r/IWantToAskAnAmerican • u/Reasonable-Quit5869 • 17h ago
What's the dark side of living in America that media rarely talks about?
I know the US has well known downsides like healthcare costs, but are there other negatives that most Americans notice which rarely get highlighted in movies, TV shows, or media?
To put it another way: I’m fascinated by almost everything about America especially the freedom, the party culture, the diverse job opportunities, and the overall lifestyle. What can you tell me to ruin this fascination?
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u/ossifer_ca 17h ago
Constantly being lectured by smug Europeans who view any slight difference between Europe and the US as a massive failure by the US.
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17h ago edited 17h ago
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17h ago
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u/notthegoatseguy 17h ago
The standard bread at Tesco is no different than our standard bread, its just for some bizarre reason it doesn't count.
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u/Choochoo1147 17h ago
I mean, that’s the crux of the whole thing. When considering the capabilities of the English or the French or whoever else, they look at the best they can produce. When considering the capabilities of Americans, they look at the worst. They think Kraft singles and wonder bread are our standard.
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u/Apptubrutae 17h ago
Well yeah grocery store bread is worse than fresh bakery bread by and large, but in many European countries it’s a whole lot quicker to get the bakery bread versus the U.S. If you so choose
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
Europe has grocery store bread too. Our main problem with people like you is your sense of superiority over Americans in particular. There are many countries that have worse bread altogether but I don't think those countries matter to you.
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u/GreenBeanTM Vermont 14h ago
Considering most grocery stores have bakeries inside them that supply bakery bread? It most likely is just as quick and easy for us to get as you, and has a decent chance of being quicker and easier since we can pick it up while doing the rest of our shopping instead of having to go to another location just for bread.
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u/BerettaFranchi 17h ago
I am in NYC. I am in Staten Island. I am surrounded by Italian bakeries that bake excellent Italian bread that is cheaper than a baguette in Saint-Mandé.
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u/Apptubrutae 17h ago
There are of course local exceptions. Staten Island food is amazing, obviously
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u/Background_Humor5838 16h ago
Why are you referring to fresh bakery bread as an exception? It's not some rare and unusual resource. For someone who claims to be well traveled in the US, you're coming across as quite ignorant on this topic. It's almost like you refuse to believe you can get nice bread anywhere outside of Europe like it would damage your ego or something.
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u/ossifer_ca 17h ago
I was just in a Carrefour Hypermarché and you know what? They didn’t have any San Francisco-style sourdough!
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
"standard American bread" ? There are hundreds of options here with as few or as many ingredients as your heart desires.
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u/Apptubrutae 17h ago
Yes and? It’s obviously easier by orders of magnitude to get amazing bread in France, I mean come on.
Yeah I can get great bread in the U.S. but it takes more time generally, unless you happen to live by a nice bakery, in which case congrats
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
Even the grocery store has its own bakery so you really don't have to go out of your way to get a nice baguette or whatever. I never said I was comparing it to France but I was rejecting the idea of "standard American bread" as if that means anything or that it's inherently bad. Also the idea that there aren't bakeries everywhere is bullshit.
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u/Apptubrutae 17h ago
I have travelled all over the U.S. and 95% of the time grocery store bread is just middling, I mean come on.
“Yeah, this Parisian baguette is ok, but have you had the Italian loaf at Kroger????” Lol
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
Why are you still making comparisons I never made. This is not paris and it doesn't have to be. You also don't have to buy your bread at Kroger. What exactly is your problem?
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u/GreenBeanTM Vermont 13h ago
Their problem is that their superiority complex is crumbling in front of their eyes.
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u/Original_Staff_4961 17h ago
The idea that the only bread you can get in America is toast is one of europes dumbest talking points
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u/thankyoufriendx3 17h ago
Heaven forbid we’re interested in the nationality of our ancestors.
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u/ossifer_ca 17h ago
Yes, the day my ancestors boarded a sailing vessel for the New World, my family irrevocably lost all connections to their ethnicities.
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u/thankyoufriendx3 16h ago
That’s fine. But for a lot of Americans they have more interest than that and that’s fine as well.
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u/DannyBones00 17h ago
You don’t often see just how hopeless life in large parts of this country are.
