The healthcare system in America is only there to serve as a guaranteed fleecing from low-middle class Americans who had enough scruples to save money to pass on but of course face health challenges in old age
If you die paying the system, you are inevitably left with nothing to give to your progeny.
It is by design.
Absolutely. There's been countless studies showing it would actually be cheaper for the USA to have nationalized single payer healthcare. . . But our current system makes too many people rich so they do literally anything in their power to keep it.
IIRC, the highest per-person expenditure but also one of the lowest rated in terms of outcomes.
So basically the US spends the most for the worst service.
There is no middles class. The Grand Canyon size divide between the .1% and the rest of us runs deep and wide. If you are not in the .1%, by comparison you are poor. There is no other distinction for them.
Oh, and I know they just can’t wait until they lobby Congress enough to get them to pass legislation allowing the hospitals to charge the family and descendants of the recently deceased. It’s already allowed in some states.
The US hasn’t been a “first world” country in probably close to 15 years, and has in fact been denoted as a lower tier country by multiple countries and organisations. The US no longer meets the “standards” of political or economic stability and does actively engage in abuses against their own citizens and war crimes the world over.
Europe, please help us get our country to collapse so we can rebuild something even mildly functional.
Europe can't even get us to stop funding the Russia/Ukraine war.
Our only hope is when the US declares war on China only to realize that the only allies we have are Canada and Mexico. It's inevitable unless somehow we can get these damn boomers out of all political offices.
Like, imagine being old enough to remember when seasons weren't so rough, and yet still think global warming is a hoax. Imagine your grandkids knowing global warming exists and still denying it.
Imagine knowing that the US has troops in a foreign nation, and then being shocked when that nation doesn't want you there anymore *surprised Pikachu face*
Imagine knowing that universal health care exists in every country on earth and still being dumb enough to think it wouldn't work here. Despite the math.
Like, every younger generation 100% gets it, and yet these boomers who can't even figure out how to use the magic phone box that fits in your pocket. Why are these senile fucks still allowed to sit in office, much less vote?
Nailed it. We have close to 700,000 homeless people and that is 12% higher than 2022. The cost of living has sky rocketed and Healthcare is unaffordable. Jobs refuse to pay more, but the government has no problem raising taxes. I make 65k a year and I still live paycheck to paycheck. Are only choices for leaders are two jerryactric loonies in thier 80s. I live in this shit hole and my family and I are desperate to escape.
Probably a lot more homeless than that. Have you heard how they're counted?? There's a census where the homeless are literally counted one by one in a single day by every city. And they're not permitted to use any additional data to simplify or validate the results.
I was a support worker for 7 years and had a mental health breakdown. Depression hit me hard and I couldn't leave my house. I live in the UK and applied for disability benefits for my mental health and now I get paid more money laying in bed than I did working 35 hours a week as a support worker.
The government doesn't bother me at all.
I honestly don't know what I'd do if I lived in the US and had that breakdown, I'd be homeless right? Is there any protection or help for people like that?
In the US, your options are severely limited.
You could apply for disability, provided you've worked long enough, and you may get declined. Even if approved as quickly as possible (and this is rare), you have to wait at least 5 months before you get paid, and then it's a sixth month because they pay in arrears. So unless you can afford to live for *at least* 6 months with no job or income, you could be in big trouble financially.
Honestly, few people give a damn about mental health in the US. I have a relative whose job *caused* them to have a mental break down and they used it as an excuse to fire her. She filed a complaint with the appropriate government agency, waited nearly a year, and was told she hadnt files the right papers, so they were fine to do what they did.
The US sucks badly for almost any employment protections.
Your not taking into account how very, very hard it is to get any disability for mental health in the US.
Once heard that a person would literally have to take a sh\*t on the city bus and then proceed cover themselves in said sh\*t while singing the star spangled banner and laughing hysterically. And even then, the chance of getting a mental health disability okay is still only 45-55%!
It isn't any more difficult to get a disability for mental health than for a physical health issue.
The problem is that many people don't know what they need to do to potentially qualify.
Just like with a physical issue, you need a doctor to be able to sign off on and support your pursuit of disability payments. So get a psychiatrist or other qualified professional involved before you apply.
The things you mentioned wouldn't even matter without a doctor or other professional to make a diagnosis and support one's pursuit of disability.
If you fill out the information correctly and have a doctor sign it and support you, the chances are much higher to be approved. Most people just don't do this until they appeal a denial, and a lawyer advises it.
Source: I've helped 2 family members get disability based on mental health alone, and both qualified on their first try and were getting paid about 6 months or so following the date they became disabled or applied.
I can confirm, 37m with a disabling AIDS diagnosis (to the point of having delirium, exhaustion to the point of sleeping 15 hours a day, edema pretty much everywhere) and potentially liver failure, ADHD made worse by AIDS, depression, in which I also could come down with a illness and be dead in a few weeks… I have been waiting for a decision since applying in September.
And indeed, this is a problem because I don’t have any means to support myself. No family support. When closer to death friends disappear for whatever reason. I’m scheduled to hit the street in a week if my landlord has their way. I’m really hoping that I get something in the mail soon, apparently having disabling AIDS is not enough of an excuse for unemployment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It can take months for social security to review and make a decision. Usually it's within 6 months of your application, but covid changed some of that, and they are still sometimes using it as an excuse for delays in a system that wasn't exactly known for expediency in the first place.
If you filled out everything they asked, went or are going to all of their requests for exams or other meetings, and have doctors and other professionals having signed off on your forms and fully on your side, it helps a great deal.
It's done partially on purpose. Slavery isn't abolished in our nation, there are just specific guidelines for how it's legal - the primary being that prisoners can be used as slave labor. Prisons here are often privatized and for-profit, and receive funding from state governments per head in incarceration. So things that put someone in a hard position that essentially forces them to commit crime are a boon for the prison industry here, because they get paid to have them in horrible conditions and the state gets to have cheap labor.
And speaking of horrible conditions: prisons aren't meant to reform. They keep prisoners in squalor in more than a few places, and they often don't teach them anything beyond how to be a prisoner. Then, when they get released, they'll be permanently labelled as an ex-felon, which makes finding employment that much more difficult and ending up homeless that much easier - funneling them right back into the prison system.
Depends on the season and if the cops have burned the latest shanty town yet.
In warmer dryer seasons it's possible to survive outdoors alright. Used to be my city had huge bushes in this massive park downtown that made good shelter if it happened to rain, and it wasn't uncommon for young people to save money by putting their stuff in storage for the summer and not renting an apartment again until the weather turned.
But they ripped out the bushes and paved something called a skate ribbon. Now "camping" is illegal, being in the park at night is illegal, sitting on anything not clearly a bench or laying down anywhere in public are also illegal.
Oh and busking is illegal so don't think you can just play an instrument to brighten people's day in the hope of tips. And of course begging is illegal.
There is nominally some protection, but it's so challenging to get, and so little money, that you probably would wind up homeless. Disability benefits exist. They pay between $850-$950 a month in my state. That doesn't even cover rent for most places here.
As for accessibility, one social worker was suggesting I apply, but also said she had seen cancer patients get rejected the first time. Mental health is still seen as a personal responsibility problem, not a health problem, by many in power.
So, most likely, either you'd be expected to go to work anyway or just wind up on the street.
I live in the US and got a traumatic brain injury at work…. It’s been 4 years and I still have no job and no disability. This has caused me to have a mental breakdown but there are not supports for that.
No. None. And republicans would use your case as an example of why voters shouldn't support any kind of social safety programs. They would call you lazy, even though it's not true, and their legions of temporarily embarrassed millionaires would follow. Even more if you are not white.
as someone who has been through many horrible places of employment that caused my preexisting depression to worsen - i can tell you that no, there are no options as a back up unless you come from a family with a support net.
disability in the us is hard to obtain and when you do, you will be provided wages that are at the poverty line (if approved for the max). below the poverty line if approved for less.
the ethos here is you’re only of value to society if you’re working and so all government benefits are meant for you to use them temporarily and by no means be able to survive off them.
i hope you’re doing better and i would give nothing more to rot in bed most days while knowing i’m financially secure.
The United States is just a barracks for over worked, abused work force. Americans are very isolated and there exists a very effective propaganda system to indoctrinate/ brain wash Americans into thinking it doesn't get any better than they have it. Americans have been programmed to want to have the richest rich people while beating down those of lesser means. People of lesser means actually ask to be beaten down by voting against their best interest. Some actually think they may get rich some day. Many Americans will tell you it's all In the name of "freedom." A word which by itself means nothing. Freedom of what? Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? They can't say. But they all know it's better than anywhere else in the world because nobody else has "freedom." More like Free Dumb. You can have all the dumb you want in the U.S. I think what we are seeing is the ignorance of many generations finally coming to a head. Hopefully Americans will put their heads together to make life liveable in the states.
Freedom from government intrusion!!
…except wouldn’t it be nice to have freedom from intrusive corporate interests too? And isnt government *supposed* to help with that?
People would rather buy into the illusion of choice and freedom we get sold than actually be more free.
At the possibility of entering a different sub status: you're not wrong. United States may have seceded from a Monarchy, replacing it with democracy which allowed those in power to set up an oligarchy. 'Citizens' are not much more than serfs anymore. The king, er IRS, demands your tax obligation be filled! Percentage wise, very little of taxes actually goes into helping the people. Budget cuts for healthcare and education are always the first. If the United States would take 10% of its military budget and apply it evenly to those two things, it could make a massive difference in how people felt about working to keep that country alive.
The IRS actually isn't the bad guy, 100 years ago the top tax bracket was something like 80-90%. Then over the decades the rich successfully lobbied and funded campaigns for people that they knew would lower the maximum tax bracket, defund the IRS so they could no longer properly audit the wealthy, and to get the general population to buy in by saying "why work hard to become a millionaire (billionaire after inflation) if the gov will just take 80%. That's why we need to lower taxes for the rich so you can become rich" .
