I’ve been watching a few American TV shows and it blows my mind that they put up with such atrocious working terms and conditions.
One show was about a removal company where any damage at all, even not the workers fault, is taken out of their tips. There’s no insurance from the multimillion dollar business. As they’re not paid a living wage the guy on the show had examples of when he and his family went weeks with barely any income and this was considered normal?!
Another example was a cooking show where the prize was tickets to an NFL game. The lady who won explained that she’d be waiting in the car so her sons could experience their first live game, because she couldn’t otherwise afford a ticket to go. They give tickets for football games away for free to people where I live for no reason at all…
Yet another example was where the workers got a $5k tip from their company and the reactions were as if this amount of money was even remotely life changing. It saddens me to think the average Americans life could be made so much better with such a relatively small amount of money and they don’t unionize and demand far better. The company in question was on track to make a billion bloody dollars while their workers are on the poverty line and don’t even have all their teeth?
It’s not actually this bad and the average American lives a pretty good life like we’re led to believe, right?
Honestly was shocked when I first visited. On TV the streets are wide there and everyone has enough to eat.
Visit (and at this point I have spent time in about half their states) and it is a different story. Broken roads in disrepair. Beggars everywhere, fighting for the chance to ask you for food, water, anything. We stopped at traffic lights and a teenage boy shaking with palsy knocked on our windows begging for food. People mobbed me in one city because I was carrying a bag of apples and they hoped for one as my bag split. I was careful never to give, but was still followed everywhere as an obvious tourist. The only place I did not get food begging on every single streetcorner was Manhattan. I am told this is because they deported beggars to the mainland there. Heartless sods in a capital that gets snow told me “there’s less beggars in winter, the cold gets them”.
I think you’re right about the jobs, too. There were roadworkers on those broken roads, using jackhammers without ear protection, or even foot protection. I was told it was because they are “free” to bring their own PPE. They looked injured and sick but determined.
Shops were similar. Waitstaff looked half starved, serving the rich in an obsequious yet hateful way unnervingly like a roleplaying slave. It was disgusting, and ruined many a meal by constant disingenious artificial attention.
You won’t regret visiting, but it is a ridiculously heartless broken place. The most expensive travel insurance too, for reasons most obvious in their medical stories.
Yanks are no doubt going to downvote this to oblivion, but it is how I have so far experienced their miserable cities.
To be fair, Gary, Indiana isn’t most people’s first choice to visit…
If we passed through Gary I didn’t notice. The map puts it in the suburbs of Chicago anyway, perhaps we drove through at the end of our stay? Spent a bit of time in Illinois, then went through Cincinnatti on the way out toward the coast.
These stories are not any one trip, or any one city or state. This is an overview of everywhere in the US as a foreigner. People were begging me for food and stealing food on street corners from (the illinois bit of) Chicago to New Orleans, from Texas to New York. They tapped windows of the car, they stopped me in the street. It was like travelling through what the yanks choose to call a third world country… It isn’t like that in Australia.
I’m not going to tell you all the things you mentioned are impossible. I’ve read your other comments too. I’ve seen homeless women crying in the street, people with obvious mental or physical problems begging. Homelessness - visible homelessness - is terribly common. As far as crime goes, I don’t know, maybe people target tourists? My rental car visibly full of luggage was broken into in San Jose once, and they stole a bunch of electronics. Learned my lesson on that one. Apart from that I’ve wandered around some rough areas on occasion and in 36 years I’ve never been victimized in person.
Anyway, one last point: according to official stats, the rate of homelessness in Australia is nearly 3x that in the US, although I imagine that Australia probably counts homelessness differently, so it’s hard to compare, but 3x seems like a big difference for simple differences in methodology to account for. That said, I’m sure Australia has better services, so it may not be as visible to the average person, and less of a struggle for those experiencing homelessness. Hard for me to believe things are all that much better in the land of Murdoch, though.
