Yeah, someone has to pay for saving their asses in both world wars, they’re obviously not going to do it.
You’re the kid that bragged your dad could easily beat up the other pre-schooler’s dad.
Why are you bringing the Soviet Union in to this?
There’s no Americans bragging about that. Corporations and the government, sure. The rest of us are to busy living in pain
Most Americans have no clue what the rest of the world is like.
Most Americans don’t even understand the progressive income tax system we have, they will go so far as to decline raises because it’ll put them in a higher bracket and they think that will mean less take home pay. It doesn’t! You should always take a raise!
I believe I’ll someday move to a country that has good policies for everything from healthcare, to work life balance, and social safety nets, and I’ll never have to deal with the American nightmare again.
To be fair, the rest of the world isn’t easily accessible for most Americans
Education is broken because on purpose
It’s literally one Google search away. And if they want to travel, you’ll be able to speak English to basically everyone (under 40)
There’s actually a tricky spot for folks who get certain social services which are tied to income. A small raise can bump you out of eligibility for things like medicaid and food stamps, and thus can in fact result in higher expenses, less money in your pocket, and a lower quality of life.
Yep! The welfare cliff I believe it’s called. Evidence of a poorly designed welfare system, which I think some see as a feature not a bug sadly.
Some years ago I were in US on vacation and a Cadillac commercial said you shouldn’t buy cars made by lazy people wo have 4 weeks vacation every year, instead you should buy an American car.
“Everything is possible if you believe in it” and destroy the fucking planet while doing so
you should buy a car assembly someone who is absolutely exhausted and has exactly no reason to give a fuck. Because freedom.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/xNzXze5Yza8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Meanwhile, GM is having all its stuff made in Mexico and Canada.
Disgusting.
I prefer co-op games like the James Webb telescope. Thanks ESA for a perfect launch.
As an american, who gives a shit about all that stuff when your family savings can be wiped out, home foreclosed upon, and bankrupted just because you get sick or suffer an injury!? Even if you plan and do everything right, it could still happen to you, through no fault of your own.
So, IMO until we have universal healthcare like every other modern nation, they all beat us…
or you can just move to a different country. Ez.
I can’t speak for others of course, but I don’t want to move away from family…
Hmmm fat Burgers on suicide watch
Do an even better comparison: school vacaancies with work vacancies. That’s real life. GPT/BARD might help speed it up
Are we gonna include school shooting deaths in those vacancies? Because for some absolutely unknown reason American schools suffer from mysterious shooting deaths multiple times a year. It’s so strange and mysterious and there is absolutely no way to stop it. Like, there is literally nothing to do about all the school shootings every single year for the last few decades.
To be fair, they have tried nothing and are all out of ideas.
Which side means I get to have rights and keep them?
Europe I’d say
I recall going to the UK after brexit, to a house party with family friends. I was hounded with how do you function with only a 2 week holiday. I then shared i had 4 weeks after 5 years. They were so confused that we could function with less than 6 weeks of vacation.
Burn out in the USA is a real thing. Our politicians will never vote for a mandatory vacation for anyone other than them selves
It’s amazing how submissive American men are.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Grindr it’s that all Republicans are bottoms that think they’re tops.
To be fair, Republican men prefer to bottom on top. It’s because you can only get so deep if you’re a bottom on bottom.
If you complain about it some Americans will just call you lazy. lol. Same thing with the cost of healthcare. They’ll just tell you to get a better job or better healthcare. They never speak about the root cause of the problem.
We are voting to give ourselves an increase on per diem, but we are also cutting food stamps benefits.
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lower unemployment
Doesn’t matter, I can only have two, maybe three jobs at once so any more than that is irrelevant to me
higher growth
I get the same $8/hr whether the GDP goes up, stays the same or goes down. You can’t leave workers out of the distribution of wealth and then pretend that more wealth is good for workers
I don’t understand how the hell people even work jobs that don’t make minimum of $30/hour at least in California and even parts of the East Coast. Like your rent is $1600-$2200. At 0.8*3200 for $ 20/hour with taxes your take home is $2560 for a 40 hour work week. So what are you just not eating that month?
