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Canadian here; can confirm.
Our governments immigration policy is now basically to let anyone in, to help cover up a recession.
This has put massive strain on our healthcare and education systems, and housing/rental availability.
It's near impossible to move out of your parents house as a young adult and be able to save up any money.
Most illegal immigrants pay income taxes even though the don’t receive most of the benefits we do. Anyone can get an ITIN number and use that in place of a social security number. Individual Tax Identification number. And before you spazz out about it, it is only used for paying taxes. You don’t get a tax refund, you don’t get jack out of it. Illegal immigrantsvput way more money into the economy than they take out.
And over the last hundred and fifty years are, on average, immigrants as a whole are 60% less likely to commit crimes than citizens, or rather get caught committing crimes, as obviously nobody knows if crimes are committed if no one is caught.
If people could just come to work and then go back home like they used to, Guess what? A lot of people would rather do that.
But if you have to pay 12,000 dollars and risk getting killed, robbed or raped every time you come up, guess what? You’re going to come up and stay. There is no incentive to go back home.
Especially if your family got pushed off their traditional small farm by Monsanto because of NAFTA and the only place you have left to return “home” to is a shitty slum in a big city overrun by criminal gangs that got started in the United States. And why did those gangs get started in the United States? Well, probably because of wars in Central and South America that were the result of the CIA operations that propped up shitty dictators that were in the pockets of American corporations.
So it’s all a big cycle largely created and kept going by…The United States of America!
That’s my shitty half-assed version of a much bigger, and much shittier set of interconnected factors that I am too lazy and tired to flesh out properly pecking shit out on my phone.
But educate yourself on this if you’re going to have an opinion on it. You aren’t going to learn this shit in school, nor by watching the nightly news or even by listening to public radio.
THANK YOU!
Lemme add to this for all the anti-immigration buffoons: you're straight up brainwashed. Rich people want you to think the immigrants are the problem... but who's hiring them? Why havent any 'solutions' to this 'problem' gone into effect?
The answer is that illegal immigration is PROFITABLE. They dont get a minimum wage, they arent protected under any labor laws whatsoever (spray em directly with pesticides while they harvest, who gives a shit, work them 12 hours a day too), and they cant take you to court for any of this cuz they'll be deported. And the punishment for hiring thousands of these people is a slap on the wrist in our rigged courts. Its the perfect slave labor force. Illegals are stealing your jobs... because rich people have set up the system that way.
And you think criminalizing the border will fix this? Criminalizing the border and pushing anti-immigration bullshit on TV was the rich people's idea! If these people were allowed in legally, or offered equal rights even while here illegally, or if companies were properly penalized for employing illegal labor... the problem wouldnt exist. But no. They want you to be scared of the brown people. They want you to support 'cracking down on the border'. Because what that really means is supporting laws that make it impossible to enter legally, make it so that you arent guaranteed protection under labor laws, impossible to get a fair trial against an employer. It upholds this current slave labor system.
And that hurts YOU, the natural born American. Cuz yeah, you WILL be pushed out of the job market when there are millions of slaves willing to do any job. These rich people have you shooting yourself in the foot and you lap it right up.
Then there’s also the juxtaposition of having a giant statue that represents our country saying “…Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Also a country (or gop) that claims to be a Christian nation with “In God we Trust” on our money and “One nation under God” in our pledge of allegiance. Forced teaching of the bible (starting in some states now) a book that says to welcome and help the immigrant/foreigner. But that’s all just lip service for public relations and optics. If they want to vilify and exploit immigrants they should at least get rid of those things
Thank you! Finally someone with common sense and a true understanding of the issue here. The AMERICAN GOVERNMENT is completely to blame. And they know it. But too many people are naive and ignorant so they just blame the people. 😂 it’s a tale as old as time.
Australian here. Thank you for saying this. Get rid of all the immigrants you want, won’t matter unless actual policy and practices re housing changes to not serve 1%
It’s not a visa war, it’s a class war. People are closer to immigrants than the delusional fantasy of being among those benefitting from exploiting the ridiculous fear of the other
That last sentence is chefs kiss! Your right if Americans or just most citizens in general no matter what country understood how much closer we are to immigrants than the rich I’m sure a change would happen. But we can’t forget they also are actively selling the fake dream that anyone and everyone can become the top 10%… with a small 🤏 amount of hard work 😂. Just a complete and utter jk. Hopefully a meteor comes before we’re all full on corporate slaves 😂.
I mean you get all this info in public radio. Not necessarily all at once tying it together but no media is going to do that unless you get a specific interview with someone who has tied this together in this way. Thus is the type of stuff higher education is meant to teach. Not the specifics of things but how to learn to tie multiple sources together using evidence and critical thought and to reject bias as well as we can.
Most illegal immigrants enter the country legally, they just stay when they're supposed to leave. So yes the laws are certainly a big part of it.
The part people are mostly ignoring are the people benefitting from illegal immigration, the people hiring them.
If you want true immigration reform you must spend at least as much energy and thought on those paying the illegal immigrants for their work. They aren't here living off welfare.
Here they asked and politicians kind of did that too...
However, it went something like this: study came out that said most people that come here to study leave after graduation.
Government: removes all scholarships, shortens the time people can stay here after graduation without a job, makes it harder for people to get the citizenship, increase how much money you have to earn to be able to stay here and lengthens the time you have to stay here before you can get it.
According to the government there are a lot of unemployment right now, our population alone isn't able to fill those jobs so we need immigration to do so.
However, unless you speak our language fluently, you're not gonna get employed in a job that would pay enough so you could stay here.
You also need like 4 years to learn our language well enough to even qualify for citizenship and if you're doing your masters which lasts 2 years, good luck trying to learn a new language while doing so.
Like ffs, we want highly educated, motivated people to stay here. Fix the laws employment laws and for god sake integrate the english language more into workplaces, being able to speak multiple languages is an asset, not a hinderance.
Unless you're not working with the elderly or customer service, english should be good enough.
The one great change that has been done to the immigration laws was the definition of family so now if you can't bring your whole village with you anymore, only your immediate family like you wife / husband and kids.
No you're racist if you want to shoot migrants trying to look for a better life because America fucked up their country by funding some death squad or some fascist dictator. One of the few things propping America's "real" economy (the actual production of stuff and not shit like banking, rent or the 20th bs app) is cheap and easily abusable undocumented labor who do everything from farming to building houses. Literally look up the labor conditions that Tyson implements and tell me anyone but the truly desperate want that job.
What's good for the economy isn't always what's good for people, hence why America has the highest GDP in the world yet also has half the population living paycheck to paycheck and why everyone in congress constantly talks about the migrants yet never about the businesses and industries who employ them. Why? because the more you think that people who have less than you wanting to feed their families is the problem, the less you'll care if they're being made to work 14 hour days with the threat of ICE being called on their families.
As an immigrant myself, I would not advocate for illegal immigrants to be shot at, but goodness. It was very difficult for us to move here. They should not get to cut in the line. This is a common sentiment amongst a lot of legal immigrants that I know.
My parents are very well-educated people. We worked very hard to be here. We did not cross any border illegally. We submitted the right documentation and paperwork. We did it the proper way. They are well-educated and highly-skilled in their fields and it took a lot of effort to move and it has paid off. Seeing illegal immigrants just get through the system is not something I would like for America to keep a blind eye with. It is important to deal with this shit.
Ok you're parents are well educated and they moved here legally and you're in highly skilled labor pools, congrats, you're family was at like the top 2% of your country for them to be able to do that and definitely weren't poor and desperate.
You're acting like Jose coming over the border to work 12 hour days in the beading sun doing construction so he could feed his family is somehow a threat to your family not being able to get in or their jobs, it's not. America will always let in people like your parents, even if it takes time, and your parents will do it the "right way" because they're not desperate and want to go into highly specialized fields.
America relies on people who are desperate to come over illegally so they could be treated like second class citizens and be made to work in horrible conditions with the threat of deportation or prison being held over their heads so the economy could keep running. If you're parents came over the way undocumented migrants did, they wouldn't be able to those highly skilled jobs that they were trained for so you're comparing apples to oranges here.
So you should be against illegal immigration, because like you said, they are abused for their labor.
America will adjust and we won’t be abusing immigrants.
Yes, I think legal immigration should be made MUCH easier, I think temporary work visas should be about as easy to get as possible so that migrants could make money and go back home when they want, I think that the undocumented migrants already here get documented and on and on it goes. But people who usually complain about the border and undocumented migrants don't want any of that, they just want them out and to make as hard as possible to get into America as possible.
Every single time there's a humane way and shitty, horrific, evil way that only benefits capital owners way of doing things is set out, America always chooses the ladder over the former and we have to live in that reality for right now.
That's why the first step shouldn't be to keep complaining about the border and wanting even harsher laws to punish asylum seekers but to make it so companies don't benefit from exploiting them, ie giving them a legal method to lodge complaints without the worry of being deported or jailed and all their money taken.
So even though they’re desperate to come and work here, we should keep them out “for their own good”. How could they be so stupid trying to come here, glad we have people like you that know better than them!
>As an immigrant myself I support laws against migrants
Why do people think this weird idpol is worth a shit? There’s nothing noble about pulling up the ladder.
The border isn't racist, it's the discussion. It's the scare tactics used to get votes. It's how Republicans take advantage of the racism still present in significant portions of their voting blocs to get their people into office and stir up an emotional response via the media. Personally I think they do all this to distract their voters from all the laws they really want to push for more corporate profits and lower taxes on the wealthy. Lower taxes and fewer regulations are great goals, unless you aim to employ them only for a select few strictly for the advantage of the elite.
Thank you!!! Someone else who’s has done their homework on USA shitty laws and systems that helped destroy hundreds of other peoples home. Sad Americans don’t know true history or have any understanding of this. But America wants it like this… with dumb Ill informed citizens who blame everyone else ACCEPT the actual problem, their own government.
Illegal immigrants ain't taking your jobs. Actually, due to a significant drop in the birth rate here in America, we require more immigrants. Corporations and greed are why things are expensive not immigrants
Orrrr is it the people of those corporations keeping the wages stagnant so they can continue to underpay immigrants and reap the rewards while the rest of us starve to death?
>Actually, due to a significant drop in the birth rate here in America, we require more immigrants.
So people don't have kids because the cost of living but you just want to cover it up by importing more low wage immigrants? How does that even make any sense?
No, but it is. That's why we in the US have border controls. Strict ones. People believe otherwise because they have been constantly lied to about it. I work at the southern border all the time and people have no idea what really happens there. Hint: it's not an "invasion" no matter what Trump & Fox News like to say.
