says that the image service is "down," but it rejects with "error: slurs"
Anyway, this is my last post here. It's been fun, lemmy.ml.
Not removed for me.
Maybe you have a potty mouth blocking Greasemonkey script or something.
Oh right, I had heard about that: there’s a filter. I’m not sure what instance it’s on and what words it filters, though.
I was using the verb version of a word for a female dog.
It's lemmy.ml and saying bitch is not allowed. I don't need a nanny instance.
And certainly not one where you can't even have a proper discussion about dogs.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
tl;dr It used to be a hell of a lot better.
As Kochevnik81 wrote 10 months ago:
I just wanted to speak a bit towards that website. I think that specifically what it is trying to argue (with extremely varying degrees of good arguments) is that all these social and economic changes can be traced back to the United States ending gold convertibility in 1971. I say the arguments are of extremely varying degrees because as has been pointed out here, some things like crime are trends that stretched back into the 1960s, some things like deregulation more properly start around the 1980s, and even something like inflation is complicated by the fact that it was already rising in the 1960s, and was drastically impacted by things like the 1973 and 1979 Oil Shocks.
The decision on August 15, 1971 is often referred to in this context as removing the US dollar from the gold standard, and that's true to a certain extent, but a very specific one. It was the end of the Bretton Woods system, which had been established in 1944, with 44 countries among the Allied powers being the original participants. This system essentially created a network of fixed exchange rates between currencies, with member currencies pegged to the dollar and allowed a 1% variation from those pegs. The US dollar in turn was pegged to $35 per gold ounce. At the time the US owned something like 80% of the world's gold reserves (today it's a little over 25%).
The mechanics of this system meant that other countries essentially were tying their monetary policies to US monetary policy (as well as exchange rate policy obviously, which often meant that US exports were privileged over other countries'). The very long and short is that domestic US government spending plus the high costs of the Vietnam War meant that the US massively increased the supply of dollars in this fixed system, which meant that for other countries, the US dollar was overvalued compared to its fixed price in gold. Since US dollars were convertible to gold, these other countries decided to cash out, meaning that the US gold reserves decreased basically by half in the decade leading up to 1971. This just wasn't sustainable - there were runs on the dollar as foreign exchange markets expected that eventually it would have to be devalued against gold.
This all meant that after two days of meeting with Treasury Secretary John Connally and Budget Director George Schultz (but noticeably not Secretary of State William Rogers nor Presidential Advisor Henry Kissinger), President Richard Nixon ordered a sweeping "New Economic Policy" on August 15, 1971, stating:
"“We must create more and better jobs; we must stop the rise in the cost of living [note: the domestic annual inflation rate had already risen from under 2% in the early 1960s to almost 6% in the late 1960s]; we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators.”"
To this effect, Nixon requested tax cuts, ordered a 90-day price and wage freeze, a 10% tariff on imports (which was to encourage US trading partners to revalue their own currencies to the favor of US exports), and a suspension on the convertibility of US dollars to gold. The impact was an international shock, but a group of G-10 countries agreed to new fixed exchange rates against a devalued dollar ($38 to the gold ounce) in the December 1971 Smithsonian Agreement. Speculators in forex markets however kept trying to push foreign currencies up to their upper limits against the dollar, and the US unilaterally devalued the dollar in February 1973 to $42 to the gold ounce. By later in the year, the major world currencies had moved to floating exchange rates, ie rates set by forex markets and not by pegs, and in October the (unrelated, but massively important) oil shock hit.
So what 1971 meant: it was the end of US dollar convertability to gold, ie the US "temporarily" suspended payments of gold to other countries that wanted to exchange their dollars for it. What it didn't mean: it wasn't the end of the gold standard for private US citizens, which had effectively ended in 1933 (and for good measure, the exchange of silver for US silver certificates had ended in the 1960s). It also wasn't really the end of the pegged rates of the Bretton Woods system, which hobbled on for almost two more years. It also wasn't the cause of inflation, which had been rising in the 1960s, and would be massively influenced by the 1970s energy crisis, which sadly needs less explaining in 2022 than it would have just a few years ago.
It also really doesn't have much to do with social factors like rising crime rates, or female participation in the workforce. And it deceptively doesn't really have anything to do with trends like the US trade deficit or increases in income disparity, where the changes more obviously happen around 1980.
Also, just to draw out the 1973 Oil Shock a little more - a lot of the trends around economic stagnation, price inflation, and falls in productivity really are from this, not the 1971-1973 forex devaluations, although as mentioned the strain and collapse of Bretton Woods meant that US exports were less competitive than they had been previously. But the post 1945 world economy had been predicated on being fueled by cheap oil, and this pretty much ended overnight in October 1973: even when adjusted for inflation, the price essentially immediately tripled that month, and then doubled again in 1979. The fact that the economies of the postwar industrial world had been built around this cheap oil essentially meant that without major changes, industrial economies were vastly more expensive in their output (ie, productivity massively suffered), and many of the changes to make industries competitive meant long term moves towards things like automation or relocating to countries with cheaper input costs, which hurt industrial areas in North America and Western Europe (the Eastern Bloc, with its fossil fuel subsidies to its heavy industries, avoided this until the 1990s, when it hit even faster and harder).
" I know the gold standard is not generally regarded as a good thing among mainstream economists,"
I just want to be clear here that no serious economist considers a gold standard a good thing. This is one of the few areas where there is near universal agreement among economists. The opinion of economists on the gold standard is effectively the equivalent of biologists' opinions on intelligent design.
Hey, thanks for the post. Interesting. I didn't even realize that the website was anti-going off the gold standard. I just really focused on the increasing wealth inequality and that bummed me out.
I have never had just pure data make me sad so quickly.
Jeez... What did happen? The Nixon Shock / Bretton Woods?
Nixon knocked over a few support pillars and then Regan came in with a wrecking ball and finished the job
This is why Trump should get elected so he can Make America Great Again, right guys?
But in all seriousness, I imagine it's a case of that America is nowhere near as good as some Americans make it out to be, but it's also not as terrible as the media make it out to be either. You can probably apply this to most of the Western World, really.
A lot of the ones that make it out to be greater than it is are just wishfully thinking. They imagine a place where they don't need to make any changes while everything else must conform to their ideals and bend for them. They imagine trump is the answer to this. They typically have the simplest of beliefs and solutions that would fail even the slightest scrutiny.
The US is also extremely huge geographically. Towns are different from each other, and states and just general locations can be different from each other. There is no one place you can say "is America". Hell, you can have a peaceful family friendly neighborhood, and the next street over could be a drugs and violence.
I agree the media absolutely makes it seem worse than it is. Especially with all the 24/7 news and fear mongering to grab attention.
You got me at first!! Hovering over that down arrow hahaha
No, despite what always online Europeans who have never visited will like to tell you. We're just very big and very vocal, so you hear about us all the time. Bad news spread faster then good news. Are you going to be reading news about how good our tap water is, our public restrooms always available, boring stuff like that? Probably not! But that's stuff you'll notice if you do actually visit. We also are much more friendly and welcoming then other countries. We're also tend to be less racist because we vocally talk about our racial problems rather then sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. I'm sure I'll get downvoted by some people who don't like to hear that, but they won't be able to refute.
Edit: Why is everything America related online swarmed with Europeans trying to shit on it. It's so exhausting and extremely pretentious. No wonder people have a distorted view of it online.
Our tap water is in crisis. What hasn’t been privatized is either being operated with outdated technology, or being polluted, and EPA protections are being weakened by the Supreme Court.
And, in most of America there aren’t freely available public restrooms. They are all located in businesses that will outright deny you access, or force you to make a purchase. Their policies allow them to discriminate against the unhoused, and the disabled.
I am an American, but I’m not going into I get into the broader discussion here, just had to respond to your two points, as they don’t seem grounded in reality.
A good way to get an impression about real america as an outsider is to follow smaller hobbyist YouTubers from middle sized towns. One guy from Michigan I follow has a remarkable boring life that's completely different from every American stereotype.
