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I am not. Are there jobs open to Americans there? Any?
Legal immigration to England is very difficult Cat from America. Anybody from Europe can come though. Crazy isn't it?
I have heard of some Americans managing to get a passport from a European country by family connection. I seem to remember Ireland gives them out to folks who have an Irish Grandparent.
It's the same in reverse of course. I can't come and stay in America, for more than the time period of a visiting visa. I think that's about 13 weeks.
If an American can manage to get a dual citizen European passport, then yep, they can come and live in England.
Our cities are booming right now. I was astonished, when riding the train from the airport a few weeks ago, how the skyline of Manchester is changing. Apartment blocks being built everywhere. Even I would like to live in Manchester. It's got everything. Theatre, good shopping and restaurants, and a great social scene for younger people. It's like a mini London, but a little more laid back.
Any theory of being American must explain one salient and striking fact: cruelty. America is the most cruel nation among its peers — even among most poor countries today. It is something like a new Rome. It has little, if any, functioning healthcare, education, transport, media, no safety nets, no stability, security. The middle class is collapsing, and life expectancy is falling.
Sky falling much? If America is so bad, then why do we have so many trying to come here
No, not very much so. There is some degree of class consciousness in EVERY country but the USA ranks far lower on that than many European countries, even less than some of the South American countries.
Americans are more impressed with achievement than who your parents are/were or what your last name is.
Who one's parents are/were or what one's last name is has little to do with American class consciousness, I agree. But class consciousness absolutely exists nonetheless. I grew up in Canada, and it's definitely more class conscious here than there.
In the US, class consciousness boils down to money, as things often do, and little else. Achievement? Not so very much. There are many Americans who are unimpressed with achievement (academic/professional)-- unless it involves plenty of money and wields lots of power.
Last edited by newdixiegirl; 06-27-2018 at 01:44 PM..
Any theory of being American must explain one salient and striking fact: cruelty. America is the most cruel nation among its peers — even among most poor countries today. It is something like a new Rome. It has little, if any, functioning healthcare, education, transport, media, no safety nets, no stability, security. The middle class is collapsing, and life expectancy is falling.
Sky falling much? If America is so bad, then why do we have so many trying to come here
Safety and security, mostly. They aren't coming from functional countries.
You don't see people from countries that are supposed to be our peers/equals flooding across the border or at our airports. The vast majority of relatively recent refugees/illegals (or even immigrants for that matter) aren't from the UK, Canada, Scandinavia, Western/Central Europe, Japan, etc.
It is astounding that a person originally from England on or near July 4th would post a thread to talk about American cruelty
England hanged children for minor theft -forced labor from colonists -forced them to house soldiers in their homes -leveled taxes on them they had no say so in their making
Had public hanging for minor offenses
And are the originators of the gun grab
Deported thousands of orphans to Australia to be forced laborers in orphanages where they were beaten and raped
Conducted a lively slave trade
Invaded numerous 3rd world countries killing and enslaving their people and stealing all their treasures of which your major museums are still full of
It is astounding that a person originally from England on or near July 4th would post a thread to talk about American cruelty
England hanged children for minor theft -forced labor from colonists -forced them to house soldiers in their homes -leveled taxes on them they had no say so in their making
Had public hanging for minor offenses
And are the originators of the gun grab
Deported thousands of orphans to Australia to be forced laborers in orphanages where they were beaten and raped
Conducted a lively slave trade
You were saying about the cruel Americans ????
This thread isn't about England though. Why are you so sensitive to criticism about the USA?
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,678,989 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow
Since it's such a "hateful" place, surely no one would want to come here.
My theory: We all know and realize that the media has a very powerful effect on young people, and it has definitely caused a huge problem in "expectations". The first thing that needs to happen for anyone is to teach them never to expect anything from anybody. Nothing at all. Not even a "Happy Birthday" on your birthday. If someone does say it, great, but if they don't, don't expect it from them. We have a lot of people who don't understand that concept. I wasn't taught that until 25 years old, and even then, my mom made me "think about it" and figure out what it meant. Took me a few years to finally get it.
