To wish it was easy to move to the USA

[Highway65]

I've been watching The Pioneer Woman on Sky the past few evenings. It's utter drivel but I LOVE it!! It's this blog writer/cook living in Oklahoma and it just looks ace! All cowboys, horses and massive ranches. I want to live there.

Infact, there are loads of places in America that I would like to live. Europe has plenty of highlights too of course. Not where I live, it's just grey!! But I reckon I should have been born American.

I have family living in California. They both married Americans to get their green cards. I would be up for that if I wasn't happily married

Maternity leave is very employer dependent; there may be some minor state variations in laws, but it is mostly up to the employer. Federally, the Family Medical Leave Act guarantees 12 weeks unpaid leave, but only applies to larger employers. There are lists published every so often of the most "women-friendly" or "family-friendly" employers in the US and maternity leave policy is usually among the first considerations in those lists.

Vacation time also varies considerably, but two weeks per year is the norm starting out, with three being common for someone with decent seniority and four not uncommon if you have been with the same employer for a long time. One of my former employers offered extra sabbatical leave every five years as an incentive for people to stay.

Well I doubt the very small, not-particularly-profitable company I worked for the Uk would have offered any paid maternity leave unless they'd been legally obliged to, so I consider myself lucky to have benefitted from that twice over!

I've had loads of opportunities to live there but have turned them down. It's just too far from my family .

IMe Americans have a much more can-do attitude to life, are less whingey and less class divided. There isn't the issue where as soon as you open your mouth you are pigeon-holed like in the UK.

They have fewer holidays which I imagine is partly why they don't seem to travel as freely as we Europeans, If you have 2 weeks leave are you going to spend time on long haul flights.

I think the American dream has reduced as it has in the UK, all the nice government jobs with big pensions at the end are no longer around here either.

Americans less whingey and less class divided? That is the funniest thing I've heard for a very long time.

There is a general belief that if you work hard and are kind you'll be all right. The problem is that it hasn't been true (crushing debt for university helped kill it greatly) since the 1980s.

Sadly, I know loads of Americans that look down on people on benefits (my sister is one of them). I literally have to hide half her political rantings on FB as she goes on and on about poor people should stop complaining - it's always THEIR fault they're poor as far as she is concerned, no such thing as an extenuating circumstance. Obamacare is robbing her to pay for medical care for the poor who, if they want better medical care or insurance, should get off their lazy asses and get it. Guns are gold - she'll shoot first and ask questions later, and kicked up a fuss because she wasn't allowed to bring her gun along to the UK when she visited. She ranted at security that she was a cop (she isn't, she's a guard in a prison, which is much different), and she is pretty damn lucky she wasn't arrested for all the ruckus she made. She is the typical overbearing American (and embarrassed me to no end while she was here - I actually had people from our local pub saying to me "oh my god, is she your SISTER?? She's NOTHING like you... So sorry but she is awful!" She wants us to wade in to the middle east, basically bomb everything that moves, and leave them to it. She is the kind that will say "the only good XXXX is a dead XXXX..." Insert whatever race/religion you prefer for the XXXX.

And the frightening thing?? I know a fair few people think the same way... obviously some are her friends. Some are family. And some are people I've worked with over the years. LOTS of them. I do spend a lot of time hiding posts on FB. sigh.

FMLA only allows you to have 12 wks off without losing your job. It doesn't require your employer to pay you. You still have to save up holiday and sick leave to cover it (generally for a year or two - so no sick time or holiday time for maybe 2 years??). When I was on the committee for my very large employer in the states to assist in choosing the group health insurance they were going to go with, we looked over all the proposals very carefully. NONE of them provided any type of disability coverage for maternity. If you wanted that, you had to buy it separately, and it wasn't cheap and it had to be purchased well in advance of any pregnancy. I only know one person that actually did that, and she struggled to get paid out as they looked for every loophole in the book to avoid paying what they were supposed to - in the end she only got about half what she should have, as they exploited technicalities to reduce the payout.

I won't go extensively into the high crime, ridiculously nonexistent punishment for many crimes, and the fact that, in the eyes of almost everyone I know in the states, once a person has been in jail they are worthless, never rehabilitated and will never amount to anything. (Even though there are examples out and about that this is not true) My younger sister has been in prison a couple times - it stems from episodes of her bipolar condition where she has been off medication and gone way off the rails. As far as my older sister (the one mentioned above) is concerned, she is dead - she is worthless. When my dad died, my older sister wanted my younger sister to have NOTHING to remember him by, as she felt she didn't deserve it because of her "lifestyle." My mum and I realise that her actions stem from her illness and try to be supportive, encourage her to take her meds, get herself together and so on.

Having said that, while I've not ever seen the Pioneer Woman programme, I've used her website for recipes for ages. Gooood stuff!

We do seem less class divided. Don't know about whiney though. :)

I don't know, we're working hard and being kind and we're doing all right.

I just about fell over one day at work when someone who, up until then, I had classed as a friend started ranting about the white trash.... she was going on and on and some were agreeing with her. Some just sat by uncomfortably. I left the room.

White trash/trailer trash... there are class divisions and they can be quite clear. They just have different labels in the US, that's all. And it might not be quite so obvious as the UK, but it's there.

Oneandonlyone
Americans less whingey and less class divided? That is the funniest thing I've heard for a very long time

Explain! Surely most of our mps, judges, Olympic competitors, bankers are from fee paying schools. Is that not a class divide?

