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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.
While this is obviously true, it's important to note that the US certainly isn't unique in this regard. Non-Americans often underestimate how diverse the US is. Americans often underestimate how diverse other countries are.
Of course variance in terms of culture, demographics, and industry in even small countries can be massive. My home city in Southern Brazil of almost 1 milliom population has less than 1% black population. Last time I visited for 2 weeks I didn't see a single black person. This surprises some people because of the perception of Brazil and the fact they imported more slaves than any other country in the America's.
So yes, I'm not claiming US is uniquely diverse. It's just unusually large so it has large amounts of diversity due to geographic distance and total population + historic & current immigration.
However what I was trying to say by 50 different countries is that the laws can vary wildly from state to state. It is something that isn't common in other countries. Of course there are other counties with strong federated systems where the provincial-level governments have strong autonomy (Germany and Switzerland come to mind) I think these types of countries are uncommon.
For example in Brazil no state regulates specific substances. That's a power for the federal government. So if you buy a substance that's legal in one state, you can safely bring it anywhere in Brazil. However in US this is not the case. I have the example of kratom, but Marijuana is another one.
This is what I was trying to say by 50 different countries. They aren't actually countries but in some ways they have just as much if not more autonomy than countries, besides of course foreign policy decisions. But look at California for example. It's economy is bigger than most countries in the world.
Off the top of my head and IRC:
Belgium (different languages, laws, educational systems, public broadcasters per language region, taxation, etc.)
UK (different laws in Scotland, different laws in Northern Ireland, education policy, etc.)
Spain (autonomous regions with their own languages, seperate civil law in Catalunya, tax collection in the Basque country, etc.)
Canada (IRC Quebec has a Napoleonic inspired civil law system, whereas the rest of Canada uses common law similar to that found in the US and UK. TLDR one legal system uses precedent, the other doesn't. )
China (the unofficial city tier system, Xinjiang, Tibet, etc.)
Russia (autonomous regions in the far east, Kadyrov/Chechnya: strict alcohol prohibition and possibly years in jail, etc.)
India (IRC autonomous administrative divisions can make their own laws, tribe/caste based laws/tribunals, Jammu and Kashmir which until quite recently had its own seperate consitution and for example Indians from other regions weren't allowed to buy land or property there.)
The problem is that as a foreigner, you're usually ignorant about all these things. Whether it's a Brit who thinks all Americans are Yankees, an American who thinks all Brits are English, a Scotsman who thinks Spanish and Castellano are synonymous, or a Spaniard who goes to Belgium expecting to speak French everywhere.
According to etymonline, Yankee has been used to refer to different sets of Americans by different people for hundreds of years.
The British calling someone from Texas a Yankee isn't really any more right or wrong than someone from Texas calling someone from Pennsylvania a Yankee. Words can have contextual meanings.
This, y'all. One of the things I think a lot of younger travelers fail to realize is that the US is not a meme. It's huge and full of people with thoughts, hopes, regrets etc. just like everyone else.
Maybe there are better places to live or visit, but the US is pretty easy and most folks I've met are genuinely nice when they realize you might need help.
Edit: try to avoid police and if you encounter them play that foreign visitor thing up or make your English really bad. A lot of them are former soldiers that served in the middle east. They default to a pretty aggressive demeanor because that's what we did to them. Your safety won't be a concern, but they can waste lot of your time.
Although I agree with most of your comment, saying your safety won't be a concern when dealing with the police is flat out wrong.
I think the main thing is that people often hear bad things about the US because they're comparing it to other developed countries. Like I wouldn't want to live there because I live in a different developed country, but I would take living in the US over a good 80% of other countries.
Umm....
Think of most of the world. We're talking Africa, India, China, Ukraine, Russia, Middle East, South America, etc.
Obviously Europe has a one-up on healthcare and infrastructure and probably China has a one-up on infrastructure... but generally speaking it is still a 1st world country.
Americans underestimate the rest of the world quite a bit huh?
I'm not American if you're trying to imply I don't know the names of most countries in the world.