But, aside from the media, what we've had are decades of baby boomers who did not go through what many of us go through today. There's several sources of information out there that show that they could quit a job at 9am and have another one lined up by the time lunch was over.
You can't do that now.
Their wages were better. You used to be able to buy a car or a home without saving up for a decade or more.
You used to be able to fully afford one parent staying home when deciding to have a family. Now, most households have both parents working...but everyone still wants to have that family even if they can't actually afford it, and the kids are, and have been, suffering for it. There used to be a term called "Latchkey kids" because so many kids came home after school to an empty house. Gee, what a great idea, nothing could possibly go wrong there. On the flip side, the parents who do have enough money to have kids don't have the time to spend with their kids because they spend so much time working to make all that money - so whether they are wealthy or not, the kids are, and have been, suffering.
Well what do you think happens when a kid isn't getting the attention that they rightly deserve, from their parents?
Have you seen our society today?
The people who say "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" are not young people. These words come from people who are out of touch with what the work force is like in this day and age, even when it's "good", it's still nothing like they had.
Wages have been stagnant in many industries for well over a decade, yet prices have gone up. Young workers today do the work, don't get more money, but pay more for everything. Today's "bootstraps" are nothing like they were for the baby boomers.
Add in the cynical attitudes like "why am I paying for Social Security, I'll never see it when I get old", something spoken by both political party supporters. They know. They aren't ever going to get a dime of it. They're getting screwed and they know they're getting screwed. Not a nice feeling that you get reminded of every two weeks or month when you get your paycheck.
So, they go to college, cause that's what everyone says they are supposed to do. Somewhere along the way, the "guidance counselors" forgot to ask them, "Have you thought about the likelihood of you getting a job in your field when you graduate? Have you looked at the odds? What will you do if you don't get into your field of study? Do you have a back up plan?"
Then they graduate with a piece of paper that says they're "really smart"...at least that's how it's interpreted, but it doesn't actually mean that. It simply means that they satisfactorily completed the courses, however they did it. Dumb people graduate every year and get that same piece of paper.
Next, they send out their resumes all over the country, because that's what everyone says they are supposed to do.
They intern, they volunteer, they join causes, whatever, anything to pad that resume...and the result?
They are waiting on tables, stressing about their college loans, and many of them never use their degree because they have to get any job that they can, not the one that they want.
"Go into STEM! How many times must we say this?"
Have you seen our education system lately?
How many people on this very forum can't even spell simple fricken words like "to, too, two", "their, there, they're" and dear GOD how many people say, "should of" or "could of" or "would of" instead of HAVE?
If we can't even teach kids how to spell and speak properly, how could you expect that they got a decent math teacher that would lead them into something like STEM?
Government now has their hands in the colleges by giving out loans left and right to people who don't know the first damn thing about loans. What a great idea, let's give this fresh faced, wide eyed 18 year old $60,000 all in one shot."
What could possibly go wrong?
That type of money in one's "pocket" feels like a lot, feels never ending to someone who has never had that kind of money before, and there's a lot of young people out there who have never had that before. So, yes, they spend it stupidly. Once they graduate, they have to face the reality that they can't get out of it. Not that they were ever taught that they couldn't whine their way out of things like they did at home with their too busy parents who didn't have time to take care of them and would buy them whatever just to shut them up for 2 seconds so Dad could concentrate. And of course they spent most of their prime early years being shipped off to daycare every day.
They hear from the older people: "If you work really hard, you will be successful. It's that easy."
Except that is not true. Plenty of people work hard and are not successful because something happened. It could be an accident, an ill family member they had to take care of, they got laid off, fired, the company closed, whatever the reason, "working hard" is absolutely no guarantee of any type of success whatsoever. But they've been told that they just needed to get an education, get a job, work hard, and they would be fine.
