Is America Really That Bad?

America is a country with over 300 million people and it's bigger than Western Europe. There's going to be a lot of variance. Someone growing up wealthy in San Fransisco is going to live in a different America than someone growing up with a single waitress mother in Louisiana.

The average homicide rate in the US is 5 per 100,000. The town of Boca Raton, FL has a homicide rate of 1 (less than half of the European average of 2.5) and Baltimore / St Louis / New Orleans can sometimes reach 30+ on bad years (worse than some Brazilian and Mexican cities).

When you ask about the shitty laws, we have to remember that the US is almost like 50 different countries in one. Every single state you will have a different experience as well. In Illinois school districts kids in elementary school may take home school laptops free of charge. In Panhandle Florida the kids aren't getting that.

In Florida you can go to a one of the many kava bars or smoke shops and purchase a kilogram of kratom. If you drive through Louisiana with that kratom you can get charged with a felony comparable to being caught with heroin.

Do you get what I'm saying? There are many different Americas - even in the same geographical area. In SE Florida there are a wild mix of different ethnicities and cultures. There are Haitians, Jews, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, Vietnamese, Jamaicans..

You can live in the same city but have a totally different experience. The Brazilians may hang out with mainly other Brazilians and go to the Brazilian restaraunts / clubs / grocery stores and not ever go to the Jewish deli that all the Jews love as a staple of the town. It's like you walk around the same area and depending on the cultural lens you put on, you experience a different reality.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT

I think America is a good country to live in. Why? Because it's better than the vast majority of the world. You earn more money. You are safer. You have more opportunities and there's better infrastructure, healthcare, etc than in vast majority of the world.

Yes, there are serious problems. Wealth inequality is splitting the country in two. Healthcare is expensive. There's an opioid epidemic. We have high rates of gun violence. Etc etc

But having come from a relatively well-off third world country, I've seen the difference in QOL first hand and it's massive. America is a good place to live.

It varies from person to person and place to place. But generally, I would say that America is a pretty good place, but not perfect and has a lot of room for improvement.

Yes, healthcare is expensive, but we have some government programs to provide cheaper care for certain groups, like the very poor, the elderly, and veterans.

Violence varies from place to place, but I feel like I live in a safe area, and I have never seen or heard a gun fired at someone in a public place.

A lot of the bad laws typically involve disenfranchising certain minority groups. I am lucky enough to not be affected by most of this, and a lot of people are fighting back against it by trying to vote in better politicians.

America is harder to live in the poorer you are, and it’s on a steeper scale than in other industrialized nations because there are fewer and less robust social services, especially health and child care, and declines in union membership have paired with a rapid increase in wealth inequality that is forcing the shrinking middle class downward and stomping on the poor even harder.

You can live a comfortable life (for now…) if you are firmly middle class and up. Your higher salary than your counterparts in Europe is eaten away at by higher costs, and you deal with risks that they don’t in the form of transportation being car dominated (more accidents and less walking exercise) easy access to guns (the most dangerous being the one in your own home, to you) and less strict food safety laws. Compared to those in Eastern Europe, however, your likelihood of suffering from a foreign attack is drastically lower, not that it was ever very high to begin with.

One thing that Americans take pride in (and rightly, mind you) and full advantage of is our First Amendment right to not have our speech be curtailed, so a large amount of the bitching about America, and especially in English, is Americans bitching about America(ns). So there’s a cultural element to it that may or may not exceed the truth.

Yes and no. More than half the country is wanting to move in the direction of other modern nations. The trouble is we have the electoral college which was instituted as a compromise for slave holding states at the foundation of our country and which gives conservatives outsized power which has resulted in a long-term deadlock.

It's likely that as demographics shift over the next decade, this deadlock will be broken and we'll probably enter a period of rapid progress, but that's only if we make it that long. With the degree to which Republicans are either brainwashed or willfully ignoring reality for the sake of trying to gain power, it remains to be seen whether we can.

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

tl;dr It used to be a hell of a lot better.

This is why Trump should get elected so he can Make America Great Again, right guys?

But in all seriousness, I imagine it's a case of that America is nowhere near as good as some Americans make it out to be, but it's also not as terrible as the media make it out to be either. You can probably apply this to most of the Western World, really.