Come visit Australia sometime. I am certain no children will knock on your windows begging for food and water when you stop at traffic lights (which happened both in cities and the occasional local township) even if you have a rental car (we were borrowing cars from locals, rentals are often too pricey for me). No one will try to steal your bag of groceries either.
Where the hell did you go to see all that? I’ve lived in the US for half a century and never seen any of that. There are some states that need to figure out how to pave roads that will last more than 2 years, but many states have figured that out.
The roadworkers? Three seperate sites in chicago, then similar seen again in New York State, and in Louisiana. Other places too but they stood out.
Knocking on our windows to beg for food and water? Everywhere on the east coast. The kid happened in New York State, but similar happened in Pennsylvania, in tenessee, in illinois, in Louisiana, and everywhere really.
I was mobbed in Pennsylvania during the notorious Apple Incident, it happened again to a friend in Charlestown with a large bag of peaches, but when we were telling this story to a bunch of other Aussies they told me a chilling tale similar that happened to a girl of their number in Tenessee. The third one happened to strangers, but they had no reason to lie to me.
I don’t rightly know what to tell you, but we saw so many beggars everywhere except manhattan. We did not like getting restaurant meals, tried to stick to takeaway, because waitstaff were upsetting everywhere we went. And if you haven’t seen the massive holes in your roads, society and infrastructure in your time there, it’s likely because you are overused to them.
America is terribly full of the desperately poor.
Edit; I have learned not to talk of the incidents that happen once, if I can help it, as I get told they are “isolated incidents” or “just happen in that state”. The girl with the dog crying in louisiana, the orphans we met in ohio, the shaking window knocker, poor bastard… That said, those isolated incidents also add up to a larger truth. All of them were due to a lack of health care or social care. All could have been cured with a little kindness, or the yanks being a little less blind to their fellow man. It is a very harsh place.
Sounds like anywhere in VA that isn’t Alexandria or Tyson’s Corner.
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There’s just a lot of inequality in the US that is both socially and politically unacceptable in the rest of the developed world. Extremes are more accepted here.
There are more extremely rich people than you would see in other Western countries and and many, many more extremely poor people than in other Western countries. Alleviating that would mean implementing policies to redistribute wealth that many Americans are not willing to implement, especially conservatives.
The US basically sacrifices the good of the many for the great of the few.
Every American is a rich man who is temporarily down on his luck and making big societal changes would screw them over when they finally get their money.
I forget who said it, “The poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
And they manage to get poor people on board by tying their policies to Jesus and Family Values. And it works like a charm and it’s so weird.
Which seems even stranger. In many other countries, Christians vote left of center to promote economic equality, reduce poverty, get green policies to protect God’s green earth, make sure that everyone has universal access to healthcare and education, etc.
In the US, they vote oppotite of that.
Americans are told by the media that they are living “the good life” and that they shouldn’t bother looking at conditions elsewhere. USA!USA!USA!
You have to go further than that. A huge population only cares about itself and has made it a part of their identity. Those who have it well don’t have to think about those without: drive to or work from home, live and socialize on internet platforms that isolate themselves from the plight of those with less. They can order everything online and have it delivered to their door - they have no clue and depending on how separated they are from those struggling, they may just say, “those people just aren’t working hard enough,” or some similar line of thinking. It’s not hopeless, but we need far more progress in the US, especially with wage inequality and affordable living/homes. Jeff Bazos is allowed to help buy up single family homes so the rich can rent them out…it makes me so angry and sad.
1 in 8 lives in poverty (<20k for a 2 person household).
1 in 4 has less than 1k in savings.
1 in 2 has less money saved than last year.
1 in 2 is living paycheck to paycheck
But thanks to massive income inequality, the average American makes 59k a year.
Fun fact: America is arguably better if you are rich or with a high income, Europe is better if you have a lower income / are poor
While this may be true today, note that European countries (well, the rich ones anyways) might just be behind the curve here. We’re certainly on our way towards a U.S.-style disaster.
It’s very hard to generalise this though as cultures here are very heterogenous here. You’d never in 100 years expect the Dutch to fall for the car industry’s strategy of getting everyone dependant on cars to anywhere near the same degree as the U.S. has while you absolutely couldn’t say the same about Germany; we love sucking on those exhaust pipes (especially our politicians).