Thank you for the actual sane take. I swear people on Lemmy are actually worse than Redditors when it comes to shitting on America. It is extremely obnoxious.
Well it's a much larger EU crowd on here so yeah
Blame the tankies
yea, finding out that lemmy is actually more insufferable than reddit in a lot of aspects.
As an American, they are usually right.
self loathing americans are even more annoying
As an European, I was tempted to downvote you. But not because your very valid points but because you started your whole speech by stating defensively that only people who never been to the US tell bad stuff about America, that's unfair.
I have relatives in the US and I've been there for several occasions. Except the midwest and Texas, I've been in most of the States and, it's true, America is like 50 different countries.
But on average, what I can say is that I love interacting with Americans, speaking with them it's like talking with some old friends, even in NYC (known by other Americans for being very un-american) I found friendlier people than in my home country. Kind of ironic that the only bad chats with Americans happened online.
I'll skip about the tap water, it's probably excellent, but to me born and raised in Switzerland, it always tasted like bleach, probably because of the added fluorine, I don't know. It's still better than tap water in UK, Turkey and half Europe and by far safer than most of Asia and Africa.
Finally, visiting America as a tourist is great, and I dreamed of living there as a child, but as an adult, I feel safer and more taken care in Europe, both from a healthcare point and from labour safety. But I live in a privileged country, if I lived anywhere else in the world, I would still chase the "American dream".
What really saddens me about America, while the people are great, the nature is amazing and the spaces are immense, is that is governed by corporations and bribes and make shows like House of Cards a documentary.
Furthermore, what part of the country are you living in that leads you to believe we are less racist than other countries!? Our racism has defined our country ever since it was created.
Seriously, I am curious what part of the country you live in? It is sheltered from most American realities
If you think I'm denying racism, you read that comment incredibly wrong. I'm saying in comparison to other coutnries.
Your point was that we’re better because we talk about it.
All over the country legislatures are banning books, and curriculums that even mention racism. It isn’t an isolated incident either.
I agree with you on the exaggeration of racism.
I don't think you bring valid points to why the United States are better than portrayed, but nonetheless believe so myself.
I look asian. I experienced more racism traveling through Europe for 6 weeks than I have living 15 years in the US (primarily Atlanta and Jacksonville).
There's a lot of Americans who aren't having a great time here. I don't think negative commentary about the US is one hundred percent Europeans' fault. Nor is it just that we're "vocal" about things, which is really a positive since it's the only way to create change anyway.
For example. I just saw a local news story that cops in a major SoCal city are arresting/citing/fining people for just...being homeless. They want them to go to shelters, but they admittedly don't create enough shelter space. So it just becomes illegal for certain people to exist. The city gets pissy and aggressive about homelessness being a problem, when they're the ones who created it and are the ones who refuse to fix it. Sure, give a homeless person a record so that it's even harder for them to get jobs and approved for an apartment, and then fine them knowing they can't pay it, resulting in doubling late fees that put them in debt. Sounds they really care about fixing the issue, great fucking job. But think about that - it's against the law, it's a crime, to not have a mortgage or rent payment. I've been hassled by cops for sitting in my own car in a grocery store parking lot. There is no public space. You have to buy something to be allowed to exist outside of a park, and in coastal places like SoCal, you have to pay to be in those too. And yes this was in one city, but it's applicable to almost every major city in the US, even if there's some variations in local laws. It's just an example of how disposable human beings are here. The minute we don't have labor to sell, the minute we stop consuming, we're thrown the fuck away. And that's not just an economic issue, it's a cultural issue as well.
Was there, several times, all corners. Sorry to tell you, but your tap water smells like chlorine.
I've lived in several states and visited over 20. LA has the worst tap water, but most places are pretty good. Larger cities tend to taste worse than medium cities and rural places.
Grew up on rural well water. Tastes great, a bit hard. Now I drink Hetch Hetchy's finest. Tastes pretty good. (My grandma's water was another story.)
We have one federal government, yes, but painting all of the US with the same brush is naive at best.
Same, I'm used to Swiss tap water (I know, sounds like cheating) and the water in America always smells like bleach. You have to get used to it, it's probably because of the added fluorine. It's still safe to drink. Can't say the same in other countries around the world. Even in Germany and Italy, that's Europe, you should avoid drinking from the tap.
It's quite safe to drink from the tap in Germany.
In houses, yes. But public fountains I've found in Germany have often the sign Kein Drinkwasser on them. Meanwhile in Switzerland, almost every public fountain is 100% safe to drink.
Things maybe have changed in the recent years, I see you're on a German instance and I guess you're German, so I trust your statement more than mine as a foreigner.
no it doesn't lol
It does, but you might not notice it since you're exposed to the smell/taste all the time. But go abroad to Europe or some other place that doesn't use chlorine for drinkwater treatment and you'd be surprised when you get back how noticeable it is.
I'd say it's hit or miss on tap water. Depends where you live and how the utilities company handles their water purification. Take Flint, MI for example.
Tell me you've never been outside your city without telling me you've never been outside your city.
A lot of US cities have really suspect lead pipes (Chicago, for one) and in general the water quality is highly dependent on the age of your building.
A shocking number of US cities also run their pipes through chemical spills (like Pasadena) and dilute the pollutants to below the legal limit.
A large number of "public washrooms" are tucked behind "please purchase to use" signs, even if they are de facto public washrooms.
The US has been shockingly and incredibly open with it's racism in a way that other countries lack. Being from East or Southeast Asia is just begging to get screamed at in some neighborhoods. My fault for not being one of the "right" minorities, I guess.
This is what happens when you get your US news exclusively online
Are people still using this lol
What state do you live in btw?
Massa-fucking-chusetts.
Bad apples make the whole place suck ass.
Canadian living in America, and I hate it here. It's not pretentious to say that America fucking sucks, because living in American cities objectively fucking sucks.
I'm sure small-town America is nice, though.
The US healthcare system is actually even worse than people think. Employers use it to hold power over us all, and even if you have insurance the prices of everything are extremely inflated (my dad went in for back surgery and the total was $47k usd, but get this, one of the items was a single bag of saline solution----$270!), and many people including myself can't afford health insurance at all so I'm 1 accident or illness away from total financial ruin.
I genuinely love America and the place where I live. There is a lot to like and there are many places where life is much harder, but the US health system is one of those things that is embarrassingly bad and honestly just scary.
That's because American health insurance is not really insurance it's a discount plan. Any of you remember being forced to sell those overpriced coupon books as fundraisers in school? That's what American health insurance is. It's a shitty discount plan/coupon book that you are forced into buying from your employer and the plan itself makes sure you pay as much out of pocket as they can legally get away with.
At least the coupon book is for products with real prices. Healthcare is a total scam with prices based on who is paying. The entire system is corrupt from top to bottom. The US problem is extreme systemic corruption. It is not individual corruption outside of the billionaire supreme court judges level, it is corporate sponsored corruption on a much larger scale.
The USA has a tenth of the laws and protections of any other western country. We have had nearly 50 years of a political denial of service attack from a right wing campaign of misdirection and distraction politics. No one can institute reasonable laws and protections when they are constantly battling whatever stupid inflammatory nonsense that hits the congressional floor. This is why the nonsense keeps happening. It is because it controls the conversation. The only purpose is to keep as many loopholes as possible open for the parasitic worthless billionaires that are funding it. The only fix is to force out the billionaires. The only way to accrue billions of dollars is by exploitation and criminal activity. There are no exceptions to this rule. Every billionaire is a criminal evading prosecution.
Really depends who you are.
And where you are.
America is 50 different countries in one. There are really two whine different Americas. Several of the states are world class nations unto themselves. It’s the 3rd most populous nation in the world and the richest. It invites a lot of immigration to fend off declining birth rates and doesn’t have a cultural taboo about it like Japan.