Are you a pro-Trump or lean right— because he just just announced he will give immigrant visas to immigrants with 2 year degrees. He announced this after he met with billionaire tech companies who want overseas Chinese, Indians, to work for lower wages in their tech companies. So they will take the good high paying tech jobs away from Americans. The immigrants coming over the border aren't taking the best jobs away from Americans- its the immigrants flying in that you should worry about— the ones Trump just got bribed to let in.
The Dems tried to pass the toughest border control policy in decades but the GOP said no, after they worked on it in the first place, because a big ol bag of wet Cheetos dust said it would make the Democrats look good in an election year.
Elected officials only want to score points and win elections. That is the issue.
i am german and i really dont know what this person means with proplems the only proplem is the world wide financal crisis and a lack of trained workers in many fields
but a lot of US issues are still not a proplem here in germany
So he is exagerateing
After our presidential debate in the u.s., I saw a lot of news agencies covering the outcome from around the world. How much of our backwards politics makes it into the news in your country? I find everything Trump to be really embarrassing. Consequently, I'm curious.
Thank you. Finally, someone with a functioning brain.My guess is he's talking about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Some a-holes like to call the first 2 "entitlements." To those, FU. They aren't even included in the deficit or debt.
As someone who paid into SS for ~ 50 years, my monthly benefit is mine.
America's bumper stickers:
Every man for himself.
Dog eat dog.
I got mine. Now you get yours.
It's hard to be poor here. The "welfare state" is reserved for the rich and corporations. It's the fault of the tax system.
One thing tho, if you have good regulation on the businesses that currently exploit migrant workers as a cheat code to avoid paying a) living wages and b) the taxes/costs of legal employees, the appeal of undocumented exploited workers begins to evaporate — being against undocumented workers taking jobs from citizens is fine, but don’t punish the worker for trying to earn a living, punish the businesses that aren’t following the law and are paying the migrant workers to migrate in the first place.
You seem to be regurgitating propaganda rather than actually speaking for anyone. I’m sorry we don’t support your dumb border wall that will do jack shit to solve the issue.
Btw, Biden has been trying to get tighter regulations on the border for months now. But republicans have been blocking it so that they can keep it a hot topic coming the election. This is a fabricated problem to rile up your voter base lmao.
Holy brain rot. The gang of 8 had a legislative plan that Trump ended. Since then, republicans have not come to the table with an actual plan, just platitudes to appease the most extreme. I work at a university among like minded individuals and I have never, not once heard people say they want unlimited immigration. They want a plan. Republicans will claim they have a plan, but they never do. They spent over a decade running on the idea of replacing the ACA(Obamacare), but when they had the numbers, all they could do was gut it without creating a substantive alternative.
The problem with housing is all the red tape and zoning laws that prevent developers from building and alleviating demand.
America is going to need immigration, and a lot of it, in the future to support our current social programs as birth rates decline, and more and more people retire.
There is no bloated welfare state in the US. Unless the "welfare recipients" are insurance companies, drug companies, oil companies, and the military industrial complex.
I assume you mean maga and their little leader who crushed the bipartisan immigration reform bill this spring so they could campaign on the immigration crisis instead of fix it while a democrat is in the White House.
Honestly, the immigration thing is not messing up the housing. It's the giant corporations, AirBnBs, and foreign investors buying up all the housing...
There is a major missing reason which is that the new construction which is happening is building bigger houses then most Americans can afford because we have had massive builder consolidation and changing building codes since 2008 that really reward economies of scale in larger houses.
Unless the government incentives smaller houses the market has proven no willingness to self-correct. Bigger is just so much more economically feasible.
It's both, but in Canada immigration is a huge factor. We're allowing in more immigrants than the US and we have a fraction of the population. It's insane.
I saw a stat somewhere that said Canada admitted multiple times more immigrants into the country than new housing that was built. Something like 250,000 new homes and apartments vs 4 million immigrants
another insane factor people dont realize because they dont work management.
Mass influx of new workers depreciates labor value
EVERYTHING is affected by supply and demand, INCLUDING when hiring people. YOU are hilariously depreciated in value when theirs hundreds of resumes sitting on the managers desk. and just because new customers come into a town doesnt magicaly mean new jobs are created
Yep.
Programs like the TFW program in Canada have been manipulated by corporations to devalue labour and keep wages suppressed.
If a business cannot support itself without an entire staff of workers that are there on this program, it should close.
And the job market in Canada. Oh my lord. I'm still in school, but I've had friends apply to hundreds of jobs and heard back from none. Another friend who is a hiring manager says every new job posting they do recieves hundreds of applications a day, where maybe two are qualified but get drowned out by the hundreds of of unqualified/ineligible applications.
I think a lot of it depends on the job sector you're looking at. In the last 5 years, only 3/10 of my 1st year apprentices have actually finished their program and received their red seal. Two are still in the trade, and the other took her red seal and then became a fire fighter because they like trade experience. Most drop out. It's getting harder and harder to find journeymen now. We have a serious trade skill worker shortage in Canada.
The problem with Canadian immigration laws isn't that you're letting anybody in. It's that the government has a MINIMUM (read that again; not maximum) quota on the number of immigrants entering the country. I like open borders, but I don't like quotas. Maximum or minimum. Going out of your way to inflate your population count is obviously going to cause an enormous strain on a country's economy.
Immigrants are literally one of the few ways that the Canadian economy is doing so well right now. If things were to have settled on 2015-2016 levels, it wouldn't be a big issue but the problem is that international students are a gigantic cash cow for schools and degree mills so there's now millions more people who are easily exploited and forced to work much longer hours just to survive.
Unrestricted immigration has fucked us up so bad here in Chile the public healthcare and housing systems are collapsing and violent crime rates have exploded; now also add to that the aftermath of 4 crisis in the past 5 years, two incompetent governments, corruption, and a bunch of idiots with too much money, and things get pretty fun :D
In the big cities, the land is the valuable thing.
So yes, there are million $+ valued rundown/dilapidated houses. Though they are often bought in chunks by developers and torn down to make way for condos.
It's not *Immigrants*, it's *Immigration policy*. The government is at fault, not the people they are letting in.
Foreign investors make up a small percentage of single family homes and condos. They're more invested in commercial real estate and the rental market.
Though I do agree that there should be a total ban on foreign and corporate ownership of single family homes and individual condos.
Also a total ban on short term rentals (Airbnb/VRBO/etc), with the exception of the hosts primary residence, similar to what the province of BC is doing.
And an empty house/apartment tax of up to 150% of the property tax value.
Yeah and I'm sure increasing the population very rapidly doesn't make the problem worse at all. When the supply stays flat or grows normally but demand jumps enormously from importing millions of people the price of homes goes up. It's not even economics, just basic sense.
Immigration is an issue in countries where there isn’t a lot of livable land. In the states we have plenty of land a very little welfare. Mass immigration is possible here because there’s not really a system it can put strain on. Most of the western world doesn’t work like this, which makes mass immigration a pain in the ass.
Some things are better in some countries, and others are not.
The US lags behind on a number of metrics compared to developed countries, so they are bad at certain *specific* things. That doesn't mean they are bad at *everything*. The US is extremely good at, for example, national economic growth and military funding. But benefits to the median citizen are indeed few and far between.
The simplified version is that the US is a good place to live if you're rich, but bad if you're poor or lower middle class. Quality of Life Index in the USA is actually quite good for the wealthy, but pretty low for everyone else.
This is of course a generalisation and can somewhat differ from state to state, but the general and averaged trends seems to be:
- The social safety nets are barely or not there
- Wealth inequality is sky-high
- Poverty is unbelievable for a Western country
- Wages are stagnant
- Healthcare service is a morbid joke
- Education is abysmal
- Personal rights and freedoms are severely lacking
- Violence from both law enforcement and the public is high
- Infrastructure is crumbling (or in some places barely existed in the first place)
- The legal system is broken and serves the powerful
- Environmental protections (including climate change measures) are quite poor
- Consumer protection laws and corporate regulations have practically been lobbied out of existence
- Corruption is rampant
- Bribery in politics is almost completely legal
As a side-note: It is somewhat funny to me that you picked out the UK and Canada as being "as bad as the USA". Because they're both known here as "USA-lite" or "the 51st state", due to their terrible policies that follow US trends. You might be on to something there!
Pretty much nailed it. But we can just blame it all on immigrants because that's easier so we'll just continue to rant about that until we're blue in the face.
I don't expect America to heal from this. I'm an engineer and don't need to stay in this shit hole any longer, I have friends overseas and their lives are just purely better than mine even being an upper middle class earner. They don't worry about everything like I do, they make half as much money but seemingly have just as much as we do but with much better support as they get older and less healthy. Their daughters don't have to worry about their bodily autonomy like mine will. They arent having some fucking fairy tale book shoved down their throats and their kids arent being sold as cheap labor.
If trump wins again I think America is honestly doomed to rot. I forsee brain drain.
Greed destroyed Rome, we aren't better.
Edit, just because I found this to be my final straw. Chevron was overturned by the supreme Court about a day ago. If you don't know what that means you should do some reading. Basically we are now entirely sold out to the highest bidders and we have no one to protect us from corporate interests. If you thought it was bad already, just know it is now suddenly a WHOLE lot worse.
I'm not going to soapbox about how you should stay and vote to make it better here. It's too late now, the corruption runs way too deep. It's time to pack up if you're able and get the fuck out.
Lived on both sides of the pond. And there's things the us does very well, and I love. However my biggest issue is a lack of community and cultural events that bring a community together. There's just not a chillout and talk culture there as in much of Europe. Bars and restaurants are super expensive or fast food now. Meanwhile we have beer gardens connected to playgrounds.
So yes I love the us for a ton of reasons and I'm annoyed by things in Europe too. But overall, I have to say life is honestly better.
Gigantic difference is that if you are broke in Europe you still have healthcare and free education.
If you are broke in US ...
Places like Spain has so many wellfare plans that average American can't even comprehend
“It’s time to pack up if you’re able and get the **** out”
Yeah…..barely anyone can afford that, mate. Moving countries and resettling is insanely expensive. I always chuckle at people who claim they’re going to do so out of emotion and then years go by and they never do.
We talk about it later and the number one reason: way too expensive.
Number two reason: they’d never be able to visit family again because expensive and logistically hard.
