this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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1 in 8 lives in poverty (<20k for a 2 person household).
1 in 4 has less than 1k in savings.
1 in 2 has less money saved than last year.
1 in 2 is living paycheck to paycheck
But thanks to massive income inequality, the average American makes 59k a year.
Fun fact: America is arguably better if you are rich or with a high income, Europe is better if you have a lower income / are poor
I recently went back to college and I'm now in my first professional role with real professional benefits and the difference is night and day
I got sick and had to miss a couple of days of work. I literally just had to send a single teams message from my work phone and could ignore everything else for the rest of the day and still be paid. I've had previous jobs where I'd be required to get a doctor's note by the end of the day just to not be disciplined for my absesnd, which meant going to urgent care which costs more because i couldn't make a same day appointment with my primary care doctor. Y'know all for a common cold
I went to go to the office one day (my job is hybrid) and found a 4 inch screw in my tire. I had zero obligation to explain myself for why I didn't come in when I was expected. I had another time I had a different issue with the car for which I didn't get around to mentioning why I didn't come in and I never heard about it. My last job I had a very catastrophic flat and literally had to miss 2 days of work while I waited for shop to get in tires to put on my car
Every holiday is paid. I've had previous jobs where I had to burn literally all of my vacation time to not take a 20% hit to my paycheck for a holiday that I don't even get the choice of working if I wanted to. I've had other jobs where I just had to accept that I'd have to take a hit on a paycheck for a holiday because I didn't get any vacation time
If I have an important personal phonecall, I can just answer the call. I don't have to do some song and dance about burning a timed break or saying out loud to everyone in earshot who sees me getting a call "oh this is an important call, I need to take this" I can just answer the damn phone and get on with it
There's usually some snacks somewhere in the building that i can grab for free. If I don't pack enough food and find myself getting hangry I'm not forced to spend my own money at the vending machine or to go to the store at lunch, I can just go grab a snack and be done with it. I also don't have to wait for a break, I can just get up and go grab my damn snack without having to explain myself
Notice how every one of these benefits is not having to spend time and/or money to appease my employer
LOL, it's because it's not, simple as that.
While this may be true today, note that European countries (well, the rich ones anyways) might just be behind the curve here. We're certainly on our way towards a U.S.-style disaster.
It's very hard to generalise this though as cultures here are very heterogenous here. You'd never in 100 years expect the Dutch to fall for the car industry's strategy of getting everyone dependant on cars to anywhere near the same degree as the U.S. has while you absolutely couldn't say the same about Germany; we love sucking on those exhaust pipes (especially our politicians).
Americans absolutely need cars due to the size of the country. We like our space. We're not being duped into buying cars for no good reason.
Cope.
It is absolutely possible to build infrastructure that is not car centric. Of course, they are always going to be people who need a car to get around but that doesnβt mean that we canβt design cities that donβt require cars.
The dumbest excuse for bad cities - Not Just Bikes
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The dumbest excuse for bad cities - Not Just Bikes
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is a common misbelief.
There's a small subset of U.S. citizens who do live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and actually do need a personal vehicle to get around. The vast majority does not.
Not true. So much of the US, including many cities is uninhabitable or at least extremely inconvenient without a car due to a lack of planning that supports a car free lifestyle.
Also, while the majority of Americans live in urban areas, the rural population is not so small as to be insignificant.
The long term solution is to improve infrastructure and zoning laws to reduce the car centrism of the majority of the USA, this is already being done in many cities, but for the time being most Americans need a car.
That's just false. There are vast rural areas and communities in every state. If you think it's only in a select few states in the middle of the country, then I have a bridge to sell you.
My argument does not hinge on any arbitrary state borders. Read again.