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[AskEurope] Fellow Europeans, what is the aspect of USA lifestyle that surprises you the most? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/europe@feddit.de
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First of all, let's try to avoid American-bashing, and stay respectful to everyone.

I'll start: for me it's the tipping culture. Especially nowadays, with the recent post on !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world with the 40% tip, it just seems so weird to me to have to pay extra just so that menu prices can stay low.

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[–] 32 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (3 children)

When I read about people being frugal, there's always something like "I now go to restaurants only once a week", "I'm driving the same car for 5 years", "you don't really need 10 subscriptions for x". Do people really not cook their own food and spend money that much? My only subscriptions are internet and rent, and my savings would be gone if I'd get a car 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago

    Are these by posts by newspapers, blogs, or normal people? Because all the people writing for newspapers and financial blogs seem to live in a different world than most Americans. The average car in the US is 12 years old for example.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    You also wouldn't spend hours commuting to work every day. Cars are fast. I don't know how it is in Europe, but in America, commute time is unpaid and cost of living is obscenely high, so cars are pretty much mandatory if you want to keep a roof over your head and get a full 8 hours of sleep.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Here, cars are not fast. Cities are congested. When I worked on the other side of my small town, getting there by bike or by car cost the same amount of time. In bigger cities there is public transport.

    We generally also don't live hours away from where we work. I got rejected for a jobs because they didn't believe I'd commute for an hour by car while looking for a new place

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

    But then you have to live in a tiny apartment in the city. Housing in cities is extremely expensive (in terms of cost per square foot).

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Well, yes.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    That's not okay.

    Dignified living is a suburban house with ample open floor space, a yard for the kids and pets to play in, and no HOA or building manager threatening you with homelessness and catastrophic debt unless you bow to his every whim.

    That's how I grew up, it was a hell of a lot nicer and less scary than the apartment I'm living in now, and housing costs have stolen that life from me. Now you're telling me I should be happy with what my life has been reduced to? No, I am not happy about it. I am angry.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    In Germany HOAs aren't a thing and by law you have quite good tenant rights. for example once you have an open ended rental contract, your landlord can't really throw you out on their whim.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Around here, they may not be able to arbitrarily throw me out, but they can decline to offer a new fixed-term lease when the current one expires, and rent automatically doubles if a fixed-term lease is not signed. Is that not a thing in Germany?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    next to no one gets fixed term leases here, and I think even if you would, after certain time, by law it implicitly changes into an open-ended one

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    It implicitly changes to an open-ended one here too, but again, at double the rent. It's obviously meant to coerce tenants into continuing to sign fixed-term leases and agreeing to whatever new terms the landlord feels like imposing.

    I envy you, that you actually have substantial protection under the law from malicious landlords.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    There are just 4 or 5 legal reasons for a fixed term contract which have to be specified, and after a few (2 or 3) renewals (or the landlord lying about the reason), the contract becomes open end automatically.

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