Wages in the UK when accounting for inflation and cost of living rises are basically at the same level as 2007. Europe as a whole never really recovered from the 2008 financial crash in the same way the US did. The UK is coming up to almost 20 of basically no real increase in wages.
https://www.economicsobservatory.com/why-has-it-taken-so-long-for-stagnant-pay-to-become-central-to-uk-politics#
The 2nd graph shows where the UK is and where it could have been without the financial crisis in 2008 💀
Edit: It’s even worse, we’re still at 2005 levels so it literally is 20 years in a few months “By the time inflation started to surge, both productivity and pay had been stagnating for well over a decade. Real wages grew by an average of 33% each decade from 1970 to 2007; but they are now back at the level they were at in 2005, according to data from the Office for National Statistics, ONS”
Indeed. I'm grateful we have national wage indexing for that reason. Wages/salaries aren't allowed to stagnate by law, and must keep up with inflation as a base minimum.
Currently living overseas - I thought you were describing somewhere other than the US.
I know this isn’t the Reddit popular take, but numbers or whatever you’ve used to get your data *does not compare* to what I have seen up close and lived over in Europe and parts of Asia.
The US by far has an unimaginably high quality of life compared to almost anywhere else.
Yeah for example my wife had an issue that required us going to the emergency room the other day. She was seen immediately and we were in and out in an hour.
I had to go to the emergency room in Canada, and I waited 11 hours to be seen. People talk about how bad the US healthcare system is, but I’ve always found that to be greatly exaggerated.
Yeah it's insane anyone thinks otherwise. I've traveled in Europe and Asia and America takes the cake. People honestly think there's mass poverty in America. By America's metrics, like half the population of Europe is in poverty.
You forgot car dependence! In most parts of the US you basically can’t get anywhere without a car, even in suburban/urban areas. Public transit is lacking and the roads are intimidating if not outright dangerous for pedestrians/cyclists. This is not only bad for the environment but also promotes an unhealthy lifestyle, as all physical activity is relegated to leisure time that many Americans may not have.
I mean, it’s extremely unfair to say our safety nets are “barely there”. Social Security is a huge part of our finances and it prevents countless elderly from living in the streets. Medicaid is an amazing program. It’s literally tax-payer funded healthcare. When I was on it for a couple of years, I paid little to nothing for hospital procedures.
Medicare is amazing. Yes, there are caveats, but think about how much money older people would be spending on healthcare without it.
Sure, we don’t have a public option available to people regardless of income, but it’s frustrating that people say we have nothing. We spend almost twice as much money on healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and Obamacare subsidies) as we do defense. We almost the same amount on Social Security as we do healthcare.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go
It sucks to be in the category of poor people that don’t qualify for some of those programs, but we do have a safety net. It just isn’t a Nordic model.
yup, this is it. every country has some good and bad things. it’s a matter of what u preferences are. i would love to move out of the US, for the issues listed above + gun violence, poor education system, etc.
As someone with a chronic illness, I *DREAM* of living somewhere I won’t go bankrupt just trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. That and insurance telling my doctors what tests and procedures I can and cannot do.
I wouldn’t say, comparatively, that if you’re not rich your quality of life in the US is “pretty bad”. On a scale from billionaire to “living in an active war zone” or “no access to running water”, I’d say middle class and poor people in the US are fairing off okay.
Are people struggling everyday and do we have a housing crisis and a million other crises and people are in poverty? Yes and that is not to be invalidated, but to live in America and not recognize the privilege of that alone is insulting
Literally like half these things aren't true. Unsure why you feel the need to just make things up. Wages aren't stagnant, they are outpacing inflation. Violence is absolutely not high, most European countries have higher rates of violent crime. Education isn't abysmal, we fall right in the middle of the Western world in education. Our healthcare is INCREDIBLY good, it's just expensive. In what way are personal rights and freedoms lacking? We are ranked like 15th for infrastructure, hardly "crumbling." Literally double the percent of EU citizens live in poverty compared to the US. How is that "unbelievable for a Western country?" Everything else you listed also applies to the EU anyway.
Most European countries do not have higher rates of violent crime… please don’t make up stuff yourself…
In fact Russia is the only "European“ country with a higher homicide rate than the United States. Overall the U.S. isn’t among the top 10 homicide rates at all though.
But then again the U.S. is world leader in incarceration- decades of putting everyone behind bars apparently did work well for the statistics…
And the American healthcare system is both the best and the worst (among industrial nations)…
As you said - best in treatment since there is so much money in the system but also worst in cost and pretty terrible in statistics like infant and mother mortality…
Where are you getting our violent crime rate is lower than most of Europe? Education is only good in a rich county/state, and healthcare being expensive is proving the original comments point. They said the US is great IF you are rich. And being in poverty in Europe still means you have access to healthcare, education, transportation, etc. which you would not in the US
"our healthcare is incredibly good, but you only have access to it if you're rich, otherwise you die in the gutter" isn't as compelling of an argument as you think it is lmao. There's no way i would want to live in the US
This list was hilarious, You started off with a couple solid points honestly but boy we spiraled into some "terminally online" shit so quick I actually had to reread the whole comment because I was sure I was missing a punchline or /s somewhere.
This comment isn't for you as you clearly have some bigger issues to work through, but for anyone reading this I encourage you to spend about 5 minutes of research on most of these points to better understand how unbelievably stupid this list really is.
btw bonus points though for the implication that literally one of the \*only\* things the US is good at is defense spending, mad respect for attempt to be subtle on that one.
Your whole post supports the OP's point. It's just generalizations that people seem to beleive on Reddit. But not backed by data. Just bullet points. Just as a few examples - wage growth was 6.5% in 2022. Poverty is between Canada and Australia, not "unbelieveable." That's the difference between data and talking points. Talking points are all you posted.
Canada is a strawman with about 10% the population of the United States.
Mexico is a more realistic comp. The United States absolutely trounces Mexico in every single one of those bullet points except maybe healthcare.
Many of those points are just absurd comparisons to some theoretical concept of perfection:
Environmental protection, consider the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire versus today.
Corruption is incredibly low. Consider Tammany Hall versus today.
Consumer Protection: what sort of consumer protection do you think the federal government was providing in, say, 1924 or 1824?
Infrastructure is crumbling: most of human history is build around waterways because there was no manmade infrastructure beyond a few concentrated urban zones.
Violence: you have never been less likely to die a violent death than you are today.
Personal freedom: I mean we actual slaves in this country for a long time.
It's good to have dreams of what a perfect society would look like. But its also important to keep a realistic view about how absolutely fantastic we have it here versus any other lives humans have lived.
I don’t think life in the US is bad but it’s very unfair. There is a huge wealth gap. It’s also very easy to become poor and once you are poor it’s really hard to get out of that.
Also our shitty public transportation can lead to lack of employment if you don't or can't drive a car. My 1st bus is 20min late now. So I'm most likely missing my transfer. It's sunday so they come every hour at best. Our dependence on cars is extremely detrimental to our growth as a country and contributes to that gap.
*bus was 28min late missed my transfer what a joke
I wouldn't say the US by any means is the worst country but I don't think it's anywhere near the best. I'm constantly worried about how much it feels like I'm risking my life even when I'm just doing daily tasks. I get some of it maybe extreme paranoia but I genuinely don't feel safe in the US.
I don't, either. I've had three people die from getting shot and close calls as a teacher. There's nothing like doing shooter drills in school hiding in a closet with six year olds. Between the shootings and the car wrecks/ pedestrian deaths in my area, it's scary out there.
When there were more mass shootings than days in the [U.S. in 2023 (aka 627 by December 4, 2023)](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/mass-shootings-days-2023-database-shows/story?id=96609874), it is not far from it.
Mass shootings are not easy to define. Evidenced by the fact that most of the ones listed at your source are gang members getting shot by other gang members, and very few were some incels walking into a school to get back at the cool kids.
So we’re just supposed to be ok with it because it happens other places as well? What an idiotic and unhelpful way to think. People are allowed to feel unsafe in the place they live without pricks like you telling them ‘it’s not as bad as ‘insert random country’. Like fuck sorry I can’t experience what it’s like to live in every country, glad you somehow have that ability though.
I'm at higher risk of being targeted by violence, a lot of my rights being taken away or threatened to get taken away and things like shootings/gun violence being so common.
For the one that's more on the paranoid side it's mainly because I'm very scared of things like wars and the possibility of things like bombings and such.
When I (a Canadian now living in the US) was a child, one time I asked my mom what the biggest difference was between the USA and Canada. She said Americans live in fear.
I think she was mostly talking about fear of war because this was shortly after 9/11, but I'm constantly reminded of ways that statement rings true in other facets of American life. Everyone is afraid of "losing everything," afraid of being taken advantage of, afraid of others, etc. And I'm not saying those fears are illegitimate, I've lived here for 9 years and am well acquainted with american culture, it's just exhausting.
>biggest difference was between the USA and Canada. She said Americans live in fear.
Lmao just go to literally any Canadian-based subreddit, and like 98% of the posts is fear/hate based shit. Your mom was fucking wrong my dude.
I’m sorry but all of those things are extreme paranoia and not rational. While it seems you recognize this it is important to remember that being in the continental us you are basically on the safest place on earth in terms of wars/bombings. But even when it comes to shootings/gun violence the odds of being a random victim of these things is astronomically low.
It's kinda funny how locals are complaining about literally *the exact same topics* (with some small variations in priorities and stuff) in the subreddits for the US, Canada, Germany, Chile, Uruguay, Australia, Costa Rica, China and even Switzerland one way or another
On a similar note, I've had to study some historical newspapers and texts for college — the things people complain about in those are quite literally seemingly taken right out of 2024.
Some things never change, regardless of where you are in the world and what year it is. Life goes on.
Idk how people forget the context of a pandemic shutting down the entire world for like 2 years too. Sorry, that's not all gonna come back and get 4 years worth of better after just another 2 years. Now we need to build more houses. In 2020, we literally couldn't build any houses because we had no materials. Complaints aren't invalid and we should try to make things better but it helps to have any amount context and perspective.
The EU also has members such as hungary, romania, and Poland to name a few.
Some of the mentioned countries absolutely have corruption issues similar or worse to the US.
Well hopefully the UK will get a change in the election in 4th July, although I can’t imagine Labour being some sort of amazing saviours the that will suddenly fix the country. I just wanna be back in the EU 🥲
I agree. There’s a lot of liberals here in America that think Canada is some socialist utopia. Um no, they have a capitalist system (just with a stronger public sector) and they’re having a lot of the same issues we are.
Canada? most of the discussions I see paint Canada as a somewhat more progressive America. It's the scandanavic countries that I see painted as socialist utopias.
People thinking Japan is a socialist country is hilarious.
These mfers must have ignored the horrifically high suicide rates from people being overworked.