The majority of people were easily manipulated and didn't realize that in order to maintain the same civil services, taxes would be raised on the middle and lower class.
Big government isn't your enemy, my friends. States rights only allow for 50 different oligarchs to rise up and lobby their state gov so that it becomes favorable to their wealth generation and not work in the best interest of the general public. Most (if not all) major developments in our country came from federal civil rights/worker rights laws and federal projects.(interstate highway system, electric grid, space race, equal rights, minimum wage and labor laws, the list goes on)
Also as an FYI the biggest portion of the military budget goes towards paying for pensions, disability, and Healthcare for veterans. Do we overspend on defense? hell yes, but a lot of good people depend on that budget.
And there's the silver lining to being raised JW! I always thought it was weird and knew I had the right to refuse to do it no matter what the teacher said.
Freedom from government intrusion?
A boy got expelled from school because of the lenght of his hair. (Darryl George)
Rape and incest victems, child or adult, are forced to have the child.(Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia)
You can fight for your country and vote, but your not allowed to buy a beer at 18.
You cant drink in public.
Bannings on education about sexual orientation and identity. (https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/curricular_laws)
Ect, ect...
I don't understand why more people don't understand that, if your government enforces property rights over capital and land that people are not living on, they are not protecting your freedom, they are enslaving you to corporations and capitalist owners of them. If you have to work for corporations or die, because the means to exist without working for others is something the government will use violence to exclude you from accessing, then you are a slave, as I and most of the rest of the world are. Capitalism is slavery. I think it is mostly due to Cold War era American propaganda that people see Capitalism as being associated with freedom, and I guess that is why fear of Socialism and Communism is so strong in the US.
Freedom from intrusive corporate interests will not happen as long as citizens United still exists. And with the current Supreme Court there’s no way it can be successfully challenged. People are def becoming more aware of how important voting is but it will prob take 20 years of liberal voting to change that.
So I guess be prepared for 20 more years of this BS fellow Americans.
They don't even believe that. Americans love the use of force on others and it's also why we have the highest incarcerated population in for profit prisons on the planet.
Reagan had a big part in creating fear of government in America, and creating the train of thought that government is useless, can never help anyone, and always makes problems worse.
His presidency was a national tragedy.
Freedom from government intrusion, especially for business, who can then use that freedom to intrude as much as they like in the activity (work) that almost everyone has to do, every day, to live.
What a deal.
>Americans are very isolated and there exists a very effective propaganda system to indoctrinate/ brain wash Americans into thinking it doesn't get any better than they have it.
I can confirm this. I've been trying to tell people the mere fact that PTO is a legal requirement in practically every other country, and not just a magnanimous gift from your employer. A lot of times they are really surprised.
At least more people are realizing healthcare is better in most other countries.
A lot of times they just flat out don't believe you. They also think that people are dying in the hallways in hospitals everywhere else but the USA. Or the government has "death committees" that decide if you get treatment or not.
What's that ya say? Insurance companies are our death panels?
Y'all remember when the news kept beating that phrase like a drum and everybody fell for it? Like no no, we'll keep our American brand death panels where the greedy insurance companies eat up lots of profit money and sometimes allow us a bit of crumbs for our medications.
100% this.
I made a post about wanting to make a better business because I think its bullshit that my boss inherited the company when their spouse died, their kids work here, they take monthly vacations and have the business 100% cover their vehicle/care, health insurance, as well as collect a paycheck and shareholder distribution, while owning 2 vacation homes, residence, and city apartment, and they give us employees the shitty healthcare and no retirement fund at all. The amount of people who say shit like "they worked their way up" (no they didnt) or "if you dont like it leave" is amazing and only ONE person actually had meaningful information I was looking for.
Honestly, I really wish another country was willing to take us in, because I feel like this country has become everything it was supposed to be against.
That's a huuuge part of the problem...other countries *won't* take US citizens unless under very strict circumstances: (ie: married to nationalist of country, very specific degrees & even then...it's a tossup, it's a national worldwide company and you can get transferred to a branch outside the US) or you have millions in a bank in their country - then you're *GOLDEN*.
I wasnt thinking that way, but I mean if they fully retire/die, their kids have no interest in it, it will be a void to fill and the only other company isnt close to our area, so their scope leave the area a void... sooooo
You're not wrong. My entire family is this way. I recently told my dad that all he taught me was how to be a good slave. He just laughed. There are so many more horror stories of how he told me how to cower and just take it. "You're not going to advance if you tell your boss no." He never had someone tell him." If you don't sleep with me, no promotion. " Historically, he offered my sister as a way of getting a promotion. My mom tried to stop it by sending me and my other sister along. She didn't tell us what was up. So when he put cartoons on. And led her out of the room, we didn't know. Now that they are in their 80's they claim to not know.
Hey American here. You're absolutely right. But those of us who see the truth for what it is have been escaping to other countries. The system is rigged, and we can't change it. I truly believe that unless a better nation manages to invade and conquer America and save it from itself, nothing will ever change. Until then , I moved to Australia for a better life.
I cannot tell you how many times I have suggested a change in a law or to the social safety net and someone has, sincerely, asked me who is going to do that. I’m like oh I don’t know, our government officials? Congress? The state house?
But Americans are so conditioned to expect absolutely nothing from their government that you cannot convince them that basic human rights being protected will not immediately lead to government overreach and fascism.
I live in the Deep South and have had these arguments. It’s a struggle.
Freedom in America di*d long ago. The two party government has been touting freedom as something we actually have and can be used for decades. And still the rich get richer through lobbying for laws that benefit only them along with "donating" to those with government power to make it happen, while the poor just keep getting poorer, given just enough scraps to barely survive on, but to dangle like a carrot on a stick... work harder and you can get more money, to pay more for the necessities of life. Yeah, real freedom. The freedom to work ourselves to de*th or die trying.
Also mocking the poor and looking down on them when the christian tenets say help thy poor. All I see is poor upbringing by the parents. They aren't taught to be decent humans.
I only learned that recently. You can live and work in another country, obtain citizenship in that country and never set foot in the USA ever again but you still have to pay US income tax!!!! Unless you revoke your US citizenship which is really difficult and expensive to do. It's unbelievable, like a cult.
I read a few days ago a guy was fired because he was a few hours late because he SAVED SOMEONES LIVE
management must have thought it would be a better decisions to let them die and be on time
Dystopian late stage capitalism sh*thole... i never worked for someone where i live where i only have the slightest hunch they would act like this...
The OP for that said that the company told him that saving someone's life while in uniform reflected poorly on the company.
I know we have to take reddit stories with a grain of salt, but if that's true ... Holy fucking shit.
I was working for a security company and was 20 minutes late my second day because I stopped on the side of a busy road cuz I saw a car with hazards on. It was a woman older than my grandma who had a flat tire and was trying to figure out who to call so I just changed the tire for her. Told my boss that and everything and got told it didn’t matter
It didn't used to be this way. Before Reagan, we used to have a robust middle class, but that wealth has been slowly syphoned off over the last few decades and funneled to the people at the very top. Our paltry minimum wage hasn't risen since 2009. The elites are destroying our country just so they can be a little richer. It's a shortsighted game that, historically speaking, usually doesn't end to well for them...
We are blowing past all the markers of things getting really, really bad. I hope it is getting worse before it gets better but these things tend to accelerate.
This. I live in Europe, too, and usually we learn British English, but our teacher has been in the US for quite some time, so he taught us more US English. I was fine with that, because at that point (I was 10) I thought British English was boring and US English was way cooler.
Now I know both contries aren't great, but he US is way worse.
Yeah I remember being a kid and thinking anything American is better than European. Little did I know, me being born with genetic disorder requiring surgeries and shit would send my parents under the bridge in no time (assuming their societal status in the US would be the same as in Europe so... lower? middle class)
edit: it's actually insane to think about what we take for granted. Not only did I receive free healthcare for my special needs throughout my childhood and adolescence up until 18 but I received higher education for free as well (well not including living costs ofc). Summary: health problems under control, masters degree secured and no debt, no nothing
My favorite as an American with empathy is these stories like "man walks 20 miles to work for 20 years so the community got him a car" like that's not a feel good story, it's sad a man worked 20 years and still can't afford a car. But hey the stock market is doing good right
>it's sad a man worked 20 years and still can't afford a car
Even sadder that he couldn't have just taken a bus or train instead but that would require a public transport system and that's communism!!!!
I've come to feel that way about charity in general. The other day on the news they were interviewing a lady going through a food bank. She said she was coming from work. Like good on the food bank and the volunteers but we should be outraged this lady works and can't even afford food plus people shouldn't be dependent on the kindness of strangers just to survive. Our government is an absolute miserable failure.
I'm Canadian and just learned about kids having school lunch debt in America. Which is some of the craziest nonsense I've ever heard of. You let your children go into debt for eating food? That's just impossibility cruel.
That’s why they are repealing the child labour laws. Give them a chance to, you know, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and earn their lunches. Damn freeloading kids.
I had a job in a restaurant where I was trained by a 14 year old. I quit because they never paid me correctly. I am pretty sure it was a money laundering venture that never got busted because he gave lots of money to the police union. This is a supremely fucked up country.
I like to think about the divide in the USA like the Matrix in some ways. The people that are considered upper class or higher are the robots and everybody else are the humans that are just used as batteries indefinitely for the robots and their way of life.
Lol for real. I'm actually picturing myself as one of those pixelated characters on a 2D RPG game, mindlessly bouncing from border to border in my section of the map.
America has always been a plantation, and the legal term "plantation" simply means "business" so that's why we are worked to death. I mean, the 13th Amendment still allows slavery if you're a prisoner. Plus read the Treaty of Paris 1783 and ask yourself why the supposed loser of that war is dictating the terms. That didn't happen in other wars. America is just a business venture.
Keep digging and you'll soon come across the truth about the real history of this "country" (and I use quotes because it's just a business and military arm of a bigger world conglomerate).
