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Why this European never wants to live in America

fluentin3months.com

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Re: Why this European never wants to live in America

#31

Post by bct »

VLM wrote: post #14
nether wrote: post #2

The article was very different from what I expected, and as an American I agreed with pretty much all of it.

One thing that I did catch that was pretty funny is he only spent time in our biggest most urbanized cities, yet he thought those were a bit too car oriented. His head would explode with surprise if he visited an area that wasn't one of the 10 largest cities. If he thought Chicago was a little too car dependent, try rural ... anywhere. Several of his comments boil down to a fanatic root belief in proceduralism. Who c…

Rural areas come with other benefits. Urban and suburban areas that are too car-centric are the worst of both worlds.

Re: Why this European never wants to live in America

#32

Post by jinushaun »

Whenever I see Europeans complain about Americans smiling all the time, I wonder why I never hear the same complaint about Southeast Asians (i.e., Land of a Thousand Smiles). People always talk about it positively.

I'm American and SE Asian. Sorry Europeans, but my face rests smiling.

Re: Why this European never wants to live in America

#33

Post by DanBC »

bladedtoys wrote: post #16

The article mentions sales/VAT/IVA tax. Perversely I think the US actually does this right: In the EU, VAT tax is included in the displayed price while in the US, sales tax is not. As the article mentions this is convenient for EU consumers who clearly know the price of their purchase in advance. But I think it has a bad side effect: consumers do not notice the size of the vat/sales tax as strongly and as a result, I…

The UK used to allow people to advertise prices without VAT. But that led to "people being confused" and a "broken free market", so a rule was introduced that if you're selling to end consumers (rather than B2B) you need to include VAT in all advertising to allow easier price comparison.

I've never thought about the hidden aspect of that tax. But then, we have very high tobacco duties and fuel duties and etc etc. People in general in the UK don't have much idea about how much tax they're paying. HN is going to be unrepresentative because of the number of people paying higher tax rates or people who are self employed with accountants.

Re: Why this European never wants to live in America

#34

Post by Zikes »

jafaku wrote: post #30
Zikes wrote: post #13

> 1. Americans are too sensitive This is a common misconception, which colors a few other items in the author's list, but the real reason they don't see many people speaking their mind is because for the most part nobody cares. Which brings me to: > 2. Everything is "awesome"! So the USA is the only country in the world that has mindless small talk? Really? We don't ask "how are you?" and expect a literal answer, we…

- Someone on the internet says Americans are too sensitive. - American is hurt so he writes a thousand lines comment trying to prove him wrong. See the irony?

Telling someone they're wrong is much more satisfying than caring about their opinion.

Re: Why this European never wants to live in America

#35

Post by VLM »

bct wrote: post #31
VLM wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I did catch that was pretty funny is he only spent time in our biggest most urbanized cities, yet he thought those were a bit too car oriented. His head would explode with surprise if he visited an area that wasn't one of the 10 largest cities. If he thought Chicago was a little too car dependent, try rural ... anywhere. Several of his comments boil down to a fanatic root belief in proceduralism. Who c…

Rural areas come with other benefits. Urban and suburban areas that are too car-centric are the worst of both worlds.

Suburban areas come with benefits too, lack of traffic congestion, no parking hassles, plenty of places to go, everything nearby.

A car in the city, is mostly just a pain.

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