You also wouldn’t spend hours commuting to work every day. Cars are fast. I don’t know how it is in Europe, but in America, commute time is unpaid and cost of living is obscenely high, so cars are pretty much mandatory if you want to keep a roof over your head and get a full 8 hours of sleep.

Are these by posts by newspapers, blogs, or normal people? Because all the people writing for newspapers and financial blogs seem to live in a different world than most Americans. The average car in the US is 12 years old for example.

“I discovered cooking at home” “Meal planning” “Dining in”

Bitch, that’s called Tuesday in most of the world.

That’s a bit exaggerated. “Corner” stores of any kind are rare in suburbs as they are zoned for residential use only. However, there are often small areas zoned commercial scattered around where a small number of shops are located. I’m pretty sure land use planning requires these things to avoid exactly what you were describing.

I’ve never been more than 10 minutes from groceries or gas in the suburbs. Now rural life, that can mean some planning if you need anything at all. And if you want to do anything remotely interesting you’re almost always going to be traveling some distance. And with very few exceptions cars are practically mandatory.

Edit: times based on car travel, not walking.

Now you understand why most Americans need cars.

No stores, markets, and services also translates to a low availability of jobs.

As a high schooler, you almost inevitably need some kind of “boost” to get out on your own. Maybe college, but at least a car or help signing for an apartment. Without at least some kind of help, it’s easy to get literally “stuck” at age 18 or 19. No money for a car or apartment, but no close access to employment without one of those tools.

I see parents moving to the suburbs to give a safe life for their kids away from “bad things” in the city. Meanwhile, parents may not be home until 6 or 7 pm due to leaving the city in traffic, and bored suburban teens can get into just as much trouble as their urban counterparts. Unless the parents are also able to commit some serious money to other involvement for their teenagers, the suburban life may not play out well for them.

Something that really struck me, particularly in Northern Europe, was that the young adults seemed to be a lot more self assured. There are probably a lot of reasons for this that I do not notice, but I wonder how much results from having a practical path to an independent and productive life. This in turn opens up so many other doors socially.

Can you believe it that some go batshit crazy and call 15-minute-cities a conspiracy? I laughed real, real hard when I first encountered that.

This is not the norm really. I drive < 10 minutes to everything I need on a daily basis. I’m sure there are places like this but it’s not the norm.

15 minutes walk or 15 minutes drive?

I’ve never understood why the drinking age is higher than the driver licence age.

Because driving is a necessity and drinking is not.

And taking away voting rights from felons.

That’s an instrument of oppression. Our right-wing party wins by stopping people from voting.

Voting is generally handled at the state level, so preventing felons from voting is a state thing. That said, they already did time, why punish them further by disenfranchisement?

Being an American, I see a winding mountain road and think about how much fun it would be. Then again, my parents bought me a $1500 shitbox when I turned 16 in exchange for me giving my sister a ride to all our after-school activities.

And I have this weird phobia about taking public transit where they’ll leave without me and I’ll be stranded with no way to get home. Planes, trains, busses, heck even monorails I have to be way, way early because I’m terrified of missing them. And if I have to make a connecting stop I’m even more anxious because they’ll also just leave without me.

Most Americans towns require you to have a car because they have little to no public transportation. Can’t get a job without a car in most places, for example.

In the Netherlands it’s even pretty decadent (and time-consuming) to take the bus to school, most of the kids just cycle to school.

I had to watch Twilight movies at some point, and they indeed all have trucks. Seems to reflect the reality with teenagers being able to drive at 16.

The average drive here to work is ~30minutes with zero public transportation in most places. I go through 4ish towns myself. Add in terrible weather ~4 months out of the year in rural areas, that’s why most people have SUVs.

Of course the dumbshit street-legal mobile tanks that the neonazis spend $1000/month in petrol on are RIDICULOUS, overkill, and definitely compensating for something, but most people not in cities need safe cold-weather vehicles.

I find this to be highly regional. Plenty of places will ignore that you exist beyond the payment. A minority of places perhaps, but the hospitality isn’t universal.

White Male Suprimacy. Thats what all thats about. The fear of them losing it to women, black people or anyone else really.

