Is it true that many Americans will never visit another country

[cinaminvanilla]

I remember reading an article where it says that many Americans don't have a passport or leave the USA ever in their lives. Just wondering does anyone with knowledge know if this true. Because the US is so big I could imagine people never travelling to another country. I think I read that for those who visit other countries the two most popular countries for people who live in the US to visit aside from their own is Canada and Mexico.

I don’t know if it’s true but I can understand why.

The US is comparable to Europe in both size and variety of cultures, cuisines, landscapes and so on. You could only holiday in the US and have a very different trip each time. Think New Orleans, New York, Austin Texas, Portland, the Grand Canyon. You can surf, camp, sail, ski, road trip, be on a beach, in a desert, city with lots of food, art and music or on top of a glacier.

Anywhere outside of the US that Americans frequent on mass is extremely expensive as it’s based on very high earners spending USD and involves some distance. Think Cancun, Mexico. And most Americans don’t earn sooooo much.

Most only get 10 days holiday and are often restricted on when they can take it such as having to take half of it off at Christmas. Most people arn’t going to do a long haul flight for 7 days. So tend to do lots of small local trips.

Lots of North American’s will own either a cabin, cottage, RV (camper van) or a boat to make the most of the long weekends and what little vacation they get

Anywhere outside of the US that Americans frequent on mass is extremely expensive as it’s based on very high earners spending USD and involves some distance. Think Cancun, Mexico. And most Americans don’t earn sooooo much.

That and the dollar isn’t as strong as the pound and euro.

on mass

It's "en masse"...

As I said. Sneering. And over nothing.

Hourly workers don't generally get paid time off because they are hourly, not on salary.

And sometimes salaried people don't get time off or don't feel they can take the time off that they have because employees can be fired at will in most states (all?). Then there are areas like law where lowly associates (salaried) are expected to put in 80 hour work weeks and not look too gleeful about taking their week off..

I work for a very large US company. As a UK employee, I get 30 days holiday per year plus the ability to buy extra days as part of my benefit package.

US colleagues at my level (VP and just below) have just moved to a benefit package that includes unlimited PTO.

If you don't want to travel outside America, then don't travel outside America. It's fine, you'll have a great time within the country, it's a lovely country. Please don't pretend that you can get everything the rest of the world has within America though (actually I don't think they are pretending, I think they really believe it).

Honestly, the only people looking bad after posts like that are the people writing them.

According to the feds, by the time you’ve worked 10 years at the same employer, you’ve put three weeks paid vacation in your pocket.

Pitiful.

American is a small part of the world, it has a tiny part of the cultural, nature, history that the rest of the world has.

What nonsense.

You can accrue vacation on an hourly wage. There's a big difference between being a convenience store clerk and a union machinist.

I feel like a stuck record but low holiday allowance correlates to low pay. It wouldn't help to have 4 weeks holiday if you can't afford to go anywhere. Work culture is tricky too as I said--there are people who don't use the holiday time they have.

I wouldn't say that the US has everything, but it has all kinds of trips. How many Brits are travelling just because the beaches and mountains are nicer? There's distance too. To get your head round it: New York to LA is just under 3,000 miles. New York to London is 3,500. If you travel 3000 miles from London, you're at the Turkey-Iran border.

It's not that North Americans are all so incurious (Canadians are more likely to have passports, but it has to be taken into account that the majority of Canadians live quite close to the US border). It's that travelling outside of North America is time consuming and expensive. And because of that the USA has a very well developed domestic tourism industry which further encourages Americans to holiday here.

I remember seeing a graph somewhere and it says nearly 60% of Brits have never left Europe.

