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Americans Are Sharing Things They Wish The US Would Learn From Other Countries, And Here Are 30 Insightful Answers
What better way to broaden your worldview than by traveling? Being able to experience new social norms and customs that might be miles away from what you're used to sounds like a great way to get some new perspectives. Perhaps just because things have always been a certain way, doesn't mean it's necessarily the best?
One Redditor asked US citizens what they think the US could adopt from other countries, and people had a lot to say. It's clever to check out how other systems work once in a while, and these folks noticed some huge gaps that the US needs to jump.
From mundane things like shoes in the house, to the whole tax system, people were eager to share where they think the US is lacking. Bored Panda selected the best submissions on what Americans could learn from other countries. Upvote your favorites, and don't be shy to share your opinion in the comments below!
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No tipping. But actually having a good salary for waiters not to mention, health insurance, paid vacation.
In Denmark waiters are paid a decent wage, so you only give a tip if the service has been extraordinary.
When I was in Austria and Germany, I walked my ass off everyday because I could. The streets were safe with designated pedestrian areas. I ate tons of food and drank tons of beer and I still lost weight. If American cities were more pedestrian friendly, we wouldn't have the obesity epidemic we have now. Well, maybe we would anyway - because, cr**py processed food with mystery chemicals in it.
I like how in Japan the schools basically have the kids clean up after themselves and take care of their school. They don't have janitors and children serve their peers lunch, too. Plus, their lunches always look amazing compared to the highly processed foods my child gets here. My son and I pick up trash around our area. The middle school by us is always covered in trash. Give some responsibility and respect to our planet.
Adding to this, guaranteed annual paid vacation days for everyone, period. The EU guarantees FOUR CALENDAR WEEKS. Some other countries have more.
US has ZERO.
Australia has 3weeks at Christmas, 1week at Easter and many paid public holidays, we even take 4 days off in November because of a horse race, frickin awesome:)
Finland has recently ended homelessness via just allowing people to live in small apartments without any preconditions and 4/5 make their way back to a stable life
it's also cheaper then allowing people to be homeless
I'm all for supporting the homeless but wonder how it's cheaper to house them than not? (Even if it's more costly I support)
A prison system that focuses on rehabilitation instead of punishment. Many countries have been successful with this saving literally billions of dollars and cutting down on crime.
Decent healthcare that isn't tied to your job. Other countries all over the world have figured out different ways to do this, so why can't we? (I know, corporations own politicians)
I'm not an expert, but I'm guessing it would destabilize a bunch of industries in the near term. But I wonder if long-term, it would create so much new innovation since people would be unafraid to lose their health benefits to leave their stable but s****y corporate jobs to start new ventures.
In Australia healthcare is paid for by our taxes, we are taxed heavily for this. In Australia we are pretty much taxed heavily for everything, the only people who seem to get away with not paying a lot of taxes are politicians
Teaching foreign language to young students in public schools (ie 5yrs, k-5) when the propensity to learn language quickly is maximum.
Seems that with huge spanish speaking countries directly to our (US) south, spanish SHOULD be mandatory.
I keep seeing people in the US being charged ridiculous fees to apply for a rental property and then up not being successful in their application. The UK has banned these fees and it seems a much more fair way of doing things.
No big pharma advertising
So, I pay my doctor $250 US per visit but then I have to talk to HIM about so and so drug???
Mandatory paid family leave for the birth or adoption of a child.
OMG yes, some people come back after a baby with no job. Huge problem
Remove it being legal for anyone to get paid less than minimum wage so as to rely on tips. No more tips. Just people making their hourly pay doing the job they do, and we pay what it costs, period.
If that means a haircut is $45, well, that's what even the cheapest one comes to anyway, with tip, so let's just have done with the tip economy and pay everyone their full wage, paid by the employer, and the customer pays the set price.
A haircut in Australia is well over $45, I mean, a packet of cigarettes is $55, a gallon of petrol (we use litres in Australia but I'm making it easier:)is approximately $7.50, my daughter got her hair coloured at the hairdressers, $425, minimum wage in my industry (I work in the building trade) $29 approx per hour, my 19 year old daughter earns $29 an hour, my 25 year old son earns $60 per hour........whilst the amounts seem large, they have to be because everything is extremely expensive
At South Korean restaurants, tables have call buttons. You press them when you're ready to order or you need anything. Other than that, the service staff leaves you alone.
In Canada they come regularly until you order then as soon as your food arrives they come back and ask how everything is before you have a chance to try it, then they can't be found when you want to pay and leave
When I went to Canada this summer I was amazed that there were recycle and compost bins everywhere. It was to the point that I almost didn't throw anything in the actual garbage the entire trip. Time to step up your game America.
