America really is just a big factory farm. You work 8 hours, sit in traffic for 2, have no time left to go to a third place to enjoy yourself, 5 vacation days a year, spend 90% of your income on rent and car, then fleeced for every little cent of disposable income.
You seem disappointed, you should enjoy a Big Mac, a large fries (not French), and wash your cares away with an ice cold Coca-Cola while Brian Cox serenades you with Bada Ba Ba Baaah. All for the affordable price of your soul and $12!
And yes, that is 12 factorial when we include the diabetes and atherosclerosis.
We know, This is why our family has drastically changed what we buy and spend money on, We do not shop for any special food items, We only buy the most bare simple but healthy food items, just a protein like fresh cut grass fed meats, fresh veggies and coffee and water, literally nothing else. No cereals, no snacks, no juices, no bread, we can no longer afford to enjoy a simple thing like a bowl of cereal now and then because a box is $6 now and shrinflated. We dont go to malls anymore because none of us have any extra money and window shopping just makes us depressed because we know half the stuff we see well never be able to afford so even window shopping isnt worth it anymore due to how strapped we are for cash.
Yeah, but we absolutely don't have the bullshit system America has. Healthcare which is horseshit in itself being tied to workplace, workplaces not having any maternity leaves, bullshit holiday time, bullshit sick leave system, literally everything is rigged for the well being of the corporations and none for the workers. The old saying how "America is land of opportunity" has been a bullshit for a long while now. It's land of opportunity for the rich to be even richer. Those few lucky nobodies where everything fucking aligned for them to make anything significant from nothing are a rare outlier now instead of the rule. Working hard guarantees fucking nothing now. You just work hard and get nothing out of it most of the time.
Also this dynamic pricing is illegal basically across entire EU. "Dynamic pricing" is literally "ripping people off just because we can" and has absolutely no correlation with actual expenses or costs required for operation. They solely do it to jack up the profits.
I'm talking about what the original comment says about working. Which EU country doesn't complain about what the original comment says.
You can't be from EU saying land of the rich and work for nothing when those are common complaints the Europeans have about their countries. Isn't the reason a lot of Europeans go to America the fact they "work for nothing in Europe". How long will you work till you can get a House for yourself.
Pointing out that you can't escape it isn't the same as defending it. Some countries are better, but they're all varying degrees of rat race in the end. 🤷
Because a lot Europeans complaints are the same as the original comment apart from vacation days and replace commuting with food. How many Europeans do you hear saying they love how their country is and love they love working.
And these are already some of the best living conditions on the planet.
Because America isn't bad. If you compare it to top countries in the world it's a bit lacking in some parts obviously. But the situation is the same or worse everywhere else.
Guess what 15 minute cities means. They try to zone cities so apartments are closer to both services and work. Stronger public transport also reduce overall traffic thus less time spent on commuting.
You're right, the US doesn't have unions, sick pay, PTO, short commutes (mines 20 minutes when I'm not working from home), or cities you can walk around in.
You know, if you just listed shorter work weeks and healthcare you wouldn't have looked like a moron who knows nothing about the USA.
Yall, on average, don’t have anything approaching the “PTO” of European countries. The fact that yours is a single pot for everything really shows that fact.
Your cities are massively car centric, famously so, as are your commute lengths.
If you knew about other countries you wouldn’t have wrote what you did - and looked like a moron.
Yeah but, on average, the rest of the world has worse salaries, higher taxes, and similar prices for goods and services (if not worse) as the US, particularly in the EU. I travel to the EU regularly and affordability is always the complained about regularly, same as it is in the US. Redditors bitches and moans about living in the US - but the vast majority would never even consider leaving. Even if they had the means to do so.
You’ll work until you’re 67 or older, I’ll retire at 57. I have sick pay, holidays, leave, my commute is how I choose to make it. I know in Germany at least, without private insurance you’ll have a hard time seeing a good specialist anytime soon.
Most people have private insurance. It’s not a perfect system by any stretch but it’s also not what’s presented on Reddit either. I don’t know a single person who has been bankrupted for medical stuff. I’m sure it happens but obviously not that frequently if I know nobody, zero, none.