The US healthcare system is actually even worse than people think. Employers use it to hold power over us all, and even if you have insurance the prices of everything are extremely inflated (my dad went in for back surgery and the total was $47k usd, but get this, one of the items was a single bag of saline solution----$270!), and many people including myself can't afford health insurance at all so I'm 1 accident or illness away from total financial ruin.

I genuinely love America and the place where I live. There is a lot to like and there are many places where life is much harder, but the US health system is one of those things that is embarrassingly bad and honestly just scary.

No, despite what always online Europeans who have never visited will like to tell you. We're just very big and very vocal, so you hear about us all the time. Bad news spread faster then good news. Are you going to be reading news about how good our tap water is, our public restrooms always available, boring stuff like that? Probably not! But that's stuff you'll notice if you do actually visit. We also are much more friendly and welcoming then other countries. We're also tend to be less racist because we vocally talk about our racial problems rather then sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. I'm sure I'll get downvoted by some people who don't like to hear that, but they won't be able to refute.

Edit: Why is everything America related online swarmed with Europeans trying to shit on it. It's so exhausting and extremely pretentious. No wonder people have a distorted view of it online.

Not an American here, so please correct me if my take is completely wrong. My understanding is that while the highs are possibly higher than in a lot of places, the lows are also much lower and possibly easier to reach. You could be doing perfectly fine one day, and then you get hit by a hospital bill ruining your life. It's surely a great place to be a billionaire or even just plainly well off. Except far too many people aren't and they would fare much better elsewhere.

Really depends who you are.

America is 50 different countries in one. There are really two whine different Americas. Several of the states are world class nations unto themselves. It’s the 3rd most populous nation in the world and the richest. It invites a lot of immigration to fend off declining birth rates and doesn’t have a cultural taboo about it like Japan.

It lacks a lot of modern supports for its very lowest classes. New immigrants cannot expect to get baseline healthcare, food assistance, or housing. And it has a generous helping of religious nuttery which brings about scattered laws against gays, a generalized attack on women (though nothing like a lot of the developing nations are still stuck in).

That’s the long and short of it. If you want to go into business and have a relatively free hand, it’s still one of the best places to be. If you have nothing and are looking for a compassionate nation that will keep you from dying of poverty, keep looking.

Depends on what you are comparing it to. Overall it is great. There are some serious systemic issues though that I don't really see getting resolved.

It has many things that are bad or disappointing.

Health care is a mess.

It's very car centric outside of maybe New York City.

There's a lot of racism. There are probably still sundown towns. You should go read the new Jim Crow.

The police are dangerous and often useless.

One of the two major political parties doesn't believe in government, and tried to overthrow the government. They're still considered legitimate.

The day to day life in most places is fine though. You almost certainly have power and clean drinking water. With at least one notable exception, on water, but not enough people cared to fix that promptly.

For most people most of the time it's a perfectly fine quality of life. That said, it's a huge country with tons of variation so if you're looking for bad qualities, there are always plenty of examples to point to.

What pisses me off is that we are nowhere near as good as we could be and as we claim to be. There are some very powerful and objectively evil forces in this country.

Its a philanthropists playground. Just dont get caught being poor.

Depending on where you are from. No. If you live in a place where gangs can roam the street challenging the police, unemployment is 15+% and corruption is rampant. The USA will be better.

Yes. If you come from a place with moderate laws, healthcare and representative government the USA could be worse to much worse.

As an American who left, it looks batshit insane to me. Everything is crazy expensive and they're passing restrictive laws that, if passed anywhere in Asia or Africa, would be run as "look at these backwards shitty country" news stories.

I've got a trans kid. We're not returning any time soon. It seems unsafe for them to exist in the us for the foreseeable future.

But I've got us friends who feel the opposite. We visited a friend in Bainbridge a few years ago who really couldn't comprehend why everyone wouldn't want to live on their island.

Asia (here) isn't really any more unsafe. I visited India recently and it felt less safe, but everyone I know there also said it wasn't really. It depends on areas as well, and much of it (everywhere) is just media depictions and racism telling your brain to panic.

The real advantage of the us is just cash. You can make a lot more money there. They're rich. Money is good. It makes life easier. Its also expensive there. To save at any income level, you have to be thrifty.