Out subdivision recycles, but if you put the wrong things in your recycle box, they don't pick it up. I try to use a lot of recyclable items for my crafting. Just made 20mo grandson alphabet, number, color, and shape magnets using soda boxes. Cut in 2x2 squares, glued 10 pieces together, painted and sealed, attached magnets. He LOVES them!
When I lived in Illinois, recycling was free with your garbage pickup, but everywhere else I have lived it’s SO expensive to have recycling picked up! Where I live now it’s more expensive than my garbage, so I don’t do it. I feel HORRIBLE about it, but I have to make cuts somewhere to pay out-of-pocket for my health insurance.
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In Germany we currently have 4 bins for organic, plastic, paper and all the other stuff
We only have three in my council area in Australia- garden waste, recycling and waste, but other councils are brining in compost and separate recycling for paper and plastic.
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I live in Arizona and you are wrong. Maybe your town doesn't.
Load More Replies... It's expensive, we in the U.S. made a great effort, then backed off. Some places may still be going at it. People do not do a good job of self-sorting, and then there are different types of plastic to be sorted, etc. The goods recycled good do not return much and so it all has to be covered by taxes and we know where that goes. I see some places around us that have three containers in front of their house, (they never leave the street, so beautiful) and the truck just dumps them all in the same truck and it goes in the landfill. Where my sister lives they used to have inspectors go around and make sure you sorted your garbage right, if you didn't, a ticket. Wow, what a job!
Our small town USED to have nice large recycling bins in the side lot of a shopping center. Couple months ago they took them away, so the town no longer has a recycling drop-off for glass, plastic, and cardboard. Oh, and the local garbage collector does not offer recycling boxes for home pickup. F*****g sucks.
What that means to say is the republican states in the US need to step up their recycling game instead of believing the Earth is hear for our destruction and nothing we do has genuinely Earthly consequences.
Last year I moved to Alabama, and they do ZERO recycling. Bit of a shock, coming from California with 3 bins and going down to one.
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In some areas all garbage goes to a center where workers sort it into recyclables and other so only the right things end up in the landfills. Considering our unemployment rate in the US, EVERY city and county should have one. It's also strange how in the US they say they can't recycle this or that and yet other countries are doing it. Does physics exist differently in the US opposed to the rest of the world?
In Verdun, France, I saw a fluorescent bulb recycling kiosk in a mall. Here in the U S the want us to recycle them but make it hard to do
The building where I live has these bins on every floor. The suburb where I used to live had weekly pick ups for these on trash collection day.
In SA this doesn't matter becausse we have large numbers of homeless who pick through the waste, sort it and take it for recycling. It gives them some sort of income.
Our county , outside DC Metro, stopped accepting a lot of recycling (glass etc) because it was no longer profitable ... and we pay a recycle pickup fee
I'm in California and we have 3 bins... recycle, compost/green waste, and a "whatever the hell else" bin.
I'm in Indiana and we have no recycling pickup at all. I have to sort my own stuff and take it to the recycling plant if I don't want to throw everything in a landfill
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I'm in Alabama and while we have recycling bins it doesn't matter since it all goes to the same place.
In my city we pay for recycling AND hardly ANY of it is recycled since there is no market for it, so it sits in the landfill and of city politicans and bureaucrats swan around feeling all virtuous. Our province charges a deposit on drink containers which you can get back by returning the containers abd it provides employment for difficult to employ individuals. About 99% of these containers are returned
We tried food compost here in Portland but the processing center shut down because of the smell and the whole program was canceled.
No, we definitely still have food composting here in Portland. Just 10 minutes ago I cleaned out my freezer and put it in the green compost bin. It’s limited to single-family residences though with yards not available in apartment buildings.
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It depends on where you are. Here in Seattle, we recycle and compost, but if you go to a lot of the smaller towns in Washington state, they don't.
It‘s funny to see these bright colors. Ours are brown for compost, yellow for plastics, blue for paper and black for everything else, except glass. Glass has it‘s own containers. And of course every bottle and can that has Pfand goes back to a store to get the deposit back.
I spent 6 months in Canada and let me tell you, having 3 trashcans was a PITA but now that I'm back home in the US, I have a lot more respect for recycling and composting
In Washington state we have lots of recycling and some places have compost. I cringe when I visit Montana because about the only thing people don't dump is scrap metal like old cars. The rest just goes in the big green garbage cans. And in Eastern Montana at least it is hard to recycle if you want too because the nearest drop point is a long way away (for many). My relatives have about a 90 minute drive to Billings which is the closest place to drop recycle. That would almost be like me driving my recycle to Seattle. Small wonder they don't bother.