This. If you are fortunate to have great employment (100k+, dual income preferred (so breaking 200+), depending on location), with good healthcare, your options are great, and you’ll access a higher level of service than most of the world can get. Great schools, great doctors, great home/car/vacations.
If you don’t have that raw income, and therefore don’t have that support, america is a much much different place.
I’m fortunate enough to have gone from very low class to a much higher strata and I never get comfortable. I’m constantly surprised by shit that just happens…easily.
An example: by having good insurance, I have a very good dermatologist. I have psoriasis and use a biologic injectable to handle it completely. Once, my specialty pharmacy had some sort of shipping issue and I called my doc to check in. They said come by.
They handed me 6 doses FOR FREE, so 6 months of medication, like it was nothing. Each dose is thousands of dollars cash. I pay 25$ with my insurance. I assume a vendor rep dropped a ton off.
Point being, I know there are millions of folks on very expensive meds, who don’t have a high quality doctor relationship, who could never access that perk I did. Literally paywalled customer service.
Each dose is thousands of dollars cash.
LOL, it’s because it’s not, simple as that.
It is, to the consumer. Obviously I’m not referring to the true manufacturing cost, that would be idiotic. What part of my comment lead you to believe I was referring to anyone who was able to subvert the customer model? Why would you even imply that given the very specific situation, and players I mentioned?
What part of my comment lead you to believe I was referring to anyone who was able to subvert the customer model?
A plane ticket out of the scam country and back is a pathetic fraction of the “thousands dollars cash per dose” you invoked.
Are you questioning the price of drugs like humera or taltz? What are you taking about scam… It’s still thousands in Mexico, last I read. Here’s an article from a few years ago
The point is that quality insurance is a serious privilege, especially in the frame of reference of folks living in America.
You’re off topic and moving goalposts
Your above comment was wrong and you should edit it. It’s misinformation
Off-topic? Goalposts? Misinformation?
Now that you’ve named specific drugs, it’s awfully easy to show how US is just a scam: https://www.statista.com/statistics/312014/average-price-of-humira-by-country
The difference between US and the runner-up is worth not just two plane tickets, but a lavish vacation. Just accept it, you’re being had and it never crossed your mind to do the reasonable thing.
Disability (which I paid taxes for, to protect me from poverty if I became disabled) pays a whopping $914/MONTH.
I sell nudes to afford basic necessities.
They also have an asset cap of $2,000 which hasn’t changed since 1974. Basically, if I have more than $2k in my bank (or in any valuables like comics or coins) at any time, they take away my food and Medical insurance. If adjusted for inflation, it would be $13k. I’m drowning and lucky I’m an attractive girl, otherwise I couldn’t afford to survive.
Yeah disability is intentionally designed to be awful. You can only have it of you’re dirt poor and it pays so little that you will always be dirt poor. God help you if you live in a place where it’s hard to get separate housing assistance, that has poor EBT benefits, a state that fucked over medicaid, etc. God help you if a family member tried to assist you in some way and now you have ever so slightly too much money. It’s a really messed up system considering how hard it is to get ln disability, meaning that the vast majority of people who have it aren’t scamming the system as some people might like us to believe.
I had to lawyer up and fight to prove I was disabled, even though I had medical documentation of seizures, severe Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Tachycardia, etc. If you don’t have a lawyer, they automatically deny you. Lawyers only get paid if they win, so if you’re not lawyered up, they assume you weren’t bad enough for a lawyer to take the case.
I contacted a senator in my state and she basically told me that Social Security is going to run out, so the cap hasn’t changed because only people with no other choice will be on disability, and it’ll last longer
I’m an American and I had a pretty decent job out of college and the idea of moving out of my parents house without roommates was impossible. In fact I don’t know a single person who did it.
$5000 might not be life changing for me, but it would take me a really long time to save that much.