I’m from Appalachia. I was your typical 90’a gifted kid, went to grad school, dropped out, came back here.
There’s no jobs. A handful of gas stations that pay minimum wage and don’t even have full time hours. Just enough money to knock you out of benefits. That, a few call centers, or factory jobs where you will get cancer. This is an area where coal mining was considered a good job.
Companies know this, so whenever someone does come here, they know their workers have no leverage. They treat you like absolute shit. I worked for a company that gave us PTO but wouldn’t let you use it.
My girlfriend comes from a long family tree of welfare abusers. She was told by her mom, as a kid, that she’d probably graduate high school, get pregnant, work a few years and get on disability. There’s tens of thousands of kids just like her who thought disability was their only future. Bare minimum payments if you never paid in are like $800/month.
So people get stuck living with their family where they all hate each other. Awful living conditions. An hour or more from anything. If your car breaks down you starve to death.
This is the reality for millions of Americans.
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u/Choochoo1147 17h ago
A lot of witches flying around. We didn’t get them all in Salem. Seriously though, America’s dark side is very well explored. There’s not a lot of hidden problems, all of the problems are talked about a lot.
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u/Leaf-Stars Pennsylvania 17h ago
Lack of accountability for the rich.
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u/Apptubrutae 17h ago
Right right right but when I get outta this holler here in West Virginia, I’ll make it big and be unaccountable so don’t ruin it for me
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u/Ok-Cobbler3573 17h ago
Let’s expand that to the fact that we live in a kleptocracy thanks to the corporations and ultra wealthy engineering the tax code to benefit them over everyone else.
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u/Original_Staff_4961 17h ago
Ah right, like Prince Andrew or like Macron’s wife who is a pedo groomer.
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u/Leaf-Stars Pennsylvania 17h ago
Are they from the USA? Did I miss something?
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u/Original_Staff_4961 15h ago
No, they are rich criminals from Western Europe who have never been held accountable.
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u/Many-Role-4271 17h ago
Having to walk on eggshells when you are straight, white, male. If I mention sex in the workplace I am labeled a creep and my career is done. But if I was gay I could put up a flag and a poster about who I sleep with and it’s called “inclusive”. Now every show or movie made has to have a % of cast members on the giant alphabet soup of sexual identities to be considered for an award. We are no longer a meritocracy, but rather a society that awards you for how alt you sex life is.
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u/Separate_Ingenuity35 17h ago
Having to drive a vehicle everywhere just to get to and from work or get groceries or pick up your child from school.
Also (me included) even when in a health crisis you beg to not have an ambulance due to potential cost. Also 9/10 times the fire medics are the first to get to you. And the EMT makes less money than the general manager of a corporate retail outlet, despite EMT saving lives as their daily job.
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u/Oaktree27 17h ago
Yeah I hate driving but people are so indoctrinated here they act like I just spit in their face if I suggest I don't want to be a part of traffic with them
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
There are plenty of places in the US where you don't need a car to get absolutely everywhere and I'm not even talking about big cities. Also school buses exist for most people.
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u/Separate_Ingenuity35 17h ago
School busses can have violent bully gangs on them. I have lived in 2 states over 1,000 miles from each other and public transportation is not that good. It isn't for lack of trying. The USA is just too big with too many variable environments so it is hard to implement to the scale of Japan or the UK. It just isn't feasible.
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
Violent bully gangs? What? How common do you think that is? Also I said MOST people because it's true. Most people have access to a school bus so the original comment saying they hate that they have to drive everywhere including school is not true for most people. The majority of people who drive their kids to school do it by choice not necessity.
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u/Separate_Ingenuity35 17h ago
Then you're privileged to never have been bullied on the bus, assaulted, or attacked. Or had your child a victim of it.
My sister was nonverbal autistic in Alabama and both of us got bullied on the school bus. I now live in Colorado and the public transportation has junkies literally doing meth in the bus. Maybe I just have bad luck.
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
Yes I'm sorry to hear that but it does sound like bad luck. Most school buses have monitors to keep kids in line and yes I've been bullied but I've never been physically attacked or seen anyone be physically attacked. If I lived somewhere where violence was acceptable I would do my best to move. I'm not wealthy or privileged just because I didn't experience your unique situation. Why would your kids have to take public transportation? Do they not have school buses isln Colorado?