How about healthcare transportation medical 401K literally anything? Pruning of benefits didn’t happen because of corporate greed it happened because people just accepted what they were offered. In the Midwest where apartments might be closer to $700-$900 a month some of this works but on the coasts rent is usually twice that. And a car to get most places is $400 a month with insurance supposing you have the credit.
I work in IT and programming, and Id love to do physical labor and talk to real humans rather than salamanders in silicon valley. But the jobs I see don’t even break $30 an hour. Yet it costed me $27 for ham and cheese and altoids, not even including bread where I live in the bay area. It is fucking expensive.
I feel like America is doing so many things ass backwards greed first. But it’s not like I have the experience of living overseas or in Canada or otherwise so I don’t have much to compare it to, so it’s safer by default to live with the devil you know than the one you don’t.
27$ for ham? How much are we talking about? 500g or 1kg? (about 1 or 2 pounds)? Deli or conveniece?
Half a pound. Deli.
Christ 250g of deli hame for $27? So probably about 22-25€?
That’s probably a ½-¼ more expensive than good ham from a local italian shop in Germany…Good god.
What people do is pile into apartments. Yeah, to live alone may cost let’s say $2000/month rent. But you can pile 4+ people into a four bedroom apartment that costs $5000, split it four (or more) ways, and they’re paying $1250/month. Some of them have significant others, so then you wind up with two people in one room each paying $625/month. (Just random numbers, but that’s the general idea of it.)
The people I know who do it hate it, but it’s what they can afford while staying in the area they like (and/or were born in, have a community in, etc.).
Good lord that’s no way to live.
But your billionaires get richer more quickly than ours! Isn’t that something to be proud of?
hey watch it buddy, one day I’m gonna be one of those billionaires
This has gekoloniseerd kokosnoot energy
one day I’m gonna be one of those billionaires
I sense people actually believe they’re an easy powerball away from just that.
Everyone is sure they’re the exception
It took me way too long to realize chasing a high pay, high stress career wasn’t worth it. I envied my friends and family for being able to enjoy weekends, evenings, and holidays when I couldn’t. I missed my best friends bachelor party, I missed Christmas and New Years parties. If i didnt miss them entirely i would show up late or leave early from every occasion. I realized I was going to reach the end of life never having lived it.
I couldn’t justify a 80k-100k pay cut for an extra week of PTO.
What about three weeks of extra annual leave, public holidays, real healthcare with no bullshit co-pays (and unlimited sick days, they don’t count towards “pto”), a maximum 35 hour work week… Because that’s more like what it would look like for a higher value job like that. Depends on the country and the job, of course. But in my case in the UK right now, and in my last job in Germany, my total “pto” in US terms has been roughly two months. (Which is a lot even here, but it’s not by any means unheard of, and easy to get if it’s a priority to you). Doing a job with an average salary of about 100k in the US, and I get paid a little over 50k £ for it, which is about 1.5 times the median salary here, so even after the recent inflation it affords a pretty comfortable lifestyle, it’s enough money to pay the mortgage and take holidays to the continent in my ample time off.
Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant, but tldr: it’s not just “an extra week”
Still not worth it. I broke my leg 3 years ago I paid $2.4k total with my insurance. Today it’d be more like $5k as my insurance isn’t as good, but it would still be worth it to stay in the US even if I broke a bone every 3 months! However, two months of PTO is certainly something. But to be honest, my mentality is in a place where I’d probably end up doing some work on the side if I honestly had 8 weeks of PTO. Even when I had unlimited PTO, I only took like 4-6 weeks a year.
I think broadly speaking, if you make under $120k/year in the US, your quality of life will be better in Western Europe just because of the social safety net and worker’s protections. And this is especially true if you’re planning on having children.
{edit, I have no idea why the Lemmy algorithm decided to put this on my front page today}
I think that big difference is for low paid workers, rather than higher flyers.
Comparing a store assistant position between Lidl USA and Lidl UK.