It lacks a lot of modern supports for its very lowest classes. New immigrants cannot expect to get baseline healthcare, food assistance, or housing. And it has a generous helping of religious nuttery which brings about scattered laws against gays, a generalized attack on women (though nothing like a lot of the developing nations are still stuck in).
That’s the long and short of it. If you want to go into business and have a relatively free hand, it’s still one of the best places to be. If you have nothing and are looking for a compassionate nation that will keep you from dying of poverty, keep looking.
America is HUGE. California alone is the size of Italy.
Yes I wish people would think of it as the size of the EU, as varied, and with as many problems, instead of thinking we’re all Texas.
you forgot about the batshit crazy gun (lack of) regulations. and the highest gun deaths on the planet. but apart from that seems pretty accurate.
Not an American here, so please correct me if my take is completely wrong. My understanding is that while the highs are possibly higher than in a lot of places, the lows are also much lower and possibly easier to reach. You could be doing perfectly fine one day, and then you get hit by a hospital bill ruining your life. It's surely a great place to be a billionaire or even just plainly well off. Except far too many people aren't and they would fare much better elsewhere.
I'll jump in and clarify a point as an American, the states vary greatly and the healthcare issue, while undeniably more expensive, general doesn't leave you destitute if you're in a blue state. California pushes for universal coverage and if you're poor enough (which isn't actual that poor) you can get insurance pretty cheaply, covering those crazy bills. Plus emergency rooms here can be paid by state under some circumstances.
For instance, my wife's labor and subsequent baby hospitalization for jaundice cost us 200 for two trips and several nights stay, but the bill was 30k. Emplorers of a certain size (iirc 15 full time) are also compelled by law to cover insurance.
There's also some safety net for free food, unemployment payments, welfare, and even transportation subsidies, although even good government here is like playing hard mode in a sim, so it's not always as effective as a country like Finland. Some people simply don't get aid and end up homeless, etc. Still miles above an underdeveloped country though.
Depends on what you are comparing it to. Overall it is great. There are some serious systemic issues though that I don't really see getting resolved.
For most people most of the time it's a perfectly fine quality of life. That said, it's a huge country with tons of variation so if you're looking for bad qualities, there are always plenty of examples to point to.
What pisses me off is that we are nowhere near as good as we could be and as we claim to be. There are some very powerful and objectively evil forces in this country.
It has many things that are bad or disappointing.
Health care is a mess.
It's very car centric outside of maybe New York City.
There's a lot of racism. There are probably still sundown towns. You should go read the new Jim Crow.
The police are dangerous and often useless.
One of the two major political parties doesn't believe in government, and tried to overthrow the government. They're still considered legitimate.
The day to day life in most places is fine though. You almost certainly have power and clean drinking water. With at least one notable exception, on water, but not enough people cared to fix that promptly.
Your comment lacks a bit of experience/awareness about what's out there. The US is huge, you're going to find different experiences in different places. Your statement about New York being the only mass transit city in all of US is not true. My vacations to Seattle and Washington DC I had no car, went all over the city by bus and train, easily.
Vacation is the key word there. Living is different, because the services you'll need aren't necessarily available. We now have stopgaps for certain areas if you aren't poor, like delivered groceries, but good luck in Seattle and Washington DC if you aren't at least upper middle class.
I've also spent time in Europe using the public transportation you're using to set the bar and Seattle and Washington DC are on par. I'm sure (hope) that some other US cities are there too that I haven't visited. Both of those cities have stops or stations throughout the whole city and suburbs. City stops are usually around a 5 minute walk to anything and the suburbs were 15 min walk at worse. Connecting routes to get across town easily. Routes were frequent in busy areas during the day. I didn't see anything offered in Europe that isn't also available in these US cities with usable public transportation
I was being a bit hyperbolic, but most places in the US require a car for long term living. A vacation isn't really representative of living somewhere full time with a job and errands.
I could get anywhere in the city quickly and cheaply at any hour of the day or night, surrounding suburbs included. Routes at least every 15 minutes or less along busy routes during the day. It would have been much cheaper if we were residents with yearly passes. We had backpacks to lug our stuff around, if you needed to bring more you could bring a small cart. It's not as convenient as a car, buts it's public transportation same as any city in Europe. I've also spent time in London and had an identical experience. What do you think busses and trains in Europe offer over the ones in good US cities? When I needed to get an hour out of London, I needed a car too
Its a philanthropists playground. Just dont get caught being poor.
Depending on where you are from. No. If you live in a place where gangs can roam the street challenging the police, unemployment is 15+% and corruption is rampant. The USA will be better.
Yes. If you come from a place with moderate laws, healthcare and representative government the USA could be worse to much worse.
The thing is places aren't bad because there are gangs or homeless or what old ladies in Russia like to mention - drunk people. All of them are here(or rather wgo they are) exacly because said place is terrible.
I moved from America to a developing country, and what pisses me off the most is how the false images of what America is influences countries like this. people here with a little bit of money and very little sense will idealize what they think is the American lifestyle. they want to drive SUVs even though the roads here are narrow and they get stuck constantly and cause traffic jams. they buy weird luxury items they can't afford. they treat people in the blue collar working class like moral inferiors. it's ironic as fuck for a society that is supposedly built on communist values.
As an American who left, it looks batshit insane to me. Everything is crazy expensive and they're passing restrictive laws that, if passed anywhere in Asia or Africa, would be run as "look at these backwards shitty country" news stories.
I've got a trans kid. We're not returning any time soon. It seems unsafe for them to exist in the us for the foreseeable future.
But I've got us friends who feel the opposite. We visited a friend in Bainbridge a few years ago who really couldn't comprehend why everyone wouldn't want to live on their island.
Asia (here) isn't really any more unsafe. I visited India recently and it felt less safe, but everyone I know there also said it wasn't really. It depends on areas as well, and much of it (everywhere) is just media depictions and racism telling your brain to panic.
The real advantage of the us is just cash. You can make a lot more money there. They're rich. Money is good. It makes life easier. Its also expensive there. To save at any income level, you have to be thrifty.
When I was a teenager, yes. Visited England and their idea of a "bad neighborhood" confused me, my city at home was rough. Their rough areas were just normal places, not scary at all.
But crime dropped here, like everywhere. It is nicer now, despite the two steps backwards we have taken lately.
We do still have violent people, we do still have a prison-industrial complex, armed police, homeless people and way too many guns, but even here in Florida my trans kid is accepted at school, my older kids got a good education (though the last did not make it out before the attack on education) and most people are nice to each other. Inside the cities it's nice enough, feels modern and city like. Lots of jobs, easy to find a job here.
Health care? Yes, it's shit here compared to a lot of places. If you are rich you can get really good care (and pay a lot for it), if not you just try to stay healthy and hope you don't need anything expensive. Insurance, if you have it, does cover preventative care visits and usually stuff like blood pressure meds or antibiotics are cheap, vaccines too, and birth control usually covered as well. But any actual sickness or bad injury can bankrupt you.
I do think it's a land of opportunity, but the odds are not great, if that makes sense? Certainly one can 'make it' here - think of Bill Clinton becoming president - I don't think that kind of social mobility is everywhere, it's a little less sticky here, more rising and falling going on than most places.
I didn't get that, what do you mean?
How easy is it to go from working minimum wage to a well paying job if you can't afford education to acquire a specialization?
Also say you go bankrupt and homeless because of some bad luck with your health leading to astronomical hospital bills. Is it even possible to recover from that and get back to an average life quality when covered with debt?
My first set of kids got a great K-12 education here, in stark contrast to what I experienced. But sadly, one is still in high school and the state is attacking freedom of speech, teachers are leaving, the classes are getting dumbed down.
I did go from cashier to good office job but pell grant covered my college. Bright Futures is covering my kids college. No, we don't do a great job of supporting kids through school, it took effort. There are still union trade jobs that pay well too though, even here.
Medical system I make no apology for. It's awful.