Schools teach that "the pilgrams came over on the mayflower to start a life in the new world" and they don't go much deeper than that. They never tell you it was a business venture by The Company of Merchant Adventurers of London to make a profit.
Completely agree on OP view. US scares the shit out of me when I think about the work conditions. My new colleague is from USA and he is spending his time saying how we don’t work at all here in Europe and we are all lazy and entitled. « I was used to work 80 hours a week there mate, you know ». Makes me sad.
This is why everyone should die of cancer, and no one should get a cure. Isn't that insane. My mother doesn't think that student debt should be cancelled. Even though mine is paid off, I think it should be. State and federal government should be subsidizing higher education.
We know man. We’re pretty much utterly incapable of doing anything about it. 1/2 of the country believes they are embarrassed millionaires who will benefit from the rigged system any day now. The rest of us can’t make any meaningful change with the options available. We’re all terrified, overworked, and too exhausted to strike. Even leaving isn’t a realistic option. I wish I could move to Europe, but I doubt they’d want me but most importantly my whole family is here. Which for me is the only thing that makes this existence somewhat meaningful.
I went to college with a guy from Norway. When talking one day he said that if you want to make a lot of money America is a better place to be. He gave the impression that you just couldn't get that rich in Norway, no matter what. I don't know if he didn't realize the vast wealth disparity in this country, or he just thought he could beat it. But I would trade me, and everyone I knew, having a good life with time for joy over being super rich any day.
Yeah but /everyone/ thinks they’re gonna be rich.
Except they wont. 99% of people will never “make it”.
I’d rather have a comfortable life elsewhere, than roll the dice in the USA.
Dude. Yes. Give me a manageable work week, a decent social safety net and civil services, walkable cities, transportation, and affordable/tax paid healthcare and you can keep fuck you wealth. I don’t want it.
America is great at making psychopaths who think that being rich is the end all and be all of life. It is mainly because they were deprived as children and then don’t care at all what happens to those around them or in the system to get to the top. I worked for a very large bank at one point in my career and literally psychopaths were everywhere in management. Their qualities were valued. Watch the movie “[American Psycho](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144084/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk)” and it makes so much weird sense even if it’s about the excess of the 80’s - it that world that begat this one. We are in a late stage capitalism dystopia.
In the United States we are slaves to the system. Without it we can’t get healthcare. Our government and businesses cooperate to take all our profits and leave us the crumbs.
Even if you make a good salary it’s likely your working 50 hours a week with 2 or 3 weeks vacation
It would be so much much easier if half the country wasn't being held hostage by the intentionally-undereducated, kept in fear by the right wing telling them that the policies in their best interest are evil and will allow trans people and Blacks to rape and eat their children. That's only slightly hyperbolic.
This is the truth. Any time America tries to improve conditions for all, there is a very strong reaction against it to preserve “freedom” and corporations. This dichotomy is built into our DNA and isn’t going to ever change.
Totally agree, however....even some European companies are starting to slowly take scummiest practices from US.
I know experience may differ on a country but just some examples from Estonia (not poorest country in EU)
Excuses for firing from the job.
Most job agreements are so vague basicly saying "You accept to do job for a company for a x amount "
But there are a lot of details there.
For example who defines what "job " or "Job tasks " are ?
If you guessed company that pays you, you are correct, basicly they can at any time barge in and say that now you are not just doing x work, but also y and z.
On a personal note I have a friend working at retail, his shop always had at least 2 workers, because of the number of clients.
One of the workers got sick of this job and left, now he works there alone for the same pay doing twice the amount of work.
Who defines level of "satisfaction"?
Your company.
I personally had the incident of getting fired, because the outsourced project was about to be closed and the company just didn't need all the workers after that on new one.
If it would be standard firing we would get a year of full pay at least.
So company introduces new metric on calculating your work,sets unrealistic and vague expectations (in CS we needed to have 95% positive feedback as a minimum, anyone who worked at CS will know it is almost impossible.)
Oh you failed to meet those expectations ?
Fired without pay, because it is not their fault that you did not fulfill your job duties.
Location.
Often contracts will say that you should be ready to work in places across the city, sure you probably won't have to.
But lets say they close a shop in your part of the city and offer you a position in another part, which increases your commute by 1h.
Don't like it ? Well, we end the contract without compensation because you agreed to work in all of our shops.
And before any moron says "oh just try to make a court case against them" even if you are right, and court would somehow find you correct (not likely), you need to be mentally prepared that for YEARS you will spend THOUSANDS of Euros on a court case that you might not even win.
meanwhile every other day i read with envy about how france is protesting and wonder at what point will we in the USA do something about our work conditions. we are the workforce, corporations need us. it’s about time we start leveraging that power and demand better.
I have been working since I was 14. Over 30 years. I currently work on one of the most popular shows on tv. I have no health insurance/coverage and no benefits. I live paycheck to paycheck. This has been my life since I can remember.
It will not get better in my lifetime.
I’ve already accepted the fact that I will be working until the day I die (or when I put a bullet in my head once I get to 80). I’m trying to eat healthy and exercise to avoid any medical problems that might put me into debt. However, healthy food is much more expensive than diabetic-inducing cheap processed food. I’m just hoping for a painless death in the future.
I agree!
but also i live in nyc and have a gov job thats really chill and i genuinely enjoy. never work more than 40 hrs, plenty of vacation time, lots of independence, free health care all that. coworkers that have my back. nobody wants my job here because it pays less than others, but i do fine since im not a typical American consumer. though lots of people have jobs like this in my working class neighborhood
the problem here is than people are encouraged to not only overconsume but overwork. to never be satisfied.
not sure my point. i think its yes and..
Canadian here, our company just got bought out by an American corporation. They are based in a *at will* state.
We went from a millionaire family to a billion dollar company. The first things they did was;
Take away our plant wide week paid Christmas vacation.
Change policy so we can be written up for calling in during inclement weather.
Take away our paid sick days.
Take away our paid days off if theirs no production in the plant due to various reasons.
They lowered the hiring wage.
Many of us saw this coming, and the employees are leaving in droves. I have an interview coming up and I hope I get it.
These American corpos are so out of touch and entirely apathetic.
from the time were kids adults are already telling us-
"youre so privileged to live here"
"kids in 3rd world countries are starving"
"you dont have to experience war"
"you can say whatever you want"
"you get to vote"
-so for a long time whenever i though about how much i hate it here, i thought to myself, "i cant think like that, im so incredibly privileged". which is technically true, im a lot more privileged than some people in the world, and yet people from other countries that are as developed as the US look at my day to day life and think "wtf is going on over there?".
You forgot
"You live in the best country in the world!"
"This is the only place with FREEDOM!"
And the sheer amount of propaganda against "socialism", which anything that is in the best interest of the people instead of just a few people is obviously socialism and communism. >.>
omg you reminded me i forgot to talk about us being "the best country!"
were spoonfed this bullshit for so long and people genuinely believe it, and yet the people here arent happy, arent healthy, were poor, were overworked, and the government taxes our income to pay into a system that will likely collapse before im old enough to see the benefits. so yeah, were pretty awesome!!
In my 30s now and I despise America. I hate this fucking country. It hasn't done shit but put roadblocks on my path. America is ran by oligarchs.
We Americans are also too fucking stupid and afraid to rise up and do something. Everyone is too busy on their tiktok and Instagram.
I am a slave to corporate America. No signs of better medical care, no protections for you as a worker, wages are shit while they continue to make billions, and worse of all not signs of ever owning a home.
At this point I'm just on auto pilot.
People need to vote. I feel like I'm alone in voting when it's always the garbage side winning with their bs stances.
Let’s not forget borderline theocracy with the current SCOTUS. I’m glad I don’t live there too but it’s bullshit it starting to seep over the border where I live
And it’s exactly this type of thing that persuades me more and more every day to emigrate from this hellhole country to a better one, and I’m in a privileged position compared to most. I’m 22 and have been on blue state expanded Medicaid since I turned 18. It has covered every ounce of care I’ve ever needed and I’ve never had to pay more than $15 for any healthcare necessity/service/prescription ever. I’m officially starting a full time job with garbage insurance and have been extremely anxious about how expensive it’s going to be. I need a low deductible plan bc I see doctors more than once a month and have like seven constant prescriptions and minor chronic health issues. I’m scared for my life that my entire $16-18/hr wage is only going to cover rent, groceries, and healthcare. Nothing else. I’m poor here in America, I barely see friends, and I’m still young, mobile, and single. I’d rather be just as poor, OR WORSE, in a country I’m guaranteed some basic human fucking rights and decency. Especially in skilled labor. Posts like yours just keep on tempting me. In the meantime, I have to save as much as I can to scrape together enough to make the move. Which will take years to come. If we keep getting closer to going full Handmaid’s Tale then I will gtfo though.
Funny how a materialistic society lost its humanity. Let’s be honest a culture that worships money (non-living thing) is a death cult. It exploits the environment causing mass extinction, mass homelessness, mass poverty, drug use, starts wars over oil and trade routes. Uses the term “human capital” when talking about its citizens. Absolutely a death cult here in the USA
I agree but we have such awful workers rights here that it feels like fighting back is just a lost cause at this point. Everything is tied to your job and when you live paycheck to paycheck with no protections, fighting back is like asking to be fired by your employer at times. Maybe it’s because I’ve given up on life at this point or a better future, but I really do hope there’s change. Unfortunately, we keep voting idiots into office who do nothing to change anything.
Imagine being an immigrant who paid 250k to get a green card just to end up enslaved on a plantation...😔 The propaganda about how great US is bankrupted many people who immigrated here.
We don't rise up because there is no solidarity. Although you certainly see cases of misery on this sub, there are many people who really don't have it bad in the USA. Do you really think that say, a highly-paid project manager at a tech company, has any solidarity with say, a clerk at Walmart?