Ok, this isn’t about Americans and travel anymore then, I don’t think? Unlimited PTO is nothing more than a marketing tool offered by start-ups that wanted to sound good and now offered by other tech companies that need to compete with start-ups. I love how a company founder says that they’d have to talk to anyone who abused the policy, defines abuse as taking 40 days, but says “no one has even come close to that.” So be grateful we’re in a culture where you have 30 days AND you’re encouraged to actually use them. Unlimited PTO in America is useless. You’d be lucky to get 30 days if you were in the US and you had it.
www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/4-lessons-about-unlimited-vacation.aspx

Also, I understand all these people jumping in with examples about their number of PTO days in the US, but the thread was supposed to be why don’t Americans travel? If a quarter of a country has no holiday or vacation allowance at all, then they’re not going to be able to spend a lengthy vacation leaving the country. That’s it. Anecdotes about how salaried workers can “earn” paid holidays, how you have 10 days or 30 or VPs at your company now have an unlimited (but it’s not really unlimited, FYI) time off policy are all… anecdotes.

And then there’s the debt. While 57% of Britons say debt isn’t a problem for them at all ( www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fpersonalandhouseholdfinances%2fincomeandwealth%2fdatasets%2fhouseholddebtwealthingreatbritain%2fjuly2010tojune2016andapril2014tomarch2018/householddebttablesfinal.xlsx ) on the other side of the Atlantic, 1 in 3 Americans thinks they’ll never be debt-free ever. 16% of them have a debt in collections for medical expenses. Of course, these groups and the 23% with no paid holidays or time off may overlap. But no holiday and heavy debt are going to put a damper on travel.
www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-american-household-debt/

The UK is not perfect. And this shouldn’t be a US bashing thread. @PrincessNutella is right about sneering. I’m not sure here to sneer.
If anything, my point is these differences, that make it more difficult for Americans to travel IF they want to (not because they just want to see their own country), are a warning sign. They’re what could easily happen to us without the NHS (which even now needs a huge cash infusion and reorganization) AND if government didn’t mandate our holidays and vacation and just left it up to businesses to do what they liked, as in the US. You’d get anecdotes like some on this thread, from people who have generous companies. And huge segments of the country, like almost every single retail worker, would be left behind.

But these comments…
According to the feds, by the time you’ve worked 10 years at the same employer, you’ve put three weeks paid vacation in your pocket.
Ten years so you can still have less than what other countries give their brand new workers.

As a software developer I get 30 days PTO plus holidays and that is pretty average amongst my peers. These things are negotiable and I would not settle for less.
How lovely that you even have the option. Of course, you’re negotiating something that’s simply a right for so many others.

America is a breathtaking country and you could spend your whole life traveling it and still not see the whole thing. But unfortunately, many Americans will never get the chance.

If anything, my point is these differences, that make it more difficult for Americans to travel IF they want to (not because they just want to see their own country), are a warning sign. They’re what could easily happen to us without the NHS (which even now needs a huge cash infusion and reorganization) AND if government didn’t mandate our holidays and vacation and just left it up to businesses to do what they liked, as in the US. You’d get anecdotes like some on this thread, from people who have generous companies. And huge segments of the country, like almost every single retail worker, would be left behind.

YYY to this - stay vigilant.

2 years ago we spent 6 weeks travelling in New York, Boston, Cape Cod, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Barely scratched the surface of any and would return to any in a heart beat, just stunning. Have done similar on the West Coast- Seattle, Pujet Sound Islands, Oregon, California( San Francisco, Big Sur, Yosemite…..). So much more we want to see - 4 corners desert, Hawaii, Deep South, Florida…… alongside returning to the above. Have also travelled extensively round Europe as nearer and other parts of the world.

If I was American on an average wage with their limited holiday I honestly don’t think I’d venture out. It would be like seeing Cape Cod before Greece or New York before Paris. Why would you? There is a enough in the US to keep any with unlimited holiday going for a lifetime. Aside from sight seeing, often on holiday you just want to spend time in beautiful countryside to relax whether it be forest, sea, lake or desert. Americans have so much more of all that, often more unspoilt than the U.K. with better roads, better weather and less crowded. There is seriously no need for any American to leave and every reason for us to holiday out of the U.K. so a little less snobbery wouldn’t go amiss.

Hourly workers don't generally get paid time off because they are hourly, not on salary.

Many hourly workers do get PTO, especially if they work full time. In those cases, PTO is calculated as a percentage of time worked. So for every hour worked, the employee would accrue a certain amount of PTO. They would also get paid holidays as well.

