Comments by "Lorri Lewis" (@lorrilewis2178) on "Type Ashton" channel.

  1. I'm in the US and we cook all our meals - pretty sure we aren't unicorns. I moved to a rural area and we have a regional grocery store, Walmart, and a farmers market during growing season. Even Walmart has plenty of organic produce nowadays.
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  2. Culturally, one's ancestral heritage still informs individual family culture in America. For example, an American family of British heritage in general acts more reserved than an American family of Italian heritage. Beloved dishes frequently cooked will be different. "Heritage" has a lot of facets. As far as immigration, there is a political divide on the subject in the US - so there isn't an overall "tendency". The current situation regarding immigration right now, is that our southern border is wide open with no control whatsoever - rightfully causing a lot of alarm.
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  3. People can choose to eat that way, but most don't. My US household doesn't.
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  4. It sure has existed forever in Europe. Calling it "American-style" is not accurate since it has existed centuries before the US existed.
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  5.  @oliverraven  On the other hand, they probably cook a lot of Italian foods and have kept their Italian culture.
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  6. If it was a dire emergency and I had to fumble around looking for 50 cents to get into the restroom, I would not be too happy about it.
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  7. Back in the 1990s, I used to work at a big US convention hotel that was owned by a German chain - Kempinski Hotels. Young German employees would come to our US location to work in our hotel for 18 months and then return to Germany. The idea was that they would learn US hotel practices and bring them back to implement. They jumped at the chance because they could advance faster once they went back home because of the experience. The typical thing that would happen when the German employees arrived for their 18 month stint, was that they would spend six months asking a lot of "Why" questions due to culture shock. By the time they were getting close to leaving, they had adjusted and most of them wanted to stay in the US - some tried to win the Visa lottery. They used to joke they needed to find an American to marry. Most of them still wanted to eventually move back to Germany where their families lived, but they wanted to stay here for a long time. I asked one why she wanted to stay here and she said, "lifestyle". All of them did as much traveling in the US as possible since they'd never get the chance again to be here so long. As far as how those same Germans would feel about living here now, I have no idea. I lost touch with all of them. EDIT: Just looked one of them up and he's still here going strong. He made a big career for himself in the US.
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  8. I relocated from the suburbs of a large American city to the Appalachian region. Our local crime rate is so low, we have the highest safety rating there is. At the same time, the local citizens are armed to the teeth.
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  9. Sounds like your hosts were just terrible people.
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  10. That isn't really correct because it depends on the state. Most states in the US expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, so if you live in one of those states you can get Medicaid and not pay anything for your health insurance. If you live in a state that didn't expand Medicaid, then you probably won't qualify. However, if you replace that job with a low-earning job, you can get a government-subsidized health plan and if your earnings are low enough, you either don't pay anything or else you pay a fraction of the cost.
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  11. I said elsewhere in the comments that the neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s used to be full of mothers during the work week and all summer when kids are on vacation. Even if you were roaming all over the place, there were adults in the houses. That alone made parents feel safer to have their child out and about. Now neighborhoods are relatively empty during the day and parents feel the situation isn't as safe for roaming kids.
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  12.  @TheSimmpleTruth  Sorry, but to say that most Americans don't go beyond a high school diploma is so inaccurate. The only way you could come to that conclusion is by lumping much older generations together with young ones. Decades ago it wasn't necessary to get a college degree to do well financially. Younger generations largely DO go to college.
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  13.  @TheSimmpleTruth  I was born in 1958. I am a late baby boomer. I'm not offended. You are offended because I gave you facts that you refuse to acknowledge.
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  14. It has always been difficult for minimum wage workers, but US prices for buying or renting have risen VASTLY in the last 2 years. It's a combination of a housing shortage and large investors buying up tons of properties to turn them into rentals. I live in a rural retiree area where 3 years ago, you could have rented a large beautiful house for what it would've cost for a one-bedroom apartment in a city. Even here, rents have doubled. Lots of people moved out of cities during the pandemic once they were allowed to work at home, and this raised prices in smaller cities and towns, making them less of a bargain than before. Everyone is hoping this insane market in the US is temporary, but who knows? EDITING TO ADD: Some US fast food workers are getting paid a bit more these days because the pandemic created a worker shortage for those jobs. This caused many franchises to raise their pay.
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  15. Two years ago, grocery prices in the US were no where near what they are now. What you experienced is the NEW normal. However $250 for a restaurant meal for 4 people is not normal for a US restaurant. Where on earth did you eat dinner?
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  16. I don't know if this is happening in Germany, but a great many workers in the US are now working from home. Since this means the worker is no longer tied to the location their company is located in, it's causing a huge shift of families moving to smaller cities or the countryside where the cost of living is less. I think it's difficult to settle on house prices in the US because they vary so much. In the southeast and midwest, the price of that house in Aurora Colorado would be considered high for 1,400 square feet. That price would buy 2,500 to 2,800 square feet in many places. Of course in California it would be a bargain.