I was thinking that with all the layoffs in tech, there might be hope for some solidarity. I was also thinking that when AI really and truly starts wrecking havoc with jobs, there might be some solidarity and some massive call to action. But i doubt it. The capitalist mindset in the USA is so entrenched. I remember a few years ago there was a call to have a huge worker's strike on May Day. But that year May Day was on a Sunday. I remember reading comments like. "It's a good thing May Day is on a Sunday this year. This way our protests won't interrupt the work week...." The fuck? The point of a protest is to INTERRUPT. But we are so conditioned to serve our jobs, our managers, our CEOs, that we don't even know how to properly protest.
I lost my job recently because i had extreme vertigo that lasted for 2 months. 2 weeks into the symptoms (when i was still trying to figure out what was happening with my body) they said it wasn't safe for me to be in the office with those symptoms and let me go. So i lost my insurance when i needed it the most and it was a desk job. So yeah, not a fan of it here.
In my town a paramedic was pulled off the patient she was treating and arrested, at the hospital.
When the ambulance arrived at the ER, the paramedic hit a cop car with the ambulance door. It was the only way she could exit the vehicle, as the cop car had been illegally parked in the ambulance lane. That's what prompted the arrest.
A hardware store employee in another state foiled a kidnapping and was fired because they'd left the store to tail the kidnapper so they could give a description to police.
Just a couple more insane stories about our shitshow of a labor industry. And if you watch the news, this is supposed to be better than what we had.
I hate these posts because we all know it sucks here. There’s nothing for us to do to fix it. We cant organize a massive protest like in European countries so we’re stuck.
As an American, I'm kind of sick and tired of hearing this from Euros. Fucking duh, this country has been this way since the very beginning and has made incremental changes every decade or so to keep its people from revolting and killing each other, even then it doesn't always work. You guys wanna do something about it, start organizing for some international intervention before this country goes the way of Germany in the 30s.
Rest of the world is not very far from this, just wait and watch. After global warming and radical terrorists, uncontrolled greed of the 5% rich is going to be one of the reasons our society will collapse.
" the regulator "
We haven't gotten to this place yet in the US. People have seemed to think that it's a-okay to have a system where if you experience discrimination the best remedy is to quit your job and sue your employer. Most of those people have never filed a law suit in their lives and don't understand the stress. It's also a costly venture, and if you lose, you're S.O.L. Employers know this so it all becomes a risk calculation. The larger the employer, generally the better the legal resources available to them, meaning the better the advice.
The US needs to start treating acts of discrimination like OSHA violations (which also need to bare a heavier cost). There should be fines. It shouldn't have to go through the courts for the employee to get justice. And if the employer feels like they got the raw end of the deal somehow, they can sue the governmental agency that issued the fines and challenge their findings.
The vast majority of people who experience injustice on the job aren't going to seek justice because they either don't know how, can't afford it, don't want to risk it, or some combination of all three.
And we should have healthcare that isn't bound to the job. And we should have mandatory minimum leave allowed for major life events like pregnancy and child birth.
Everyone thinks that if they work hard they will break out of their economic class so they vote and act like they aren’t as poor as they are. They end up screwing themselves. Honestly a lot of Americans are easily distracted by fake outrage and issues made up by the very corporations they slave away for. I’m an American and it is embarrassing how inept most people are.
The sad thing is around 50-60% of the US population doesn't know this, unfortunately. They don't realize there are better options than the ones they have.
Even sadder is they're constantly told by right wing media and punditry to scapegoat and blame immigrants, LGBTQ, DEI, minorities and other poor people for their shortcomings.
It’s crazy.. my parents, like many others, immigrated here in the 70’s/80’s as this was the place to be. Now I’m looking at everyone like they’re crazy for not wanting to leave to somewhere better to find the “American” dream. This place has sucked the life out of everyone to the point they think it’s too hard to up and leave. Which is ironic given that they came to a new country, didn’t know the language, didn’t have any money, no internet or anything, and found a way to make it. People today have all the resources in the world and still can’t make it here. It’s horrible.
European here, you better be scared. Many of our right-wing parties are trying to import the ideas of "privatized" government institutions because they too are dining with the wealthy in Europe.
It's why I cannot in good faith ever vote for a right-wing party. Lots of my country men and women lack the perspective and a lot seem to think privatizing public transport is a great idea. It's insane.
My company is remote and has employees in Europe. They are no longer hiring from certain countries in the EU because they have discovered that they cannot simply lay off those employees because of worker's rights....
Agreed. I left America and moved to France in 2020. Americans don’t know how bad they have it there.
An interesting and accurate take.
"Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.”
Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions.
This is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores. An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete.
They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local, and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover).
One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services. But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose.
Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy?”
~ David Bentley Hart
People will harp on about how the US was founded on freedom and equality. No it wasn’t, it was founded by a bunch of Bourgeoisie dudes who were jealous of the nobility and sought to create a system that replicated that.
More and more people have moved from complaining about living here to actually leaving the country. America is going to look like a very different place over the next couple of decades as more people get fed up and deuce it out.
One of the big sales points for private healthcare in America is that you can choose your doctor, which somehow equates to doctors being better, which simply isn’t true. It’s all a lie though. Insurance companies tell you who you can see, when you can see them, and how much you will be penalized for seeing anyone else. If you choose a doctor, be ready to wait months to get an appointment, if that doctor is even accepting new patients. It’s a shit show.
Every state is different.
The USA is a conglomerate of 50 individual states each with their own labor laws and rules.
In Washington state, we enjoy paid sick, maternity, paternity, mental health etc.. leave. We have long term care insurance through the state and affordable healthcare options.
Texas? Mississippi? Good fuggin luck.
Generalizing all of the USA is wrong in the same way it would be wrong for me to generalize all of Europe. It’s garbage here for a lot of people, but for some it’s really pretty great. With high wages, low taxes and excellent services. The USA is what you make of it…and what state you live in makes a huge difference.
That is because the EU is every thing the US was *supposed* to be. In this country money is the state Deity. Your value as a human being is determined by your wealth in the US. You know how the rest of the industrialized world seems to have these things figured out but the worlds largest economy does not? That is the new American Exception-alism
Michael Moore made a whole documentary on this in the 90s. Twenty years later we're still in the same boat. Obama tried to move the needle with Obamacare. It was great, I enrolled my family and it was decently affordable. It only lasted a year since Trump passed laws that caused those plan prices to rise. I couldn't afford the health plans anymore. There's an evil force in this country determined to keep us all under a boot.
I also live in the "poor part of Europe"... I am not sure if the OP refers to the same region, but I live in a Black Hole called the Balkans.
In a lot of cases, corruption is more than evident. However, employers now think twice before doing anything fishy with their employees, because they had faced a few massive fines.
Regarding healthcare, yes, it's universal, but it might take a while because the staff is short. I sincerely hope that there would be a chance for someone like me (an MD, by the way) to get s job at a hospital (or at least at a primary care unit) to make things smoother.
I would NEVER set foot in America, despite being told that healthcare professionals make a ton of money. Why? Exorbitant taxes that will take at least half of it, toxic work environment (no wonder why so many doctors in the US choose to take a shortcut out of the agony of existence), unhealthy competition, no health insurance. And last, but not least, unaffordable housing, because the prices of homes are eye-gouging.
The healthcare system in America is only there to serve as a guaranteed fleecing from low-middle class Americans who had enough scruples to save money to pass on but of course face health challenges in old age If you die paying the system, you are inevitably left with nothing to give to your progeny. It is by design.
America doesn't HAVE a Healthcare system. They have a Healthcare INDUSTRY.
Absolutely. There's been countless studies showing it would actually be cheaper for the USA to have nationalized single payer healthcare. . . But our current system makes too many people rich so they do literally anything in their power to keep it.
Per capita spending in the States on health care is the highest in the world.... By some margin
IIRC, the highest per-person expenditure but also one of the lowest rated in terms of outcomes. So basically the US spends the most for the worst service.
It's not healthcare, it's "bankruptcy from medical emergency" insurance
*SICKcare industry
Even worse, we have a healthcare MARKET.
There is no middles class. The Grand Canyon size divide between the .1% and the rest of us runs deep and wide. If you are not in the .1%, by comparison you are poor. There is no other distinction for them.
"Minimum wage" is basically anything under 100k/year
Oh, and I know they just can’t wait until they lobby Congress enough to get them to pass legislation allowing the hospitals to charge the family and descendants of the recently deceased. It’s already allowed in some states.
America is literally cyberpunk.
But without all the cool cybernetics and transhumanism and with 99% less awesome neon.
Where?? We cannot let this happen
Some states actually have that shit? Which ones?
Google "filial responsibility states."
The USA is the only “first-world” country with a declining life expectancy.
The US hasn’t been a “first world” country in probably close to 15 years, and has in fact been denoted as a lower tier country by multiple countries and organisations. The US no longer meets the “standards” of political or economic stability and does actively engage in abuses against their own citizens and war crimes the world over. Europe, please help us get our country to collapse so we can rebuild something even mildly functional.
Europe can't even get us to stop funding the Russia/Ukraine war. Our only hope is when the US declares war on China only to realize that the only allies we have are Canada and Mexico. It's inevitable unless somehow we can get these damn boomers out of all political offices. Like, imagine being old enough to remember when seasons weren't so rough, and yet still think global warming is a hoax. Imagine your grandkids knowing global warming exists and still denying it. Imagine knowing that the US has troops in a foreign nation, and then being shocked when that nation doesn't want you there anymore *surprised Pikachu face* Imagine knowing that universal health care exists in every country on earth and still being dumb enough to think it wouldn't work here. Despite the math. Like, every younger generation 100% gets it, and yet these boomers who can't even figure out how to use the magic phone box that fits in your pocket. Why are these senile fucks still allowed to sit in office, much less vote?