Lidl USA
- Starting pay $16.00 per hour
- Up to 20 days of Paid Time Off (PTO) to use for sickness or vacation, plus 6 paid holidays annually
Lidl UK
- Starting pay £12 (current exchange rate $15.21)
- 30 days holiday (increasing to 35 after 5 years service)
- 10 days sick.
Don’t want to brag, but I took my compulsory 2-week vacation in July. I’m having another week of vacation in the middle of August and I’m taking a whole month off in the middle of October when my second child is born (dad-vacation, in addition to the 18 months that the mom has as paid maternity leave). Oh and all of this is fully paid.
That sounds really good, where do you work?
I’m guessing Norway, Finland, or Sweden.
I’ve had about 6 or 7 weeks of paid vacation this year already. A week long winter vacation and 4 week summer vacation and random days off in the middle of the week every now and then. The good thing about christian culture even though almost no-one is religious here is that we still get a day off for their holidays.
*Fully paid by your higher taxes.
I’d rather my country raise my tax to 50% than live in a country like America.
Ironically, the average total taxation (after you add local, regional, national, etc. taxes) is either lower or at a similar approx. 35% of income.
Americans just get stiffed by where that money goes afterwards.
I wonder how it ends if they add all the insurances, benefits etc. they would need to pay to get the same benefits as us.
We are supporting each other in hard times and fun times. Whats the problem? Should we rather shoot, hate and make fun of each other instead?
Lol, we’ll see how that works out with your immigration policies.
Works good overseas, right? Imagine fearing an ER visit because of crippling debt or the ride with a fucking van to the ER itself.
Who’d have thought that prioritizing mental wellbeing, family, and health over corporate gains would be a good idea!? Surely this backwards commie system is doomed to fail!
How does that work exactly? Why would the government pay my vages during my summer holiday when I work for a private company? I’m afraid you have no idea what you’re talking about…
*Fully paid by higher progressive taxes on wealthy people.
- paid by middle class, which cannot afford tax evasion.
Wealthy people in Europe don’t pay shit. It’s much easier than in the US, where only ultra-wealthy don’t pay shit.
Yeah just go to Monaco. It’s infuriating.
^This is what the law and order crowed says when the law is for wealthy and powerful people.
Honestly, I was being a bit facetious by responding to an overly simplistic comment in an overly simplistic way. Personally, I think we should fund universal welfare programs by cutting out the ultra-wealthy middle man with a sovereign wealth fund like they do in Norway. No need to tax the ultra-wealthy if they don’t exist because they can’t extract the wealth from the people in the first place.
this “overly simplistic comment” has everything you need and more, but I’ll bite.
-
Wealthy people own companies. Companies are perfect tool for accumulating wealth, since you can reinvest profits forever and pay income tax (corporate rate) only on stuff you intend to extract to your own name, which is usually not much compared to total amount of generated income. Private person, on the other hand, is taxed on whole income and may qualify for usually laughable deductions. Got huge bonus from your job at the end of the year and plan to get few months off work to “invest in yourself” and learn a new trade? Tough luck, buddy, you are “rich” now - welcome to higher tax bracket, government will take their cut first and let’s see what you’ll be able to afford with what’s left.
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VAT is a scam to fuck people who have to spend their income for actual living. If you live paycheck to paycheck you’ll end up paying VAT on your whole income.
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Wealthy people don’t get their income in salary, salary is for working class. Dividends, capital gains, royalties - in any jurisdiction it’s possible to find something which will be less severe than income tax, which is also often not progressive or capped at something like 20%. Social security contributions are easily bypassed by employing yourself as CEO for minimal salary. Boom - now you have same healthcare as people who have to pay great chunk of their whole paycheck for it.
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If we restrict ourselves to EU citizens and your particular country is really anal or maybe 20% or something tax is too much for you anyway - you are free to move to Cyprus, Malta or Switzerland, which will have 0% capital gains if you meet not too tough conditions. Or “move”, you just have to get a residence there to declare as your primary one and be present at least sometimes - there’s no border control, it’s really hard to track if you spent there more than half a year for tax residency purposes, this is usually a matter of long legal battles and you won’t even get into that territory if you’re not doing anything too bizarre.