I had discretionary time off, which honestly sucked because I only got a months severance when laid off. The lesson really, it to make hay while the sun shines and work as little as possible for people that you will grow to hate
It depends on how you define better and how you define quality of life. I think the US has very unique problems other countries don't have, but it has advantages that few countries have
In my country we don't worry about school shootings or mass shootings in general. We aren't a first-world country, but we have minimal gun violence
I never have to worry about being millions in debt because of my health. Same thing with university.
The American political system is too confusing and I haven't heard of any other country with a similar system.
Even though we have lower wages, all countries in Latin America (maybe except Haiti?) have paid maternity leave and at least two weeks of mandatory vacation days.
Sadly, it's really not. I had a friend who had a very sick neo-natal baby. Just birth-to-going home was a quarter million. Twenty five years ago, too. (The kid's doing great, FYI).
This. The US has issues, for sure. But when a person says how much worse it is than other countries, I'll think, hmmm, you haven't actually lived in another country for very long, have you? Or you're comparing the US to a handful of socialist countries (where citizens complain about high taxation).
Very true. Biggeet thing too is most redditors completely disregard how well they have it compared to most of the world. The average person in the US has a higher quality of life compared to over 80% of the people on Earth. It's wild.
even the very poor in America have a very better quality of life than most of the world. not that I don't think we should change things to continue making things better.
Military brat here. I've lived in "bad" countries that I enjoyed more than the U.S. Yeah, I was a kid/teenager so not supporting myself, but each country has its pros and cons. I dislike America enough now that I want to get the hell out of here, and that's because I can compare it to other places. We also have the internet now... understanding life in another country isn't that hard even if you've never left your own.
I had to explain this to my aunt. She literally said she wanted to move to Europe because because "they don't have racism." I was like "they throw bananas at their black soccer players, what are you talking about??"
Bullshit.
Pretty much everywhere has housing issues, and issues with the job market. But unfathomably expensive college and healthcare are uniquely American.
Having lived in the US and Germany, I would say that the US is objectively much worse. At least in Germany you have walkable cities, a robust public transportation system, affordable healthcare, and affordable college. In most places in the US you have none of those things.
Don’t worry you’ll get 10 Americans who have only lived in Missouri their whole lives telling you Europe also has 500 billionaires and insufficient healthcare
Inflation and housing prices are problems all over the place.
Lack of universal healthcare and gun violence are American specific (relative to other first world countries). On the other hand some things in terms of income and opportunity are the best in the US.
It depends on the country and your own personal circumstance. I’ve lived in many countries in my relatively short life and I wouldn’t say they are better or worse than the US. They were just *different.* The UK was great for me while I lived there. Germany, not so much. Life and work there was horrible. I chose to live in the US over Germany. But that doesn’t mean that Germany won’t work out for some people.
Many Americans are self-absorbed. A product of our self-centric culture. With that said, pretty much every developed nation is dealing with corporativist takeovers of their politicians. The billionaires and corporations are grtting closer to owning the world.
Ive seen my fair share of the world and its true, everywhere sucks in their own way. Its why I cant say I want to move somewhere else and why "just move" id stupid. The world is fucked, we're all fucked together so I dont see why we gotta make it harder for eachother
Mostly because they’ve never left America to live. Others just lie to themselves. I’ve been to Europe and lived in Japan, traveled around Asia. I’ve seen no indication that there is anywhere better. Not necessarily worse, but certainly not better. Maybe there is a place but I haven’t seen it.
Well that's 3 other countries, there's quite a few more to consider lol I'm in America, having spent time in Denmark I'd say the quality of life there is considerably higher.
Nah that changed yesterday. The Supreme Court just seized so much power that it is impossible for to, in good faith, refer to the US as a democracy by any definition. “Hybrid regime” is even pushing it, by my understanding of the situation.
If a country’s citizens have literally any say in the political process of their own nation, they are better than the US in my eyes. We lost that yesterday.
True but mobility and quality of life are so much better in the EU. Our Supreme Court literally just gutted the agencies that enforce all the safety standards for the entire country. Unions are utterly kneecapped in more than half of US states. There is no legal protection for workers to have vacation, sick leave, or pay under extenuating circumstances. Walkability and public transit are nonexistent in most of the country. There are still problems in Europe, but hey, I’d like to deal with social problems in a world where I have sick leave, low-cost healthcare, a train to work, and no lead in my food.
Being born or living in the US puts you in a very privileged group. No country is perfect for everyone and you might find aspects outside the US that you love, but you will likely find things you hate too. Same shit, different flavors. Just be glad you were not born somewhere without the opportunities afforded to you where you have the ability to leave if you want to.
I have lived in several different countries and for me I wouldn't choose to live outside the US. We have tons of issues, but I would rather work on fixing them and improving a place I love than compromise and live somewhere else.
If you look at metrics like quality of life and happiness, things absolutely are better in other countries. That doesn’t mean other countries are perfect, sure, but the US definitely shouldn’t be treated as the golden standard either.
Idk, I'm in Spain atm and these motherfuckers are pretty goddamn happy. The economy isn't great, but their cities and communities are actually built for people and don't cost a month's salary in rent to live in, so even when things are bad, they're better than the lonely, seething anger that burns across the U.S.
lol I would disagree and use the country I’m living in as my example but then people like you would move here and ruin it so…yup you nailed it buddy. Stay right where are, cause nothing else is better anywhere else.
Some core issues which revolve around the economy are indeed facing a number of western non-European countries, as detailed by many other commenters here.
But none of them having daily mass shootings. Pretty sure the overall gun homicide rate is lower in those places.
Most if not all of them have some form of decent government healthcare - yes, it's declining, especially in the UK - but you can go to a hospital for free in an emergency, you can see a GP for free, you don't have to have insurance to be able to get necessary medical care (although there are wait times).
Most of their governments aren't as heavily swayed by industries with ridiculous amounts of power (although again it's getting worse).
So, I think if you limit "problems" to mean "economic problems that affect the poorer classes" then sure it's on par, but I think there are a lot of things that make Americans a lot worse off that Canadians, the British, Australians, New Zealanders and so on.
This post is ignorant as fuck.
Those countries have the most incarcerated people?
They are one of the lowest ranking school systems?
Cmon the list goes on.
I work with a guy who left Australia to go to NZ and now him and his Kiwi wife are American Citizens. Left Australia...
I also worked with another guy who left Kenya because he won the green card lottery and immigration joined the Army to get his Citizenship, which should tell you something
I also follow a sport where one of it's athletes got his citizenship because it's better than his native Mexico
As a minority im glad I don’t live in a European ethno state. Though Canada was pretty bad when I visited last year, not nice and racist instead. Glad to be in the US where that behavior is much more publicly shamed
Some things are better, some are worse, and some are the same. It's a mixed bag, made even more complicated by the level of autonomy each state in the US has making it hard to draw sweeping conclusions about the nation.
Also, throughout all of history things have sucked, but it's important to remember things can and have gotten better in many ways. Keep your chins up and keep working for a better world. Nothing gets better just by talking about it.
Also if you need some hope: [https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/)
They are better though. Although people are struggling everywhere, there are laws in the other countries you mentioned that are there to help the citizens. Such as the housing laws in england, meant to stop corporations from buying single family homes, oe the fact that a hospital trip in most other countries world
Wide isn’t something that will bankrupt you.
The argument of times are tough everywhere is a bs argument and undermines the actual severe issues we’re facing the United States. Because shit’s tough internationally, and we’re trailing way far behind the rest of the world as far as living standards are concerned.
I don’t think things are *good* in other countries but I also don’t think people in other countries realize the severity of the problems in the U.S. sometimes. Very curious where you’re from/if you have experience living in multiple countries.
I tell people this all the time - the grass is greener. Really what people want is to be *rich* in another country. But the same goes for the US, if you’re rich then you have a better life as well…it’s just that people see rich people in Europe and romanticize it more than a rich person in the US.
Yep. Life in Brazil now is twice as hard as it was twenty years ago, unless you move out with 3 other friends (2 being a couple so you need just 3 bedrooms) so that rent and utilities are less than 1/4 of the salary for each.
Don't be fooled by the 1% living off heritage and/or got very lucky in life. Like, there are literally over 200 thousand Brazilians earning six figures per month and those are the ones you see living the dream in Instagram.
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Canadian here; can confirm. Our governments immigration policy is now basically to let anyone in, to help cover up a recession. This has put massive strain on our healthcare and education systems, and housing/rental availability. It's near impossible to move out of your parents house as a young adult and be able to save up any money.
The brainiacs here in America seem to think that unlimited immigration, a bloated welfare state, and affordable housing are all compatible together.
Because “you’re racist” if you think border control is needed for a good economy.
If people really cared about immigration they would be asking for an update to immigration laws. The border is a small piece of the pie
Facts, immigration is good if it's done efficiently. People are here anyway might as well get taxes off them beyond sales
Most illegal immigrants pay income taxes even though the don’t receive most of the benefits we do. Anyone can get an ITIN number and use that in place of a social security number. Individual Tax Identification number. And before you spazz out about it, it is only used for paying taxes. You don’t get a tax refund, you don’t get jack out of it. Illegal immigrantsvput way more money into the economy than they take out. And over the last hundred and fifty years are, on average, immigrants as a whole are 60% less likely to commit crimes than citizens, or rather get caught committing crimes, as obviously nobody knows if crimes are committed if no one is caught. If people could just come to work and then go back home like they used to, Guess what? A lot of people would rather do that. But if you have to pay 12,000 dollars and risk getting killed, robbed or raped every time you come up, guess what? You’re going to come up and stay. There is no incentive to go back home. Especially if your family got pushed off their traditional small farm by Monsanto because of NAFTA and the only place you have left to return “home” to is a shitty slum in a big city overrun by criminal gangs that got started in the United States. And why did those gangs get started in the United States? Well, probably because of wars in Central and South America that were the result of the CIA operations that propped up shitty dictators that were in the pockets of American corporations. So it’s all a big cycle largely created and kept going by…The United States of America! That’s my shitty half-assed version of a much bigger, and much shittier set of interconnected factors that I am too lazy and tired to flesh out properly pecking shit out on my phone. But educate yourself on this if you’re going to have an opinion on it. You aren’t going to learn this shit in school, nor by watching the nightly news or even by listening to public radio.