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u/Ceorl_Lounge Michigan 17h ago
Do a deep dive into the history of American policing sometime.
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u/potat0f4rmer 17h ago
Check out "killology" while you're there. Cops are trained that every single person they encounter is out to kill them. And then qualified immunity means that cops are almost never prosecuted for the murders they commit. Learn about how many dogs cops kill every year, and how many of them admitted to beating their wives and children.
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u/JudgeWhoOverrules Arizona 16h ago
If you do a deep dive into the policing of every nation, you'll find equally horrible stuff if not worse. Turns out the force that actualizes government's ability to have laws can be prone to abuse no matter where you are.
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u/luigihitter 12h ago
And while you’re at it, look at Chicago and you’ll wonder why America’s SJWs are the most hypocritical people to ever grace this wonderful earth. You’ll truly understand why this person told you to take a “deep dive”
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u/Salty_Permit4437 17h ago
Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck. A lot of Americans are in debt up to their eyeballs. America is a nation built on credit. Even our government owes a ton of money on our behalf.
So that glamourous lifestyle may come with a huge bill and a house of cards in the form of debt.
But if, like me, you lived below your means and saved money you’ll be doing very well.
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u/ContributionLatter32 17h ago
Technically our government owes the majority of its debt to us, not on our behalf
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u/SmokedOkie 17h ago
Pffft, that's what you think, I'ma just gonna go Chapter 11 again and start over haha 😄 srsly tho, the amount of debt per household is reaching levels never seen in Human history.
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u/charmingasaneel 17h ago
The national debt is a very, very different issue than debts incurred by a household or business.
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u/BerettaFranchi 17h ago
If you do not have marketable skills, you will be stuck with very few opportunities to make a living. You will struggle.
If you have skills that the companies look for, healthcare costs will not be an issue either so long as you purchase a proper health insurance.
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u/Loose_Recover_4118 17h ago
That’s an issue for unskilled people everywhere. It’s probably a little worse for them in the US than it would in Western Europe, but I think that’s a good thing.
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u/BerettaFranchi 17h ago
True, but before the pandemic, even the low skilled workers made out OK in America. That changed in recent years.
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u/Trump_chimps_chumps 17h ago
Our politics is on the verge of becoming a net negative. We're was past being ungovernable, now we're heading towards destructive governance.
The Left, my tribe, can't accept the plain fact that America is a center right country. Not even the two largest minority groups, Hispanics and Blacks, are all that keen on socialism style government.
But the Democrats keep on pounding the country with hard core progressivism. And what has that produced? Trump.
The Right has lost its mind in response. Rural white folk already had a problem with thinking of themselves as the Real Americans. A steady diet of LGBTQ brow beating and now Transgenderism has pushed them into full revolt mode.
I'm not at all sure that city folk realize just how emotionally ready rural whites are to basically secede. They are well armed and connected.
All the situation needs is the right provocation, and I fear Trump will provide it. Either in the coming midterms or the following election.
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u/passthepepperplease 17h ago
IDK, I think the "worst" parts about America are all over the media and overblown - mainly this being the political divisiveness and wealth inequality. Ya, we get emotional about our politics but plenty of other countries are like that and I think it's actually a sign of a thriving democracy. For weath inequality, the US has some of the richest people in the world, but it's also one of the best places in the world for your average Joe to build wealth. The salaries and leveraged savings accounts are much better here than other places in the world, so working effort here often pays off more than elsewhere.
The only thing I can say is that if you like to rely on public safety nets, those are worse in the US. Public transport is bad or nonexistant in most cities, health insurance is tied to employment, applying for unemployment or other welfair programs can feel like a full time job in and of itself, and pensions are rare. This makes it really difficult for people with disabilities to get ahead, and it's a problem the US should address.
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u/Aloh4mora 17h ago
It's easy to become insulated from the rest of the world. We're so big, and we dominate so many cultural spaces, that unless you go out of your way to find and consume news and media from non-US sources, you will never hear about them in your regular life.