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  17. Grew up in the US in the 1960s and 1970s. We lived in a huge suburb and rode our bikes everywhere. We were out all day until it was time to come home for dinner. I noticed the fear about children's independence coincided with mothers beginning to work away from home. When I was a child, all the mothers were at home, so our parents knew there was supervision at our friend's houses even if we were playing outside. Once most mothers were working, neighborhoods became empty during the weekday and even during summer when kids are on vacation. I think the empty quiet neighborhoods devoid of grownups are considered more dangerous to kids.
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  18. Well, I know some of my American family were in WWII and one of them came back shell shocked and was never the same.
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  19. The US is the most natural disaster prone country in the world. Masonry construction is dangerous in the face of tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Building with wood is kinder for the environment and we have plenty of it.
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  20.  @IvanBaas  If you're referring to being subsidized for an Affordable Care Act marketplace plan, I do know people who've gotten it. They've gotten low-deductible plans and could see any doctor they wanted and no waiting time. They paid zero for the plan due to being low income. They went through an independent broker who looked for the best plan for them, which is the best way to approach it rather than figuring it out yourself.
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  21. One quibble. Anyone living in Colorado need not worry about losing their health insurance if they lose their job. Colorado is one of the states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA. As of 2023, 40 states have expanded Medicaid. Unless you live in one of the 10 states that didn't expand Medicaid, you are covered.
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  22.  @PDVism  The subsidy is on a sliding scale. For instance a person only making $15,000 per year would pay zero, with the gov't picking up the whole cost. Also the sliding scale sets a cap on what percentage of your income can go to pay the cost. The old scale was 2% to 9.5% of your total income and 0% for people at the lowest incomes. However, the Inflation Reduction Act was just passed and now the scale is 0% to 8.5% of income until 2025. They also removed the income cap, so it applies to everyone now. Another thing is that if a person has no insurance and needs surgery, many hospitals will provide financial aid up to 100%. I know two people who got 100% financial aid from two different hospitals in the US. One of them had a $60,000 bill for a 2 week hospital stay wiped clean because of financial aid. The other had a surgery 100% paid for via financial aid from the hospital - she never even saw the bill to know the cost. Our system has a lot of holes, but at the same time, there can be more options than you'd think.
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  23. I don't know that those numbers are correct these days. A lot of US fast food restaurants have raised hourly wages because the pandemic created a shortage of restaurant workers. My local Burger King offers $12.00 per hour and we're in the middle of nowhere.
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  24.  @kilsestoffel3690  Vacation rentals are using up a lot of real estate in the US as well.
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  25.  @Fuerwahrhalunke  The locals who have families that go back here for generations, teach their children to use guns and to hunt as a practical skill. It was a real culture shock when I first moved here to see a local newspaper run a story about an 11-year-old boy who killed his first deer. The caption noted that his family would not go hungry that winter. A lot of non-hunters don't realize something biologists know - deer without natural predators overpopulate and die slow deaths of sickness due to overpopulation. The hunt keeps them healthier. I was once on a two-lane road in a long valley and the sparse traffic had come to a halt. I got out of my car to ask what was wrong. Deer roam everywhere here, and a driver had accidentally hit one and severed it's hoof. There was no saving the deer. Did someone call the authorities? No. Some man in a truck had a gun on him and put the poor injured deer out of it's misery. It's a different world in the mountains. 🤔
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  26. You can buy better bread in bakeries in the U.S. It's not as convenient as the supermarket, but depending on the bakery there is lots of handcrafted bread types available. Our supermarket sells "La Brea" bread in the bakery section, which is pretty good.
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  27.  @peterkoller3761  I recently bought a loaf of La Brea Walnut & Cranberry bread in my local American supermarket that was wonderful with Kerrygold butter on it. It had a chewy handcrafted texture. Where do you live in the US?
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  28. Either you have not tried or don't have access to American "Winesap" apples. They have all the taste you could ever wish for. My local supermarket sells them in October and November and sometimes December. Plus our local apple orchards have them to pick.
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  29.  @apveening  Yes. My favorite apples are OLD varieties - Winesap or Empire. Not a fan of the newer varieties, though Opal is mild and pleasant. In general, I don't like apples that are mild, and somehow they've become the dominant types sold in the grocery stores. You'll have better luck picking from an orchard, though my local grocery store does sell Winesap and Empire in season..
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  30.  @wolfgangpreier9160  The Bay Area is insane. Rich tech employees have made it untenable.
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  31. There's a U.S. mail order company that delivers "misshapen" produce at a lower cost.