To be fair, I was in Perth and they didn't recycle anything! Was moaning about it to my friend and he explained that they recycle everything in the waste processing factory. Which is better because people make mistakes or don't want to recycle
In our city, they come to you to pick up all three categories, each in a different bin.
Universal school lunches. It is embarrassing that we do not have folks cooking lunches for students from scratch, and that it is not provided for free to all students. You want to bring your own lunch? Great, but you can also have the free hot lunch that looks homemade, not pizza squares, canned veggies and a slice of a fruit and 3 oz of milk. Kids shouldn't be going into debt for lunch. We're probably wealthy enough that our food waste alone would be sufficient to, if captured magically, to feed every kid in the United States three proper meals per day.
Walkable cities.
Above ground monorail systems.
I was on the board of a food charity for about six years. The amount of food that grocery stores throw away is staggering. In part due to US food safety laws. In bigger part due to US shoppers are super picky so if any fruit or veggie has a minor blem they will pass on it. The amount of waste is just painful to see.
A better tax system. IE the government gives you a number and you pay it, no guess work.
I thought USA is such a great country but reading all these and something as simple as taxes makes me realise maybe it is not as great as they make it look like. You are missing on so many points and to me it seems like your citizens are money making machines for the 1% and close to getting bankrupt with one wrong step....
Not having huge gaps in bathroom stalls from any other country in the world please. Why do we as americans put up with this? I'm tired of making eye contact with strangers while s******g in public.
I loved a unisex setup I used in Japan. (I think, small chance it was Korea). Open area is for hand washing. Also a pee trough on back wall. The stalls had walls/doors floor to ceiling. Appropriate since they were squat toilets. But when a person goes into a stall it is basically like a private room. So nobody watching you potty - but saves space with shared sinks. And of course it totally sidesteps the "which bathroom is okay to use" problem because everyone uses the same one.
In Japan there is a service that you can call 24hrs/day that will come with 2 drivers 1 car. One driver drives you and your car home, the other follows in their car to pick up the driver that took you home with your car. No DUI ect. Its actually really affordable there. No need to get an uber home that night then an uber back the next day when you are hung over only to find out you have a million parking tickets or your car got towed.
The train system from Japan. The US public transportation is lacking.
The US public transportation system is lacking because everything is rigged for fossil fuel companies to make moolah.
Taking your shoes off when entering the inside.
Lol this is certainly an American thing and i don't understand at all why you would want to wear your shoes indoors. It's dirty and so much more comfortable without shoes anyway
keep public spaces clean and tidy like in japan. that is all.
Swedish drinking laws. If I remember correctly, you can purchase alcohol below 5% at age 18, and be served liquor is bars (so the bartender can control the amount being served.) Seems like a smarter way to introduce kids to alcohol rather than opening the flood gates at 21.
I have always hated the hypocrisy / inconsistency between when you are mature enough to drive - 16, sign legal contracts / die in the military - 18, and smoke or drink - 21. Drive a car to the recruiting center, join the military and kill other human beings / maybe get blown up. But don't you dare buy a cigarette.
Widely available artisan bread at affordable prices
Where I live you can get the best artisan bread ever in a supermarket. Plus we have mini bakeries in some grocery stores that make amazing bread and other baked goods and sell them for a couple euros at most
Amsterdam. Knew they biked, but didn’t expected multi-level bike parking lots every mile. Jesus christ I loved it there.
I have just come back but did not do any sight seeing as the client my husband is a carer for wanted to go to the red light district every day. The first day we split up I want off with my baby but due to having sarcoidosis and ME the walking we done left me bed bound the following day with my feet elevated. Anyway this is the only tourist thing that was done, my husband his client and a friend who tagged along took the baby out for a canal cruise. The guide was really informative apparently and had said that every year they remove about 15 thousand bikes from the rivers and canals in the city. I thought it was a great fact because I love facts. But I really hope these bikes are recycled and turned in to more bikes because they are everywhere you look. I want to go back soon as I missed so much I wanted to see
Siesta. Nothing seems more civilized than everyone taking a nap from 12 until 3ish in the afternoon. Then working until 6-7. And eating dinner at 8 or 9
This seems like a waste of a day to me. I'd rather finish work 3 hours earlier in the day to have that time back with my family instead of napping and stretching out my work day
When I went to Japan. When I ordered from food from any type of chain that is also in USA like McDonald's, Denny's, Burger King, it looked like the picture on the menu or the commercial. It was truly bizzare. Like in the USA if you get a bigmac it looks nothing like the picture or in the commercials. When You get a big mac in japan...it looks like the one in the picture. Its like somebody back there was painstakingly putting that burger together perfectly.