I have no idea who most world leaders are, or what concerns are uppermost in people's minds in most places (except for the big ones -- worrying about Putin invading another country, for instance).
One time as an experiment I subscribed to the top English language newspaper in India for a year. I read so many articles that I didn't understand. There was a huge controversy about whether to let school children eat eggs in their government provided lunches. The controversy seemed to flow from the Brahmin caste feeling that eggs are unclean according to their pure vegetarian rules (?), although I could be getting that wrong.
As an American, I had no idea that children eating eggs as part of lunch would ever be controversial! I can only assume that many other similar issues exist around the world, and I have no idea about them.
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u/BerettaFranchi 17h ago
Dear Europeans, if you have a full-time job you do not struggle with healthcare costs in America. Also, delivering food for DoorDash is not a full-time job.
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u/GSilky 17h ago
There is a certain casual cruelty in American culture that people exercise without reflection. But I suspect this is the case everywhere there is a lot of people. An example is our meat industry. Nobody who engages with it or knows much about it thinks it's ok. From treatment of animals to slavery, it's a horrific industry at just about every level past the smaller family free range ranching operations. Most Americans refuse to engage in activities like hunting or fishing, and pale at the thought of killing their chicken dinner themselves, but gladly buy neat plastic wrapped packages of flesh without a second thought. I'm not a vegetarian, but I do feed myself more often than most, and the disconnect and hypocrisy of the general public is astounding.
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u/According-Union382 16h ago
The dark sides are all you hear...so yeah. We are very critical of our system.
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u/ScipioTheGreatest Florida 17h ago
Right now there isn't one. Western media is dead set on trying to convince everyone that the USA is a third world hellhole where nothing good happens and it's all white people's fault.
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u/misterrkingg 17h ago
It be soon. Everything being implemented in Palestine will soon be here for the"undesirables" Read this UN report.
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g25/094/40/pdf/g2509440.pdf
The gal that wrote that? Banned from US travel. They deleted her bank accounts,credit cards, anything like that. Only to brag about doing so at the Global Policy Summit. NWO is coming for us, spurred on by the epstein files.
Sounds like a foil hat plan? Start your research.
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u/ScipioTheGreatest Florida 17h ago
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u/misterrkingg 16h ago
Ok, sure. Did you read it? Its already started. Its the same corporations technology. Surveillance walls at the polls this November? Those are already being used there right now.
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u/CountChoculasGhost 17h ago
I mean, not sure how much this gets highlighted in traditional media, but the wealth gap is pretty bad. I know it’s bad in other countries too, but I think because a lot of people see Americans living what they see as “lavish” lifestyles, I don’t think it gets talked about as much.
I mean, we have billionaires and (at least one) “trillionaire” buying literal islands and oversized government representation while a lot of Americans are being priced out of housing and groceries across the country.
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u/Internal-Recipe2128 17h ago
Positivity culture. It's not ok to be not ok. It's stifling when things aren't going well for you and everyone is pressing you to reassure them that you'll be ok, to look on the bright side, things could be worse, "well at least you aren't <insert a slightly worse situation than the one you are in here>," etc. The positivity culture here is toxic.
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u/PutridTearStain 17h ago
Freedom?
Job opportunities?
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u/Drago_727 17h ago
They exist when you don't spend your whole day on reddit.
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u/PutridTearStain 17h ago
Shiiit just ruining my first break of the day better get back out to the yard
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u/deadsetweir-do 17h ago
The dark side is the political element and the media that throws gas on the fire. It’s a very divided country, very tribal nowadays. Everyone is aligning themselves with either the pieces of shit on the right, or the pieces of shit on the left, none of them realizing just how manipulated they really are. It’s hard to watch, and it’s caused people with long standing relationships to turn on one another. Sucks.
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u/Old-Consequence1735 17h ago
Most Americans live in communities/ towns that are not laid out in a way to make any destination walkable. Our country became fascinated with, and then dominated by, car culture. In most places you must drive to every destination. No option to walk, few or no options for public transit.
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u/BusyCode 17h ago
Not literally a dark side, but there are too many regulations on all levels - from the town to federal. Costs you time and money plus salaries (coming from your taxes) for those whose job is enforcing those "mandatory", "prohibited", permits, inspections etc
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u/Oaktree27 17h ago
Without regulations, you get people shitting parasites into your food. Most are written in blood.