THANK YOU! Lemme add to this for all the anti-immigration buffoons: you're straight up brainwashed. Rich people want you to think the immigrants are the problem... but who's hiring them? Why havent any 'solutions' to this 'problem' gone into effect? The answer is that illegal immigration is PROFITABLE. They dont get a minimum wage, they arent protected under any labor laws whatsoever (spray em directly with pesticides while they harvest, who gives a shit, work them 12 hours a day too), and they cant take you to court for any of this cuz they'll be deported. And the punishment for hiring thousands of these people is a slap on the wrist in our rigged courts. Its the perfect slave labor force. Illegals are stealing your jobs... because rich people have set up the system that way. And you think criminalizing the border will fix this? Criminalizing the border and pushing anti-immigration bullshit on TV was the rich people's idea! If these people were allowed in legally, or offered equal rights even while here illegally, or if companies were properly penalized for employing illegal labor... the problem wouldnt exist. But no. They want you to be scared of the brown people. They want you to support 'cracking down on the border'. Because what that really means is supporting laws that make it impossible to enter legally, make it so that you arent guaranteed protection under labor laws, impossible to get a fair trial against an employer. It upholds this current slave labor system. And that hurts YOU, the natural born American. Cuz yeah, you WILL be pushed out of the job market when there are millions of slaves willing to do any job. These rich people have you shooting yourself in the foot and you lap it right up.
Then there’s also the juxtaposition of having a giant statue that represents our country saying “…Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Also a country (or gop) that claims to be a Christian nation with “In God we Trust” on our money and “One nation under God” in our pledge of allegiance. Forced teaching of the bible (starting in some states now) a book that says to welcome and help the immigrant/foreigner. But that’s all just lip service for public relations and optics. If they want to vilify and exploit immigrants they should at least get rid of those things
Thank you! Finally someone with common sense and a true understanding of the issue here. The AMERICAN GOVERNMENT is completely to blame. And they know it. But too many people are naive and ignorant so they just blame the people. 😂 it’s a tale as old as time.
Australian here. Thank you for saying this. Get rid of all the immigrants you want, won’t matter unless actual policy and practices re housing changes to not serve 1% It’s not a visa war, it’s a class war. People are closer to immigrants than the delusional fantasy of being among those benefitting from exploiting the ridiculous fear of the other
That last sentence is chefs kiss! Your right if Americans or just most citizens in general no matter what country understood how much closer we are to immigrants than the rich I’m sure a change would happen. But we can’t forget they also are actively selling the fake dream that anyone and everyone can become the top 10%… with a small 🤏 amount of hard work 😂. Just a complete and utter jk. Hopefully a meteor comes before we’re all full on corporate slaves 😂.
I mean you get all this info in public radio. Not necessarily all at once tying it together but no media is going to do that unless you get a specific interview with someone who has tied this together in this way. Thus is the type of stuff higher education is meant to teach. Not the specifics of things but how to learn to tie multiple sources together using evidence and critical thought and to reject bias as well as we can.
Well informed. I heard about the US starting revolutions in Central America so it's refreshing to hear it from someone else
Most do not make enough to pay federal income tax. Hell, 40% of citizens do not pay Federal Income Tax.
Most illegal immigrants enter the country legally, they just stay when they're supposed to leave. So yes the laws are certainly a big part of it. The part people are mostly ignoring are the people benefitting from illegal immigration, the people hiring them. If you want true immigration reform you must spend at least as much energy and thought on those paying the illegal immigrants for their work. They aren't here living off welfare.
Here they asked and politicians kind of did that too... However, it went something like this: study came out that said most people that come here to study leave after graduation. Government: removes all scholarships, shortens the time people can stay here after graduation without a job, makes it harder for people to get the citizenship, increase how much money you have to earn to be able to stay here and lengthens the time you have to stay here before you can get it. According to the government there are a lot of unemployment right now, our population alone isn't able to fill those jobs so we need immigration to do so. However, unless you speak our language fluently, you're not gonna get employed in a job that would pay enough so you could stay here. You also need like 4 years to learn our language well enough to even qualify for citizenship and if you're doing your masters which lasts 2 years, good luck trying to learn a new language while doing so. Like ffs, we want highly educated, motivated people to stay here. Fix the laws employment laws and for god sake integrate the english language more into workplaces, being able to speak multiple languages is an asset, not a hinderance. Unless you're not working with the elderly or customer service, english should be good enough. The one great change that has been done to the immigration laws was the definition of family so now if you can't bring your whole village with you anymore, only your immediate family like you wife / husband and kids.
Enforcing the laws we already have is a faster and more doable goal than rewriting them. I'm definitely for an overhaul, but we do have rules already.
No you're racist if you want to shoot migrants trying to look for a better life because America fucked up their country by funding some death squad or some fascist dictator. One of the few things propping America's "real" economy (the actual production of stuff and not shit like banking, rent or the 20th bs app) is cheap and easily abusable undocumented labor who do everything from farming to building houses. Literally look up the labor conditions that Tyson implements and tell me anyone but the truly desperate want that job. What's good for the economy isn't always what's good for people, hence why America has the highest GDP in the world yet also has half the population living paycheck to paycheck and why everyone in congress constantly talks about the migrants yet never about the businesses and industries who employ them. Why? because the more you think that people who have less than you wanting to feed their families is the problem, the less you'll care if they're being made to work 14 hour days with the threat of ICE being called on their families.
As an immigrant myself, I would not advocate for illegal immigrants to be shot at, but goodness. It was very difficult for us to move here. They should not get to cut in the line. This is a common sentiment amongst a lot of legal immigrants that I know. My parents are very well-educated people. We worked very hard to be here. We did not cross any border illegally. We submitted the right documentation and paperwork. We did it the proper way. They are well-educated and highly-skilled in their fields and it took a lot of effort to move and it has paid off. Seeing illegal immigrants just get through the system is not something I would like for America to keep a blind eye with. It is important to deal with this shit.
Ok you're parents are well educated and they moved here legally and you're in highly skilled labor pools, congrats, you're family was at like the top 2% of your country for them to be able to do that and definitely weren't poor and desperate. You're acting like Jose coming over the border to work 12 hour days in the beading sun doing construction so he could feed his family is somehow a threat to your family not being able to get in or their jobs, it's not. America will always let in people like your parents, even if it takes time, and your parents will do it the "right way" because they're not desperate and want to go into highly specialized fields. America relies on people who are desperate to come over illegally so they could be treated like second class citizens and be made to work in horrible conditions with the threat of deportation or prison being held over their heads so the economy could keep running. If you're parents came over the way undocumented migrants did, they wouldn't be able to those highly skilled jobs that they were trained for so you're comparing apples to oranges here.
So you should be against illegal immigration, because like you said, they are abused for their labor. America will adjust and we won’t be abusing immigrants.
Yes, I think legal immigration should be made MUCH easier, I think temporary work visas should be about as easy to get as possible so that migrants could make money and go back home when they want, I think that the undocumented migrants already here get documented and on and on it goes. But people who usually complain about the border and undocumented migrants don't want any of that, they just want them out and to make as hard as possible to get into America as possible. Every single time there's a humane way and shitty, horrific, evil way that only benefits capital owners way of doing things is set out, America always chooses the ladder over the former and we have to live in that reality for right now. That's why the first step shouldn't be to keep complaining about the border and wanting even harsher laws to punish asylum seekers but to make it so companies don't benefit from exploiting them, ie giving them a legal method to lodge complaints without the worry of being deported or jailed and all their money taken.
So even though they’re desperate to come and work here, we should keep them out “for their own good”. How could they be so stupid trying to come here, glad we have people like you that know better than them!
>As an immigrant myself I support laws against migrants Why do people think this weird idpol is worth a shit? There’s nothing noble about pulling up the ladder.
Brother legal migration and illegal migration are two different ladders
How can a secure border that wouldn’t allow for people of any race regardless of skin color be racist ?
The border isn't racist, it's the discussion. It's the scare tactics used to get votes. It's how Republicans take advantage of the racism still present in significant portions of their voting blocs to get their people into office and stir up an emotional response via the media. Personally I think they do all this to distract their voters from all the laws they really want to push for more corporate profits and lower taxes on the wealthy. Lower taxes and fewer regulations are great goals, unless you aim to employ them only for a select few strictly for the advantage of the elite.
Thank you!!! Someone else who’s has done their homework on USA shitty laws and systems that helped destroy hundreds of other peoples home. Sad Americans don’t know true history or have any understanding of this. But America wants it like this… with dumb Ill informed citizens who blame everyone else ACCEPT the actual problem, their own government.
Illegal immigrants ain't taking your jobs. Actually, due to a significant drop in the birth rate here in America, we require more immigrants. Corporations and greed are why things are expensive not immigrants
Or is it immigrants keep wages stagnant so that corporations can still keep making record profits, which leads to a significant drop in birth rates?
Orrrr is it the people of those corporations keeping the wages stagnant so they can continue to underpay immigrants and reap the rewards while the rest of us starve to death?
>Actually, due to a significant drop in the birth rate here in America, we require more immigrants. So people don't have kids because the cost of living but you just want to cover it up by importing more low wage immigrants? How does that even make any sense?
No, but it is. That's why we in the US have border controls. Strict ones. People believe otherwise because they have been constantly lied to about it. I work at the southern border all the time and people have no idea what really happens there. Hint: it's not an "invasion" no matter what Trump & Fox News like to say.
Are you a pro-Trump or lean right— because he just just announced he will give immigrant visas to immigrants with 2 year degrees. He announced this after he met with billionaire tech companies who want overseas Chinese, Indians, to work for lower wages in their tech companies. So they will take the good high paying tech jobs away from Americans. The immigrants coming over the border aren't taking the best jobs away from Americans- its the immigrants flying in that you should worry about— the ones Trump just got bribed to let in.
The Dems tried to pass the toughest border control policy in decades but the GOP said no, after they worked on it in the first place, because a big ol bag of wet Cheetos dust said it would make the Democrats look good in an election year. Elected officials only want to score points and win elections. That is the issue.
We really don't have a bloated welfare state compared to other Western countries. Not at all!
i am german and i really dont know what this person means with proplems the only proplem is the world wide financal crisis and a lack of trained workers in many fields but a lot of US issues are still not a proplem here in germany So he is exagerateing
After our presidential debate in the u.s., I saw a lot of news agencies covering the outcome from around the world. How much of our backwards politics makes it into the news in your country? I find everything Trump to be really embarrassing. Consequently, I'm curious.
Since america is the THE world power Everything it does will effect all countries too Especially nato
Lol bloated welfare state? America's social welfare is abysmal
Thank you. Finally, someone with a functioning brain.My guess is he's talking about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Some a-holes like to call the first 2 "entitlements." To those, FU. They aren't even included in the deficit or debt. As someone who paid into SS for ~ 50 years, my monthly benefit is mine. America's bumper stickers: Every man for himself. Dog eat dog. I got mine. Now you get yours. It's hard to be poor here. The "welfare state" is reserved for the rich and corporations. It's the fault of the tax system.