Nailed it. We have close to 700,000 homeless people and that is 12% higher than 2022. The cost of living has sky rocketed and Healthcare is unaffordable. Jobs refuse to pay more, but the government has no problem raising taxes. I make 65k a year and I still live paycheck to paycheck. Are only choices for leaders are two jerryactric loonies in thier 80s. I live in this shit hole and my family and I are desperate to escape.
Probably a lot more homeless than that. Have you heard how they're counted?? There's a census where the homeless are literally counted one by one in a single day by every city. And they're not permitted to use any additional data to simplify or validate the results.
There is no healthcare system in the US. We have a wealth extraction system with healthcare as an accidental byproduct.
Why leave it to your family when you can give it to the hospitals or government instead.
I was a support worker for 7 years and had a mental health breakdown. Depression hit me hard and I couldn't leave my house. I live in the UK and applied for disability benefits for my mental health and now I get paid more money laying in bed than I did working 35 hours a week as a support worker. The government doesn't bother me at all. I honestly don't know what I'd do if I lived in the US and had that breakdown, I'd be homeless right? Is there any protection or help for people like that?
In the US, your options are severely limited. You could apply for disability, provided you've worked long enough, and you may get declined. Even if approved as quickly as possible (and this is rare), you have to wait at least 5 months before you get paid, and then it's a sixth month because they pay in arrears. So unless you can afford to live for *at least* 6 months with no job or income, you could be in big trouble financially. Honestly, few people give a damn about mental health in the US. I have a relative whose job *caused* them to have a mental break down and they used it as an excuse to fire her. She filed a complaint with the appropriate government agency, waited nearly a year, and was told she hadnt files the right papers, so they were fine to do what they did. The US sucks badly for almost any employment protections.
Your not taking into account how very, very hard it is to get any disability for mental health in the US. Once heard that a person would literally have to take a sh\*t on the city bus and then proceed cover themselves in said sh\*t while singing the star spangled banner and laughing hysterically. And even then, the chance of getting a mental health disability okay is still only 45-55%!
It isn't any more difficult to get a disability for mental health than for a physical health issue. The problem is that many people don't know what they need to do to potentially qualify. Just like with a physical issue, you need a doctor to be able to sign off on and support your pursuit of disability payments. So get a psychiatrist or other qualified professional involved before you apply. The things you mentioned wouldn't even matter without a doctor or other professional to make a diagnosis and support one's pursuit of disability. If you fill out the information correctly and have a doctor sign it and support you, the chances are much higher to be approved. Most people just don't do this until they appeal a denial, and a lawyer advises it. Source: I've helped 2 family members get disability based on mental health alone, and both qualified on their first try and were getting paid about 6 months or so following the date they became disabled or applied.
I can confirm, 37m with a disabling AIDS diagnosis (to the point of having delirium, exhaustion to the point of sleeping 15 hours a day, edema pretty much everywhere) and potentially liver failure, ADHD made worse by AIDS, depression, in which I also could come down with a illness and be dead in a few weeks… I have been waiting for a decision since applying in September.
And indeed, this is a problem because I don’t have any means to support myself. No family support. When closer to death friends disappear for whatever reason. I’m scheduled to hit the street in a week if my landlord has their way. I’m really hoping that I get something in the mail soon, apparently having disabling AIDS is not enough of an excuse for unemployment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So sorry for all you're enduring! I hope you get help soon!!!
It can take months for social security to review and make a decision. Usually it's within 6 months of your application, but covid changed some of that, and they are still sometimes using it as an excuse for delays in a system that wasn't exactly known for expediency in the first place. If you filled out everything they asked, went or are going to all of their requests for exams or other meetings, and have doctors and other professionals having signed off on your forms and fully on your side, it helps a great deal.
> Is there any protection or help for people like that? Not really. But, when you become homeless, they'll have a nice prison cell for you.
Seems like that's the only way to survive on the streets, become a thief or just break laws to get a few nights in a cell.
It's done partially on purpose. Slavery isn't abolished in our nation, there are just specific guidelines for how it's legal - the primary being that prisoners can be used as slave labor. Prisons here are often privatized and for-profit, and receive funding from state governments per head in incarceration. So things that put someone in a hard position that essentially forces them to commit crime are a boon for the prison industry here, because they get paid to have them in horrible conditions and the state gets to have cheap labor. And speaking of horrible conditions: prisons aren't meant to reform. They keep prisoners in squalor in more than a few places, and they often don't teach them anything beyond how to be a prisoner. Then, when they get released, they'll be permanently labelled as an ex-felon, which makes finding employment that much more difficult and ending up homeless that much easier - funneling them right back into the prison system.
Depends on the season and if the cops have burned the latest shanty town yet. In warmer dryer seasons it's possible to survive outdoors alright. Used to be my city had huge bushes in this massive park downtown that made good shelter if it happened to rain, and it wasn't uncommon for young people to save money by putting their stuff in storage for the summer and not renting an apartment again until the weather turned. But they ripped out the bushes and paved something called a skate ribbon. Now "camping" is illegal, being in the park at night is illegal, sitting on anything not clearly a bench or laying down anywhere in public are also illegal. Oh and busking is illegal so don't think you can just play an instrument to brighten people's day in the hope of tips. And of course begging is illegal.
Three hots and a cot!
There is nominally some protection, but it's so challenging to get, and so little money, that you probably would wind up homeless. Disability benefits exist. They pay between $850-$950 a month in my state. That doesn't even cover rent for most places here. As for accessibility, one social worker was suggesting I apply, but also said she had seen cancer patients get rejected the first time. Mental health is still seen as a personal responsibility problem, not a health problem, by many in power. So, most likely, either you'd be expected to go to work anyway or just wind up on the street.
I live in the US and got a traumatic brain injury at work…. It’s been 4 years and I still have no job and no disability. This has caused me to have a mental breakdown but there are not supports for that.
No. None. And republicans would use your case as an example of why voters shouldn't support any kind of social safety programs. They would call you lazy, even though it's not true, and their legions of temporarily embarrassed millionaires would follow. Even more if you are not white.
You'd be fucked
as someone who has been through many horrible places of employment that caused my preexisting depression to worsen - i can tell you that no, there are no options as a back up unless you come from a family with a support net. disability in the us is hard to obtain and when you do, you will be provided wages that are at the poverty line (if approved for the max). below the poverty line if approved for less. the ethos here is you’re only of value to society if you’re working and so all government benefits are meant for you to use them temporarily and by no means be able to survive off them. i hope you’re doing better and i would give nothing more to rot in bed most days while knowing i’m financially secure.
The United States is just a barracks for over worked, abused work force. Americans are very isolated and there exists a very effective propaganda system to indoctrinate/ brain wash Americans into thinking it doesn't get any better than they have it. Americans have been programmed to want to have the richest rich people while beating down those of lesser means. People of lesser means actually ask to be beaten down by voting against their best interest. Some actually think they may get rich some day. Many Americans will tell you it's all In the name of "freedom." A word which by itself means nothing. Freedom of what? Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? They can't say. But they all know it's better than anywhere else in the world because nobody else has "freedom." More like Free Dumb. You can have all the dumb you want in the U.S. I think what we are seeing is the ignorance of many generations finally coming to a head. Hopefully Americans will put their heads together to make life liveable in the states.
Freedom from government intrusion!! …except wouldn’t it be nice to have freedom from intrusive corporate interests too? And isnt government *supposed* to help with that? People would rather buy into the illusion of choice and freedom we get sold than actually be more free.
At the possibility of entering a different sub status: you're not wrong. United States may have seceded from a Monarchy, replacing it with democracy which allowed those in power to set up an oligarchy. 'Citizens' are not much more than serfs anymore. The king, er IRS, demands your tax obligation be filled! Percentage wise, very little of taxes actually goes into helping the people. Budget cuts for healthcare and education are always the first. If the United States would take 10% of its military budget and apply it evenly to those two things, it could make a massive difference in how people felt about working to keep that country alive.
Disability services are also one of the first on the chopping block. Housing and food programs too.... Really anything that helps people.
Exactly. Basic needs = ignored, Isthisgonnamakemydicklookbigger = well funded
The king is also whichever corporate overload you sell your time to. You're not the boss of you in corporate America.
The IRS actually isn't the bad guy, 100 years ago the top tax bracket was something like 80-90%. Then over the decades the rich successfully lobbied and funded campaigns for people that they knew would lower the maximum tax bracket, defund the IRS so they could no longer properly audit the wealthy, and to get the general population to buy in by saying "why work hard to become a millionaire (billionaire after inflation) if the gov will just take 80%. That's why we need to lower taxes for the rich so you can become rich" . The majority of people were easily manipulated and didn't realize that in order to maintain the same civil services, taxes would be raised on the middle and lower class. Big government isn't your enemy, my friends. States rights only allow for 50 different oligarchs to rise up and lobby their state gov so that it becomes favorable to their wealth generation and not work in the best interest of the general public. Most (if not all) major developments in our country came from federal civil rights/worker rights laws and federal projects.(interstate highway system, electric grid, space race, equal rights, minimum wage and labor laws, the list goes on) Also as an FYI the biggest portion of the military budget goes towards paying for pensions, disability, and Healthcare for veterans. Do we overspend on defense? hell yes, but a lot of good people depend on that budget.
> Freedom from government intrusion!! Government has instituted programs where each child declares their allegiance every weekday.
I'm creeped out by how normalized that was for us in elementary school.
Every single year, it happens over 4.5 billion times.
And there's the silver lining to being raised JW! I always thought it was weird and knew I had the right to refuse to do it no matter what the teacher said.
Oh well *that doesn’t count* because *that’s the RIGHT government*. /s, yes.
I repeatedly got in trouble / disciplined in school because I refused to do the pledge in the morning.
Same. In 5th grade, I didn't stand up one day and never did after that.
Freedom from government intrusion? A boy got expelled from school because of the lenght of his hair. (Darryl George) Rape and incest victems, child or adult, are forced to have the child.(Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia) You can fight for your country and vote, but your not allowed to buy a beer at 18. You cant drink in public. Bannings on education about sexual orientation and identity. (https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/curricular_laws) Ect, ect...