I moved from America to a developing country, and what pisses me off the most is how the false images of what America is influences countries like this. people here with a little bit of money and very little sense will idealize what they think is the American lifestyle. they want to drive SUVs even though the roads here are narrow and they get stuck constantly and cause traffic jams. they buy weird luxury items they can't afford. they treat people in the blue collar working class like moral inferiors. it's ironic as fuck for a society that is supposedly built on communist values.

Nothing is ever so black-and-white when it comes to talking about the state of the USA right now. Yes, we are still comparitavely well-off when stacked against developing nations, but we have unique problems that are a real sore spot for many that aren't getting any better and nobody is addressing them, letting the wounds fester.

For example, we have a lot of poverty. Sure, our lowest of the low class probably still enjoy a lifestyle better than that of someone from a remote village in some far away corner of the world, but the promise of prosperity is not equally accessible and the idealized "middle class" is vanishing rapidly. Homelessness is a crisis in basically every large city, especially in the warmer parts of the country, and inflation is still not under control which means the cost of living is going to be unsustainable for a lot of people very soon.

If you put politics aside, things really aren't as bad as they could be, but that doesn't stop people from voicing their concerns that things aren't as good as they could be either.

Worker rights kinda suck and it can be difficult to form communities due to being more spread out and car centric.

Some states are better than others. Washington is a better state than Alabama. New York is better than Florida. California is better than Texas. There's a trend here: the states where the ruling party institutes at least European social democracy-lite are the best to live in.

When I was a teenager, yes. Visited England and their idea of a "bad neighborhood" confused me, my city at home was rough. Their rough areas were just normal places, not scary at all.

But crime dropped here, like everywhere. It is nicer now, despite the two steps backwards we have taken lately.

We do still have violent people, we do still have a prison-industrial complex, armed police, homeless people and way too many guns, but even here in Florida my trans kid is accepted at school, my older kids got a good education (though the last did not make it out before the attack on education) and most people are nice to each other. Inside the cities it's nice enough, feels modern and city like. Lots of jobs, easy to find a job here.

Health care? Yes, it's shit here compared to a lot of places. If you are rich you can get really good care (and pay a lot for it), if not you just try to stay healthy and hope you don't need anything expensive. Insurance, if you have it, does cover preventative care visits and usually stuff like blood pressure meds or antibiotics are cheap, vaccines too, and birth control usually covered as well. But any actual sickness or bad injury can bankrupt you.

I do think it's a land of opportunity, but the odds are not great, if that makes sense? Certainly one can 'make it' here - think of Bill Clinton becoming president - I don't think that kind of social mobility is everywhere, it's a little less sticky here, more rising and falling going on than most places.

America is a decent place if you put your blinders on and worry about yourself.... and don't get sick. In America, you get sick and you go bankrupt. Some places in the world you get sick and you die. 🤷‍♂️ People in the US are pissed off because the problems we have are obvious, easy to fix, and the people in charge make blatantly shitty decisions because they stand to profit off of them. Unchecked capitalism has corrupted every branch of the government. And since the leaders are the ones that have to regulate it and they profit off of it, they won't change it. The elections are actually lies. And there are people that try to say we are an elite, premier example of democracy and the best country in the world. We are not that. The upper half of this country is broken and it's squeezing the middle and lower class until we pop, for profit.

The decision making people in this country are selfish twats. They would be voted out but gerrymandering and electoral colleges (that they control) prevent the people from actually making the decision. Our elections are a farce.

But if you don't pay attention to those things and you decide to just keep your head down, work, pay rent, consume like they want you too, it's OK. Keep your head out of the news or you just get pissed off and ashamed.

Consider it a teenage country. It has growing pains and likes to think it knows better. It's hard to look at it knowing the luxuries other countries have and still believe the rhetoric that is suggested in a lot of media glfron earlier in life

It's not, but people love to be outraged and will find any reason to be. We have extremely comprehensive media coverage, so anything that can possibly go wrong will definitely be covered in the media, whereas in other countries, you just don't hear about most bad things happening. The media will always twist anything and everything to be as polarizing as possible, as that generates clicks/views. Most of the time when you see things on the internet that make you rage (including here on lemmy), if you look into it deeper, there quite a bit of nuance, and you can see where they were coming from when they did such a thing. But to many people who are perpetually online, they don't care about nuance. Everything is black and white to many people on the internet. Either it makes you happy or it makes you rage, and there is no in-between.