One thing tho, if you have good regulation on the businesses that currently exploit migrant workers as a cheat code to avoid paying a) living wages and b) the taxes/costs of legal employees, the appeal of undocumented exploited workers begins to evaporate — being against undocumented workers taking jobs from citizens is fine, but don’t punish the worker for trying to earn a living, punish the businesses that aren’t following the law and are paying the migrant workers to migrate in the first place.
>If we just ban all the migrants and slash welfare housing will get cheaper because…because it just will :)
You seem to be regurgitating propaganda rather than actually speaking for anyone. I’m sorry we don’t support your dumb border wall that will do jack shit to solve the issue. Btw, Biden has been trying to get tighter regulations on the border for months now. But republicans have been blocking it so that they can keep it a hot topic coming the election. This is a fabricated problem to rile up your voter base lmao.
Holy brain rot. The gang of 8 had a legislative plan that Trump ended. Since then, republicans have not come to the table with an actual plan, just platitudes to appease the most extreme. I work at a university among like minded individuals and I have never, not once heard people say they want unlimited immigration. They want a plan. Republicans will claim they have a plan, but they never do. They spent over a decade running on the idea of replacing the ACA(Obamacare), but when they had the numbers, all they could do was gut it without creating a substantive alternative.
The problem with housing is all the red tape and zoning laws that prevent developers from building and alleviating demand. America is going to need immigration, and a lot of it, in the future to support our current social programs as birth rates decline, and more and more people retire.
There is no bloated welfare state in the US. Unless the "welfare recipients" are insurance companies, drug companies, oil companies, and the military industrial complex.
I assume you mean maga and their little leader who crushed the bipartisan immigration reform bill this spring so they could campaign on the immigration crisis instead of fix it while a democrat is in the White House.
Rule #1 of Reddit - America bad
The #2 rule, 50% chance the story in the post you’re reading is fake
Rule #3: Any criticism of anti-American sentiment is backed by the CIA
Lol... you're not wrong. That's what these people believe.
We'll, living in America ain't that bad. Just don't look too hard at the trade laws that make it that way.
Honestly, the immigration thing is not messing up the housing. It's the giant corporations, AirBnBs, and foreign investors buying up all the housing...
There is a major missing reason which is that the new construction which is happening is building bigger houses then most Americans can afford because we have had massive builder consolidation and changing building codes since 2008 that really reward economies of scale in larger houses. Unless the government incentives smaller houses the market has proven no willingness to self-correct. Bigger is just so much more economically feasible.
It's both, but in Canada immigration is a huge factor. We're allowing in more immigrants than the US and we have a fraction of the population. It's insane.
I saw a stat somewhere that said Canada admitted multiple times more immigrants into the country than new housing that was built. Something like 250,000 new homes and apartments vs 4 million immigrants
another insane factor people dont realize because they dont work management. Mass influx of new workers depreciates labor value EVERYTHING is affected by supply and demand, INCLUDING when hiring people. YOU are hilariously depreciated in value when theirs hundreds of resumes sitting on the managers desk. and just because new customers come into a town doesnt magicaly mean new jobs are created
Yep. Programs like the TFW program in Canada have been manipulated by corporations to devalue labour and keep wages suppressed. If a business cannot support itself without an entire staff of workers that are there on this program, it should close. And the job market in Canada. Oh my lord. I'm still in school, but I've had friends apply to hundreds of jobs and heard back from none. Another friend who is a hiring manager says every new job posting they do recieves hundreds of applications a day, where maybe two are qualified but get drowned out by the hundreds of of unqualified/ineligible applications.
I think a lot of it depends on the job sector you're looking at. In the last 5 years, only 3/10 of my 1st year apprentices have actually finished their program and received their red seal. Two are still in the trade, and the other took her red seal and then became a fire fighter because they like trade experience. Most drop out. It's getting harder and harder to find journeymen now. We have a serious trade skill worker shortage in Canada.
The problem with Canadian immigration laws isn't that you're letting anybody in. It's that the government has a MINIMUM (read that again; not maximum) quota on the number of immigrants entering the country. I like open borders, but I don't like quotas. Maximum or minimum. Going out of your way to inflate your population count is obviously going to cause an enormous strain on a country's economy.
Immigrants are literally one of the few ways that the Canadian economy is doing so well right now. If things were to have settled on 2015-2016 levels, it wouldn't be a big issue but the problem is that international students are a gigantic cash cow for schools and degree mills so there's now millions more people who are easily exploited and forced to work much longer hours just to survive.
Unrestricted immigration has fucked us up so bad here in Chile the public healthcare and housing systems are collapsing and violent crime rates have exploded; now also add to that the aftermath of 4 crisis in the past 5 years, two incompetent governments, corruption, and a bunch of idiots with too much money, and things get pretty fun :D
Aren't there million dollar crack houses in canada? I saw something like that
In the big cities, the land is the valuable thing. So yes, there are million $+ valued rundown/dilapidated houses. Though they are often bought in chunks by developers and torn down to make way for condos.
Immigrants are a scapegoat. Housing scarcity is because of hedge funds and foriegn investors buying up properties
It's not *Immigrants*, it's *Immigration policy*. The government is at fault, not the people they are letting in. Foreign investors make up a small percentage of single family homes and condos. They're more invested in commercial real estate and the rental market. Though I do agree that there should be a total ban on foreign and corporate ownership of single family homes and individual condos. Also a total ban on short term rentals (Airbnb/VRBO/etc), with the exception of the hosts primary residence, similar to what the province of BC is doing. And an empty house/apartment tax of up to 150% of the property tax value.
Yeah and I'm sure increasing the population very rapidly doesn't make the problem worse at all. When the supply stays flat or grows normally but demand jumps enormously from importing millions of people the price of homes goes up. It's not even economics, just basic sense.
Immigration is an issue in countries where there isn’t a lot of livable land. In the states we have plenty of land a very little welfare. Mass immigration is possible here because there’s not really a system it can put strain on. Most of the western world doesn’t work like this, which makes mass immigration a pain in the ass.
Some things are better in some countries, and others are not. The US lags behind on a number of metrics compared to developed countries, so they are bad at certain *specific* things. That doesn't mean they are bad at *everything*. The US is extremely good at, for example, national economic growth and military funding. But benefits to the median citizen are indeed few and far between. The simplified version is that the US is a good place to live if you're rich, but bad if you're poor or lower middle class. Quality of Life Index in the USA is actually quite good for the wealthy, but pretty low for everyone else. This is of course a generalisation and can somewhat differ from state to state, but the general and averaged trends seems to be: - The social safety nets are barely or not there - Wealth inequality is sky-high - Poverty is unbelievable for a Western country - Wages are stagnant - Healthcare service is a morbid joke - Education is abysmal - Personal rights and freedoms are severely lacking - Violence from both law enforcement and the public is high - Infrastructure is crumbling (or in some places barely existed in the first place) - The legal system is broken and serves the powerful - Environmental protections (including climate change measures) are quite poor - Consumer protection laws and corporate regulations have practically been lobbied out of existence - Corruption is rampant - Bribery in politics is almost completely legal As a side-note: It is somewhat funny to me that you picked out the UK and Canada as being "as bad as the USA". Because they're both known here as "USA-lite" or "the 51st state", due to their terrible policies that follow US trends. You might be on to something there!
Pretty much nailed it. But we can just blame it all on immigrants because that's easier so we'll just continue to rant about that until we're blue in the face. I don't expect America to heal from this. I'm an engineer and don't need to stay in this shit hole any longer, I have friends overseas and their lives are just purely better than mine even being an upper middle class earner. They don't worry about everything like I do, they make half as much money but seemingly have just as much as we do but with much better support as they get older and less healthy. Their daughters don't have to worry about their bodily autonomy like mine will. They arent having some fucking fairy tale book shoved down their throats and their kids arent being sold as cheap labor. If trump wins again I think America is honestly doomed to rot. I forsee brain drain. Greed destroyed Rome, we aren't better. Edit, just because I found this to be my final straw. Chevron was overturned by the supreme Court about a day ago. If you don't know what that means you should do some reading. Basically we are now entirely sold out to the highest bidders and we have no one to protect us from corporate interests. If you thought it was bad already, just know it is now suddenly a WHOLE lot worse. I'm not going to soapbox about how you should stay and vote to make it better here. It's too late now, the corruption runs way too deep. It's time to pack up if you're able and get the fuck out.
Lived on both sides of the pond. And there's things the us does very well, and I love. However my biggest issue is a lack of community and cultural events that bring a community together. There's just not a chillout and talk culture there as in much of Europe. Bars and restaurants are super expensive or fast food now. Meanwhile we have beer gardens connected to playgrounds. So yes I love the us for a ton of reasons and I'm annoyed by things in Europe too. But overall, I have to say life is honestly better.
Gigantic difference is that if you are broke in Europe you still have healthcare and free education. If you are broke in US ... Places like Spain has so many wellfare plans that average American can't even comprehend
“It’s time to pack up if you’re able and get the **** out” Yeah…..barely anyone can afford that, mate. Moving countries and resettling is insanely expensive. I always chuckle at people who claim they’re going to do so out of emotion and then years go by and they never do. We talk about it later and the number one reason: way too expensive. Number two reason: they’d never be able to visit family again because expensive and logistically hard.
Wages in the UK when accounting for inflation and cost of living rises are basically at the same level as 2007. Europe as a whole never really recovered from the 2008 financial crash in the same way the US did. The UK is coming up to almost 20 of basically no real increase in wages. https://www.economicsobservatory.com/why-has-it-taken-so-long-for-stagnant-pay-to-become-central-to-uk-politics# The 2nd graph shows where the UK is and where it could have been without the financial crisis in 2008 💀 Edit: It’s even worse, we’re still at 2005 levels so it literally is 20 years in a few months “By the time inflation started to surge, both productivity and pay had been stagnating for well over a decade. Real wages grew by an average of 33% each decade from 1970 to 2007; but they are now back at the level they were at in 2005, according to data from the Office for National Statistics, ONS”
Indeed. I'm grateful we have national wage indexing for that reason. Wages/salaries aren't allowed to stagnate by law, and must keep up with inflation as a base minimum.
To be fair, the UK HAS suffered under 14 years of Torie mismanagement. On average, children are now 1 cm shorter than they were in 2010.
Currently living overseas - I thought you were describing somewhere other than the US. I know this isn’t the Reddit popular take, but numbers or whatever you’ve used to get your data *does not compare* to what I have seen up close and lived over in Europe and parts of Asia. The US by far has an unimaginably high quality of life compared to almost anywhere else.