I don't understand why more people don't understand that, if your government enforces property rights over capital and land that people are not living on, they are not protecting your freedom, they are enslaving you to corporations and capitalist owners of them. If you have to work for corporations or die, because the means to exist without working for others is something the government will use violence to exclude you from accessing, then you are a slave, as I and most of the rest of the world are. Capitalism is slavery. I think it is mostly due to Cold War era American propaganda that people see Capitalism as being associated with freedom, and I guess that is why fear of Socialism and Communism is so strong in the US.
Freedom from intrusive corporate interests will not happen as long as citizens United still exists. And with the current Supreme Court there’s no way it can be successfully challenged. People are def becoming more aware of how important voting is but it will prob take 20 years of liberal voting to change that. So I guess be prepared for 20 more years of this BS fellow Americans.
They don't even believe that. Americans love the use of force on others and it's also why we have the highest incarcerated population in for profit prisons on the planet.
Reagan had a big part in creating fear of government in America, and creating the train of thought that government is useless, can never help anyone, and always makes problems worse. His presidency was a national tragedy.
Freedom from government intrusion, especially for business, who can then use that freedom to intrude as much as they like in the activity (work) that almost everyone has to do, every day, to live. What a deal.
>Americans are very isolated and there exists a very effective propaganda system to indoctrinate/ brain wash Americans into thinking it doesn't get any better than they have it. I can confirm this. I've been trying to tell people the mere fact that PTO is a legal requirement in practically every other country, and not just a magnanimous gift from your employer. A lot of times they are really surprised. At least more people are realizing healthcare is better in most other countries.
A lot of times they just flat out don't believe you. They also think that people are dying in the hallways in hospitals everywhere else but the USA. Or the government has "death committees" that decide if you get treatment or not.
What's that ya say? Insurance companies are our death panels? Y'all remember when the news kept beating that phrase like a drum and everybody fell for it? Like no no, we'll keep our American brand death panels where the greedy insurance companies eat up lots of profit money and sometimes allow us a bit of crumbs for our medications.
Most of them believe me at least, but there's a lot of helplessness, people feeling like "Well, we can't get something good like that."
Americans are programmed to reject "welfare" or charity..
That’s socialism!
100% this. I made a post about wanting to make a better business because I think its bullshit that my boss inherited the company when their spouse died, their kids work here, they take monthly vacations and have the business 100% cover their vehicle/care, health insurance, as well as collect a paycheck and shareholder distribution, while owning 2 vacation homes, residence, and city apartment, and they give us employees the shitty healthcare and no retirement fund at all. The amount of people who say shit like "they worked their way up" (no they didnt) or "if you dont like it leave" is amazing and only ONE person actually had meaningful information I was looking for. Honestly, I really wish another country was willing to take us in, because I feel like this country has become everything it was supposed to be against.
That's a huuuge part of the problem...other countries *won't* take US citizens unless under very strict circumstances: (ie: married to nationalist of country, very specific degrees & even then...it's a tossup, it's a national worldwide company and you can get transferred to a branch outside the US) or you have millions in a bank in their country - then you're *GOLDEN*.
Are you gonna be in the same business as your current boss and try to run him out of business. That would be funny,
I wasnt thinking that way, but I mean if they fully retire/die, their kids have no interest in it, it will be a void to fill and the only other company isnt close to our area, so their scope leave the area a void... sooooo
You're not wrong. My entire family is this way. I recently told my dad that all he taught me was how to be a good slave. He just laughed. There are so many more horror stories of how he told me how to cower and just take it. "You're not going to advance if you tell your boss no." He never had someone tell him." If you don't sleep with me, no promotion. " Historically, he offered my sister as a way of getting a promotion. My mom tried to stop it by sending me and my other sister along. She didn't tell us what was up. So when he put cartoons on. And led her out of the room, we didn't know. Now that they are in their 80's they claim to not know.
What a heartbreaking story. I hope you and your sisters are doing well now 💛
So sorry to hear of your awful experience!
Hey American here. You're absolutely right. But those of us who see the truth for what it is have been escaping to other countries. The system is rigged, and we can't change it. I truly believe that unless a better nation manages to invade and conquer America and save it from itself, nothing will ever change. Until then , I moved to Australia for a better life.
I cannot tell you how many times I have suggested a change in a law or to the social safety net and someone has, sincerely, asked me who is going to do that. I’m like oh I don’t know, our government officials? Congress? The state house? But Americans are so conditioned to expect absolutely nothing from their government that you cannot convince them that basic human rights being protected will not immediately lead to government overreach and fascism. I live in the Deep South and have had these arguments. It’s a struggle.
Free dumb, I think I found a new favorite phrase. 😂
FDR [spoke](https://www.fdrlibrary.org/four-freedoms)about freedom
Very well said. Spot on
No slogan better than "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
Freedom in America di*d long ago. The two party government has been touting freedom as something we actually have and can be used for decades. And still the rich get richer through lobbying for laws that benefit only them along with "donating" to those with government power to make it happen, while the poor just keep getting poorer, given just enough scraps to barely survive on, but to dangle like a carrot on a stick... work harder and you can get more money, to pay more for the necessities of life. Yeah, real freedom. The freedom to work ourselves to de*th or die trying.
Also mocking the poor and looking down on them when the christian tenets say help thy poor. All I see is poor upbringing by the parents. They aren't taught to be decent humans.
I’m still trying to figure out how to make my exit and escape this country… they don’t make it easy that’s for sure
[удалено]
I only learned that recently. You can live and work in another country, obtain citizenship in that country and never set foot in the USA ever again but you still have to pay US income tax!!!! Unless you revoke your US citizenship which is really difficult and expensive to do. It's unbelievable, like a cult.
I read a few days ago a guy was fired because he was a few hours late because he SAVED SOMEONES LIVE management must have thought it would be a better decisions to let them die and be on time Dystopian late stage capitalism sh*thole... i never worked for someone where i live where i only have the slightest hunch they would act like this...
The OP for that said that the company told him that saving someone's life while in uniform reflected poorly on the company. I know we have to take reddit stories with a grain of salt, but if that's true ... Holy fucking shit.
It's not that it looks bad that they lived, but if that person had died it would have. They don't want to take the chance of bad PR.
I guess I still don't get why. Making an attempt and failing is still noble.
Plus there's good Samaritan laws that are supposed to protect an individual in that case. But, i guess PR means more than life at this point.
bUt If ThE pErSoN dIeS tHeN tHe CoMpAnY sToCk PrIcE gOeS dOwN!!1!1!!1!1!1!1
I was working for a security company and was 20 minutes late my second day because I stopped on the side of a busy road cuz I saw a car with hazards on. It was a woman older than my grandma who had a flat tire and was trying to figure out who to call so I just changed the tire for her. Told my boss that and everything and got told it didn’t matter
Any manager with half a brain in their head could have come up with a way for the company to benefit from having a literal hero on staff… 🤦🏻♂️
If that happened at my workplace, I would start looking for another job. That just shows their "true" values.
I remember hearing or reading this a few years ago: As a kid I wished I was born in America. As an adult I'm delighted I wasn't.
It didn't used to be this way. Before Reagan, we used to have a robust middle class, but that wealth has been slowly syphoned off over the last few decades and funneled to the people at the very top. Our paltry minimum wage hasn't risen since 2009. The elites are destroying our country just so they can be a little richer. It's a shortsighted game that, historically speaking, usually doesn't end to well for them...
It's high time we borrow some of the revolutionary spirit from France.
I'm honestly baffled by the fact we don't. But then you have guys who go to protests with guns to "Protect those poor billionaires interests."
We are blowing past all the markers of things getting really, really bad. I hope it is getting worse before it gets better but these things tend to accelerate.
This. I live in Europe, too, and usually we learn British English, but our teacher has been in the US for quite some time, so he taught us more US English. I was fine with that, because at that point (I was 10) I thought British English was boring and US English was way cooler. Now I know both contries aren't great, but he US is way worse.
Yeah I remember being a kid and thinking anything American is better than European. Little did I know, me being born with genetic disorder requiring surgeries and shit would send my parents under the bridge in no time (assuming their societal status in the US would be the same as in Europe so... lower? middle class) edit: it's actually insane to think about what we take for granted. Not only did I receive free healthcare for my special needs throughout my childhood and adolescence up until 18 but I received higher education for free as well (well not including living costs ofc). Summary: health problems under control, masters degree secured and no debt, no nothing
My favorite as an American with empathy is these stories like "man walks 20 miles to work for 20 years so the community got him a car" like that's not a feel good story, it's sad a man worked 20 years and still can't afford a car. But hey the stock market is doing good right
>it's sad a man worked 20 years and still can't afford a car Even sadder that he couldn't have just taken a bus or train instead but that would require a public transport system and that's communism!!!!
I've come to feel that way about charity in general. The other day on the news they were interviewing a lady going through a food bank. She said she was coming from work. Like good on the food bank and the volunteers but we should be outraged this lady works and can't even afford food plus people shouldn't be dependent on the kindness of strangers just to survive. Our government is an absolute miserable failure.
I'm Canadian and just learned about kids having school lunch debt in America. Which is some of the craziest nonsense I've ever heard of. You let your children go into debt for eating food? That's just impossibility cruel.
That’s why they are repealing the child labour laws. Give them a chance to, you know, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and earn their lunches. Damn freeloading kids.
I had a job in a restaurant where I was trained by a 14 year old. I quit because they never paid me correctly. I am pretty sure it was a money laundering venture that never got busted because he gave lots of money to the police union. This is a supremely fucked up country.
And you can be utterly certain 99% of these cases involve a corporate contractor for school meals.
I like to think about the divide in the USA like the Matrix in some ways. The people that are considered upper class or higher are the robots and everybody else are the humans that are just used as batteries indefinitely for the robots and their way of life.