But it's not like that these days. Nor did we define "success". For many young people, being "middle class" is not their idea of "success". This is why you have naive graduates actually believing that they are going to start out making well over $100k, because everyone told them it was easy.
Our country is not "hateful". Our country is filled with people who do not understand those who are younger than them, and the younger ones are not understanding the older people because both sides have lived a completely different experience, and yet neither one seems to be able to communicate that without someone calling the one side "lazy, stupid, entitled, arrogant" etc, and the other side calling the other "hateful, mean, militant".
Trump is not an evil person. Trump is not hateful. He jabs at people not because he hates them, but because he knows it will keep his base motivated to get out and vote, just like the left uses unkind words to motivate their base to get out and vote. That's all it is. If you had read anything from anyone about Trump during the campaign/election cycle, you would have known that. And if any of the left had paid attention, Trump requested to begin his campaign for the next election on the very day he was inaugurated. (For those who say "he won't run again"...fools, he's been campaigning this entire time.)
What is going on this country is not Trump's fault.
What is going on in this country is the fact that younger and older people are not living the same reality, and the older people, not understanding this, bark at everyone to "quit whining" and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" like they did, as they claim. I wager that most of those claiming that they did everything by themselves would not fare as well today as they did in the past.
None of this excuses anyone. It's not to say, "Oh well, it's too hard now, just give up and make people give you things", you still have to work hard, you still have to try, and you have to live in this new reality that it's not going to be like it was for your parents or grandparents (depending on age of said person). You're going to have to suck it up and face that reality.
And if you aren't living the comfy life that they had...that's simply how it is. It has nothing to do with "fairness", it's just reality. So get over it.
For the boomers...I'm sick to death of hearing "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps", shut the hell up. Many people work hard today without the same successes for reasons that are totally beyond their ability to change or do anything about. Yes, there are some people who don't want to work hard, but no, not everyone wants "everything handed to them".
It's not that America is "hateful", it's that no one knows how to communicate anymore.
You're (general you) not always right and the other person is not always wrong just because your personal experiences went a certain way.
The "underlying cruelty has manifested itself" was not because of Trump. It became more clear once the internet became widely used, and is now pretty much a household product everywhere. You get to see exactly how people really are, all over the world. A lot of people say, "I bet you would never say that to my face" or "in real life". Like that's some kind of jab? The fact is, they are saying it because you aren't there jabbing your nagging finger in their face when they do say it. The internet has revealed exactly what people are truly like...it didn't start with Trump.
Oh, boo-hoo.
I'm a Boomer. Nobody gave me squat & there were colleges that I couldn't apply to because of being female. There were jobs not open to me because they were only for males. My first job after college wasn't great, but on top of that, they only gave healthcare insurance to males. It was never easy to get a job where I lived, for anyone, unless they had a connection. Most people didn't. Food, real estate, & cars were cheaper. I took a job in factory when l was in college because l needed the money to commute go school because living there was not in the budget. I got $1.75 an hour & people were impressed. I worked my butt off for that $1.75.
I had to go back to school repeatedly after college to get new skills & paid for it each time. Cash on the barrel head.
I never got a job using my degree, because I didn't have connections but I got decent jobs because l had one. You have to use your head. I kept telling my sister that giving trophies for showing up was a bad idea because that's not how it works in the real world.
You just keep feeling sorry for yourself & blaming my generation for all of your woes. It is our fault for giving trophies for showing up.
Every so often though, someone says something that grabs my attention, and makes me think. We have to be able to accept criticism, and explain how we feel about that. I have tried to answer everybody who has spoken to me directly in this thread, in as honest a manner as possible. I don't try and hide my true feelings about any subject. I speak the truth as I see it. I can accept folks telling me they don't agree with what I believe.
Sadly most Americans can’t take constructive criticism, they are right and anyone who disagrees with them is a liar and hates America and isn’t a Christian, which they think we all should be.
There some sort of twisted mindset that a lot of Americans have and it leaves the rest of the world scratching thier heads.
Last edited by reed067; 06-27-2018 at 04:48 PM..
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