40 Europeans Share What Problems Are Too American For Them To Grasp

Also everyone having guns is not a problem, but a girl daring to wear a sleeveless shirt to school when it's a super hot day? Everyone loses their minds

I know, it's not actually democracy if it doesn't work like this

Yes!! What's up with that??

So the Customers have to feel Guilt about Poverty, not the Employers

Have you seen the ridiculous large portions we get here? In most European countries that's considered a meal for at least a family of 4 at minimum!

The Flat Earth Society exists across the globe- ahem, disc... :D

That's the deepest mystery of all.

This one I also don't understand. I'm not "a drunk" myself, but it's BECAUSE nobody was strict about it with me.

This is so true, what's that all about ?!

Hmmm, a lot to think about there

I find the "perfect" look ugly. It looks like plastic.

It's crazy that American police can straight up murder people based on their skin colour and there's no repercussions for it. In my country if the police uses a gun even once, even to just injure a suspect, there's massive investigation launched into whether that use of force was called for

That whole "right to bear arms" thing was written when it took 15 seconds to load one shot of round lead, haha. They didn't envision AR15's. They need to revisit those laws. Badly.

You have to always calculate tax and tip like we're some kind of math geniuses or something!

And paternity rights/leave!

And whenever to tell someone that there’s something wrong with how the USA does things, people do one or more of the following: A. Yell at you “if you don’t like it, then leave!” (mindless nationalism, not patriotism)... B.They refuse to believe it’s better anywhere else... C. They tell you that any place with a seemingly better system is still actually worse because it’s “socialism” (and they are fully convinced by obsolete and never correct Cold War propaganda to reject anything that has the scent of “USSR” on it, whether legit or not)... D. They go as far as comparing the USA to some third-world hellhole or theocracy just to make the USA seem better by comparison (sinking to that low a bar is really f*****g revealing!!!).

YES!

Same here, are American houses just made out of cardboard or what?

Many American Christians are so weird, yelling things like "Jesus hates f**s" when if they'd read the bible they would know Jesus never said anything about homosexuality

This is leaking into UK culture too

We all pay for ambulances. The problem with the American healthcare system is how it's handled and the strange effect of liability beyond anyone's control on the prices

They won't even protect their children from getting shot dead. We had one school shooting in the UK and even gun owners were so sickened they supported the changes in the law. In the US children getting shot in the face is less horrifying than not being allowed to walk around showing off a gun.

Flying to Europe and paying full private hospital fees would still be cheaper!

In Australia we do have goods and services tax. The item price shown on the shelf / advertising is exactly what you will pay.

It took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that, if they say that the US is the best country in the world, it's not a joke! THEY ACTUALLY MEAN THAT!!! 😱

well, if i recall it right, the idea is, that it is cheaper to rebuild your cardboard house after every event. The materials are a lot cheaper. but those events will happen more often so i think it is just plain stupid now!

You're not the only one but, alas, it's one of those: "it is what it is" things.

Or put their feet with the shoes on, on the bed!! I mean, hygiene people!!

First off: What makes you think we have a civilized world here? The Civil war here is still going on in some people's mind albeit not physically. In answer to your question about the Rx pricing: Yes, it does depends where you live because we here live the good life of out of control predatory greed.

The religion stuff has always bugged me. It annoys me how people dont see freedom from religion as part of our freedom to religion. Not to mention Christianity is everywhere

I did uni in Finland for five years, never had to buy a single textbook, my library provided all the textbooks for free

American here* - then trying to do the student buyback at the end of a semester and being told you can receive $2.00 for the textbook you were required to spend $400 on. Awesome.

And here too (Canada).

British Columbia has an initiative to publish a lot of uni textbooks for free if you need them... https://open.bccampus.ca/browse-our-collection/find-open-textbooks/ I think the reason for the HAVING to buy them if professors use the textbooks they themselves have written. Then they "update" them every year and insist on having cruicial information needed that the old one doesn't have so they get their sales cut.

It's the same result as with most things in America. Corporate greed.

OH, and then they change the book slightly every 2 years so you can't use an old book

I had to spend £50 on a University textbook, that we literally looked at for quarter of a semester. This was in England.

What's worse, many of the books are written by the professor and guess what? They're rarely ever used in class. It's just b******t!

That's actually going from "Buying the required book" to "Purchasing the required online access." I've had one wonderful professor in all my time make our only requirement a $30 book. The rest she provided in handouts. And I actually prefer to buy my own book so I can reference them for information whenever I choose instead of depending on library hours.

The funny part is that they make you PAY to get a job. And, then get annoyed your still paying college debt.

Well we have a thing called Internet that have places like Websites that you can buy & sell used books for cheap.

One doesn’t HAVE to buy textbooks. One can RENT them. But I agree; why are they so expensive?? Because it’s a free market and that’s how they make money. Nothing wrong with making money, but price-gauging is something entirely different.

I have a bit of a fix for that... but it might not always work: most, I can't say all, but most academic libraries provide and offer Inter-Library Loan services for their faculty, staff, and students. If your library doesn't offer your textbooks via their collection, you can request those materials from another library. This doesn't always work, but 8 out of 10 times, it does. There are limitations as well as timeframes, but oftentimes, the librarians and staff will work with you to make sure that you are taken care of. The materials are out there and we use it when we take classes so why don't you? Ya know? haha. just a tip from a library staff member to all you students out there.

In Brazil, Universities suggest books but it's not mandatory to buy, and they usually have them in the library to borrow (oh, and the best Uni are public, btw)

get ten people together, a good pc based scanner, buy one copy, scan it, distribute the book on memory sticks for $10 a copy... illegal as hell, but you get the satisfaction of beating the system... ask around, somebody who took the class last semester will sell you their memory stick with the book on it for $5

Agreed. Thankfully this is the exception not the norm now as ebooks are used far and wide

Text books are expensive everywhere. One of mine cost £90 and that was 10 years ago. It’s probably way more now.

At my university (Technical University Graz, Austria) professors offered scripts of their lectures at a college shop. These scripts were photo copies and cost about 5 to 8 Euro cent per page in today money. I bought a few scripts I didn't need for college simply because I was interested in certain topics and the scripts were cheap.

Yeah not sure that's just a U.S. thing. I had to buy some expensive books for Uni.

In the Netherlands we do our annual taxes in an online app where most of the data is already entered. All you need to do is check, enter your deductibles and hit "Send" and you're done. But that isn't possible in the US because some greedy software companies managed to block the IRS from setting up a similar system as a free service.

this one is sad..

Also children having to pledge allegiance to the flag in school sounds like some North Korea s**t to me. The only time in my country we give a s**t about the flag in school is independence day and even then no one is forced to pledge allegiance to it or sing to it

I love going to my local sauna. Everyone is naked. Boys and girls. You might see your boss or teacher naked. It's just completely normal, and I love it. But for my American friends, when I tell them, the first thing they ask is if people have sex orgies there or how I avoid getting a boner. 😖

This is not an american problem, it happens as well in Europe..Trust me, I am working in the logistics business for over 30 years :-)

We do have student loans in Norway, too, but that's to pay for food and rent. The interest rates are low, however, and I've never heard of anyone not being able to pay it back.

We have voting leave! (not so useful anymore, but used to be voting was 8-6 so if you worked, you couldn't make it, so you get to come late/leave early so you can vote - now voting is 6-22 most places so no need anymore)