Nothing is ever so black-and-white when it comes to talking about the state of the USA right now. Yes, we are still comparitavely well-off when stacked against developing nations, but we have unique problems that are a real sore spot for many that aren't getting any better and nobody is addressing them, letting the wounds fester.
For example, we have a lot of poverty. Sure, our lowest of the low class probably still enjoy a lifestyle better than that of someone from a remote village in some far away corner of the world, but the promise of prosperity is not equally accessible and the idealized "middle class" is vanishing rapidly. Homelessness is a crisis in basically every large city, especially in the warmer parts of the country, and inflation is still not under control which means the cost of living is going to be unsustainable for a lot of people very soon.
If you put politics aside, things really aren't as bad as they could be, but that doesn't stop people from voicing their concerns that things aren't as good as they could be either.
It's not, but people love to be outraged and will find any reason to be. We have extremely comprehensive media coverage, so anything that can possibly go wrong will definitely be covered in the media, whereas in other countries, you just don't hear about most bad things happening. The media will always twist anything and everything to be as polarizing as possible, as that generates clicks/views. Most of the time when you see things on the internet that make you rage (including here on lemmy), if you look into it deeper, there quite a bit of nuance, and you can see where they were coming from when they did such a thing. But to many people who are perpetually online, they don't care about nuance. Everything is black and white to many people on the internet. Either it makes you happy or it makes you rage, and there is no in-between.
Things that actually do suck:
The mass shootings are absolutely awful and should be taken more seriously.
Healthcare is expensive if you don't have insurance. But most people have decent enough insurance that it isn't a huge deal. For example, my insurance plan has a $2000 out of pocket maximum, so no matter what happens, the most I can ever pay per year is $2000 for my entire family. Plus, most people rarely see a doctor, so it isn't something that affects their daily lives. Kind of an "out of mind" type of thing.
It should be noted here that insurance is tied to your employer. Some employers offer better plans than others. This commenter has an above average plan.
For someone like me who is employed as a contractor (1099) I would be completely fucked on healthcare if I wasn't able to get on my wife's employer's insurance. And it isn't even a good plan.
Healthcare is a huge problem is the US, mainly due to it being privatized instead of government run like most so-called developed nations.
True, I do have an above average plan. At my old job my plan was even better. Probably among the best plans possible. I paid $20 for every doctor visit, $50 for any specialist/ER visit, and never a penny more. But then we got bought out by another company and I basically didn't have insurance anymore. I had an $8000 deductible, which means I needed to spend $8000 in a year before insurance kicked in. This was a number I would never get to. That was the reason I left and found a new job. Which highlights the problems you mentioned with it being tied to employers. Luckily my profession was in-demand at that time (it is not currently), and I was able to find a new new job extremely quickly. If that happened today, I would probably be fucked.
Worker rights kinda suck and it can be difficult to form communities due to being more spread out and car centric.
It's also just not a community type of country. There's a huge emphasis on individuality here. I think to the point where it flies against human nature. I have a hunch that that's why we have so many cults. I'd ask a sociological organization but I'd rather not because I'd rather go my own way.
America is a decent place if you put your blinders on and worry about yourself.... and don't get sick. In America, you get sick and you go bankrupt. Some places in the world you get sick and you die. 🤷♂️ People in the US are pissed off because the problems we have are obvious, easy to fix, and the people in charge make blatantly shitty decisions because they stand to profit off of them. Unchecked capitalism has corrupted every branch of the government. And since the leaders are the ones that have to regulate it and they profit off of it, they won't change it. The elections are actually lies. And there are people that try to say we are an elite, premier example of democracy and the best country in the world. We are not that. The upper half of this country is broken and it's squeezing the middle and lower class until we pop, for profit.
The decision making people in this country are selfish twats. They would be voted out but gerrymandering and electoral colleges (that they control) prevent the people from actually making the decision. Our elections are a farce.
But if you don't pay attention to those things and you decide to just keep your head down, work, pay rent, consume like they want you too, it's OK. Keep your head out of the news or you just get pissed off and ashamed.
Some states are better than others. Washington is a better state than Alabama. New York is better than Florida. California is better than Texas. There's a trend here: the states where the ruling party institutes at least European social democracy-lite are the best to live in.
Cannot be overstated --- the US is huge, and the difference between one state and another can dwarf the difference between two European countries. Same de facto language, same currency...but that's about it.
I don't think you understand how much of a difference it makes to speak another language.
You are far less likely to marry someone with a different language or move somewhere with a different language. From what I read on the internet, Americans move between states several times in their lives. That is a very equalising factor for the culture and general way of life. There's much more exchange and assimilation if there is constant mixing.
How a French person and a German person view life, work and public conduct can differ greatly. And the differences won't be equalised soon, because of the different languages and therefore less mixing.
Surely the states have differences between them, but you have one traditional Thanksgiving dinner nationwide for example.
What an Italian considers a traditional Christmas meal would not be considered "christmassy" in Finland.
On the political sphere, there are constitutional monarchies, presidential republics, parliamentarian republics, oligarchies and dictatorships in Europe. Personal freedom and safety might differ greatly. But even within the EU, where personal rights are more or less equal there are still so many cultural differences. At what age you move out, how prestigious it is to go to university, if cooking at home is a great value.
Even architectural trends are different in each country.
Not to diminish the diversity in the US, but two different countries is just another level.
You raise some very interesting points, never thought about language (I also marry someone who's not from my country, so I'm kind of an anomaly).
Sorry, didn't mean to diminish diversity across Europe. The point I was trying to make is that the cultural difference between two extreme ends of the US is...well, extreme, and that you could find two regions of Europe, in different countries, that felt more similar. Not at all suggesting that if you pick two random locations in the US and in Europe that the US will be "more different."
For example, the US state of Louisiana has about the same fraction of Louisiana-born residents as Switzerland has Swiss-born.
The areas of the country that are in terrible poverty, with serious systemic issues, vote for the people who refuse to help them. They're so proud of it, and being American, and own the most guns. They hate you for not being one of them. It's a weird place to visit in all these areas.
If you live in a major metropolitan area, it's fine. The country could have a much higher standard of living if we'd band together and get some labor rights and benefits codified. As a worker your treated better, and have more rights in every other western country.
Consider it a teenage country. It has growing pains and likes to think it knows better. It's hard to look at it knowing the luxuries other countries have and still believe the rhetoric that is suggested in a lot of media glfron earlier in life
I like this analogy. The teenagers, some who are very responsible, intelligent, kind, and respectful of others have got caught up with a couple of POS idiots who think they know best, and then all of them do some stupid shit together and become a laughing stock of the whole school.
There are some amazing people here. We have amazing freedoms, fantastic opportunities, and so many things to be thankful for (compared to so many other places in the world at least). There's just a bunch of shit ass teenagers spoiling the bunch and causing the rest of us to look like complicit idiots to the rest of the world, when we're just as if not more appalled.
It's called soft power. Hollywood and US military and fiscal aid makes it seem that the US is friendly to your country and a prosperous land of freedom, when it's anything but.
Soft power is also why people think of Korea and Japan as more favourable and less conservative than countries with similar views on women, LGBT rights , etc that do not have the same level of soft power due to cultural and technological exports .
It depends on who you are, really.
If you're a poor, black woman living in Louisiana where the only work you can find is at a chemical plant, your life is going to fucking suck.
If you're upper-middle class living in a city, you're probably going to have a pretty good life.
There are some systems that are just awful by developed standards though. Education, medicine, policing, and politics come to mind. They're not likely to change, so you just have to cope with them. Basically just don't ever get sick or interact with the police. You'll probably die if you do either.
I agree with you. I'll also add that if you are a poor Black woman in California, New York, Massachusetts, and a number of other states you will may have access to great public schools, where you can be guided into (public or private) college and grad school and programs for certification where you can actually claw your way into the Middle Class. It really depends on where you grow up in the US.
Depends on the socioeconomic status of the city. I live in a city where it's odd to not hear gunshots every night...
There's a lot of opportunities here. There's a lot of money here. We also have a lot of racism and greed.