Things that actually do suck:

The mass shootings are absolutely awful and should be taken more seriously.

Healthcare is expensive if you don't have insurance. But most people have decent enough insurance that it isn't a huge deal. For example, my insurance plan has a $2000 out of pocket maximum, so no matter what happens, the most I can ever pay per year is $2000 for my entire family. Plus, most people rarely see a doctor, so it isn't something that affects their daily lives. Kind of an "out of mind" type of thing.

It depends on who you are, really.

If you're a poor, black woman living in Louisiana where the only work you can find is at a chemical plant, your life is going to fucking suck.

If you're upper-middle class living in a city, you're probably going to have a pretty good life.

There are some systems that are just awful by developed standards though. Education, medicine, policing, and politics come to mind. They're not likely to change, so you just have to cope with them. Basically just don't ever get sick or interact with the police. You'll probably die if you do either.

The areas of the country that are in terrible poverty, with serious systemic issues, vote for the people who refuse to help them. They're so proud of it, and being American, and own the most guns. They hate you for not being one of them. It's a weird place to visit in all these areas.

If you live in a major metropolitan area, it's fine. The country could have a much higher standard of living if we'd band together and get some labor rights and benefits codified. As a worker your treated better, and have more rights in every other western country.

I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot.

It's called soft power. Hollywood and US military and fiscal aid makes it seem that the US is friendly to your country and a prosperous land of freedom, when it's anything but.

Soft power is also why people think of Korea and Japan as more favourable and less conservative than countries with similar views on women, LGBT rights , etc that do not have the same level of soft power due to cultural and technological exports .

Depends on the socioeconomic status of the city. I live in a city where it's odd to not hear gunshots every night...

There's a lot of opportunities here. There's a lot of money here. We also have a lot of racism and greed.

It depends. I'm a Canadian who frequently crosses the border.

The cities close by the border seem perfectly cromulent, everyone's super nice and accepting. The gas is definitely cheaper, and there is a wider variety of products on offer than in Canada.

There are certainly areas of the US that I'd want to avoid (Florida comes to mind, I would get hate-murdered the very millisecond I stepped there), but the good areas are good. Like someone else said, just don't get caught being poor or with medical issues.

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America definitely has its issues, but I think we have historically been good about surfacing problems and making sure they're at least talked about publicly, even if they're not fixed. This probably makes it look worse than it is. I feel like even in countries with reasonable free speech, there can be social taboos against talking about certain things.

Every state has its good and bad. We are out of control with the gun thing. There is a higher chance you will get shot and killed while minding your own business in America than most other countries. We are selfish and not much unity unless you are on one side or there and even then, we have become stupid and gullible. We are violent. We are much more violent in general than anyone I have ever encountered in other countries. Maybe England, but even there, it is not the same. Americans have no problem straight up killing each other. We are getting worse.

Is America great? Depends on who you ask. Is America a place where you still have some opportunities to make a better life for yourself. Sure. But it is not the same as that the pamphlet sold to everyone else. We are far from perfect and in many cases, other countries do things better.

Having said that, it is cool. Just keep your eyes open and pay attention.

America is very nice if you do not really care about how your life negatively affects others.

When doing world rankings, to me it’s a better visual to compare each US region/state to countries as the size of the US is a big factor. Each region has its own distinction. I live in the Pacific Northwest which is (I believe) comparable to most developed countries. If you’re in the southeast, the rankings drop and your probably better off in Eastern Europe. The Northeast US (I.e. New England) is also comparable to most developed countries but the Midwest is moving more towards a theocratic style of localized governance. The US isn’t in a position I’m any region to compete with Norway, Finland, Denmark, etc but that’s why they are ranked at the top.

We’re very vocal when we see a wrong. We’re also a big country, with different priorities in different places. Most importantly, media tends to publish most outrageous stories, for the shock value in attracting attention

My state has the fewest shootings, helped by the strictest gun laws until recently. We’re generally tops in education, near universal health insurance, and quality of life indexes on par with the best in the world. We are generally a safe place for various cultures and preferences, and we’re first in the US to embrace gay marriage We have a strong, innovation-based economy with among the highest pay. We even have a pretty good (for the US) transit system, walkable town centers, an emphasis on sustainability and renewable energy.

