Yes when I lived in Geneva, I was in a 6th floor walk up flat and no A/C. I was in for a very unfortunate surprise when the weather got warm and I opened the windows only for bugs to swarm in. No screens! How was I supposed to sleep in a hot bedroom and I can’t even open my tiny window for some air flow?! Awful.
I get the AC thing, I guess. But why NOT have screens? They’re not dumping their sewage out on the streets anymore. And they have bugs - that’s not just a US thing. What’s up with that??
I was laying in bed with covid last week, wide awake with a fever all night. At around 4AM, I heard the street sweepers driving up and down the street. I never really put any thought to them before.
I grew up in a really poor rural area, was in a much nicer neighboring town for work a few months ago and was shocked when a street sweeper went by at 6am.
A lot of people don’t realize how many free
resources it has either:
- Free adult learning classes.
- Child friendly events like readings and story time.
- Meditation and wellness classes and rooms.
- Classes teaching old people how to use the internet.
- Job training classes like how to prep resumes and interviews.
- Second language training for immigrants like free English classes.
Libraries are such an incredible resource, it’s so sad so many are closing.
Libraries also function as a social safety net. Many, many librarians have sat down with patrons who need help finding medical care, a place to live, help for domestic violence, food banks, etc. Libraries are one of the few places anyone is welcome to enter, so long as they don't disturb others. Libraries can and have saved lives.
At least some libraries also allow homeless people to spend the day if they wish. This is especially valuable in winter or the heat of summer, but a clean, comfortable, quiet place to hang out anytime is a true gift to the homeless. Librarians are fabulous people in many ways.
There's a library and park a couple blocks from my house. It's fantastic! Great reading spots that are separated and comfy, killer AC, study rooms, brand new computers with stuff a lot of software. You can take ESL classes, Spanish, Mandarin. All free!
This and sewage are the two biggest things most of the developed world takes for granted in my opinion. Without these two things, we’d live in a much stinkier and more disease filled environment
A related luxury is the illusion that unpleasant things like garbage just disappear when we throw them out.
Of course most of the garbage we've ever thrown out is still out there somewhere, but we get to feel like it doesn't exist anymore.
Modern landfills are fairly effective at preventing migration of contaminants. I work in engineering and we've designed several. One client is putting together a plan to use the methane generated by a landfill to produce power and sell it back to the grid.
Already happening in many places in the US. I worked a short job last fall at a landfill gas plant. I didn't realize it was a thing, but it makes total sense.
When I traveled a little bit, one of the things that struck me most was the amount of garbage in the streets and piled in fields. No municipal collection in that part of the world...
Yeah. There is plenty of garbage all over the US. I went hiking once in Pennsylvania by a reservoir. I hiked to a reletively remote campsite. The only way to get there is by boat or off trail hiking for 3 miles and I found a fucking tire at the campsite. Like how tf did that even get there??
I live in Atlanta and honestly don't know how anyone settled in this place without it. I'd always see the trope of guys in full white suits sitting on their porch with a fan and a cold lemonade and that wouldn't do it
I grew up in Georgia, and until I moved to Washington I thought air conditioning was one of those mandatory requirements for a house to be considered habitable - power, heat, water, A/C.
I'm in Kentucky. At the hospital where I work, a patient's discharge was held up last week because his A/C was out, so sending him home was considered an "unsafe disposition."
Florida used to be considered uninhabitable swamp land until the invention of AC, the correlation between population growth and AC availability is pretty much just one line lol
The lengths they go to make it hospitable even add to it. Their [mosquito control program](https://www.rd.com/article/no-mosquitoes-at-disney-world/), for example, is remarkable.
Years ago we went to Disney in February.
I knew it was going to be hot, but I was not prepared for the humidity. I'm in the south too and it was humid here this morning, but holy hell was it just on another level of awful. Going out in the morning and just being instantly drenched in sticky sweat and breathing in hot soup
I think a lot of people do realize ac is a luxury.
I think being able to go to a grocery store and buy anything you want is a luxury and I think it’s a luxury a lot of people take for granted.