It depends. I'm a Canadian who frequently crosses the border.
The cities close by the border seem perfectly cromulent, everyone's super nice and accepting. The gas is definitely cheaper, and there is a wider variety of products on offer than in Canada.
There are certainly areas of the US that I'd want to avoid (Florida comes to mind, I would get hate-murdered the very millisecond I stepped there), but the good areas are good. Like someone else said, just don't get caught being poor or with medical issues.
I think it also depends a lot on visiting versus living there. I'm also Canadian and the US is generally great to visit. There's some states I don't trust anymore nor want to give my money anyway, but the progressive states are great and for a large part, American culture doesn't really feel all that different from Canadian culture, especially as a non resident.
They are considerably higher crime, though, and the way they approach guns just makes me extremely uncomfortable. I've never seen places like convenience stores be as locked down in any Canadian city I've been to compared to many American cities I've been to. I had a long distance relationship with someone who lived in Atlanta and wow does Atlanta feel unsafe compared to really any Canadian city (and I lived in Saskatoon for years, which is one of the highest crime Canadian cities).
But as a resident? Ehhhh. I'd never want to live in the US, even though the opportunity has come up and I'd make so much more money if I did. Their politics can largely be ignored as a visitor, but as a resident, they'd actually matter a lot more. And their health care system is batshit crazy. Canadian health care has a lot of problems, but I wouldn't wish the American system on my worst enemy.
America definitely has its issues, but I think we have historically been good about surfacing problems and making sure they're at least talked about publicly, even if they're not fixed. This probably makes it look worse than it is. I feel like even in countries with reasonable free speech, there can be social taboos against talking about certain things.
I'll echo this. My understanding is that compared to other countries, Americans are willing to share our lives with strangers. Now, apply that to politics. As a country, we're very open about everything.
When doing world rankings, to me it’s a better visual to compare each US region/state to countries as the size of the US is a big factor. Each region has its own distinction. I live in the Pacific Northwest which is (I believe) comparable to most developed countries. If you’re in the southeast, the rankings drop and your probably better off in Eastern Europe. The Northeast US (I.e. New England) is also comparable to most developed countries but the Midwest is moving more towards a theocratic style of localized governance. The US isn’t in a position I’m any region to compete with Norway, Finland, Denmark, etc but that’s why they are ranked at the top.
Every state has its good and bad. We are out of control with the gun thing. There is a higher chance you will get shot and killed while minding your own business in America than most other countries. We are selfish and not much unity unless you are on one side or there and even then, we have become stupid and gullible. We are violent. We are much more violent in general than anyone I have ever encountered in other countries. Maybe England, but even there, it is not the same. Americans have no problem straight up killing each other. We are getting worse.
Is America great? Depends on who you ask. Is America a place where you still have some opportunities to make a better life for yourself. Sure. But it is not the same as that the pamphlet sold to everyone else. We are far from perfect and in many cases, other countries do things better.
Having said that, it is cool. Just keep your eyes open and pay attention.
England's really not violent at all.
I know some punchy english dudes but yeah, you right. Nothing like America.
America is very nice if you do not really care about how your life negatively affects others.
We’re very vocal when we see a wrong. We’re also a big country, with different priorities in different places. Most importantly, media tends to publish most outrageous stories, for the shock value in attracting attention
My state has the fewest shootings, helped by the strictest gun laws until recently. We’re generally tops in education, near universal health insurance, and quality of life indexes on par with the best in the world. We are generally a safe place for various cultures and preferences, and we’re first in the US to embrace gay marriage We have a strong, innovation-based economy with among the highest pay. We even have a pretty good (for the US) transit system, walkable town centers, an emphasis on sustainability and renewable energy.
We don’t make the news as much because that’s not outrageous: it’s what we want. However I’m sure others may find it expensive, oppressive, or offend their sensibilities
How to stop shootings? Make guns illigal.
How to stop Unkrainian drone attacks? Make drones illigal.
Solving problems Putin-way.
Overall, no. In most places things are peaceful and nice. In some places there is a lot of crime and squalor. A lot depends on your location, perspective, and luck.
No, but because it's the 4th largest country by landmass of course you're going to have more craziness, it's par for the course.
It's a lot safer then it used to be though, it just seems bad because we don't censor things here compared to other countries, so everyone sees the good and the bad as opposed to just the good
Shit country, great pay in a few fields.
If you're skilled labour and not a software engineer, just move to Canada tbh.
It's not just America. It's the whole world right now.
No. The US has its problems but it's not the hellhole people like to make it out to be.
It helps to look at the US in parts rather than as a homogeneous block. The country is huge and varied with 300M people in a land area larger than Europe. Laws can be wildly different from state to state, especially on hot topics like abortion or gun ownership or drug possession. Some states are filthy rich and others are depressingly poor. Some places are perfectly safe and others are dangerous.
For example, take a look at these maps comparing US states to European countries. Depending on the metric the US can look great or awful compared to Europe.
8'd say it's only bad by the standards of the first world. Not counting foreign policy here, mind you.
It’s all relative, but no, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not.
The issue, whether it’s conscious or not, is what we were sold (work hard, be nice, and you can have everything you ever wanted) not matching up with reality for most of us. My parents are squarely in the dead middle of the boomer generation. My step father is a construction worker, and my mother hasn’t worked since I was in high school. So they are one income, and it’s probably not an exceptional lot good income. They own their own home, in a very nice area, have retirement options, the world wasn’t literally on fire, they didn’t have to go through multiple once in a lifetime collapses, etc. In contrast, I’ll probably never be able to afford a home (run down houses on tiny properties are easily 800k here) and husband and I are dual income, I’ll likely never retire, my money is worth far less than theirs was, the world is burning, etc.
I’m also the last generation that didn’t have to worry about school shootings. I was graduating the year columbine happened. Not a single thing has been done in over 20 years since. I’d actually say access has gotten so much worse. Plus the “gun culture”. It’s insanity. The worship is crazy.
Then watching government fall into the farce it is, that’s bought and paid for. With little help coming to those that need it. And being a woman, watching my rights slip further and further away across the country.
If you're in a developing nation, consider this: America has probably about the same amount of wealth inequality as you, but America has probably ten or a hundred times more wealth. So, the American who lives a life similar to you will have more money when he travels; but while he's in America, there's some rich, corrupt villain in the nearby big city who has enough money to buy up and destroy his neighborhood at any time, who owns most of the police force and government and media - I am presuming your developing nation is the same way, because only some parts of the EU are different (at least from what I've been told)
Every government everywhere passes bad laws l, Canada past laws requiring exposure on online media to be a certain percentage Canadian, but then didn't give a way for "small" online creators ( non company run) to join the system. The UK is straight up attempting to ban encryption. The French President told the people of the country "no fuck you" after they protested for months about a law to increase pension age. No country is perfect, every nation has active issues. Anyone saying America is the worst, is on aware of what is going on elsewhere in other countries.
Yes and no.
We do have mass shootings, but we also live in a country of 330 million (humongous population size), but every mass shooting makes national news, so it seems far worse than it is. Also, most mass shootings are gang violence that get lumped in with what we normally consider "random mass shootings" to pump up the numbers and scare people.
Healthcare could definitely be better, but 67% of Americans are satisfied with their insurance. I would still much prefer a universal healthcare system.
Overall, America definitely has its ups and downs, but a lot of the "AMERICA BAD" rhetoric is just part of a reddit-style circlejerk where people get socially rewarded for trashing it.
Expect this comment to be downvoted from the same crew.
You skipped over the whole 50% of the population lost the constitutional right to control their own body.
You skipped over a lot of stuff.
America is pretty bad, and we'll never get better if everyone keeps insisting we're not that bad.
The only way we'll improve is if people realize how shitty it is and vote for better reps and better laws.
I mean, case in point: someone replied to my comment apparently not knowing abortion is banned in places in America. I don't even understand how that's possible it was everywhere on the news for months.