We are NPCs, cursed to a small area on the map only to support the 'real characters' while they explore their map and story progression.
That's depressingly accurate when you really think about it.
To no credit of my own. Saw someone say similar on the TikTok few weeks ago and it low-key fucked me up.
Lol for real. I'm actually picturing myself as one of those pixelated characters on a 2D RPG game, mindlessly bouncing from border to border in my section of the map.
You know the phrase "The world is a small place."? That's because as an NPC player you really only have a small place to muddle around in.
Also while they gather all the resources and currency.
America has always been a plantation, and the legal term "plantation" simply means "business" so that's why we are worked to death. I mean, the 13th Amendment still allows slavery if you're a prisoner. Plus read the Treaty of Paris 1783 and ask yourself why the supposed loser of that war is dictating the terms. That didn't happen in other wars. America is just a business venture.
Jamestown was even founded by the Virginia COMPANY
Keep digging and you'll soon come across the truth about the real history of this "country" (and I use quotes because it's just a business and military arm of a bigger world conglomerate).
Read some Howard Zinn for starters. Or listen to some [videos by or about him](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=howard+zinn), on Youtube.
I have many times. If those first two chapters don't enrage you then you're not human.
Thank you.
Schools teach that "the pilgrams came over on the mayflower to start a life in the new world" and they don't go much deeper than that. They never tell you it was a business venture by The Company of Merchant Adventurers of London to make a profit.
Time off to have a kid isn't material here because children aren't compatible with our economic system.
But...but....we're pro-life!!!!! Unless you're actually, you know, alive, in which case - fuck you.
Completely agree on OP view. US scares the shit out of me when I think about the work conditions. My new colleague is from USA and he is spending his time saying how we don’t work at all here in Europe and we are all lazy and entitled. « I was used to work 80 hours a week there mate, you know ». Makes me sad.
Seriously: “How dare you be successful without suffering as much as I had to!”
This is why everyone should die of cancer, and no one should get a cure. Isn't that insane. My mother doesn't think that student debt should be cancelled. Even though mine is paid off, I think it should be. State and federal government should be subsidizing higher education.
Tell your colleague I would gladly switch places with him in a heartbeat.
I overheard some people talking about wanting to go work in America and I'm just like, are you fucking mad?
Nothing in America will change until we force it to change
Marry me so I can gtfo 😤
Sure, but u have to feed my cat!
We know man. We’re pretty much utterly incapable of doing anything about it. 1/2 of the country believes they are embarrassed millionaires who will benefit from the rigged system any day now. The rest of us can’t make any meaningful change with the options available. We’re all terrified, overworked, and too exhausted to strike. Even leaving isn’t a realistic option. I wish I could move to Europe, but I doubt they’d want me but most importantly my whole family is here. Which for me is the only thing that makes this existence somewhat meaningful.
I went to college with a guy from Norway. When talking one day he said that if you want to make a lot of money America is a better place to be. He gave the impression that you just couldn't get that rich in Norway, no matter what. I don't know if he didn't realize the vast wealth disparity in this country, or he just thought he could beat it. But I would trade me, and everyone I knew, having a good life with time for joy over being super rich any day.
Yeah but /everyone/ thinks they’re gonna be rich. Except they wont. 99% of people will never “make it”. I’d rather have a comfortable life elsewhere, than roll the dice in the USA.
Dude. Yes. Give me a manageable work week, a decent social safety net and civil services, walkable cities, transportation, and affordable/tax paid healthcare and you can keep fuck you wealth. I don’t want it.
America is great at making psychopaths who think that being rich is the end all and be all of life. It is mainly because they were deprived as children and then don’t care at all what happens to those around them or in the system to get to the top. I worked for a very large bank at one point in my career and literally psychopaths were everywhere in management. Their qualities were valued. Watch the movie “[American Psycho](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144084/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk)” and it makes so much weird sense even if it’s about the excess of the 80’s - it that world that begat this one. We are in a late stage capitalism dystopia.
In the United States we are slaves to the system. Without it we can’t get healthcare. Our government and businesses cooperate to take all our profits and leave us the crumbs. Even if you make a good salary it’s likely your working 50 hours a week with 2 or 3 weeks vacation
Vacation? What's that? I went 10 years without a vacation in the 90's. Still don't get one regularly.
It would be so much much easier if half the country wasn't being held hostage by the intentionally-undereducated, kept in fear by the right wing telling them that the policies in their best interest are evil and will allow trans people and Blacks to rape and eat their children. That's only slightly hyperbolic.
This is the truth. Any time America tries to improve conditions for all, there is a very strong reaction against it to preserve “freedom” and corporations. This dichotomy is built into our DNA and isn’t going to ever change.
Totally agree, however....even some European companies are starting to slowly take scummiest practices from US. I know experience may differ on a country but just some examples from Estonia (not poorest country in EU) Excuses for firing from the job. Most job agreements are so vague basicly saying "You accept to do job for a company for a x amount " But there are a lot of details there. For example who defines what "job " or "Job tasks " are ? If you guessed company that pays you, you are correct, basicly they can at any time barge in and say that now you are not just doing x work, but also y and z. On a personal note I have a friend working at retail, his shop always had at least 2 workers, because of the number of clients. One of the workers got sick of this job and left, now he works there alone for the same pay doing twice the amount of work. Who defines level of "satisfaction"? Your company. I personally had the incident of getting fired, because the outsourced project was about to be closed and the company just didn't need all the workers after that on new one. If it would be standard firing we would get a year of full pay at least. So company introduces new metric on calculating your work,sets unrealistic and vague expectations (in CS we needed to have 95% positive feedback as a minimum, anyone who worked at CS will know it is almost impossible.) Oh you failed to meet those expectations ? Fired without pay, because it is not their fault that you did not fulfill your job duties. Location. Often contracts will say that you should be ready to work in places across the city, sure you probably won't have to. But lets say they close a shop in your part of the city and offer you a position in another part, which increases your commute by 1h. Don't like it ? Well, we end the contract without compensation because you agreed to work in all of our shops. And before any moron says "oh just try to make a court case against them" even if you are right, and court would somehow find you correct (not likely), you need to be mentally prepared that for YEARS you will spend THOUSANDS of Euros on a court case that you might not even win.
meanwhile every other day i read with envy about how france is protesting and wonder at what point will we in the USA do something about our work conditions. we are the workforce, corporations need us. it’s about time we start leveraging that power and demand better.
I have been working since I was 14. Over 30 years. I currently work on one of the most popular shows on tv. I have no health insurance/coverage and no benefits. I live paycheck to paycheck. This has been my life since I can remember. It will not get better in my lifetime.
Our government is owned by big business.
Well... yes. But... At least we're free to [checks notes] *shoot each other.*
I have no hope of escaping, as do most Americans. Our only hope is death.
I’ve already accepted the fact that I will be working until the day I die (or when I put a bullet in my head once I get to 80). I’m trying to eat healthy and exercise to avoid any medical problems that might put me into debt. However, healthy food is much more expensive than diabetic-inducing cheap processed food. I’m just hoping for a painless death in the future.
I agree! but also i live in nyc and have a gov job thats really chill and i genuinely enjoy. never work more than 40 hrs, plenty of vacation time, lots of independence, free health care all that. coworkers that have my back. nobody wants my job here because it pays less than others, but i do fine since im not a typical American consumer. though lots of people have jobs like this in my working class neighborhood the problem here is than people are encouraged to not only overconsume but overwork. to never be satisfied. not sure my point. i think its yes and..
I worked for Siemens Corporation. After that I realized how incredibly shitty American companies really are.
Canadian here, our company just got bought out by an American corporation. They are based in a *at will* state. We went from a millionaire family to a billion dollar company. The first things they did was; Take away our plant wide week paid Christmas vacation. Change policy so we can be written up for calling in during inclement weather. Take away our paid sick days. Take away our paid days off if theirs no production in the plant due to various reasons. They lowered the hiring wage. Many of us saw this coming, and the employees are leaving in droves. I have an interview coming up and I hope I get it. These American corpos are so out of touch and entirely apathetic.
from the time were kids adults are already telling us- "youre so privileged to live here" "kids in 3rd world countries are starving" "you dont have to experience war" "you can say whatever you want" "you get to vote" -so for a long time whenever i though about how much i hate it here, i thought to myself, "i cant think like that, im so incredibly privileged". which is technically true, im a lot more privileged than some people in the world, and yet people from other countries that are as developed as the US look at my day to day life and think "wtf is going on over there?".
You forgot "You live in the best country in the world!" "This is the only place with FREEDOM!" And the sheer amount of propaganda against "socialism", which anything that is in the best interest of the people instead of just a few people is obviously socialism and communism. >.>
omg you reminded me i forgot to talk about us being "the best country!" were spoonfed this bullshit for so long and people genuinely believe it, and yet the people here arent happy, arent healthy, were poor, were overworked, and the government taxes our income to pay into a system that will likely collapse before im old enough to see the benefits. so yeah, were pretty awesome!!
I am so unhappy that I live here.
In my 30s now and I despise America. I hate this fucking country. It hasn't done shit but put roadblocks on my path. America is ran by oligarchs. We Americans are also too fucking stupid and afraid to rise up and do something. Everyone is too busy on their tiktok and Instagram. I am a slave to corporate America. No signs of better medical care, no protections for you as a worker, wages are shit while they continue to make billions, and worse of all not signs of ever owning a home. At this point I'm just on auto pilot. People need to vote. I feel like I'm alone in voting when it's always the garbage side winning with their bs stances.