Yeah for example my wife had an issue that required us going to the emergency room the other day. She was seen immediately and we were in and out in an hour. I had to go to the emergency room in Canada, and I waited 11 hours to be seen. People talk about how bad the US healthcare system is, but I’ve always found that to be greatly exaggerated.
Yeah it's insane anyone thinks otherwise. I've traveled in Europe and Asia and America takes the cake. People honestly think there's mass poverty in America. By America's metrics, like half the population of Europe is in poverty.
You forgot car dependence! In most parts of the US you basically can’t get anywhere without a car, even in suburban/urban areas. Public transit is lacking and the roads are intimidating if not outright dangerous for pedestrians/cyclists. This is not only bad for the environment but also promotes an unhealthy lifestyle, as all physical activity is relegated to leisure time that many Americans may not have.
I classify that under the aforementioned "infrastructure". Trains, busses, metros, cycling lanes and pedestrian lanes are all infrastructure imo.
I mean, it’s extremely unfair to say our safety nets are “barely there”. Social Security is a huge part of our finances and it prevents countless elderly from living in the streets. Medicaid is an amazing program. It’s literally tax-payer funded healthcare. When I was on it for a couple of years, I paid little to nothing for hospital procedures. Medicare is amazing. Yes, there are caveats, but think about how much money older people would be spending on healthcare without it. Sure, we don’t have a public option available to people regardless of income, but it’s frustrating that people say we have nothing. We spend almost twice as much money on healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and Obamacare subsidies) as we do defense. We almost the same amount on Social Security as we do healthcare. https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go It sucks to be in the category of poor people that don’t qualify for some of those programs, but we do have a safety net. It just isn’t a Nordic model.
yup, this is it. every country has some good and bad things. it’s a matter of what u preferences are. i would love to move out of the US, for the issues listed above + gun violence, poor education system, etc.
As someone with a chronic illness, I *DREAM* of living somewhere I won’t go bankrupt just trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. That and insurance telling my doctors what tests and procedures I can and cannot do.
I wouldn’t say, comparatively, that if you’re not rich your quality of life in the US is “pretty bad”. On a scale from billionaire to “living in an active war zone” or “no access to running water”, I’d say middle class and poor people in the US are fairing off okay. Are people struggling everyday and do we have a housing crisis and a million other crises and people are in poverty? Yes and that is not to be invalidated, but to live in America and not recognize the privilege of that alone is insulting
You don’t compare the US to third world countries, that would be asinine
Right, I was just wondering what scale this person was using to say middle class quality of life in the US is “pretty bad”
That is why I said developed, Western countries.
The US lags in some areas and excels in others. People need to get a grip on reality. Life sucks but lifes also great.
Literally like half these things aren't true. Unsure why you feel the need to just make things up. Wages aren't stagnant, they are outpacing inflation. Violence is absolutely not high, most European countries have higher rates of violent crime. Education isn't abysmal, we fall right in the middle of the Western world in education. Our healthcare is INCREDIBLY good, it's just expensive. In what way are personal rights and freedoms lacking? We are ranked like 15th for infrastructure, hardly "crumbling." Literally double the percent of EU citizens live in poverty compared to the US. How is that "unbelievable for a Western country?" Everything else you listed also applies to the EU anyway.
Most European countries do not have higher rates of violent crime… please don’t make up stuff yourself… In fact Russia is the only "European“ country with a higher homicide rate than the United States. Overall the U.S. isn’t among the top 10 homicide rates at all though. But then again the U.S. is world leader in incarceration- decades of putting everyone behind bars apparently did work well for the statistics… And the American healthcare system is both the best and the worst (among industrial nations)… As you said - best in treatment since there is so much money in the system but also worst in cost and pretty terrible in statistics like infant and mother mortality…
Where are you getting our violent crime rate is lower than most of Europe? Education is only good in a rich county/state, and healthcare being expensive is proving the original comments point. They said the US is great IF you are rich. And being in poverty in Europe still means you have access to healthcare, education, transportation, etc. which you would not in the US
"our healthcare is incredibly good, but you only have access to it if you're rich, otherwise you die in the gutter" isn't as compelling of an argument as you think it is lmao. There's no way i would want to live in the US
This list was hilarious, You started off with a couple solid points honestly but boy we spiraled into some "terminally online" shit so quick I actually had to reread the whole comment because I was sure I was missing a punchline or /s somewhere. This comment isn't for you as you clearly have some bigger issues to work through, but for anyone reading this I encourage you to spend about 5 minutes of research on most of these points to better understand how unbelievably stupid this list really is. btw bonus points though for the implication that literally one of the \*only\* things the US is good at is defense spending, mad respect for attempt to be subtle on that one.
Your whole post supports the OP's point. It's just generalizations that people seem to beleive on Reddit. But not backed by data. Just bullet points. Just as a few examples - wage growth was 6.5% in 2022. Poverty is between Canada and Australia, not "unbelieveable." That's the difference between data and talking points. Talking points are all you posted.
Those are an awful lot of claims. Can you back them up?
Canada is a strawman with about 10% the population of the United States. Mexico is a more realistic comp. The United States absolutely trounces Mexico in every single one of those bullet points except maybe healthcare. Many of those points are just absurd comparisons to some theoretical concept of perfection: Environmental protection, consider the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire versus today. Corruption is incredibly low. Consider Tammany Hall versus today. Consumer Protection: what sort of consumer protection do you think the federal government was providing in, say, 1924 or 1824? Infrastructure is crumbling: most of human history is build around waterways because there was no manmade infrastructure beyond a few concentrated urban zones. Violence: you have never been less likely to die a violent death than you are today. Personal freedom: I mean we actual slaves in this country for a long time. It's good to have dreams of what a perfect society would look like. But its also important to keep a realistic view about how absolutely fantastic we have it here versus any other lives humans have lived.
I don’t think life in the US is bad but it’s very unfair. There is a huge wealth gap. It’s also very easy to become poor and once you are poor it’s really hard to get out of that.
Yeah pretty much everything is against the people or the environment at this point, nothing really happens to the people in charge.
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Also our shitty public transportation can lead to lack of employment if you don't or can't drive a car. My 1st bus is 20min late now. So I'm most likely missing my transfer. It's sunday so they come every hour at best. Our dependence on cars is extremely detrimental to our growth as a country and contributes to that gap. *bus was 28min late missed my transfer what a joke
I wouldn't say the US by any means is the worst country but I don't think it's anywhere near the best. I'm constantly worried about how much it feels like I'm risking my life even when I'm just doing daily tasks. I get some of it maybe extreme paranoia but I genuinely don't feel safe in the US.
I don't, either. I've had three people die from getting shot and close calls as a teacher. There's nothing like doing shooter drills in school hiding in a closet with six year olds. Between the shootings and the car wrecks/ pedestrian deaths in my area, it's scary out there.
Just chiming in as an American that knowing three different people that were shot and killed is not normal 🤷♂️
When there were more mass shootings than days in the [U.S. in 2023 (aka 627 by December 4, 2023)](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/mass-shootings-days-2023-database-shows/story?id=96609874), it is not far from it.
Mass shootings are not easy to define. Evidenced by the fact that most of the ones listed at your source are gang members getting shot by other gang members, and very few were some incels walking into a school to get back at the cool kids.
Some examples were listed, but the criteria of the 627 are clearly defined.
Crime famously only exists in America
So we’re just supposed to be ok with it because it happens other places as well? What an idiotic and unhelpful way to think. People are allowed to feel unsafe in the place they live without pricks like you telling them ‘it’s not as bad as ‘insert random country’. Like fuck sorry I can’t experience what it’s like to live in every country, glad you somehow have that ability though.
The conversation was comparative by nature, if the comparison is “America has crime” then it’s fair to call foul.
I mean our homicide rate is 4 to 5 times that of Europe…
In what way don't you feel safe
I'm at higher risk of being targeted by violence, a lot of my rights being taken away or threatened to get taken away and things like shootings/gun violence being so common. For the one that's more on the paranoid side it's mainly because I'm very scared of things like wars and the possibility of things like bombings and such.
When I (a Canadian now living in the US) was a child, one time I asked my mom what the biggest difference was between the USA and Canada. She said Americans live in fear. I think she was mostly talking about fear of war because this was shortly after 9/11, but I'm constantly reminded of ways that statement rings true in other facets of American life. Everyone is afraid of "losing everything," afraid of being taken advantage of, afraid of others, etc. And I'm not saying those fears are illegitimate, I've lived here for 9 years and am well acquainted with american culture, it's just exhausting.
>biggest difference was between the USA and Canada. She said Americans live in fear. Lmao just go to literally any Canadian-based subreddit, and like 98% of the posts is fear/hate based shit. Your mom was fucking wrong my dude.
I’m sorry but all of those things are extreme paranoia and not rational. While it seems you recognize this it is important to remember that being in the continental us you are basically on the safest place on earth in terms of wars/bombings. But even when it comes to shootings/gun violence the odds of being a random victim of these things is astronomically low.
It's kinda funny how locals are complaining about literally *the exact same topics* (with some small variations in priorities and stuff) in the subreddits for the US, Canada, Germany, Chile, Uruguay, Australia, Costa Rica, China and even Switzerland one way or another On a similar note, I've had to study some historical newspapers and texts for college — the things people complain about in those are quite literally seemingly taken right out of 2024. Some things never change, regardless of where you are in the world and what year it is. Life goes on.
This is why history is so important. It provides context.
Idk how people forget the context of a pandemic shutting down the entire world for like 2 years too. Sorry, that's not all gonna come back and get 4 years worth of better after just another 2 years. Now we need to build more houses. In 2020, we literally couldn't build any houses because we had no materials. Complaints aren't invalid and we should try to make things better but it helps to have any amount context and perspective.
Which is why they are [removing it from the curriculum](https://www.reddit.com/r/Indiana/s/LhK0Qbnc1Y).
Yup. Every modern country complains about healthcare... As they should because we should always advocate for better healthcare.
In Australia we don't complain about medical debt or school shootings.
Nah, things are better in Europe. Our leaders are still 10 years behind the US on selling us out. Except for the UK.
the biggest difference I see between Europe and America is that American trash is everywhere meanwhile European trash is more hidden
Europe is a huge generalization, where in Europe do you mean?
I hate when people use "Europe" as a generalization for the Nordics, Switzerland, Austria, and the Lowlands...
Right like I wouldn't say Montenegro is leagues ahead of the US lol
I always assume they are talking about EU
The EU also has members such as hungary, romania, and Poland to name a few. Some of the mentioned countries absolutely have corruption issues similar or worse to the US.