Well, thats my gut based opinion anyway :)

You’re talking about a stereotype of a very small subset of Americans. You’re basing your fears on the extremist online postings that aren’t really indicative of Americans in real life in the majority of the country. If you have legitimate reasons to be afraid to leave your house, then I strongly urge you to move. I can’t imagine you’d have much tying you to the area if you never even go outside.

Grew up here thinking all this is normal. Trump opened my eyes to our crazy country. Now I’m a bit of a black sheep of the family. Enjoying all of your responses. Just bought my first European car recently. Hope to go back soon.

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I read a travel guide to another European city I was visiting, and the guide was aimed at Americans. It’s a major really walkable city, with car access as good as nonexistent (wonderful). It surprised me, that some Americans walk so little, that the first advice in the guide was “start by trying to walk around your house”

Have you seen the size of America?

18-21 is very common here in the South. I haven’t heard of younger personally. But I’m not rural. Know of some towns very religious and inbred, I’m sure it’s happening there.

What?!

And apparently, it’s not too uncommon for girls as young as 12 or 14 to get married, often to far older men.

It is very, very uncommon.

Children as young as 12 or 14 getting married is not at all common. The study the wikipedia article you posted claims less than 1500 hundred children over 18 years that were married at the age of 12-14 in a country of over 330million. It also points out that of those under 18, the vast majority was 17. Not to say that it isn’t a problem and should be fixed, but its not common what so ever and I would guess 90% of americans will never meet someone married under the age of 18 and except for some of the most rural middle of now where places its considered pretty horrific and unacceptable by most americans.

It shouldn’t indeed, but then you have service charges you cannot opt-out of such as here https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/1840098

I guess it comes with being founded by puritans.

Sad, yes. But surprising? It’s been going on for literally hundreds of years…

I do get asked when I vote, which part I belong to. I just flip flop every time to keep them on their toes

I’m not sure voting by default to one party is a consequence of registering with that party. Maybe some psychological effect.

I’d say the main cause is the fact there are only two parties to choose from, so unless you are a moderate (or these days right-moderate) it is just a waste of time looking at candidates and their policies beyond party affiliation.

The related issue is this: in some places in america, the primaries are run by the parties. So you can only vote for canidates (within a party) in the primaries IF you register with that party. In some races the primaries are the important part, because everyone knows which party will win the main election, so who gets the party nomination is basically the undecided part.

Lifelong American here - I do love it here, though as you point out there are definitely some stressful flaws.

Healthcare here is messed up. Not the quality (which is typically very high), but the price. Having insurance tied to employment never made sense to me either.

Personally, I actually love driving and owning a car. I just think cars are really cool and I like wrenching on them. Everything I could need is within a 10-15 minute drive and I never have to worry about there not being enough parking. That said, you are correct that car ownership is basically required - although I have been to cities in the US that have decent public transportation. Not European level good, but decent.

At my job I get 4 weeks paid vacation and “unlimited” sick days (they say unlimited but of course they have the ability to deny them if they find you are abusing them). My bosses will actually hunt people down who HAVENT used all their vacation days and encourage them to do so. They have realized that productivity is tied to employee happiness so they try to keep us happy. Now, none of that is government mandated but I just mention it to prove that not everyone here has a job that treats them like crap. I agree that this stuff should be guaranteed though. For reference, I work in IT and make less than 100k.

Tipping is definitely a weird thing and I would be glad to never have to think about it again.

As someone who spent roughly half my life in the US and the other half in EU, this is very accurate as to my experience in each place. In the US my life constantly felt balanced on a knife edge like everything could fall apart at any moment. When I moved to the EU, even though I didn’t speak the language or grow up there, I breathed a big sigh of relief. I felt like my life was finally manageable.

I think this causes a ton of mental illness in the US that we just don’t see in the EU. Most people I know in the US are on the constant verge of a breakdown and basically just disassociating themselves from reality (usually using drugs, alcohol, religion, or some combination thereof). I think this is why Americans so badly need to put on a happy face. If they didn’t, they’d all have a simultaneous mental breakdown.

America is a developing country with a Guccu bag.

There are some rich areas, but even there, the vast majority of people are poor and live under not-great conditions.

I think the “pursuit of happiness” mindset is still very strong over there. You’re only poor because of yourself, not because rich people fucked you over. So you can’t really complain, because it’s your fault.