This is a biggest difference with US citizens, they can’t benefit from tax havens because of their passport, IRS doesn’t care and is good equipped with lots of info, so US guys are left with real shady stuff with nominees and cash or traditional buy-borrow-die, which is sustainable only for ultra-rich.
I’m living and doing business in EU and it took me quite a lot of time to get from nothing into the position where I can utilize at least some of the benefits of the above - but you have to be completely fucking blind to not see that it’s rigged and tax burden on people who don’t try to game the system is completely disproportional.
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I will gladly pay for those.
But as far as I am aware those higher taxes fuel other things paid leave. I believe paternity leave is subsidized by it.Yup! And all we get for it is healthcare, childcare, college tuition, pensions, sick leave, maternity leave…
Don’t forget reliable and comfortable public transport and properly maintained roads and public infrastructure.
reliable
lol
I try explaining this to fellow Americans that you end up paying much less in the end and never have the stress of how you’re going to afford this stuff (or possibly even lose everything to a sudden health problem) but it falls on deaf ears if they’ve already been brainwashed. They refuse to hear that other countries have things figured out to make the lives of their citizens much more enjoyable.
But imagine I’ll never get sick or have kids, then I’m losing money!!
Right?
Which European country do you live in?
I don’t know which country he lives in but it could be Germany since I know that it’s like this in Germany.
Sounds very much like it. Paid leave for dads is what a few of my co-workers did.
I had a few days off in spring, recently had my 2 weeks and another coming in october.
Not much but it’s sufficient to me (but more is always better).
God please let me move to Europe I don’t even care what language I have to learn I just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
If you work in academia, you don’t need to learn a new language. English is the working language. Also the 5 weeks of holiday is nice, but what really helps is the working day.
I started as a bioinformatician a month ago. I come in to the office at 0830 have coffee from 09:00 til 09:45 with my boss and colleagues, work a bit, have lunch from 12:00 untill 13:15, work a bit, go home at 15:30. That’s my day.
Maybe you don’t need the language for work. But you will need te learn the language eventually for other day to day interactions.
Or the paper works outside of the labs.
never needed german knowledge to do standard burocracy stuff
Don’t know about other countries, but in Norway you always have the option of getting websites and government information in English. Everyone speaks it including cashier’s, cleaners etc.
The same thing is not true in Germany and Spain.
My experience is purely based on Germany and I hate it even as a native. Plus having ADHD and paper being a chore doesnt help at all…
Also most folks (in my experience of south west Germany) of age >40-50 have little experience with English and can’t converse beyond the most basics.
Dutchie here, we do the same. Everybody speaks (some form of) English, almost everything is also available in English.
The Dutch speak better English than some parts of England.
This is true but also keep in mind that Dutch is still leading in most cases. E.g. if you have a contract that’s both in English and Dutch, if issues arise the Dutch translation will usually be the one that is followed
Dutch is still leading in most cases.
Sint Maarten should check-in and tell us about the English-Dutch separation and the class system it all but foments. It’s 90% fascinating if 10% disappointing.
bro youre so cosmopolitan, Im crying out so proud I am reading your comment. No countries, borders, or languages. We are all one
spoiler
cuck
I would most certainly disagree that every person speaks English. Especially older people don’t, but in general many people here do not speak a good english
Oh, I see that I totally forgot to mention I’m from Germany
No, pretty much anyone in Norway can speak English, some don’t feel confident in their ability though. But if you ask any rando on the street if they speak English you get the answer of course ".
For some reason France really doesn’t like giving english (or any other than french) options on their gov sites. Every other country in the eu are fine.
In France, I feel French is heavily a part of their identity; and contrary to Americans fairweather-jeering their best revolutionary ally, the French do not surrender lightly. It feels like that’s the one thing even the poorest French person has, and taking away one iota of that will be met with a resistance we’ve learned to respect.
but in Norway [:] English. Everyone speaks it
Scandinavia is absolutely killing it for bilingualism, among so many other ways they’re killin’ it – no, really, other countries should just study them for clues in general. My experiences (just Sweden, Denmark and bonus Iceland, so far) is that they say Hejdo and listen for your “hello”, flipping over into beautiful and perfect English without hesitation. Their language programmes are just fucking astounding, really.