We don’t make the news as much because that’s not outrageous: it’s what we want. However I’m sure others may find it expensive, oppressive, or offend their sensibilities

It's not just America. It's the whole world right now.

Overall, no. In most places things are peaceful and nice. In some places there is a lot of crime and squalor. A lot depends on your location, perspective, and luck.

Shit country, great pay in a few fields.

If you're skilled labour and not a software engineer, just move to Canada tbh.

No, but because it's the 4th largest country by landmass of course you're going to have more craziness, it's par for the course.

It's a lot safer then it used to be though, it just seems bad because we don't censor things here compared to other countries, so everyone sees the good and the bad as opposed to just the good

8'd say it's only bad by the standards of the first world. Not counting foreign policy here, mind you.

It’s all relative, but no, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not.

The issue, whether it’s conscious or not, is what we were sold (work hard, be nice, and you can have everything you ever wanted) not matching up with reality for most of us. My parents are squarely in the dead middle of the boomer generation. My step father is a construction worker, and my mother hasn’t worked since I was in high school. So they are one income, and it’s probably not an exceptional lot good income. They own their own home, in a very nice area, have retirement options, the world wasn’t literally on fire, they didn’t have to go through multiple once in a lifetime collapses, etc. In contrast, I’ll probably never be able to afford a home (run down houses on tiny properties are easily 800k here) and husband and I are dual income, I’ll likely never retire, my money is worth far less than theirs was, the world is burning, etc.

I’m also the last generation that didn’t have to worry about school shootings. I was graduating the year columbine happened. Not a single thing has been done in over 20 years since. I’d actually say access has gotten so much worse. Plus the “gun culture”. It’s insanity. The worship is crazy.

Then watching government fall into the farce it is, that’s bought and paid for. With little help coming to those that need it. And being a woman, watching my rights slip further and further away across the country.

If you're in a developing nation, consider this: America has probably about the same amount of wealth inequality as you, but America has probably ten or a hundred times more wealth. So, the American who lives a life similar to you will have more money when he travels; but while he's in America, there's some rich, corrupt villain in the nearby big city who has enough money to buy up and destroy his neighborhood at any time, who owns most of the police force and government and media - I am presuming your developing nation is the same way, because only some parts of the EU are different (at least from what I've been told)

No. The US has its problems but it's not the hellhole people like to make it out to be.

It helps to look at the US in parts rather than as a homogeneous block. The country is huge and varied with 300M people in a land area larger than Europe. Laws can be wildly different from state to state, especially on hot topics like abortion or gun ownership or drug possession. Some states are filthy rich and others are depressingly poor. Some places are perfectly safe and others are dangerous.

For example, take a look at these maps comparing US states to European countries. Depending on the metric the US can look great or awful compared to Europe.

Mass shootings, although there are indeed many, are a small percentage of the gun deaths in the US. Most are suicide, next most common are arguments outside bars. Most common weapon in gun homicides is a handgun.

Research shows that income inequality causes crime and you can see that more unequal nations (Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Israel) have more violence.

The problem with the US is it's a sanctuary for capitalists, capital and capitalism. Worse than anything that the US does or allows to happen to its own people, is what our government/corporations do to "developing nations". Invasions, supporting coups, fighting to suppress labor rights and wages, extracting natural resources with little compensation, overthrowing governments that try to stop any of that, supporting genocide, committing genocide, chemical warfare, biological warfare, nuclear warfare. Any socialist country they can't overthrow they'll try to starve through embargoes.

Anyway, the worst states are ones where abortion is outlawed, lawmakers fight access to public health care or any public resources that don't go to the wealthy. Usually these states are controlled by the wealthy, like coal bosses running West Virginia into the ground. Capitalists have been using evangelical christianity in north and south America to scare voters into voting right-wing on culture war issues like abortion and transphobia. They use reactionary tendencies like hatred of foreigners, hatred of gun control, hatred of schools teaching the history of how our country treated black people, etc, to keep people voting for the right-wingers who also happen to be the friendliest to business.

Both major political parties are right-wing pro-capitalist parties. Some states do have some social safety nets for health care and welfare but being poor is a horrible experience in every state. 50,000 people die yearly from lack of health care access, not including COVID deaths. There's really no state you can live or party you can vote for to get away from it.