Americans have high salaries compared to the rest of the world, but everything is really expensive so things kind of balance out.
One thing to consider is that the higher salaries make it easier to get things like an iPhone or MacBook. But all the things that are needs like housing, food, and a car are almost too expensive to afford.
Most people have a car loan, most people don’t even dream of owning a home any longer. When you see that you will never earn enough for a home, then you don’t really save for it.
When the amount you earn that. An be saved is too little then you don’t really bother with it.
Most Americans do not live nearly as well as it is portrayed on TV or in movies.
update
I’ll add on to this that most Americans have debt for some reason or another besides having a car and house. A lot of people have student debts that are oppressive some people have medical debt as well.
Gas prices are reasonably low, but everything is so far that you end up using a decent amount of gas to get around.
I’m an American and I had a pretty decent job out of college and the idea of moving out of my parents house without roommates was impossible. In fact I don’t know a single person who did it.
Not to pick on you specifically, but I’ve never understood the modern generations’ seeming aversion to housemates.
I had housemates from after college until 7 years later when I had a wife, starting in the mid-90s. My mom had housemates in the 60s after college (my dad had the GI bill, which afforded flexibility, but had other drawbacks).
It seems weird to me that people these days seem to think that’s unacceptable. That’s how people do it when they are just getting started. Either that, or they live somewhere less desirable, far from cities, small, old, crappy. Personally I did both… housemates in a rural area in a shitty place. :)
The aversion to housemates represents a breakdown in social trust in general, plus people are just more precarious. You’ve got to hope your housemates can pay rent when all of you hold tenuous employment. One person losing their job is a disaster for everyone else. One person moving out can also be a crisis.
I lived with housemates around 2010 to 2016 and it was a constant struggle to keep bills paid, plus we’d have to share vehicles and that was difficult since sometimes one of us would work nights, some of us days. Also revolving door of girlfriends/boyfriends who’d come in and eat our food or borrow cars.
Not great experiences. Honestly some fun times looking back on it all. Was nice to be around friends or do movie nights. But otherwise it was a struggle to keep together.
This may be unpopular to hear… but most of the justifications for not having roommates are like the ones in this thread. People say they can’t have roommates because they have social anxiety or other people are just jerks.
To an older person it sounds like “My generation can’t have roommates because we don’t get along with other people, and they don’t get along with us.” That’s not an economic problem.
It’s actually far far more worrying than that. What happens to a generation that has no ability to coexist with other people? What happens to the world when they are in charge of it?
I do see it as an economic problem. Precarity is going to induce loneliness and tension. People are working more hours and there’s simply less ability to connect. There are fewer “third spaces” (places outside of work or home) these days, so people have reduced capacity to develop bonds with one another. All of that is going to generate mistrust and lack of friendship among people.
Political tensions are high too, for instance, I would refuse to live with someone who expresses casual transphobic because I wouldn’t trust them to be around me.
Furthermore this is a niche internet forum with a lot of nerds who have general social anxiety. Probably not a good cross section of a population.
TV shows aren’t even remotely comparable to real life situations here. Americans have a spending problem. I’ve never been to college. Yet I’ve already earned one retirement and I’m working on a second. I’m 42 years old.
America is great because you can make as much money as you want as long as you’re motivated enough to do it. The problems I see mostly from people here are self inflicted.
If everyone was the same as you, yes. But different metabolisms, impacts of things medicine doesn’t understand, remove motivation, take away executive function. In short for the people who are able, it seems like everyone else is lazy. For those who aren’t as able, they simply can’t make the right decisions, and do the right things. An easy example is that successful people on average require less sleep. So they have more hours to utilize.
It didn’t take much for me to do any of this.
Just a little ambition. Show up to work. Keep a positive attitude as much as possible. Save money, don’t blow it on useless shit.
If you recall my op said most people self inflict their problems. Obviously mentally retarded people and quadriplegic people are going to have a disadvantage. But most people are simply giving up and using everything or everybody else as an excuse.
I’m not going onto say what gave it away but I am positive you are over 50.
42 in January
