7 things the US doesn’t get, and it really is no big deal — or not.
Things you deserve as a human being but easily forget about when you work three different jobs for minimum wage and are too busy catching up with the Kardashians!
Universal free healthcare: who needs healthcare when you have baking soda, which basically is the remedy to ALL health issues, as well as the main ingredient to having clean bathroom stalls. All this time spent nervously waiting at the dentist’s when all I needed was just a little powder to say goodbye to cavities and all my pains. They just don’t tell you that where I come from, and those fools just give you free healthcare whether you’re poor…OR RICH. Even worse: it works if you’re middle class too!
Quality food that’s affordable: who needs organic vegetables when you can have an alkaline diet by just snorting that magical remedy we already talked about that is baking soda! Just mix it with some high-fructose corn syrup or a bit of aspartame if you wanna be fancy, grab your spoon, be careful not to sneeze and go with the flow! And if you really insist on getting one fresh organic zucchini this month but are reluctant about paying half the price of your rent for it, just take a loan at the bank. One more or one less, what’s the big deal, right? IT’S AMERICA, BABY. MONEY GROWS ON TREES (contrary to fruits, that grow in a Monsanto laboratory).
A real social security system: honestly, people who get injured or fired because they’re not stock options and have human needs and defaults, they just deserve it all. Just give them some opioids to treat their back pains without asking yourself if something other than the symptoms could be treated and just hope for the best when they get strung out on drugs they can no longer afford cause their bank account and worth in society are moving in the same direction. Don’t forget to be a good neighbor and wave when you see them in the Walmart parking lot — yup, the same one that first fired them, replacing them with automated cashiers — asking for change (oh, the irony)! I used to think it was cool that you still got paid in France when you were injured or had cancer and had to stop working in order to just survive your health condition, but I now see that us froglegs are just a bunch of whinnies. Same with the benefits for poor and unemployed people. Who are they tricking anyway, pretending they can’t find a 5-figure job?
Affordable education: Who needs knowledge when you’re already part of the XXIst century empire? If we still have affordable education in Europe, it’s only because we’re peasants eager to get to the US level, knowledgewise and manonthemoonwise and we haven’t found incentives other than money to get people enrolled in university. All we’ve been able to put the French flag on and that still remains, honestly, has just been rotten milk AKA cheese and grape juice turned sour AKA wine. We’re just barbarians with cheap education (170€ for a year of Bachelor, 243€ for a year as a Master’s student, but I guess you only get your money’s worth and that somehow Marie Curie must’ve studied an online Mooc from the US while she was wasting her time in one of Paris’ universities on her way to the Nobel Prize — oh wait).
Protests and strikes and people taking up the streets: The French people is pretty much known as an angry people. We cut heads a few centuries ago and we’re still famous for it (even my American boyfriend knows that). It was a bloody carnage. But the fact is, if we’re still protesting today, and throwing stones at cops and looking for beaches of sand under the concrete sidewalks, that’s just because our little European country hasn’t got proper entertainment techniques yet, nor the government developed proper diversion skills to make us oblivious to the fact that we’re pretty close (we, the 99%) to being fucked like you by the remaining 1%. Also, we’re not high on sugar all the time, and obesity is not that bad yet so that we can’t take our butts outside and on the streets. Our government hasn’t reached that level of conspiracy against the poor that they just manage to make them unable to move from their couch. Also, we have streets that allow walking from one place to another. Protesting is way easier when you don’t need your car for every single aspect of your life. Who’d have known geography and city management played such a role in popular uprising?
However, protests are overrated and I do not miss the people taking part in politics and civil rights at all. Seriously, that’s super annoying to come across a street full of naive utopians when you just want to reach the fast-food restaurant on the other side of Place de La République.
BONUS : wanna learn more about the “yellow vest” protests in France ? Click here.
Human-sized environments: See previous point. Why give up cars when we all know that climate change is a scam invented by the Chinese, ainiright?
An economy that does not rely on the debt of individuals: Moving to the US has been eye-opening. I wonder how I ever managed to rent any place in Europe, and especially in Paris, without having to prove to them that I was in crippling debt but still managed to work 60 hours a week to make all my payments right on time. Naively, I always thought that having regular money and a positive balance on my bank account was better than being trapped in debt. America showed me I was wrong, and I now entirely enjoy my right as a consumer to be fully required to pay those lovely banks back each month!