See, this just isn't true. There are a number of states that have the right to abortion enshrined in their constitution. Others are voting to have it added to their constitutions. Just because it was removed nationally, doesn't mean everyone lost that right.
Granted, it is absolutely a tragedy what is going on in the more backwards states. But things like this make it sound worse than the situation is nationwide. This is the issue the OP has. If you only see the negatives that are reported in the news, it sounds like the US is an absolute hellhole, which is not most people's lived experience.
It is true that 50% of the population lost this constitutional right.
There are state CONSTITUTIONS that protect this right, so no it's not true.
Dude you're not going to get through this with shitty wordplay. They did in fact lose a US constitutional right. This isn't a debatable statement, it is a fact.
What is your end game here?
The point is that people's QOL is highly dependent on where in the US they live. Local laws have a much bigger impact to people's quality of life than whatever happens in Washington. I did not lose my constitutional rights to an abortion because I live in a sane place. If I live somewhere like Texas, I would have.
The reason the rest of the world thinks the US is so terrible is that we act like the whole country is impacted the same way by national decisions. Or that all idiotic local laws apply to everyone the same way.
The whole country is impacted when rights are stripped from anyone. Look at what you're saying: If some people are living a good life then it can't be all that bad. Well, Elon Musk is living a pretty swell life so it doesn't matter how many homeless people die in the street from hunger tonight, right? I know it's kind of jumping the shark, but your rationale would call America "not that bad" if slavery were still allowed nationally but forbidden, in some states, right?
We should be judged by what those that have allow to happen to those that have not. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
I never said that we should let people suffer. You're the one who needs to take a step back and stop raging.
OPs question is literally: "Are all states in the US that bad." The answer is no, some states are obviously worse than others. It's the shitty ones that get all the air time.
Double check the OPs question.
This is their question. Read the post.
That's probably a typo, read the title.
And speaking of this weak ass defense you've got going, let's take it one step higher. Do you think developing countries should use America as the shining example of what to be? Surely there are better countries in the world to strive to emulate than America.
You can't lose a human right. Their right to bodily autonomy is being infringed upon, but they still have it, no matter what the government says.
I appreciate what you mean but the idea that human rights aren't granted is just a philosophy, not something that actually matches reality.
That is to say, whether I agree with your premise or not doesn't change reality at all.
Go outside dude. "America bad" is not based on reddit, there are millions of citizens out there who have real issues with the way our country is run, real activist groups doing protests and trying to spread awareness.
All you have to do is open your mind to be able to see these problems (instead of downplaying issues like mass murder) and listen to the people who feel they've been disadvantaged
Yes, how dare I look at the actual statistics over listening to people that "feel" a certain way.
Trying to downplay the old gun violence again? There is still this though: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html
And those numbers only go up to 2018. This year, we have already had as many school shootings by June as during the entire year of 2018: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2023/01
But yeah, I guess some people consider that 'scare tactics'. smh
Yes, this is exactly what I was talking about.
But yes, don't let silly facts get in the way of your narrative.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent
So what about statistics from the Center of Homeland Defense and Security? Probably also just inflated, right? https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/a01
Do you not realize how much lower those numbers are than what you originally posted?
You are undermining your own claim.
They also include deaths that never happened at schools.
Also from your own link:
From your own data, in 2018, there were 10 homicides of youths in schools.
https://www.census.gov/topics/education/school-enrollment.html
On average in America, there are 73.8 million students in school.
That's a percentage of .0000001%
Very close to your chances of dying from a lightning strike (.0000006%)
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-victims
No offense, but this sounds a bit like asking the congenitally blind if they miss seeing.
I don't disagree with that.
The new American Dream is to get the fuck out of here.
Not for me, I'm having a great life in the USA. I can do whatever I want here most of the time, my career is going great, my family is great, and I should be able to pay off my house in a few years.
I live in a low crime area with low cost of living, clean air, and lots of forest land all around. I'm far away from larger cities but I can order anything I want from the internet to my door, and a couple of grocery stores and several restaurants are a 5-minute drive from my house.
Excellent! I’m also having a great life in the USA. I’m getting paid really well by a world leading tech company, live in a low crime area, and my kids have convenient access to world leading medical care and education. I know my kids will be safe and accepted, and they’ve already experienced a wide array of cultures without leaving home. I like that I get same day or overnight delivery of most things, have gigabit fiber internet, and a full range of town services. I especially like that I live in a small town where we can walk to the center, with a transit hub, many shops and restaurants, and a variety of people.
It’s not as bad as they say it is. And yes it does vary from region to region a great deal.
Yes and no. Better than a lot of places in a lot of ways, worse than a lot of our peers in a lot of ways.
In 2015 I was in Niger doing NGO work and the founder of the NGO said to me that the most important thing about America is the peaceful transition of power. That next year that transition of power came under direct attack and then again in 2020.
From my travels and the people I talk to, we have been under attack since at least 2008. From domestic terrorists working with foreign governments. Factions in spy agencies actively engaged in domestic espionage to help elites take more power. Cultist religious mega churches spreading misinformation and conspiracies in rural areas for decades priming for a “revolution”.
Billionaires that you hear about daily are also in on it.
You better fight for your democracy by showing up to every town meeting you can America because you will absolutely lose everything. Support unions and delete that extreme individualism in your programming that capitalist America wants to instill in each person so you never organize against them.
This is the time to get out in front of 2024 and fight for your rights and a reasonable society not this psycho bullshit we are stuck in right now.
I'm pretty sure Obama allowed power to be transferred peacefully to Trump, just like every other president had before him.
I think they meant that Trump said he'd say it was rigged if he didn't win.
Mass shootings, although there are indeed many, are a small percentage of the gun deaths in the US. Most are suicide, next most common are arguments outside bars. Most common weapon in gun homicides is a handgun.
Research shows that income inequality causes crime and you can see that more unequal nations (Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Israel) have more violence.
The problem with the US is it's a sanctuary for capitalists, capital and capitalism. Worse than anything that the US does or allows to happen to its own people, is what our government/corporations do to "developing nations". Invasions, supporting coups, fighting to suppress labor rights and wages, extracting natural resources with little compensation, overthrowing governments that try to stop any of that, supporting genocide, committing genocide, chemical warfare, biological warfare, nuclear warfare. Any socialist country they can't overthrow they'll try to starve through embargoes.
Anyway, the worst states are ones where abortion is outlawed, lawmakers fight access to public health care or any public resources that don't go to the wealthy. Usually these states are controlled by the wealthy, like coal bosses running West Virginia into the ground. Capitalists have been using evangelical christianity in north and south America to scare voters into voting right-wing on culture war issues like abortion and transphobia. They use reactionary tendencies like hatred of foreigners, hatred of gun control, hatred of schools teaching the history of how our country treated black people, etc, to keep people voting for the right-wingers who also happen to be the friendliest to business.
Both major political parties are right-wing pro-capitalist parties. Some states do have some social safety nets for health care and welfare but being poor is a horrible experience in every state. 50,000 people die yearly from lack of health care access, not including COVID deaths. There's really no state you can live or party you can vote for to get away from it.
I've lived in a few less right-wing states. A friend of a friend was killed by police while he was suspected of shoplifting, trying to run away. Some kid killed himself in my high school while i was there. I live in a town where there's lots of homeless people and syringes all over the place. 3 people in my family died of COVID.
Basically the US is a fascist country. Fascism is when the wealthy consolidate their power over government, in the face of growing violence and instability from growing inequality. The point of fascism is to protect capitalism from these growing threats by creating a police state, deflecting blame for hardship onto minorities, and handing off chunks of the government to the wealthy through privatization. The wealthy and the government essentially merge, they become the same people with the same goals.
I've lived in the US for over 50 years and yes, in many ways it's really shitty here. I look at how other countries function and wonder why we can't do the same thing. The US is "supposedly" the greatest country in the world and yet, there is so much wrong with it.
Granted, there are good things too (depending on where you live and your status, of course.)