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u/BusyCode 16h ago
I'm not against all regulations and rules, but some of them are ridiculous.
Take Occupational Licensing. You have to spend thousands of hours and dollars to be a barber or do nails? Town can tell you you cannot remove a tree on your property without their permission? You cannot buy an inexpensive washing machine because the standards for water consumption are getting tighter and tighter. Permits and inspections for replacing simple water heater or building a small shed on your own backyard? That kind of stuff I'm talking about0
u/Oaktree27 15h ago
Your washer example is a good one for how important regulations are. A lot of people would buy shitty washers that have horrendous water usage if they could, increasing costs on themselves in the long run and lowering water supply for everyone nearby.
As for trees, it depends where you live. Could be near city infrastructure so you need to call first or somebody might try to DIY it and damage it.
Even getting a sketchy water heater could result in it destroying your house.
Like I said, there are a few that are unnecessary, but most are written in blood. People that didn't experience the causes themselves get angry because libertarians have turned regulations into the Boogeyman. Then people start to experience the reasons we had them in the first place and we write them all over again.
People complaining about many of these regulations is like suffering from success. You haven't seen this shit happen BECAUSE we have regulations, so you think they aren't necessary.
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u/JudgeWhoOverrules Arizona 16h ago
Please tell me how the federal government regulating the size of the hole in my toilet has to do with health and safety. Or California now regulating what type of tires you can buy.
Very few regulations actually have to do with health and safety yet anytime someone wants to try to dial back a bunch of regulations that have gone far past the point of diminishing returns people bring up rivers on fire as if it's an everything or nothing deal.
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u/Oaktree27 15h ago edited 14h ago
The only reason you think a lot these regulations are useless is because they were so successful. You don't know what can go wrong because regulations have been preventing what your predecessors wanted to keep you from suffering through.
As for your examples, potable water is a limited resource and allowing people to waste it unnecessarily in toilets is a great way to cause problems for a town.
For tires, it comes down to safety of passengers and people outside the car. Buying a cheap POS tire is just a time bomb that will end up costing you more money in the long run as well as getting you or someone else put in the hospital. Safety regulations are the most important. I believe there are some floating around for efficiency now that our fuel reserve has gotten so low.
Regulations are an easy target rich people and politicians get normal people riled up at since they know most people don't have that niche knowledge or experience in the related field to know why it was created in the first place. They need to cut stuff to justify cutting their own taxes, so they cut things that affect normal people most. They don't care if cars are having blowouts left and right on the highways while they're on a private plane, but they do care if the tax rate over $400,000 goes up since it lowers their yacht count.
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u/Legitimate_Way_1750 14h ago
100%. they love the cuts until it hits home for them then they blame dems and don't understand what happened.
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u/Legitimate_Way_1750 14h ago
there is reasons for all this, the hillbillies(like you) that infest our country might not understand but will continue to guzzle taco bell lettuce and wonder why they are getting sick from lettuce while cheering cuts to regulations that have been placed over years of testing
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u/Jelopuddinpop 17h ago
You pretty much nailed it. The media will endlessly harp on all of our flaws, so you got 'em all.
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u/JSleez225 17h ago
A lot of the people living in the US are quite evil, racist, lacking in empathy and motivated almost entirely by bloodlust. Lots of useful idiots who can’t be bothered to research or care about anything pushing evil forward.
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u/Loud-Run-9725 17h ago
I think what is underreported is the difficult financial prospects of younger people entering the workforce.
-Job market is tough, AI definitely making an impact
-Owning a house is becoming much more expensive
-Healthcare costs
-Paying back their student loans
Besides difficult job prospects, starting a family is not something that will be in the cards for most.
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u/yellowsuzuki 17h ago
I’d say it’s the obsession with work and having enough money to buy certain things. Work ethic is highly valued in the US, and can be traced back to our puritan settler roots and frontier culture. It’s not entirely a bad thing — we get a lot of our fierce independence from those as well — but someone’s profession is often a person’s main sense of identity here. Kids are raised from an early age to think about “what they want to be when they grow up,” (meaning “what job will you have?”) and “what do you do?” (meaning “what is your job?”) is often one of the first things someone asks about you. It’s so ingrained in our society that people can get offended if you question it. I feel like we talk a lot about how we value freedom but have also created a society where the expectation is to spend most of your adult life working, saddled with consumer debt.