I've lived in a few less right-wing states. A friend of a friend was killed by police while he was suspected of shoplifting, trying to run away. Some kid killed himself in my high school while i was there. I live in a town where there's lots of homeless people and syringes all over the place. 3 people in my family died of COVID.

Basically the US is a fascist country. Fascism is when the wealthy consolidate their power over government, in the face of growing violence and instability from growing inequality. The point of fascism is to protect capitalism from these growing threats by creating a police state, deflecting blame for hardship onto minorities, and handing off chunks of the government to the wealthy through privatization. The wealthy and the government essentially merge, they become the same people with the same goals.

The new American Dream is to get the fuck out of here.

Every government everywhere passes bad laws l, Canada past laws requiring exposure on online media to be a certain percentage Canadian, but then didn't give a way for "small" online creators ( non company run) to join the system. The UK is straight up attempting to ban encryption. The French President told the people of the country "no fuck you" after they protested for months about a law to increase pension age. No country is perfect, every nation has active issues. Anyone saying America is the worst, is on aware of what is going on elsewhere in other countries.

It’s not as bad as they say it is. And yes it does vary from region to region a great deal.

Yes and no. Better than a lot of places in a lot of ways, worse than a lot of our peers in a lot of ways.

The only reason I didn’t get financially destroyed by the accident I was in, was just because the driver who struck me off my bicycle was 100% at fault and there was no denying it. You can try to say I served in front of you but at the end of the day you struck a bicyclist from behind on the road.

Anyways, because of laws on how much you can sue for I was capped out. So I didn’t get a ton of money but thankfully they also were forced to cover all my medical expenses along with the payout, which would have easily bankrupted me even with really good insurance if I had to pay that back.

In 2015 I was in Niger doing NGO work and the founder of the NGO said to me that the most important thing about America is the peaceful transition of power. That next year that transition of power came under direct attack and then again in 2020.

From my travels and the people I talk to, we have been under attack since at least 2008. From domestic terrorists working with foreign governments. Factions in spy agencies actively engaged in domestic espionage to help elites take more power. Cultist religious mega churches spreading misinformation and conspiracies in rural areas for decades priming for a “revolution”.

Billionaires that you hear about daily are also in on it.

You better fight for your democracy by showing up to every town meeting you can America because you will absolutely lose everything. Support unions and delete that extreme individualism in your programming that capitalist America wants to instill in each person so you never organize against them.

This is the time to get out in front of 2024 and fight for your rights and a reasonable society not this psycho bullshit we are stuck in right now.

I've lived in the US for over 50 years and yes, in many ways it's really shitty here. I look at how other countries function and wonder why we can't do the same thing. The US is "supposedly" the greatest country in the world and yet, there is so much wrong with it.

Granted, there are good things too (depending on where you live and your status, of course.)

Yes and no.

We do have mass shootings, but we also live in a country of 330 million (humongous population size), but every mass shooting makes national news, so it seems far worse than it is. Also, most mass shootings are gang violence that get lumped in with what we normally consider "random mass shootings" to pump up the numbers and scare people.

Healthcare could definitely be better, but 67% of Americans are satisfied with their insurance. I would still much prefer a universal healthcare system.

Overall, America definitely has its ups and downs, but a lot of the "AMERICA BAD" rhetoric is just part of a reddit-style circlejerk where people get socially rewarded for trashing it.

Expect this comment to be downvoted from the same crew.

America is wealthy as all hell regardless. It is part of the reason things like Healthcare is so expensive: there's a whole lot of economic power to siphon up as an insurance company.

There are lots of worse places to be, but it definitely isn't "namba wan". Remember, it's a country of extremes and superlatives. "Everything" is "always" the "worst" or the "best". There's "never" a middleground.

Also, out interface with the US is online and the media. Online, people often express their unfiltered opinion or an extreme opinion + behavior, simply because they aren't face to face with others. It feels much less intimate and thus people behave that way. This has been going on long enough that the opinions online have taken a foothold IRL and the US is a good example thereof (from my outside view).

Also, don't forget, there are many people speaking English and talking about the US that do not actually live there and weigh in on stuff. Some crazy af opinions might not even be coming from a person physically in the US.

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Not American, but I imagine that news reporting uses loaded terms and partly drives the division between republicans and democrats. I assume that in reality most people are levelheaded people that don't hate or fear their neighbors.