Spain’s fine in the touristy spots, but Spanish itself is VERY accessible as a language, so it’s kinda moot like France.
In Germany I will have to rely heavily on the kindness of strangers as I will never grok the language.
They’re exposed to English every day from multiple sources. You aren’t allowed into university unless you can read and write English to a high level. Your text books are in English at university and classes open to exchange students are taught in English. All English media is subtitled. And school lessons in English start when they’re 6. No mystery, just practice.
im in the country for almost 10 years now without speaking a word. not true.
Work in IT.
Start at 9:00
Lunch 13:00-14:00
Go home at 18:00
Commute (if construction does not tear up the main crossing) is around 30min 1-way with bus or a 15-20min bicycle ride.Experience: About 5 years without college/uni.
if construction does not tear up
It’s München time
Work in IT. Start at 9:00 Lunch 13:00-14:00 Go home at 18:00
IT Job I left:
- start at 8
- coffee 10-1030-ish (sometimes like 11)
- lunch at 12-13
- second coffee 15-1530
- leave at 1647, home by 1720 by train – tools down, muthafuckas
- voluntary standby for 1/4 time and immediate double-time for callouts, sanctity of personal time otherwise.
- union, 9x9 work term, no abrupt firings.
- EXACTLY on the median base salary for my job+region, which includes dot-coms.
- in north america, no less.
Experience: About 5 years without college/uni.
Experience: my soul.
Both of y’all are melting American brains trying to do the math on figuring out what times you’re talking about.
Most Americans have no clue that 13:00 is 1:00pm because 12+1 is too difficult, and God help you if you say 22:00, because 22-12 might as well be euclidean geometry.
I think IT might not be as easy as you think. Academia is a bit more open.
IT isn’t quite high skilled enough to get in. They’d almost certainly need an employer to say they couldn’t find a European to do the job, which is exceedingly unlikely.
I don’t know if I quite get what you are saying…
You mean it from the perspective of a US based company?I think he’s saying it’s harder to get a work visa taking a job in IT, as the EU company would have to first prove that they couldn’t find a European citizen to take the job before they can start hiring foreigners.
It hasn’t been my experience though, we hire lots of foreigners on work visas. Many from India and former Soviet countries especially.
I’m not in a big corp soI can just assume:
Do some countries require to proof local citizens are not sorthy enough so you need to import work force from abroad?Yeah, many countries do this. It’s common in Europe but the US does it also.
Yeah, that’s what I was saying.
In Spain we do have non-EU people, but oftentimes they come here, live in Spain “irregularly” at some point, and then manage to get residency through means other than an employer sponsoring them. That might not be the case everywhere though.
In what country do you work?
Norge
I work in the public sector. If I start my day at 06.00, I can leave at 14.30 👌 Perfect for me since I am an early riser and the days are slowly getting darker and darker again
Yeah I have flex time, but the daycare doesn’t.
Seven hour day with an hour and fifteen minute lunch. What kind of magic is this? What’s the catch?
Well this might be an anomaly but the company I worked for in the Philippines gave you a dedicated hour for lunch and two 15-minute breaks, plus two hours weekly for any of the workshops/learning opportunities they provide.
sOcIaLiSm
lol i work a third of that
The catch is that you live in Europe and cops won’t beat you to death.
Those are summer hours. In the rest of the year I’ll be expected to work an additional 45 minutes. Officially we only get 30 minutes for lunch, but no-one cares. When our contact in admin is in we keep it to 45 minutes.
30-45 minutes for lunch, where do you live, in the Netherlands?
In France it’s 1h30 usually (give or take a bit depending the company).
We take around a hour and a half but we’re not officially supposed to.
lmao fatty. you live in a shithole
just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
If you avoid the flatlander areas, Canada may be for you. We also speak English; just, without the accent. :-P
(unless you live on the island that’s an hour’s ferry from France)
Speaking a language without an accent is like wearing clothes without a material
Idk I’m from the central US and I had a German foreign exchange student tell me we didn’t have a mimicable accent. I know it’s not true but it was interesting to hear that from someone who’s familiar with everyone around her speaking in a completely different way, even when using English.
