Yahoo Lifestyle 15 Extremely Difficult Things People Do Not Understand About The United States, And, Honestly, They Got A Point
Since the United States has been in the news a lot more lately, it makes a lot of sense that people are talking about us and feeling very confused about a few things. So when Reddit user BrilliantBug1296 asked: "What is the most difficult thing to understand about the United States?" people delivered a whole lot of opinions on the matter. Here's what they said below:
1."Why are healthcare prices a secret? Suddenly boom! Your bill is over $100 or $100,000. Who knows?"
"And what you are billed has no relationship to what you'll end up paying. "
2."How such a massive and important country only has two viable political parties for leadership."
"Because U.S. political parties are not structured like what the rest of the world considers 'political parties.' They are broad and very loose coalitions.
There is no formal membership process; you either register to receive a party's primary ballots or simply state you are a Democrat or Republican. The party structures rely upon part-time volunteers and, outside an election cycle, very small cadres of full-time paid staff.
Voters choose individuals, not party slates. Elected officials can switch parties if they so choose and can vote against party leadership without having to resign their office.
Most political activity is done by non-party groups, such as organizing, lobbying, protesting, etc. The parties are a skeleton around which groups cluster, not an organized force in and of themselves."
3."Lack of paid leave for maternity/paternity — and the vast amounts of money it costs to go through pregnancy/childbirth. Obviously, that bewilderment extends to the cost of medical care in general, but for a country that prides itself as 'pro-life' champions, this feels wild to me."
"Yeah, it’s wild. Fortunately, some companies are great about it. Before I had kids, my company only offered one week of paternity. I changed to a company that offered me 20 weeks. It would be nice if we had a standard across the board."
4."The bounty and the deprivation coexisting side by side."
"That was my takeaway from my one and only visit to Las Vegas... it was jarring to see. I had trouble reconciling the wealth and those pretending to live the wealthy lifestyle beside the poverty."
5."How big it is and how many subcultures exist within it. Every state is a different culture."
"Even in my own state (Michigan), there’s a divide between downstate people and people who live in the upper peninsula, lol."
6."The tax code. Imagine if the credit card companies were run like the IRS: 'Keep all your receipts for the year and figure out what you owe us at the end of the year. If you're wrong, we're going to hit you with major penalties.'"
"Still terrified I’m going to wind up in jail for getting audited seven years after I do my taxes wrong accidentally, only to not be able to explain my errors because I absolutely do not understand taxes and guess every time."
7."I'm always surprised at how little they are taught at school about world affairs and politics. All the American folks that I have met have been very outgoing, kind, and gregarious, so where does this lack of interest in the rest of the world come from?"
"Proximity and scale. For proximity, we only have two neighbors, really, and one is practically a Northern version of us. We just are not that close to the rest of the world.
For scale, we’re a pretty big country, and there are a lot of state and national-level discussions going on that distract from global discussions.
We don’t have any less capacity for interest in other 'areas,' but that capacity is more filled with things that are localized if that makes sense. Most of us keep up with hotspot topics like Ukraine, Yemen, Israel/Palestine, etc."
8."Why that focus on individualism (with tendencies towards egoism) and aversion towards the idea of living as part of a community of solidarity?"
"Think of the history in relation to the geography. It's a huge ass country, and you're forced to do things on your own. Build your home, farm livestock, agriculture, and protection. EVERYTHING was on you, the individual. When your closest neighbor is at minimum half a mile away and has no transportation other than walking, no one takes care of you better than you. Fast forward 200 years, and here we are."
9."Trump. As an American, Trump. He has the entire South blowing him, and he’s a Yankee from NYC who is the physical embodiment of everything Southerners used to dig on 'Yankees' about. His wives, his scattered kids, his tacky decor, lack of manners, he’s rude, he’s disrespectful. We have successful people throwing their entire lives away for him. Look at Rudy Giuliani! Had all of that goodwill after 9/11. Literally, all he had to do was shut up and retire. Then he got involved with Trump. I don’t know what to say."
10."How proud they are of their founding values versus how casually they toss aside those values the instant they get in the way."
11."Their fetishism for guns and soldiers."
12."Insane levels of religiosity, especially with the people calling themselves Christians whilst not displaying any Christian values."
13."As a middle-aged American, I will never understand Americans’ eagerness to vote to make their own lives worse in the hopes of hurting racial/demographic groups that they don’t like. The concept of welfare, having a social safety net, was very popular in the US after World War II until Ronald Reagan started with his lies about welfare only helping Black people (although white people are the primary beneficiaries of that program in our country). Now, welfare is very unpopular, and 1/4 of the country votes against maintaining it."
"We could have taxpayer-funded healthcare; it’s popular in theory, but the same bottom 1/4 of our country would rather go bankrupt from medical bills than have their tax money pay for healthcare for one LGBTQ person or woman. Our tax proceeds could fund higher education, as is the case in almost every other wealthy nation, but there’s that bottom 1/4 of voters again, protesting their taxes, helping anyone outside of their racial/religious group. 1/4 of our population would rather suffer and struggle than ever cooperate with a minority or LGBTQ person."
14."Americans seem to have both the smartest and the stupidest humans on earth coexisting in their country."
"We have the third largest population in the world. Logic would follow; we would have at least the third largest number of idiots if not more."
15.And finally, "That we don't have a public transit system that is nationalized. It would be great to not absolutely depend on a car to travel to work."
Is there one incredibly difficult thing to understand about the United States? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