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  32. Not putting faith in a central power was baked into the US system from the very beginning. Our federal government was supposed to have few powers and the states were supposed to have all the rest.
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  33. It was put in place to prevent the interests of high-population city voters from swamping the interests of rural voters, which is exactly what would happen without it.
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  34. Considering that babies are often put up for adoption due to parental poverty, you could argue that situation is exploitation too.
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  35.  @TheSimmpleTruth  That is because it's counting ALL generations. As I said, younger Americans generally attend college. What do you think the complaints about college loans are all about? If you break it down by age, the percentages get higher as the generations get younger.
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  36.  @TheSimmpleTruth  You wrote: "Immigrants with higher education and skills will get better jobs than the average American because the average American does not have a higher education. Most Americans do not go beyond a high school diploma, therefore, they cannot have better jobs. So, when immigrants with bachelor and master degrees come, surely they will get good paying jobs and move on to financial stability." You are talking about the job market, which eliminates generations who are retired. Your claim that "most Americans do not go beyond a high school diploma" is laughable. The percentage of WORKING AMERICANS with a college degree was 53.7% according to a 2021 study by the Lumina Foundation.
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  37.  @PDVism  Sure, but at that income the gov't partly subsidizes their marketplace plan. And if they contribute to a retirement account, their subsidy will be higher.
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  38. Compare the families once their children are past preschool, because once they're in elementary school, the American preschool costs are over with. I'm a lot older than you, so I've seen how the ACA legislation dramatically increased health insurance deductibles. On the flip side it made health insurance free or lower cost to poor Americans (unless they don't qualify and need Medicaid.) We had our own business and paid for our own health insurance before the ACA and our deductibles were not remotely as high as they are today.
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  39.  @TypeAshton  But how are you figuring the American family would pay thousands for the birth of their children if they have insurance? Deductible? I know some things are 100% paid for regardless of the deductible. Is birth one of those things?
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  40.  @annamc3947  Yeah, when I worked for other people (companies) I think I always had an HMO plan. Had surgery twice and paid little to nothing back in the 1990s.
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  41.  @JustLIkerapunzel  As I said, some of them joked that they needed to marry an American because they wanted to stay. I didn't mean they only wanted to stay for a couple of years. They wanted to stay for many many years, and then retire in Germany when they were old. The one guy I looked up is still here after 31 years and he's doing super well in his career. I'm not trying to prove anything - just telling my experience at that time.
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  42. California is one of the most expensive places to live in the US, especially when it comes to housing. Californians who move to other states are always shocked by what they consider to be low housing prices. Also, housing prices everywhere have skyrocketed recently due to a supply problem caused by the 2008 recession when builders quit building houses for a long time, plus inflation.
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  43.  @TypeAshton  I realize this comment is a day late and a dollar short, but since most US citizens in the early days came here from across the pond, it is to be expected that they built what they had known. Of course, some things were modified for the weather here, like adding porches in the areas that were a hotter climate than Europe. My understanding about D.C architecture mimicking Rome, is that there was a revived interest in classical architecture at the time.
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  44. This American hasn't yet run into the extra tipping for things like coffee. As far as tipping in restaurants, there have been many think pieces written about whether restaurant tipping should be abolished and a guaranteed wage be substituted. However, it seems that many waiters themselves are not on board. If they work in an upscale restaurant, they say they would make less money on the proposed guaranteed wages than they make on tips. Then again, I read an account from a restaurant owner who abolished tips and substituted a mandatory service charge of 18% and said his whole restaurant functioned better because the back of the house staff ended up with more money.
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  45. You can buy good quality in the US. Even Walmart sells organic produce now. It depends on what the consumer chooses.
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  46. If you are in the US in October/November, see if you can buy Winesap apples. If the local grocery store doesn't have them, usually an apple orchard will. Full of flavor and my absolute favorite.
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  47.  @arnewengertsmann9111  I have lived here for just over 20 years now and have never seen local news reporting a gun accident. So, yes, the locals are responsible. I'm not sure what the rate of accidents is elsewhere. One thing that might surprise a lot of people is that 62% of the gun deaths in the US are from suicide rather than crime according to the CDC.
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  48. They are currently installing two roundabouts in my rural US town, so I guess we don't hate them. They are being put in places where roads are being reconfigured.
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  49.  @TypeAshton  Both my sister and my niece were able to begin working from home full-time last year. It caused them to pick up sticks and move to a beautiful warmer area with far lower costs of living. I think this trend is here to stay because workers are refusing to go back into the office for no reason now that the pandemic is over. ;)
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  50.  @tonykyle2655  Yeah, there are still some jackass employers out there. I don't know why they insist on their people being in the office when so many other companies have gone to the work-at-home model. It makes them less desirable as employers.
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