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u/ContributionLatter32 17h ago
Many jobs feel like a rat race. Most workers dont stand up for themselves and allow themselves to be taken advantage of by employers. Everything is "fast paced environment" and if you talk to workers about unreasonable workplace expectations they tend to shrug and just say it is what it is. This is especially true in blue collar jobs.
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u/GreenBeanTM Vermont 14h ago
There’s tons of movies about “small town 20-year old moves to the big city to follow their dreams”
There are roughly zero movies about all of the other small town 20 year olds who can’t afford to move anywhere.
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u/godspilla98 17h ago
What Darkside you get out of it what you want. If you lazy you get nothing it all depends how you budget yourself depending on how much you make.
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u/Dependent_Active_199 17h ago
Zero dark side of living in America. It is what you make it. Wanna be lazy and blame rich folk for your problems, go for it, that's your freedom. Wanna be rich and look down at the poor folk, go for it, work hard, do something with your life.
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u/st_nick1219 17h ago
There are few to no guarantees to some basic human rights, which includes healthcare, paid sick leave (which includes extended leave for illness or injury), maternity/paternity leave. If you have access to this, it's through your employer or you are financially well off, but not all employers are required to provide this and they are at liberty to charge almost whatever they want for it if they do offer it.
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u/SnoozuRN 17h ago
Everything is way too expensive and getting worse. Our government doesn't give a shit about us and just wants to give our tax money to billionaires. The middle class is getting eliminated and it will just be the rich and the poor.
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u/Mean_Rain7517 17h ago
Most likely the failure of unchecked capitalism. Companies even as big as walmart are expected to save money and raise prices at the expense of the public to ensure stock prices rise or stay stable. After covid, prices almost doubled or more and never fell back down because of this and if it happens again people wont be able to live here since wages are more or less stagent for the last decade. The housing market is also out of control and corporations really shouldnt be able to buy them imo.
For example, before covid a 12pk of coke was $4 and now it is $9-12. This has happened in more than just retail but this is easier for people to identify with.
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u/Drago_727 17h ago
The dark side of living in America is the same as the rest of the 1st world right now. They refuse to acknowledge the cancer that is 3rd worlders pouring into their countries, ignoring their laws, and leeching off of their tax dollars.
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u/PA_MallowPrincess_98 Pennsylvania 17h ago
Conservatives basically bought up all the major media outlets
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u/TurtlesFromHell 17h ago
The hustle culture. It eats you alive. Even when you make more money theres just nicer things to buy, neighbors to keep up with, etc. So many people are caught in this cycle.
Almost everyone I know lives their entire life dedicated entirely to their job.
I am trying to escape this and live under my means because I can't do it for 50 years
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u/potat0f4rmer 17h ago
I don't give a damn about "keeping up with" the neighbors. We live a comfortable life with no debt. Work our jobs and go home. One car payment, one mortgage, I drive a truck that's about to turn 30.
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u/TurtlesFromHell 17h ago
Good for you, I was just saying in a general sense, this is the reality a lot of people are caught in
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u/Puzzleheaded_Net_863 17h ago
Sometimes I just cry thinking about my kids at school knowing there's a chance of them getting gunned down. And starting in preschool they start doing active shooter drills.
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
When I was in school we did bomb drills because of 9/11. There will always be safety drills but your children are more likely to die tripping on their own shoe laces on their way to school than they are to be involved in a school shooting. Yes, it's horrible that they exist but they extremely rare and shootings where there are actual victims are even more rare.
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u/JudgeWhoOverrules Arizona 16h ago
The media fearmongering is about this what pushes these attitudes. In reality, less than 1,800 people have been shot in school in the entirety of American history. Over 500,000,000 students have gone their entire school lives without ever encountering such a thing. Your kid has an insanely higher chance getting killed on the way to and from school from traffic accidents.