As an American, let me assure you... no, it's not that bad. It's much worse.

It depends. I'm a Canadian who frequently crosses the border.

The cities close by the border seem perfectly cromulent, everyone's super nice and accepting. The gas is definitely cheaper, and there is a wider variety of products on offer than in Canada.

There are certainly areas of the US that I'd want to avoid (Florida comes to mind, I would get hate-murdered the very millisecond I stepped there), but the good areas are good. Like someone else said, just don't get caught being poor or with medical issues.

Honestly it isn’t that bad.

I’m over fifty now and have never been even close to a mass shooting. Outside of a gun range I’ve never heard a gun shot. I’m definitely not middle class or upper middle class and other then a 2 year stretch I’ve never had a problem getting insurance or getting insurance to pay my medical bills. In the last year my mom has started having a problem with certain medical bills getting paid by insurance. They always pay but sometimes it requires a call or two to the insurance or doctors office to fix it.

It’s amazingly easy to start your own business in the US. The number of opportunities is crazy. That goes for both people who just came to the US and for those that were born here.

Are there problems? Yea. Same as in any country.

I find the first world problems in my life literally inescapable. I mean I am stuck being lonely and stressed because of political policies. More broadly though, Americans are bolstering the progressive leftism we will need to change our conditions, so in my lifetime these most immediate problems will be fixed. Is america bad? Yes, it is, and American's are angry about it enough that we have prevented a lot of those shitty laws from getting passed and put into effect. We'll be okay.

American Dream isn't dead. I'm grinding for mine. It's just definitely harder now.

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Interesting question...

As an overall answer: humans are incredibly adaptable, so as a person living in the US, it almost never subjectively feels bad. For goodness' sake, I knew people who lived in Chicago's Hyde Park (one of the most dangerous neighborhoods) and happily biked to work. I personally lived in what people would describe as a "hood" and a "third-world country" for a good year and a half, and honestly felt really safe over there. Because of this, I honestly don't think anyone can give an objective answer solely from their living experiences.

Objectively, the US is a developed country and is not terrible, but regarding your specific points:

1. Yes, the government passed shitty laws, and chose to not pass a lot of not-shitty laws.
2. Yes, there are more mass shootings than the country should have. I'm not going to say why.
3. Insured healthcare isn't expensive (correction: some stuff are still too expensive even after insurance). However, uninsured healthcare is incredibly expensive, and unfortunately people without employment/self-employed have to purchase their own insurance... which is also stupidly expensive. Also, a lot of things that should be insured aren't.
4. The different states are certainly different. US politics is very polarized, so heavy-blue and heavy-red states are quite different in their approaches to... many things in life. Whether they are good or bad is up to you.

I mean, people living in Switzerland complain about their countries all the time, even though almost everyone else in the world envy the way they live... so it is possible that some might be a bit overblown.

Honestly, no. People bitch a lot but I've lived here a lot of years, my healthcare is fine, despite owning several guns I've never seen one fired at anyone, and I can pretty much do whatever I want.

From Canada it seems like this: poverty down there is a trap from which escape is almost impossible and it's a trap that's constantly threatening everyone except the richest 5% of the population. Very high risk and very high reward and success seems to depend much more on luck than hard work and intention.

No. it's not that bad.

I grew up poor, without many opportunities. No free ride, college etc. I grew up in a small town, without much going on.

I was able to work hard, put myself through college, buy a house, and raise a family on my single income, and live comfortably. I have medical coverage, we have new-ish vehicles.

That being said, the opportunity is there. But, it is NOT given to you. You do have to work for it.

But, again, nothing has been "given" to me. I didn't have the advantage of having rich parents, or large inheritances (or- well, ANY inheritances). I didn't have a family member give me a 4,000sq-ft house they purchased in 1952, for 1,200$.

Every single thing I own, I have worked for.

Now, there are a few sides to this argument-

There are a lot of people who don't want to work. They see someone who is doing financially well, and believe they have some claim to someone else's fortune. I do not agree with this.

On the other side, we don't have universal healthcare. This is a touchy subject.

I do believe we need it, but, HOW we get that, is a different story.