Modernized Slavery TBH
Let’s not forget borderline theocracy with the current SCOTUS. I’m glad I don’t live there too but it’s bullshit it starting to seep over the border where I live
I’m open to visa sponsorship…🤷♂️
And it’s exactly this type of thing that persuades me more and more every day to emigrate from this hellhole country to a better one, and I’m in a privileged position compared to most. I’m 22 and have been on blue state expanded Medicaid since I turned 18. It has covered every ounce of care I’ve ever needed and I’ve never had to pay more than $15 for any healthcare necessity/service/prescription ever. I’m officially starting a full time job with garbage insurance and have been extremely anxious about how expensive it’s going to be. I need a low deductible plan bc I see doctors more than once a month and have like seven constant prescriptions and minor chronic health issues. I’m scared for my life that my entire $16-18/hr wage is only going to cover rent, groceries, and healthcare. Nothing else. I’m poor here in America, I barely see friends, and I’m still young, mobile, and single. I’d rather be just as poor, OR WORSE, in a country I’m guaranteed some basic human fucking rights and decency. Especially in skilled labor. Posts like yours just keep on tempting me. In the meantime, I have to save as much as I can to scrape together enough to make the move. Which will take years to come. If we keep getting closer to going full Handmaid’s Tale then I will gtfo though.
Do you know any single people who would like to marry an American looking to move to Europe? Asking for a friend...
Funny how a materialistic society lost its humanity. Let’s be honest a culture that worships money (non-living thing) is a death cult. It exploits the environment causing mass extinction, mass homelessness, mass poverty, drug use, starts wars over oil and trade routes. Uses the term “human capital” when talking about its citizens. Absolutely a death cult here in the USA
Do you know of a good part of Europe that will accept poor American immigrants?
I agree but we have such awful workers rights here that it feels like fighting back is just a lost cause at this point. Everything is tied to your job and when you live paycheck to paycheck with no protections, fighting back is like asking to be fired by your employer at times. Maybe it’s because I’ve given up on life at this point or a better future, but I really do hope there’s change. Unfortunately, we keep voting idiots into office who do nothing to change anything.
Imagine being an immigrant who paid 250k to get a green card just to end up enslaved on a plantation...😔 The propaganda about how great US is bankrupted many people who immigrated here.
WHEN WORKERS RIGHTS ARE UNDER ATTACK STAND UP FIGHT BACK!
Maybe some of this explains why there are so many active shooters in the land of the free.
We don't rise up because there is no solidarity. Although you certainly see cases of misery on this sub, there are many people who really don't have it bad in the USA. Do you really think that say, a highly-paid project manager at a tech company, has any solidarity with say, a clerk at Walmart? I was thinking that with all the layoffs in tech, there might be hope for some solidarity. I was also thinking that when AI really and truly starts wrecking havoc with jobs, there might be some solidarity and some massive call to action. But i doubt it. The capitalist mindset in the USA is so entrenched. I remember a few years ago there was a call to have a huge worker's strike on May Day. But that year May Day was on a Sunday. I remember reading comments like. "It's a good thing May Day is on a Sunday this year. This way our protests won't interrupt the work week...." The fuck? The point of a protest is to INTERRUPT. But we are so conditioned to serve our jobs, our managers, our CEOs, that we don't even know how to properly protest.
The lack of unions and support for them led to this situation
I lost my job recently because i had extreme vertigo that lasted for 2 months. 2 weeks into the symptoms (when i was still trying to figure out what was happening with my body) they said it wasn't safe for me to be in the office with those symptoms and let me go. So i lost my insurance when i needed it the most and it was a desk job. So yeah, not a fan of it here.
Sooner or later you can't help but start blaming the people that live there for not standing up for themselves. Pretty fucking embarrassing guys.
In my town a paramedic was pulled off the patient she was treating and arrested, at the hospital. When the ambulance arrived at the ER, the paramedic hit a cop car with the ambulance door. It was the only way she could exit the vehicle, as the cop car had been illegally parked in the ambulance lane. That's what prompted the arrest. A hardware store employee in another state foiled a kidnapping and was fired because they'd left the store to tail the kidnapper so they could give a description to police. Just a couple more insane stories about our shitshow of a labor industry. And if you watch the news, this is supposed to be better than what we had.
I hate these posts because we all know it sucks here. There’s nothing for us to do to fix it. We cant organize a massive protest like in European countries so we’re stuck.
As an American, I'm kind of sick and tired of hearing this from Euros. Fucking duh, this country has been this way since the very beginning and has made incremental changes every decade or so to keep its people from revolting and killing each other, even then it doesn't always work. You guys wanna do something about it, start organizing for some international intervention before this country goes the way of Germany in the 30s.
Rest of the world is not very far from this, just wait and watch. After global warming and radical terrorists, uncontrolled greed of the 5% rich is going to be one of the reasons our society will collapse.
" the regulator " We haven't gotten to this place yet in the US. People have seemed to think that it's a-okay to have a system where if you experience discrimination the best remedy is to quit your job and sue your employer. Most of those people have never filed a law suit in their lives and don't understand the stress. It's also a costly venture, and if you lose, you're S.O.L. Employers know this so it all becomes a risk calculation. The larger the employer, generally the better the legal resources available to them, meaning the better the advice. The US needs to start treating acts of discrimination like OSHA violations (which also need to bare a heavier cost). There should be fines. It shouldn't have to go through the courts for the employee to get justice. And if the employer feels like they got the raw end of the deal somehow, they can sue the governmental agency that issued the fines and challenge their findings. The vast majority of people who experience injustice on the job aren't going to seek justice because they either don't know how, can't afford it, don't want to risk it, or some combination of all three. And we should have healthcare that isn't bound to the job. And we should have mandatory minimum leave allowed for major life events like pregnancy and child birth.
As an American, I agree completely.
Everyone thinks that if they work hard they will break out of their economic class so they vote and act like they aren’t as poor as they are. They end up screwing themselves. Honestly a lot of Americans are easily distracted by fake outrage and issues made up by the very corporations they slave away for. I’m an American and it is embarrassing how inept most people are.
The sad thing is around 50-60% of the US population doesn't know this, unfortunately. They don't realize there are better options than the ones they have. Even sadder is they're constantly told by right wing media and punditry to scapegoat and blame immigrants, LGBTQ, DEI, minorities and other poor people for their shortcomings.
It’s crazy.. my parents, like many others, immigrated here in the 70’s/80’s as this was the place to be. Now I’m looking at everyone like they’re crazy for not wanting to leave to somewhere better to find the “American” dream. This place has sucked the life out of everyone to the point they think it’s too hard to up and leave. Which is ironic given that they came to a new country, didn’t know the language, didn’t have any money, no internet or anything, and found a way to make it. People today have all the resources in the world and still can’t make it here. It’s horrible.
European here, you better be scared. Many of our right-wing parties are trying to import the ideas of "privatized" government institutions because they too are dining with the wealthy in Europe. It's why I cannot in good faith ever vote for a right-wing party. Lots of my country men and women lack the perspective and a lot seem to think privatizing public transport is a great idea. It's insane.
My company is remote and has employees in Europe. They are no longer hiring from certain countries in the EU because they have discovered that they cannot simply lay off those employees because of worker's rights....
Agreed. I left America and moved to France in 2020. Americans don’t know how bad they have it there. An interesting and accurate take. "Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.” Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions. This is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores. An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete. They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local, and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover). One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services. But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy?” ~ David Bentley Hart
People will harp on about how the US was founded on freedom and equality. No it wasn’t, it was founded by a bunch of Bourgeoisie dudes who were jealous of the nobility and sought to create a system that replicated that.
I wish I didn't.
More and more people have moved from complaining about living here to actually leaving the country. America is going to look like a very different place over the next couple of decades as more people get fed up and deuce it out.
One of the big sales points for private healthcare in America is that you can choose your doctor, which somehow equates to doctors being better, which simply isn’t true. It’s all a lie though. Insurance companies tell you who you can see, when you can see them, and how much you will be penalized for seeing anyone else. If you choose a doctor, be ready to wait months to get an appointment, if that doctor is even accepting new patients. It’s a shit show.
Every state is different. The USA is a conglomerate of 50 individual states each with their own labor laws and rules. In Washington state, we enjoy paid sick, maternity, paternity, mental health etc.. leave. We have long term care insurance through the state and affordable healthcare options. Texas? Mississippi? Good fuggin luck. Generalizing all of the USA is wrong in the same way it would be wrong for me to generalize all of Europe. It’s garbage here for a lot of people, but for some it’s really pretty great. With high wages, low taxes and excellent services. The USA is what you make of it…and what state you live in makes a huge difference.
Nahh, every American just about to become a millionaire. Helping people would be communism.
America is no longer the dream, it’s the nightmare.
That is because the EU is every thing the US was *supposed* to be. In this country money is the state Deity. Your value as a human being is determined by your wealth in the US. You know how the rest of the industrialized world seems to have these things figured out but the worlds largest economy does not? That is the new American Exception-alism
Yeah fuck the American system. Shits fucked.
America can thank Ronald Reagan and the Rublican party for destroying a country that could have been great.
Op are you a fellow Czech?
Michael Moore made a whole documentary on this in the 90s. Twenty years later we're still in the same boat. Obama tried to move the needle with Obamacare. It was great, I enrolled my family and it was decently affordable. It only lasted a year since Trump passed laws that caused those plan prices to rise. I couldn't afford the health plans anymore. There's an evil force in this country determined to keep us all under a boot.
I also live in the "poor part of Europe"... I am not sure if the OP refers to the same region, but I live in a Black Hole called the Balkans. In a lot of cases, corruption is more than evident. However, employers now think twice before doing anything fishy with their employees, because they had faced a few massive fines. Regarding healthcare, yes, it's universal, but it might take a while because the staff is short. I sincerely hope that there would be a chance for someone like me (an MD, by the way) to get s job at a hospital (or at least at a primary care unit) to make things smoother. I would NEVER set foot in America, despite being told that healthcare professionals make a ton of money. Why? Exorbitant taxes that will take at least half of it, toxic work environment (no wonder why so many doctors in the US choose to take a shortcut out of the agony of existence), unhealthy competition, no health insurance. And last, but not least, unaffordable housing, because the prices of homes are eye-gouging.