Japan seems to take pride in everything they do. Amazing country and people
Fika, Swedish break for coffee and light socializing.
Note: this post originally had 37 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
FYI: These are not universal, either in or outside the US. Humanity plus corporate greed plus local/regional/national preferences mean any of these can apply anywhere, anytime. If you don't tip in Latin America, btw, be prepared for a *very* bad time. So.... yeah, not even tuesday and here we go. Geez, BP, take a weekend off... or just block everyone from the US from using BP since our nation sucks so much. I understand that's a very progressive/s/ thing to do. (For those wondering: See: News: Montana bans Tiktok)
Agreed. South Africa has a lot of the above problems as well. We have a tipping culture, and if you want quality anything you pay. We do have free education and public healthcare but the quality is abyssmal so most people pay for private suppliers.
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This isn’t an attack on the U.S., unless you make it one. These are ideas from around several countries that may improve lives in the U.S., some areas, some communities, some cities may not benefit from them, to think that one idea or system would work across a nation as huge and varied as the U.S. is optimistic to say the least, but look at the system that is in place now and see if it could be improved by importing some ideas that work elsewhere. If you are offended that’s your issue, offence is taken, not given. The U.S. has exported some great ideas, be confident enough to admit that others may have ideas that would improve your nation, none of us live in a perfect country.
And aren't the answers being given by Americans who have been to Europe and seen where changes can be made?
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Maybe we’ll get lucky and get :eek: 2 closed-minded, US-slamming posts this week. *Fingers-crossed*
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It's staggering how little we get for the amount of taxes we pay. In Europe and Asia, ordinary people are not subsidizing the wealthy and enterprises who are not paying their taxes.
German traffic education, laws, and penalties. German regulation of automobiles. Yeah, gimme that.
4 weeks of vacation would be great and all, but I go bonkers after one week.
It's not 4 weeks in a row, you arrange them during the year as you wish and can according to your work schedule / organisation with the colleagues. I have 8 weeks paid, and take them throughout the year so as to do max 15 days in a row, otherwise I'd go bonkers as well.
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So you're against the US adapting good ideas from other countries? That's all this list was. And most of our ideas originate elsewhere. This is a global age. Stop being a snowflake, we're not perfect.
Load More Replies... FYI: These are not universal, either in or outside the US. Humanity plus corporate greed plus local/regional/national preferences mean any of these can apply anywhere, anytime. If you don't tip in Latin America, btw, be prepared for a *very* bad time. So.... yeah, not even tuesday and here we go. Geez, BP, take a weekend off... or just block everyone from the US from using BP since our nation sucks so much. I understand that's a very progressive/s/ thing to do. (For those wondering: See: News: Montana bans Tiktok)
Agreed. South Africa has a lot of the above problems as well. We have a tipping culture, and if you want quality anything you pay. We do have free education and public healthcare but the quality is abyssmal so most people pay for private suppliers.
Load More Replies... This isn’t an attack on the U.S., unless you make it one. These are ideas from around several countries that may improve lives in the U.S., some areas, some communities, some cities may not benefit from them, to think that one idea or system would work across a nation as huge and varied as the U.S. is optimistic to say the least, but look at the system that is in place now and see if it could be improved by importing some ideas that work elsewhere. If you are offended that’s your issue, offence is taken, not given. The U.S. has exported some great ideas, be confident enough to admit that others may have ideas that would improve your nation, none of us live in a perfect country.
And aren't the answers being given by Americans who have been to Europe and seen where changes can be made?
Load More Replies... Maybe we’ll get lucky and get :eek: 2 closed-minded, US-slamming posts this week. *Fingers-crossed*
Load More Replies... It's staggering how little we get for the amount of taxes we pay. In Europe and Asia, ordinary people are not subsidizing the wealthy and enterprises who are not paying their taxes.
German traffic education, laws, and penalties. German regulation of automobiles. Yeah, gimme that.
4 weeks of vacation would be great and all, but I go bonkers after one week.
It's not 4 weeks in a row, you arrange them during the year as you wish and can according to your work schedule / organisation with the colleagues. I have 8 weeks paid, and take them throughout the year so as to do max 15 days in a row, otherwise I'd go bonkers as well.
Load More Replies... So you're against the US adapting good ideas from other countries? That's all this list was. And most of our ideas originate elsewhere. This is a global age. Stop being a snowflake, we're not perfect.
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