There are lots of worse places to be, but it definitely isn't "namba wan". Remember, it's a country of extremes and superlatives. "Everything" is "always" the "worst" or the "best". There's "never" a middleground.
Also, out interface with the US is online and the media. Online, people often express their unfiltered opinion or an extreme opinion + behavior, simply because they aren't face to face with others. It feels much less intimate and thus people behave that way. This has been going on long enough that the opinions online have taken a foothold IRL and the US is a good example thereof (from my outside view).
Also, don't forget, there are many people speaking English and talking about the US that do not actually live there and weigh in on stuff. Some crazy af opinions might not even be coming from a person physically in the US.
America is wealthy as all hell regardless. It is part of the reason things like Healthcare is so expensive: there's a whole lot of economic power to siphon up as an insurance company.
Yes it's that bad
Not American, but I imagine that news reporting uses loaded terms and partly drives the division between republicans and democrats. I assume that in reality most people are levelheaded people that don't hate or fear their neighbors.
American Dream isn't dead. I'm grinding for mine. It's just definitely harder now.
I don't think my parents or grandparents had to "grind" for the American Dream™. They could afford a house, a car, and raise a family all on one full-time job 50 years ago.
They may have had to grind but doing so allowed then to save and achieve their goals. Many people today grind themselves to dust merely to survive.
A lot of people don't see what their parents had to deal with, because by the time we are old enough to notice those things, they have already had a chance to work their way upward. Not to say that certain things might not have been easier back then, because in some ways it certainly was. But I hear about how my grandparents worked in a factory or joined the military because it was their only option at the time, and then I hear about how my great grandmother had 8 children to take care of as a single parent, and she walked miles to get to work in her factory job. Things have always been difficult depending on circumstances.
Working full-time isn't a grind?
I'm speaking as someone who supports a family of five and bought a home on one income, btw. I work hard to do it, but I do it.
I don't think the "American Dream" ever really existed.
It’s synonymous with exploitation from what I’ve seen. I don’t live there but the news is unavoidable here.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people here (and all over the world) who grind their asses off through multiple jobs while sacrificing their entire life, and still don't earn enough to lead a decent life or own anything.
I find the first world problems in my life literally inescapable. I mean I am stuck being lonely and stressed because of political policies. More broadly though, Americans are bolstering the progressive leftism we will need to change our conditions, so in my lifetime these most immediate problems will be fixed. Is america bad? Yes, it is, and American's are angry about it enough that we have prevented a lot of those shitty laws from getting passed and put into effect. We'll be okay.
Honestly it isn’t that bad.
I’m over fifty now and have never been even close to a mass shooting. Outside of a gun range I’ve never heard a gun shot. I’m definitely not middle class or upper middle class and other then a 2 year stretch I’ve never had a problem getting insurance or getting insurance to pay my medical bills.
In the last year my mom has started having a problem with certain medical bills getting paid by insurance. They always pay but sometimes it requires a call or two to the insurance or doctors office to fix it.
It’s amazingly easy to start your own business in the US. The number of opportunities is crazy. That goes for both people who just came to the US and for those that were born here.
Are there problems? Yea. Same as in any country.
I would like to provide an anecdotal counter-point, because I don't think your experience is representative.
My father was a master plumber and operated his own business, very successfully, for 30+ years until he died of lymphoma. We fought with insurance tooth and nail but when all was said and done, his estate - which included property, savings, and his business assets - were drained to less than $10,000 by medical bills when all was said and done.
He was a military veteran, and was also getting support from the VA - if not for that, he'd have been bankrupted years before he died.
This was someone who, by most metrics, did everything right - he pulled himself up by his bootstraps, was an absolute workaholic, and worked hard to make his business successful, and for all of that, he checked out with less than $10,000. And he died at 64 - he was working up until about 2 weeks before he died.
Honestly, no. People bitch a lot but I've lived here a lot of years, my healthcare is fine, despite owning several guns I've never seen one fired at anyone, and I can pretty much do whatever I want.
Just a few million homeless, hungry, and incarcerated, plus the exploitation of workers in poorer nations, and you can be pretty ok with how things are! It's a great system
Last I checked, US had like 20% of the world's prison population. Just absolutely insane, plus prison doesn't exactly rehabilitate anyone, so people just end up back in it
It also removes any chance you once had at being a law abiding citizen. Once you have a record you basically aren't allowed to work anymore.
Well, when a good chunk of your prisons are for profit, and there is no system to incentivise reform, then it makes sense. They don't want to kill their business.
It's bullshit though. Prisons should be paid based on how many of their inmates successfully rehabilitate.
As an American, let me assure you... no, it's not that bad. It's much worse.
Interesting question...
As an overall answer: humans are incredibly adaptable, so as a person living in the US, it almost never subjectively feels bad. For goodness' sake, I knew people who lived in Chicago's Hyde Park (one of the most dangerous neighborhoods) and happily biked to work. I personally lived in what people would describe as a "hood" and a "third-world country" for a good year and a half, and honestly felt really safe over there. Because of this, I honestly don't think anyone can give an objective answer solely from their living experiences.
Objectively, the US is a developed country and is not terrible, but regarding your specific points:
I mean, people living in Switzerland complain about their countries all the time, even though almost everyone else in the world envy the way they live... so it is possible that some might be a bit overblown.
Calling Hyde Park one of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods makes this comment impossible to take seriously.
For reference, Hyde Park is the neighborhood where President Obama taught law and got his famous haircut. His home was a few blocks outside the neighborhood in Kenwood, one of the richest neighborhoods in the city; also the location of Louis Farrakhan's mansions and former mayor Rahm Emmanuel's house.
You might have already figured this out from the law school thing, but Hyde Park is home to, and dominated by, the University of Chicago, one of the best schools in the world. It's got buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright and other famous architects. It's pumped to the gills with historic wealth and private security.
Muggings are a problem. Gang violence is not. Get real.
Yes it is. I have "good" insurance and it still cost me $3,000 for a few stitches, a CAT scan, and a night in the hospital when I slipped and hit my head. That's on top of the almost $600 a month I'm paying, and the $1200 a month my employer is paying.
From Canada it seems like this: poverty down there is a trap from which escape is almost impossible and it's a trap that's constantly threatening everyone except the richest 5% of the population. Very high risk and very high reward and success seems to depend much more on luck than hard work and intention.
The only thing saving us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency
No. it's not that bad.
I grew up poor, without many opportunities. No free ride, college etc. I grew up in a small town, without much going on.
I was able to work hard, put myself through college, buy a house, and raise a family on my single income, and live comfortably. I have medical coverage, we have new-ish vehicles.
That being said, the opportunity is there. But, it is NOT given to you. You do have to work for it.
But, again, nothing has been "given" to me. I didn't have the advantage of having rich parents, or large inheritances (or- well, ANY inheritances). I didn't have a family member give me a 4,000sq-ft house they purchased in 1952, for 1,200$.
Every single thing I own, I have worked for.
Now, there are a few sides to this argument-
There are a lot of people who don't want to work. They see someone who is doing financially well, and believe they have some claim to someone else's fortune. I do not agree with this.
On the other side, we don't have universal healthcare. This is a touchy subject.
I do believe we need it, but, HOW we get that, is a different story.
Our government has proven time and time again, if you give them a simple task, they will fuck it up, royally, and hemorrhage money. Our medical system as a whole, is completely fucked. It's not the doctors getting rich. Its the damn insurance companies, and all of the bureaucracy and bullshit involved. Granted, doctors aren't living on sticks. But, do remember- they literally spent OVER two decades of their life in school, to learn how to be a doctor. Its expected they should have a salary greater then someone who works at your local fast food place.
I realize, lots of people will disagree with my post. And- for that, I don't give a shit. If you don't want to be poor, then take control over your life. Identify an in-demand profession, which has good compensation, and work for it. Quit blaming everyone else due to you working at McDonalds because your liberal arts degree, isn't marketable.
Also- OP- lots of the people you talk to on social media, are statistically younger, in the 20s, and still trying to figure out how to live life.