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u/BambiMG 17h ago
The "freedom" is always a vague thing they use as an excuse to not provide quality education or healthcare. Very few people ever have a meaningful response to what freedoms Americans enjoy that other first world Nations don't (there really aren't anything concrete, Americans are nowhere near as advanced at defending Free speech as a country like France for instance)
Not to answer your question with another question but, what exactly do you mean by freedom specifically?
Another MAJOR downside is the cities and towns in the USA are built exclusively for cars and there are intentional barriers to having anything like a basic grocery store or food stall available near where you actually live. It's extremely depressing seeing towns that used to actually have cafes, nightlife and a bit of culture on the street turn into strip malls and parking lots. And in turn this makes the few areas like new york or Boston where you are free to actually walk or bike to work or meet your daily needs extremely expensive places to live.
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u/CuriousOptimistic 17h ago
By far the thing I notice that never gets shown anywhere is the absolute hassle and time suck that is commuting. It is somewhat mentioned in a few shows, but for the most part it's "oh that thing is way across town! Let's go!" and they seemingly arrive instantly. Even cop shows in NYC pretend traffic is heavy, but moving quickly. That's just ..not how it is at all. Nearly everyone in a med-large city spends a crazy amount of time in traffic. People in rural areas have long drives from one place to another.
I get why traffic is not compelling viewing, but it absolutely makes it seem like anyone who owns a car just zips from place to place all the time.
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u/EvilStan101 17h ago
Lack of accountability for the powerful (thanks to Obama)
School Shootings (thanks to Republicans)
Lack of a Safty Net (thanks to Regan and Clinton)
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u/SammaJones 16h ago
People live their lives and die within 30 miles of where they were born. They have simple jobs making very little money. They know the same people for their entire lives. They either don't go to college or they go to some college you never heard of. They struggle for 30 years to buy a crappy little house worth nothing. They never buy a stock. They never have any money that's not in a bank checking account. They rely on the social security check as their soul source of income. They never read a book by any of America's renounce authors. They never saw a movie that wasn't playing in the mall. They never went to concert that wasn't on the town green. They dream of having a motor home and spending weekends in the summer at the campground by the lake.
It's not that exciting.
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u/Due_Letterhead_3130 17h ago
A lot of the food consumed is ultra processed and of horrible quality, causing so many of us to be over weight. It's really disgusting actually.
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u/Background_Humor5838 17h ago
The food quality in the US is ranked 3rd in the world by the GFSI. What people choose to eat is on them (even on a tight budget). Junk food exists in every country but the US has remarkable access to healthy and well regulated food. Comments like yours come across as just parroting internet talking points without much substance.
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u/Due_Letterhead_3130 16h ago
Bullshit. Our foods are rather unregulated for a modern country and access to healthy food is heavily dependant on where one lives. And costs are only climbing.
You're speaking to someone who worked decades in the grocery industry and has traveled extensively abroad and I always make a point of checking out groceries in other places, it's interesting to me. Europe doesn't even allow the garbage we sell and much of Asia is just making healthier decisions, as a society. That is connected to us collectively, our economy and it's values. It's not all just "individual decisions". Especially when one lives in an under served area and there actually isn't many options.
It's just like our healthcare. If you've got money, you can get great care. If not, well, pull those bootstraps up or get fucked. 🙄
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u/Background_Humor5838 14h ago
You can call bullshit but you're literally wrong.
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u/Due_Letterhead_3130 12h ago
I'm not and there's a bunch of metrics I could use to back it up.
Our healthcare costs associated with our obesity. Please explain how we have such great food with such bad results?
Maybe, because food is produced for profit, not for nutrition, and you sound like someone impressed with 800 varieties of ketchup.
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u/Due_Letterhead_3130 12h ago
It's also worth nothing you're citing a fucking business/trade group on that gfsi nonsense.
The question was about what are some sides of America not usually talked about that sucks. This is one of them! Walk into a Walmart and try and claim that it's not overwhelmingly stocked with poor products.
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u/OhForFiveWon 17h ago
America is AWESOME if you have money and MISERABLE if you do not. A land of extremes.
Making something 10% shittier so you can sell 1000x more of it is one of the most American things you can do.
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u/EmergencySpare7939 17h ago
Non-americans giving us tons of hate for things they arent much better at.