Perhaps I have only lived in wealthier states where there are jobs available so people are more positive and don't whinge.

I don't whine. It's actually illegal in the Midwest, you'll find. :o

Even now I give DS a friendly, "suck it up, buttercup!" at too much complaining. It's like hearing my dad speaking out of my mouth. Sigh.

illegal in the midwest. Some of those people I know are in the midwest, others on the west coast, some on the east coast. You can find it anywhere in the states.

True!

I just have this uncle (who lives on the coast and is very "Manhattan") whose daughter is around the same age as my DS and I have just had to endure an excruciatingly long conversation with him.about what a speshul snowflake she is. And how finally after four schools they have found one that understands her and lets her be herself and how she can finally a free spirit because they make the children run down a hill screaming every day. And that he would have benefitted from such a school and how much better his life would have been... I just want to give him a brisk shake and tell him to milk a cow or something. :o

Dual citizen here. Absolutely impossible to generalise about the US, it's too big and there are too many people.

Healthcare: If you have the money, or a job which provides good coverage and access, fine. Otherwise it's a mess. It's also very profit-driven, with providers tending to push you into treatment options which benefit them. The constant commercials for drugs are one of the first things I notice when I visit. My main issue with Obamacare is that it embedded the parasite in the system, and will, I think, prove very expensive for providing nothing like universal care. The "cheap" policies have such high deductibles they are practically worthless.

Crime: I guess there are lots of guns around, but I rarely saw one in my 30 years there. Was mugged once when I lived in New Jersey, but that's a rite of passage. Never met any of the Sopranos.

Culture: You can find pretty much whatever you want, though thousand year old castles and cathedrals are thin on the ground. As far as TV goes, there has been some very, very good stuff produced in the States along with the drivel; just like the UK.

The car culture: Given the size of the place this was probably only natural, and the UK is equally car-mad (but thankfully mostly open to ramblers). When I go back to visit my hometown in the midwest, however, what I most love is riding a bicycle on those big wide quiet streets.

Politics: As maddening as the UK, just in its own way. There's some beautiful writing in the founding documents though.

Housing: My sister lives in a house which cost the equivalent of about £80k. I would classify it as a mansion. Set it down in East Sussex where I live and it would easily be 10x that. I know it's largely about space, but still, it highlights just how insane prices are here.

Other stuff:
The IRS. Ugh. Taxes are far more complicated over there, and wherever you go in the world, as a US citizen you cannot escape the Internal Revenue Service. I won't go into the details, but dual citizens are now facing such onerous filing requirements and difficulty opening foreign bank accounts that more of us are contemplating renouncing our citizenship (and renunciation itself isn't free; incredibly, this year the price went up from $450 to $2350). Just something to consider if you're ever offered citizenship but don't wish to spent the rest of your life there.

Patriotism. The UK has its monarchy; the US its flag. The former is, in my opinion, fundamentally wrong; the latter, the banner of the most violent country in the world (it's their chief export). I don't want my taxes going for endless undeclared wars.

@jollygoodthen, not feeling very jolly at the moment...

Teens ime in the US don't get let loose on their own, as everyone has to be driven everywhere, so getting a bus into town at age say 12 onwards and hanging out with friends is not going to happen, instead you go to someone's house and hang out with them there.

I think it's better that DCs can do their own thing, maybe makes for more individualism but also prob means more opportunity to get into mischief.

It really depends. In bigger cities you see teens on public transport all the time; in smaller places there is none. Almost everyone drives at 16, though.

I don't drive (very strange for an American) so I personally walk everywhere.

But ooh, speaking of the US, I'm newly upduffed and am so excited at the thought of a "live birth in America" thread because it seems like so many people have questions about it.

The problem is that we look upon 'America' as a uniform entity with nation wide laws and regulations such as we have in the UK and that isn't indeed so.

What does concern me is the new tax rules for US expats. They are causing more Americans than ever to renounce their citizenship because of the increased difficulty in accessing bank accounts etc over here.

There is a class system in the Us but we, as British may not be as aware of it.

I would choose to live in the UK over the US any day. Mainly because my family are here but I also prefer the food, products, watching TV without endless adverts and I find people a bit less fake here, overall - but that's a unfair view.

I do love their attitude to entrepreneurship, their customer service (minus the fake bits) and their overall generosity and friendliness.

But its still the UK for me!

CheerfulYank aw, congrats!!! I'm looking forward to the thread (because ain't no way I'm having any more!! )!

A silly thing, but I like that people don't have to be glamorous to be on television here. You look at a soap from the US - almost all model material, they're all lawyers, doctors, or policemen (or own a huge multimillion dollar business)....in the UK, lots of them look like normal people, they have (for the most part) normal jobs. I like it.

To be honest, I think the main difference between the US and the UK is that the US is so much bigger. I'm not being facetious, but the UK is fairly homogenous, whereas each US state has enormous variations.
I lived in NYC - never saw guns, wild animals, racial issues, religion hardly mentioned.
I live in the Southern US now -- surrounded by people with automatic weapons, have to swerve to avoid the flocks of vultures in the road, de facto racial segregation and fervent religious belief. It truly is another world.
I, too laughed A LOT at the idea on this thread that there is no class system in the US. How many poor people do you think are in my country club, or my son's fencing class? Do you think the children from the trailer parks are invited to the pool parties in the big houses?

I remember reading somewhere, possibly a MN thread, that class is the UK's main preoccupation and race is the USA's. Mixed race couples are unremarkable in the UK, but I get the feeling they're rarer in America.