That’s common if you don’t know a language too well. There is the variant that you learned, and since you don’t know more, you think that this variant has no accent and all the other variants (that you didn’t learn and thus are hard to understand) you think have accents.
Only once you spent significant time with multiple accents will you be able to pick up the differences.
Or typing without a font.
That said, I think they were having a dig at how some Americans believe they have “no accent” because they (think they) sound like movie people.
Dutch American Friendship Treaty.
Sprich Deutsch du Hurensohn.
That’s ich_iel spirit.
Is there a Lemmy version of r/ich_iel? I need it for research purposes…Nvm found it
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Did Duolingo teach you what “Hurensohn” means?
If not duolingo, then certainly this year’s r/Place helped!
Yes. For everyone who missed it, “Hurensohn” ist the German word for CEO.
Just call your boss a Hurensohn tomorrow to impress them.
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Yes. Subscribe for the naughty words 😏
Subscribe for the naughty words
THIS is how Duolingo will get my money. That’s some value-add right there.
But the quebecois stuff just sounds religious. Weeeird. (I kid, I kid. I once had a sergeant mutter ‘sacre bleu’ to me, and I almost chuckled realizing it was an actual curse, which is the only way the day could have been made worse)
God I miss that comment chain on r/ich_iel! Made my day for real, even though I don’t speak an inch of German.
Nah, man. Stay where you are, we don’t want any 'muricans (assuming you are). Fix what you have instead.
We’d love to fix what we’ve got if that were a reasonable option. For most people, it’s not.
See, politics are so broken here that it’s really just a dick measuring contest to see who can wax the best poetic. And then even when we do get a decent president—because let’s be clear, Biden isn’t a good president—they often cater to corporations long before they even think about making things better for the working people.
At this point, fixing our political system would require either:
- A voting miracle, voting not on party lines but on the actual merits of the candidates, or at least voting for the actual best candidate in the primary of the “least” evil party.
- A revolution, either through ratification of a new constitution or actual war.
Most people in America are too uninformed for number one to be realistic within less than an entire generation. Sure, newer generations are far more informed and are actually changing the voting landscape in some ways, but it’s not going to be enough to change everything while we’ve still got boomers voting for politicians who don’t have their best interests in mind. It will take years, if not decades, to get that far.
Meanwhile, most people don’t want to be involved in a revolution. Even if everything is peaceful (which it likely wouldn’t be), and we’re able to ratify the new constitution without many issues (which there would be a ton of), that still leaves us with a tumultuous period of transition. Not many people would really want to live through that. I admit that most people probably would because there’s not much of a better choice during that transition, but I guarantee there would be a huge spike in emigration from the United States.
Moving to Europe or Canada is just the best option for a lot of Americans who feel they can’t deal anymore with our broken politics, substandard workers’ rights, and/or dwindling human rights for LGBTQ people. My family has tossed the idea around of moving to Canada, since it’s close, or even Germany despite the fact that my husband and partner make decent money. We just can’t keep up sometimes, and as a polyamorous household of three AMAB people, two of whom are married, we’re worried for our rights, too.
For most people, moving to a different country is a fresh start, and the majority of them will do their utmost to make sure they respect the country they come into. There will always be some that don’t, especially when they’re coming from a country like America, but for the most part, all we want is basic rights that other people have and not having to worry about putting food on the table some days.
Edit: commas and grammar
My family has tossed the idea around of moving to Canada
Come to Canada! It’s 70% awesome and the rest is prairies and Republicans! Lend your income to our tax system and help out my neighbours and my family and also get some healthcare (still recovering from covid, but it’ll mend). Yay!
Too bad European countries are following the US footsteps. Finland just ousted their popular prime minister lady with a government of actual ultra right wing nazis, Germany’s AfD is gaining lots of traction and getting crazier with their conspiracy theories about great replacement, Italy is going far right too with their new government. UK and their Brexit night… At least Spain is still not having a far right party in the government, if they can form one.
This reddit-ass post