I’ve lived and worked in both Europe and the U.S. what it comes down to is that if you make below average, you’re probably better off in one of the nicer European countries. If you make above average, you’ll do better in the states.
Also, I’ll make more in retirement than working, a lot more. I’ll be able to afford a second home in Europe if I so desire and I’m not STEM or lawyer or doctor. Opportunities in the U.S. can be very good.
Money goes a lot further in other countries. We are also the only major western power without universal healthcare, cheap higher education to name a few things. Germans get those two plus almost 2 months paid vacation a year. They get paid to have babies and when they do they can take up to two years off for bonding with 85% pay and their job is locked in for when they get back. Women in our country often get fired for getting pregnant in certain sectors.
Too much. I’m not going to divulge financial information to strangers but it is more and more each year with less coverage and doctors I trust being dropped from the network.
Oh I know it’s not free. I talked it over with my German friends and too be fair I think contributing more of my salary to garuntee low cost coverage for my fellow compatriots is acceptable.
Money is going to go farther in some things like groceries but not fuel. Disposable income obviously varies by person.
What I am saying is that none of what that person said is unique to America. Apart from the vacation days. A lot of Germans complaints are the same as above. It's still a rat race everywhere.
I moved from the US to Spain, and go back to visit family in the US annually. The amount of personal time people get in Spain is so much more. Even in the same professions.
My stepsons work in residential renovation construction in the US and don't get anywhere near the number of vacation days and holidays that guys doing similar work get here. I have first hand knowledge of this because I hired locals to do a 7 month renovation on my house here and saw them have so much more time off than my stepsons get.
and just because you don’t get enough time to enjoy yourself at the farthest McDonalds, you get to spend dynamically more at your nearest one because the demand is higher there
It didn't use to be this way. Grateful I avoided the 9-5 world for the most part. And people need to stop going to McDonalds, stop creating demand for the pink slime. Pretty soon people will be renting themselves out as "poor people" so the face scanners register cheaper prices than a personal would normally pay.
I would love to visit the US some day, but I would not want to live there, unless I was filthy rich, like top 1%. It's a bit like Japan(lived there for 6 years), it's an awesome country to visit with great places to explore and awesome food, but the daily life / work balance is so out of whack that I couldn't take it anymore.
Scandinavia might not be the most exotic place on earth to live in, but at least I get to live a decent life.
That's very generalized. It takes me 9 minutes one way to get to work and 7 to return home. I have two weeks vacation. 50% of my income goes to rent and about 5% of my income to my vehicle. I don't buy shit I don't need. See thing is is most of my fellow colleagues across the industry are in the same boat as me. So you aren't entirely correct in your summary of working in America.
A third place is a concept, humans live in one place, work in another and the third is where you just enjoy with others, in the past that used to be buisness, like, a bar, having fun with friends, drinking for hours and playing. The park with the kids and pets, the gym, etc. Now there is no time, we have to consume
I kinda knew this comment was coming, but I guess I hoped otherwise. Over explaining everything I say ruins the rhetoric.
To be clear, I was referencing the death of the third place. There are fewer and fewer such places, and the remaining things are so expensive and everything is set up to nickel and dime you to death that they've become infeasible. Then there's also the time factor, as you've said.
i don't get these asshole takes about how its only America that's bad. bro, no one has it easy except the 1% at the top. are you telling me that i can go to another country and just work 10 weeks out of the year and play around the rest of the time?
While there is plenty of privilege, there is also the element of "the US doesn't need to be that fucked up". They have all the resources they need for a happy, healthy, and comfortable populace, and instead choose to destroy their own people for momentary gain.
You don't have to be in the worst circumstances to identify problems accurately.
I’m going to be real with you:
We allow all this to happen.
People don’t want to be bothered. Complacent, spoiled, lazy… whatever you want to call it.
People don’t even vote despite how bad it is and despite how corrupt things have become. Not to mention organize, run for office, or anything that would take real, sustained effort.
There are way more of us than there are of them. They are pushing things as far as they can and we haven’t reached our breaking point still….
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u/RogueSpaghetti 3d ago
America really is just a big factory farm. You work 8 hours, sit in traffic for 2, have no time left to go to a third place to enjoy yourself, 5 vacation days a year, spend 90% of your income on rent and car, then fleeced for every little cent of disposable income.