To be so intrigued by America?

[hollyblueivy]

AIBU to be so intrigued by America and just how vastly different it is to the UK despite both being rich modern nations?

Trump features a lot in the UK news and it has made me look into why the US seem so uncaring. Their systems to help the vulnerable are so different to ours. They have no right to housing so many can easily risk facing homelessness. With no national health service, access to healthcare is much more difficult and expensive, pushing people into deprivation even if they are working.

They don’t seem to have the same socialist heart as the UK and it gives a very much dog eat dog and every man for themselves culture.

I don’t think I fully appreciated this before. Anyone else?

Its a very different culture and outlook even those whom appear more left wing have views that are not really inline with what we consider left wing here

its a new country and country built on self reliance and violence and its a country of extremes, for all the bad there are some amazing things about the US, to me it seems it has the best and the worse of the western world

we as a country really do not have a socialist heart

I guess what I mean about the socialist heart was things like the right to housing, benefits and welfare system, national health service, decent (?) minimum wage - All taken into consideration in comparison to the US

I don't understand why they are still turning up to work whilst not being paid during the government shut down. That would never happen in the UK, everyone would down tools.

I always think you need to look to history to understand a lot of this sort of thing. Fundamentally America is full of people who are literal pioneers, chasing the dream of a new life. They believe in self mastery and shaking off state institutions and over reach. The UK is surprisingly innovative. We punch high for our size, we’re just not very good at commercialising the things we invent. Again, I think that’s a function of being much earlier in the game to shake off the feudal system and reduce the monarchy to a symbolic role lacking executive power, and then one of the earliest industrialise, thereby freeing people up to better themselves and chase ideas

Because ultimately they will get paid. The banks will pay their wages in the knowledge they’ll get back payments.

Government shutdown is another example of the differences between the two countries. Surely there must be some reform to prevent the whole of the American government from being shut down.

Good summary

Just a few points from someone who adores the USA.

• huge range of states; governance and culture really vary from state to state.
• Americans are much, much more structurally generous than Brits. Giving to charities, social organisations etc, both in money and time, is stratispherically higher than it is over here. What they don’t choose is to have the federal state as involved as the state is here. That has positives and negatives, but there is absolutely no lack of sharing, caring and giving, much more locally and flexibly than we do.
• American healthcare is the best in the world, and it is freely available to those without any money at all. It’s the low income worker that struggles, and a tangled range of vested interests keeps costs high and public health variable.
• What is presented to us in the media is of course distorted. The US is presented as ‘anti-vax’ but they have much stricter standards on vaccination than we do, or as ‘anti abortion’ when a big proportion of states have much better abortion laws than we do in the UK.

I get that but the point is that it's so culturally different. People just wouldn't turn up to work in Europe without pay, they'd be riots, everything would grind to a halt.

Im here currently and travel here frequently for work! The thing that struck me the most about the USA is that you are either a “ have” or a “ have not” there is no other option! Wealthy or poor! There really is an attitude of get out there and earn your money, unlike the UK where to many are content to live off the taxpayers. There is also a massive correlation between how vile and full of all sorts of chemicals reasonably priced food is and the fact that they have to pay for healthcare!

I’m from the UK but now live in the States and have done for about 20 years. Any preconceptions you might have about the US are probably wrong. Mine certainly were. It’s a foreign country, it’s very different, I think peiple expect the two countries to have more in common because of the shared language.

I don’t know what you mean about no right to housing or benefits.

There’s a lot I love about the US and then some I can’t and will never be able to wrap my head around.

I’m not American and I’ve not visited BUT I read an account by a man with a heart problem and no money. Every time he had a heart issue, a hospital would do the bare minimum to get him back out of the door. They would only sort the problem properly when the man was literally at death’s door and there were no other options.
if true, I don’t fancy that system at all.

And this is all absolutely spot-on

Oh yes the food thing too. I follow Zachmovesabroad who is a black man that has moved from the US and is currently travelling around the UK with his family and I have been influenced by his take on the differences he has noticed between the two cultures. He has reflected on the way that we mark Remembrance Day compared the the way Veterans Day is marked in the US.

Sort the point I was going to make about the food is that the guy I follow spoke about how their ‘fresh’ sandwiches last so much longer than ours due to the things put in it and he did a post with some ingredients lists.

@PermanentTemporary ”huge range of states; governance and culture really vary from state to state” - it’s interesting to me how so many people on Mumsnet fail to grasp this. (Not talking about anyone on this thread.) I still smile a little when I think of that one thread several months ago where the OP was contemplating a move to Connecticut, and people started telling her that she’d be living amongst evangelical Christians and would never be able to get an abortion. In Connecticut. 😂

Veterans Day here is for the living who have served. Memorial Day in May is for those who died in conflict.

Ah that makes more sense! He was talking about it as though it was a celebration and that they have things like veterans sales at the shops.

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. If he was low income his care would have been covered under Medicaid.

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medicaid-and-chip-enrollment-data/report-highlights

it provides government funded healthcare for 77 million Americans.

Where did you park the spaceship?
Really, where have you been all this time that you’ve only just sussed out the vast gulf between the USA and GB!
Theres no more reason the States should resemble Britain than France or Germany should.

Britain isn't ‘socialist’ at heart, but it is (pace Thatcher) built on centuries of collective endeavour and responsibility, a badly damaged spirit which just about survived the 1980s, though possibly only in comparison with far more individualistic societies than GB.
The USA was built mostly on individual enterprise, initially by those abandoning the conventions and dominant organised religions of Europe, separating themselves from the collective according to a desire for the expression of personal conviction (or frequently, as decreed by a very different kind of conviction, of course).
European powers which had colonised most of the continent were ultimately far less influential than this characteristic among settlers, which brought about and survived Independence, and became a national ideal.

(It’s that collectivist spirit of GB which motivated the creation of the welfare state after the War, a system viewed as anathema in the USA.)

The famous observation that Britain and America are ‘two nations divided by a common language’ in fact covers a great deal more than language, certainly!

Did you see the video of the women who rang over 50 churches to ask for a tub of baby formula and all said no bar 4 churches and when she phoned a mosque they said yes straight away.

The US was built on slavery. All this talk about enterprise and self sufficiency.

They probably are. It is much more of a “thank you for your service” day whereas Memorial Day is very solemn.

And what part of the UK’s booming economy wasn’t dependent on slavery at the same time?

Have you visited every state in the US for a long period, or have you come to your conclusions purely based on what you’ve read/ seen on the internet? The media LOVE to spin a negative narrative about the US. I would never leave the wonderful US state, that I proudly call home. I’m extremely excited about becoming a citizen in the upcoming future.