Our government has proven time and time again, if you give them a simple task, they will fuck it up, royally, and hemorrhage money. Our medical system as a whole, is completely fucked. It's not the doctors getting rich. Its the damn insurance companies, and all of the bureaucracy and bullshit involved. Granted, doctors aren't living on sticks. But, do remember- they literally spent OVER two decades of their life in school, to learn how to be a doctor. Its expected they should have a salary greater then someone who works at your local fast food place.

I realize, lots of people will disagree with my post. And- for that, I don't give a shit. If you don't want to be poor, then take control over your life. Identify an in-demand profession, which has good compensation, and work for it. Quit blaming everyone else due to you working at McDonalds because your liberal arts degree, isn't marketable.

Also- OP- lots of the people you talk to on social media, are statistically younger, in the 20s, and still trying to figure out how to live life.

Edit- Also, one more thing. Drama sells news. News outlets are only going to show news, which people want to watch. People don't tune into the news to watch good things happening. They want to see the bad. As such, news and social media can give inaccurate vision of how things actually are. (Unless you live in Chicago or NYC. Then- it's actually even worse than the news shows)

The only thing saving us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency

Short answer, no. Longer answer, not even close. America has its problems, but it's a wonderful place to live. Those of us who are older remember a time when it felt more free, and had a less intrusive government, but it's still the land of opportunity.

I was born poor and grew up on welfare. I worked my ass off my entire life, starting as a paperboy at the age of 12. I've literally bled and cried working my way out of poverty, but I did it. I'm now pretty well-to-do. There are thousands of countries in the world where that's not possible.

I know a political refugee who fled to America 40 years ago with nothing. He had literally nothing when he arrived. He is a multi-millionaire doctor now, with a huge house on 10 acres of land, and he drives a brand new top of the line Mercedes Benz. All of his kids are either college graduates, or in college.

We're free to criticize our government without reprisal. We're free to express ourselves and be who we want. We have protections against discrimination, and we have workers rights. Yes, all of that could be improved still, but that's always been a battle and always will be.

Most Americans will never experience anything you read in the news. Their lives are comfortable and safe. Food is plentiful, as is entertainment.

There are still a lot of things to fix in our country, and some things are sliding backwards, but we can and will continue to fight for progress. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet. Yes there are truths to it, but you have to remember that we're a country of 320 million people. Texas and California, just 2 of the 50 states, are large enough to cover the entirety of Europe. So you read a lot of bad news online, but it's a concentration of all the bad stuff from across an enormous country. There are bad parts of America, and some places you'd rather not live, but most of the country is a pretty great place.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Everything is played up by the media, for ratings. Mass shootings are extremely rare, America is just huge and we have other issues. (of course any number above zero is bad) Health care is built around having insurance, but there is government insurance like Medicaid and Medicare available. If you don't have insurance, you can often talk it down by just saying you don't have insurance.

It's not bad at all (for me), as the other person said it cavaries from person to person. Social media likes to take shots at it but the reality is it's quite enjoyable. Mass shootings are overblown by the media (they happen, they suck, but they effect like .000001 percent of the population per year, your more likely to be killed by a deer than I vlolved in a mass shooting). Gun crime exists but is mainly in specific poor or inner city areas. The other 99% is pretty safe.

Healthcare is expensive but if you have a decent job the company pays most of it. The care provided is really good in an emergency response way, but poor for general care.

Everyone everywhere is very nice, it's extremely rare to find an exception to this. If you are brown or Muslim then you may find descrimination more often outside the city, but again that's rare unless you go to a few areas that no one goes to anyway. My friend is Muslim and doesn't have many issues unless he goes to the airport.

Stuff is cheap (relatively) compared to elsewhere. You can get a cheap 65" TV for like 350 bucks. Housing is expensive though unless you go to places that are cheap.

It is corrupt politically. That is going downhill, but day to day it doesn't effect us much.

You have to drive everywhere which kind of sucks. Public transport sucks and it's hard to find places where you can just walk around.

The air is pretty clean, the food and water is safe to eat and drink, there are plenty of jobs available, there are lots of massive beautiful outdoor spaces, etc.

No.

It's worse than you could imagine.

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No, it's not nearly as bad as depicted.

The USA, for all its faults, remains the standard against which other countries measure themselves (and find themselves lacking). That's why every embarrassment and mistake gets blasted across the international media.