It's difficult to compete for skilled hourly workers in the US if employers don't provide PTO and holidays.

Why don't Americans campaign for paid time off and maternity leave? Is it a vote loser?

I remember I read years ago that some time in the last century there was a productivity leap both in Europe and America. Europeans chose to used this extra productivity to reduce working hours with PTO and Americans chose extra money.

Why don't Americans campaign for paid time off and maternity leave? Is it a vote loser?

They have for years and it depends on the state they live in.

It does often depend on the state you live in. But much of it is cultural as well. Generalizations are always tricky, but attitudes about work are often very different in the US than in most European countries. People don't campaign for changes in a system that they largely agree with.

I studied and lived there for almost 7 years.
I met many people who had never left the states, don’t own a passport. Surprisingly, a large amount of professional/well-earning people. Their country is so big and has almost all landscapes you could see in other countries - So it often doesn’t cross their mind to go so far a field for a week of sunshine when they could just drive to Florida. Also, they get a lot less annual leave, some places only give 2 weeks. So they just don’t have the availability to world travel on that unless they take unpaid leave.

@phoenixrosehere

Why don't Americans campaign for paid time off and maternity leave? Is it a vote loser?

They have for years and it depends on the state they live in.

Correct, it's often regulated at the state and local level. New York, for example has a higher minimum wage than the Federal one, and NYC has mandatory paid sick time for hourly workers who meet certain criteria. So there is sentiment for more regulation in some places.

There is a cost to mandating holiday pay. It raises the cost of staffing for employers, who may then have to eliminate jobs or cut back hours to stay in business. It's also inflationary.

What You Need To Know About The Minimum Wage Debate

So low wage workers will be better off, unless they lose their jobs.

Honestly, the very purpose of this thread is clearly to sneer at Americans. If you were just curious, you could just use the damn Google. And yet there are 200 messages so far, including messages by me. Many of us should probably be ashamed of ourselves for adding to the pile-on.

I agree - and this always happens when any other country is mentioned on MN.

Americans do campaign for leave. There's a few problems. There's a deep set attitude from a lot of people here that they shouldn't pay for other people's "choices" (and not all these people vote Republican!) Or they convince women that if leave is mandated employers just won't hire them. Or business "can't afford it". Or the people in good jobs that have nice benefits don't care because they aren't personally affected.

In general the Republican Party is completely dismissive of anything they regard as a "women's problem" and since the Senate is biased towards rural states, which currently vote Republican, they have an inbuilt advantage. Even when congressional districts aren't gerrymandered, Democrats cluster more tightly, so their votes are packed into fewer districts.

California, New York, and New Jersey instituted a form of paid maternity leave by expanding their short term disability pay to include childbirth.

Even when congressional districts aren't gerrymandered, Democrats cluster more tightly, so their votes are packed into fewer districts.

Congressional districts are apportioned by population. based on the most recent census data. New York City, for example, has multiple congressional districts.

www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/dec/2020-apportionment-map.html

@gofg

Honestly, the very purpose of this thread is clearly to sneer at Americans. If you were just curious, you could just use the damn Google. And yet there are 200 messages so far, including messages by me. Many of us should probably be ashamed of ourselves for adding to the pile-on.

I agree - and this always happens when any other country is mentioned on MN.

Really? I've never noticed a thread where dozens of MN's gleefully pile on to rubbish some aspect of culture or society in Germany, Italy, South Korea, etc. Even brutal dictatorships are usually spared the condemnation that America regularly receives here.

It's made me rethink whether I want to holiday in the UK, despite my husband having lived there previously.

@PrincessNutella

Honestly, the very purpose of this thread is clearly to sneer at Americans. If you were just curious, you could just use the damn Google. And yet there are 200 messages so far, including messages by me. Many of us should probably be ashamed of ourselves for adding to the pile-on.

Quite a lot of reasonable posts have pointed out why fewer Americans may choose or be able to travel internationally. There hasn't been a wholesale pile on of sneering as far as I can see.