Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal ‘black hole’

I love the US for its beauty and many parts of its culture, but I would never want to live there.

In western europe it is normal for people to go to preventive care, or hospitals and NOT fear to be bankrupt.

Its normal to have four weeks of paid vacation a year.

Its normal to have a safety net when you fall on hard times, e.g. when you lose your job or family or mind.

Its normal to think of police as a positive, not as something to be regularly scared of.

Its normal to live walking or cycling distance to work.

Its normal to study at university and not be saddled with debt.

Its normal to be fine with life as it is, without an ambition for being rich or powerful or whatever.

America seems to me always like a place for ambitious and hungry people that want to work and fight all their lives to prove themselves. But it doesn't seem like a place for people that want to be happy and live a good life.

America is a force for creativity and creation but also for the misery of many. I just can't believe how many people 'stick it out', how many people simply accept that dental pain is normal if they can't pay to fix it, or that they might die because they pay $100+ for insulin that they need to live, when in any other first world country this is free. Your employer can let you go with basically no warning or reason and you lose everything - how insane is that!

America has more prisoners than China (>4x its size). America has one of the highest child and maternal mortality rate in the world. America has an abysmal school system that fails the majority of people. America has crime and murder rates through the roof.

I just don't understand how Americans have learned to accept all that with no inkling to either leave or fight for actual change.

And world class surgeons are everywhere, you just don't pay world class prices everywhere. I don't need or want a famous surgeon, I want someone that makes sure I'm well and that I don't need to pay off for the rest of my life.

Anecdote: When he was three my son needed a rare emergency surgery. He had an ambulance transfer to a specialist pediatric hospital from another hospital where he was first admitted. They brought a specialist in just for that surgery. My son then stayed three weeks in the children's hospital and I slept next to him on a bed. I paid nothing for any of this except my own sandwiches, and was by his side the whole time. This was the summer holiday period and fell into our annual three weeks of summer vacation. I sent my work my medical certificate and they registered this (as required by law) as sick days and I was able to move my vacation days to right after the hospital stay, meaning I lost not even a single vacation day. Of course i also got full pay for those days with my son sleeping in the hospital, so I was neither working (except for some minimum email forwarding and answering simple queries) nor did I lose any salary, benefits, sick days, leave days, ... And I knew that there was no risk whatsoever that i wouldn't lose my job or insurance.

Honestly I would not give any of this up for twice or thrice the money. ~40-50% of everyone's gross salary goes to all these services and we pay close to 20% VAT, but this buys us comfort and security. No one dies because they can't afford treatment - even the homeless or irregular migrants can go to the ER and get care (but likely far less than we are lucky yo receive).

But let's not pretend it's a US trait. I hear more criticism about democratic leaders from democrats than republicans. Less vitriol, but more criticism.