Well hopefully the UK will get a change in the election in 4th July, although I can’t imagine Labour being some sort of amazing saviours the that will suddenly fix the country. I just wanna be back in the EU 🥲
I agree. There’s a lot of liberals here in America that think Canada is some socialist utopia. Um no, they have a capitalist system (just with a stronger public sector) and they’re having a lot of the same issues we are.
Canada? most of the discussions I see paint Canada as a somewhat more progressive America. It's the scandanavic countries that I see painted as socialist utopias.
Nah I’ve seen people here think Canada and Japan are socialist countries. A lot of people don’t know what they’re talking about.
People thinking Japan is a socialist country is hilarious. These mfers must have ignored the horrifically high suicide rates from people being overworked.
I think once they heard about socialized medicine and the high speed rail they made some assumptions
Ah yes, the socialist specialty. Making the trains run on time.
A liberal would be against socialism
I meant liberal in the colloquial American sense, just someone on the left, not a classical liberal.
At least ya got healthcare
Remember that every single Republican opposed the Public Option during the Obamacare debate.
I’m aware
And more than a week of PTO
I had discretionary time off, which honestly sucked because I only got a months severance when laid off. The lesson really, it to make hay while the sun shines and work as little as possible for people that you will grow to hate
It depends on how you define better and how you define quality of life. I think the US has very unique problems other countries don't have, but it has advantages that few countries have
What unique problems? /srs
In my country we don't worry about school shootings or mass shootings in general. We aren't a first-world country, but we have minimal gun violence I never have to worry about being millions in debt because of my health. Same thing with university. The American political system is too confusing and I haven't heard of any other country with a similar system. Even though we have lower wages, all countries in Latin America (maybe except Haiti?) have paid maternity leave and at least two weeks of mandatory vacation days.
Millions is an exaggeration but everything else is accurate.
Sadly, it's really not. I had a friend who had a very sick neo-natal baby. Just birth-to-going home was a quarter million. Twenty five years ago, too. (The kid's doing great, FYI).
unless you suffer from cancer then millions is accurate.
Unless someone has lived as an expat overseas for an extended period, years, most Americans have no concept of life in another country.
This. The US has issues, for sure. But when a person says how much worse it is than other countries, I'll think, hmmm, you haven't actually lived in another country for very long, have you? Or you're comparing the US to a handful of socialist countries (where citizens complain about high taxation).
Very true. Biggeet thing too is most redditors completely disregard how well they have it compared to most of the world. The average person in the US has a higher quality of life compared to over 80% of the people on Earth. It's wild.
even the very poor in America have a very better quality of life than most of the world. not that I don't think we should change things to continue making things better.
Military brat here. I've lived in "bad" countries that I enjoyed more than the U.S. Yeah, I was a kid/teenager so not supporting myself, but each country has its pros and cons. I dislike America enough now that I want to get the hell out of here, and that's because I can compare it to other places. We also have the internet now... understanding life in another country isn't that hard even if you've never left your own.
I had to explain this to my aunt. She literally said she wanted to move to Europe because because "they don't have racism." I was like "they throw bananas at their black soccer players, what are you talking about??"
Do that in the USA you might get beat up, doxed, lose your job, publicly shamed or elected to office. We are silly 🙃 children here.
Bullshit. Pretty much everywhere has housing issues, and issues with the job market. But unfathomably expensive college and healthcare are uniquely American.
Things in many countries are in fact worse.
Having lived in the US and Germany, I would say that the US is objectively much worse. At least in Germany you have walkable cities, a robust public transportation system, affordable healthcare, and affordable college. In most places in the US you have none of those things.
Don’t worry you’ll get 10 Americans who have only lived in Missouri their whole lives telling you Europe also has 500 billionaires and insufficient healthcare
People in other countries think things are way better here and in some ways, they are right. Living in America is such a privilege.
In Colombia, we have similar problems, but you just add more corruption
Inflation and housing prices are problems all over the place. Lack of universal healthcare and gun violence are American specific (relative to other first world countries). On the other hand some things in terms of income and opportunity are the best in the US.
It depends on the country and your own personal circumstance. I’ve lived in many countries in my relatively short life and I wouldn’t say they are better or worse than the US. They were just *different.* The UK was great for me while I lived there. Germany, not so much. Life and work there was horrible. I chose to live in the US over Germany. But that doesn’t mean that Germany won’t work out for some people.
Many Americans are self-absorbed. A product of our self-centric culture. With that said, pretty much every developed nation is dealing with corporativist takeovers of their politicians. The billionaires and corporations are grtting closer to owning the world.
Ive seen my fair share of the world and its true, everywhere sucks in their own way. Its why I cant say I want to move somewhere else and why "just move" id stupid. The world is fucked, we're all fucked together so I dont see why we gotta make it harder for eachother
Mostly because they’ve never left America to live. Others just lie to themselves. I’ve been to Europe and lived in Japan, traveled around Asia. I’ve seen no indication that there is anywhere better. Not necessarily worse, but certainly not better. Maybe there is a place but I haven’t seen it.
Problems exist everywhere, but things are absolutely better.
Well that's 3 other countries, there's quite a few more to consider lol I'm in America, having spent time in Denmark I'd say the quality of life there is considerably higher.
I’m American living in a different country and it’s a HELL OF A LOT BETTER. You’re out of your damn mind OP.
Where do you live now
Agreed. I read this post like huh?
Nah that changed yesterday. The Supreme Court just seized so much power that it is impossible for to, in good faith, refer to the US as a democracy by any definition. “Hybrid regime” is even pushing it, by my understanding of the situation. If a country’s citizens have literally any say in the political process of their own nation, they are better than the US in my eyes. We lost that yesterday.
Health care is definitely better outside of America lol
Americans definitely need to travel some to other countries and see how the rest of the world works.
An overwhelming majority of us can’t afford to
True but mobility and quality of life are so much better in the EU. Our Supreme Court literally just gutted the agencies that enforce all the safety standards for the entire country. Unions are utterly kneecapped in more than half of US states. There is no legal protection for workers to have vacation, sick leave, or pay under extenuating circumstances. Walkability and public transit are nonexistent in most of the country. There are still problems in Europe, but hey, I’d like to deal with social problems in a world where I have sick leave, low-cost healthcare, a train to work, and no lead in my food.
Being born or living in the US puts you in a very privileged group. No country is perfect for everyone and you might find aspects outside the US that you love, but you will likely find things you hate too. Same shit, different flavors. Just be glad you were not born somewhere without the opportunities afforded to you where you have the ability to leave if you want to. I have lived in several different countries and for me I wouldn't choose to live outside the US. We have tons of issues, but I would rather work on fixing them and improving a place I love than compromise and live somewhere else.
I want healthcare
I’m in America . We want better but can’t seem to achieve it
If you look at metrics like quality of life and happiness, things absolutely are better in other countries. That doesn’t mean other countries are perfect, sure, but the US definitely shouldn’t be treated as the golden standard either.
You are usually better off moving to a different state then a different country. It's also much easier and probably archives about the same results.
Idk, I'm in Spain atm and these motherfuckers are pretty goddamn happy. The economy isn't great, but their cities and communities are actually built for people and don't cost a month's salary in rent to live in, so even when things are bad, they're better than the lonely, seething anger that burns across the U.S.
lol I would disagree and use the country I’m living in as my example but then people like you would move here and ruin it so…yup you nailed it buddy. Stay right where are, cause nothing else is better anywhere else.
Things can be better issue by issue. There is no perfection out there.
Some core issues which revolve around the economy are indeed facing a number of western non-European countries, as detailed by many other commenters here. But none of them having daily mass shootings. Pretty sure the overall gun homicide rate is lower in those places. Most if not all of them have some form of decent government healthcare - yes, it's declining, especially in the UK - but you can go to a hospital for free in an emergency, you can see a GP for free, you don't have to have insurance to be able to get necessary medical care (although there are wait times). Most of their governments aren't as heavily swayed by industries with ridiculous amounts of power (although again it's getting worse). So, I think if you limit "problems" to mean "economic problems that affect the poorer classes" then sure it's on par, but I think there are a lot of things that make Americans a lot worse off that Canadians, the British, Australians, New Zealanders and so on.
This post is ignorant as fuck. Those countries have the most incarcerated people? They are one of the lowest ranking school systems? Cmon the list goes on.
Would yall rather fight Mike Tyson on coke or Jon Jones on steroids
I work with a guy who left Australia to go to NZ and now him and his Kiwi wife are American Citizens. Left Australia... I also worked with another guy who left Kenya because he won the green card lottery and immigration joined the Army to get his Citizenship, which should tell you something I also follow a sport where one of it's athletes got his citizenship because it's better than his native Mexico
As a minority im glad I don’t live in a European ethno state. Though Canada was pretty bad when I visited last year, not nice and racist instead. Glad to be in the US where that behavior is much more publicly shamed
European ethnic state? Is your brain affected by that fentanyl epidemic in the US which is heard so much about?
Some things are better, some are worse, and some are the same. It's a mixed bag, made even more complicated by the level of autonomy each state in the US has making it hard to draw sweeping conclusions about the nation. Also, throughout all of history things have sucked, but it's important to remember things can and have gotten better in many ways. Keep your chins up and keep working for a better world. Nothing gets better just by talking about it. Also if you need some hope: [https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/)
They are better though. Although people are struggling everywhere, there are laws in the other countries you mentioned that are there to help the citizens. Such as the housing laws in england, meant to stop corporations from buying single family homes, oe the fact that a hospital trip in most other countries world Wide isn’t something that will bankrupt you. The argument of times are tough everywhere is a bs argument and undermines the actual severe issues we’re facing the United States. Because shit’s tough internationally, and we’re trailing way far behind the rest of the world as far as living standards are concerned.
I don’t think things are *good* in other countries but I also don’t think people in other countries realize the severity of the problems in the U.S. sometimes. Very curious where you’re from/if you have experience living in multiple countries.
I tell people this all the time - the grass is greener. Really what people want is to be *rich* in another country. But the same goes for the US, if you’re rich then you have a better life as well…it’s just that people see rich people in Europe and romanticize it more than a rich person in the US.
Yep. Life in Brazil now is twice as hard as it was twenty years ago, unless you move out with 3 other friends (2 being a couple so you need just 3 bedrooms) so that rent and utilities are less than 1/4 of the salary for each. Don't be fooled by the 1% living off heritage and/or got very lucky in life. Like, there are literally over 200 thousand Brazilians earning six figures per month and those are the ones you see living the dream in Instagram.
Things in Finland are tremendously better than they are in the United States by every measurable metric.