Edit- Also, one more thing. Drama sells news. News outlets are only going to show news, which people want to watch. People don't tune into the news to watch good things happening. They want to see the bad. As such, news and social media can give inaccurate vision of how things actually are. (Unless you live in Chicago or NYC. Then- it's actually even worse than the news shows)
Your take and my take are not mutually exclusive. I want to work at a worthwhile career, but I also want to work hard at activism and unionizing so that one day we can achieve better.
I can accept that. I am by no means at all, saying things are ideal. There is VAST rooms for improvement in nearly every aspect of everything.
THIS.
Seriously. Turn off corporate media and throw it in the garbage.
This is accurate, I've had a similar experience through my life in the USA. Working for what you need in life is somehow an unpopular opinion now?
Well, at least we tried to teach them.
Yup. And it only seems to keep getting worse and worse.. Sadly.
You sound like an American boomer.
Well healthcare for everyone would be nice (I have it) but How??
I worked hard, didn't study, have a house and family. Everyone not having house and family are lazy.
I mean there are other things but dude you are the American stereotype!
Yup.
Suppose I am the youngest boomer ever.
Nearly a half of a century off too.
But, in either case, everyone has the opportunity to apply themselves, and seek out a better life. Can blame others, or bash on me for being a "boomer". But, in the end, the only one who can improve you, is you.
If, universal basic income became a thing, poor people are still going to be poor. The price of milk is just going to go up to compensate for inflation, and you wouldn't be much better off.
Still very out of touch. I personally am doing okay, however anything I have is due to the sheer luck of knowing some one who knows someone. That is more or less the way of life is it not?
One thing your generation does not understand, is the sheer crushing depression that everyone I know has been dealing with. Yes every generation has had to face doomsayers, death, wars, things that can create just as much depression. However, at the end of the day, all they needed to do was work to get ahead. Now imagine all of that, continuing to work, and then listening to how their peers handled all the same issues but yet... my generation still cant own a single thing? Some of us are LUCKY to be afforded that oppurtunity, where a majority of us are just fucked.
I agree with you though, I dropped out of Highschool, had a kid at 17, got into a trade and I'm doing okay. Even then, I'm not alright. I am just being anecdotal of course, and comparing myself to others is not fair, and I wouldnt say America is absolute shit, but then again it really is. Hard to say otherwise when half the country is doing their absolute hardest to remove human rights, opportunities, and being so incredibly distant and toxic to anyone with a different mindset.
I'm under 40.
I was in school when 9/11 happened.
I was a grunt in the military during the iraq war.
I was around when the market collapsed in 2008-ish.
I lived on a diet of Ramen noodles and crackers for years, in the early 20-teens.
My "college degree" is actually worth less then nothing now. I paid one hundred thousand dollars, to a fucking school, which was not accredited, and no longer exists. There were no bailouts for me. And, every so often, I get reminded of it, when I see another lawsuit ad against them on the news.....
For literally a decade, I also fought through those issues. Doctors will just give you lovely trazodones, and other drugs, to "make you happy". The worst part, is they make sure you know, it's YOUR fault.
I lived through the fun of trying to decide if I wanted to pay the bills, or get something to eat.
I recall, all of the wonderful.. insomnia which results from depression.
And, best of yet, the feeling of having all sorts of fun bills arrive.
It never really ends either. It just gets funner... and the risks get higher, especially when you have kids involved.
That being said- I might be doing OK now, but, life has not been rainbows and daisy's for me. Thanks... to a short stay in the armed forces, I am quite certain my emotions are beyond repair, and well. I can't hear worth a damn.
But, I did learn a few useful things in the military.
Adapt, and overcome.
Drive on.
Edit, matter of fact, I still have issues with depression. Knock on wood though, my kids are fantastic at making me forget about it. But, life still has its ups and downs. Although, I generally do a pretty good job of hiding it. Although, it still takes a significant effort to want to "do things"
Another veteran under 40 here, also with depression. BSCS. I suffered a violent career upset / ending and lived in my car for a few months. Two years later I own my own house and have paid off the loan on said car making two thirds of what I used to.
You're going to work your testes off but it can be done. Writing this from aforementioned car on a security guard shift as my second job.
Hope all is well. Also- How are you?
Sorry for the delay. Suffered another job loss a few months ago and had to work my second job like crazy. A couple accounts are in collections. I flew to see family in Japan, got another job and am looking at ways to boost my income and get ahead. No one's going to do it for you.
Nope, not at all.
Behind every successful story, is a lot of failures. (or- really rich parents).
If you work hard then everything is going to be okay / if it is not okay then you haven't worked hard enough is some American evangelist boomer crap.
Sure, you worked hard and it turned out well, but you seems to be blind to the fate of all other people working hard and not making it.
You worked hard, like we all do, and you got lucky but don't want to acknowledge it.
Guess it's an attitude, not an age range.
Your in France. Why are you commenting on how the US is?
Oh god forbid right.
Short answer, no. Longer answer, not even close. America has its problems, but it's a wonderful place to live. Those of us who are older remember a time when it felt more free, and had a less intrusive government, but it's still the land of opportunity.
I was born poor and grew up on welfare. I worked my ass off my entire life, starting as a paperboy at the age of 12. I've literally bled and cried working my way out of poverty, but I did it. I'm now pretty well-to-do. There are thousands of countries in the world where that's not possible.
I know a political refugee who fled to America 40 years ago with nothing. He had literally nothing when he arrived. He is a multi-millionaire doctor now, with a huge house on 10 acres of land, and he drives a brand new top of the line Mercedes Benz. All of his kids are either college graduates, or in college.
We're free to criticize our government without reprisal. We're free to express ourselves and be who we want. We have protections against discrimination, and we have workers rights. Yes, all of that could be improved still, but that's always been a battle and always will be.
Most Americans will never experience anything you read in the news. Their lives are comfortable and safe. Food is plentiful, as is entertainment.
There are still a lot of things to fix in our country, and some things are sliding backwards, but we can and will continue to fight for progress. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet. Yes there are truths to it, but you have to remember that we're a country of 320 million people. Texas and California, just 2 of the 50 states, are large enough to cover the entirety of Europe. So you read a lot of bad news online, but it's a concentration of all the bad stuff from across an enormous country. There are bad parts of America, and some places you'd rather not live, but most of the country is a pretty great place.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Everything is played up by the media, for ratings. Mass shootings are extremely rare, America is just huge and we have other issues. (of course any number above zero is bad) Health care is built around having insurance, but there is government insurance like Medicaid and Medicare available. If you don't have insurance, you can often talk it down by just saying you don't have insurance.
Mass shooting are extremely rare? They are almost a daily occurrence... https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
They can be both frequent and rare. They are rare in the sense that the number of people directly affected by them is tiny compared to the population.
There is an injury from a lightning strikes about once a week in the US - frequent! Yet the vast majority of people will still not be struck by lightning in their lifetimes - rare!
While I do think we need to enact much stricter gun control, people touting this website about "mass shootings" always gives the outside world the idea that all of them on that list are like the Vegas concert shooting, which people think of when they hear the term "mass shooting."
From their methodology page on how they characterize a mass shooting-
If you click through the incidents and read the reports, almost all are isolated incidents. Gang violence, mentally ill people murdering their family and committing suicide, other terrible things like that. Which is tragic and very much strengthens the argument about needing stricter gun control. But people keep linking that page, people go there and see a wall of reports, and assume all of them are crazed gunmen firing indiscriminately into a crowd at a shopping mall or the like. It's not like that at all, but curating the data with their methodology and saying the details don't matter and all mass shootings are the same as long as 4 people are injured just paints a disengenuous picture to people who don't live here. I've seen plenty of people that post they refuse to visit the US because they think they'll be randomly shot for no reason while walking down the street, which isn't at all a normal occurance. Sadly I'm more afraid that if a cop wants to stop and talk to me that I'll get shot much more than I am going to a festival.