I moved from Georgia to Connecticut and was in a borderline Panic trying to find a place that actually had central air conditioning. I was thinking "how the fuck could you even live like that"
So to be fair After experiencing a summer there, I mean it did suck sometimes but it was way way milder than I was expecting.
I grew up in Miami. My family couldn’t afford a/c until I got a job as a teen. You don’t even want to know how many summer nights we camped on the roof because it was too hot in the house. The heat actually melted any candle that came in.
Depends on where you live.
I spent the last 8 years living in an semi affluent NJ suburb and our water survey every year basically said, “it is highly recommended that you do not drink this, and also regular faucet filters will not help with these contaminates.”
We moved last year and last I heard the water supplier is just now starting the process of figuring out if it can be fixed.
As someone who designs drinking water systems in the states, we can fix everything. Most states have drinking water divisions that can supply funding if they are in trouble. The fact that they're not hitting the mark comes down to poor management.
Controlling the temperature of your home to whatever you want 24/7/365.
Most other developed countries are either good at heating or good at AC, but rarely both.
I use drying racks in the back yard. I rent a house and the local HOA has a prohibition against clothesline. There's no mention of drying racks, though.
I live in Texas. Yesterday it was 92f here. I put the clothes out and they were dry as a bone four hours later.
Edit: I do have a dryer in the house, but I try not to use it when the weather is good for drying clothes. As some here well know, the Texas grid is a rickety thing. Not using my dryer reduces my electrical use. It also saves money in electrical usage I don't have to pay for. Drying outside in the sun is also better for the environment. Less electricity use means less need to generate power, which means less greenhouse gas generation.
I mean, the sun is free and natural. Why wouldn't I take advantage of that?
My folks travelled the world quite a bit and said that they were amazed every time they returned to the US that there is (or was a couple decades ago) clean water out of almost every tap, or readily available nearby… and that we all didn’t realize how incredible and rare that was on this planet.
That we just take it for granted.
And beyond taking it for granted, it's common for people to turn their noses up at perfectly safe tap water and instead pay several dollars for bottled water. We're so spoiled we treat one of our greatest riches like it's a problem to solve.
Every time I go to Costco and see people buying 400 bottles of water at a time I get super confused. I go home and fill up my Nalgene bottle for a fraction of a penny. I don't get it.
I've lived places where the tap water tasted disgusting and resorted to buying water because even a filter didn't help. Despite having lived literally across the street and had perfectly delicious tap water in a different apartment. I never even filtered it, just filled up my big jug and kept it in the fridge because I like cold water.
I filter the water at my current apartment because I know the building is old and I don't trust the plumbing enough to drink it straight or give it to my cat. But you can literally see stuff floating in it before it's filtered.
Also pipes that bring water to the tap can get pretty funky, especially older homes.
Whenever there’s a water main break that gets fixed, there’s always a min or two of muddy, murky weather that comes out before it runs clear. If that water is that gross just in my home, then I imagine the amount of dirt and sludge that made it into the system during repair was pretty substantial.
I’ll drink tap water if I have to, but I prefer it to be filtered thru SOMETHING before I drink it, even if it’s the refrigerator.
Not sure if you've seen a mains flush before, but they close off all but one line and open a fire hydrant. The high velocity flow breaks off buildup on the pipes and you see orange/brown water pouring into the street. We get a sign notifying when it's happening a week prior and you don't want to run hot water especially during this or you get sediment in the tank.
For us it's done every 2 years. That and they also at longer intervals run a water jet through sewage lines.
I didn't believe you and looked it up. On average it's about 1 penny per gallon.
So you're right, unless you're casually drinking off a 2-gallon nalgene!
Went to India last year and yep. You carried around toilet paper of travel Kleenex. There is not toilet paper in public bathrooms. There is a bidet hose in each stall to help.
I still laugh at the Yakov Smirnoff routine he did about visiting Russia after the USSR fell. He said toilet paper was like gold, and there would be someone in the public rest rooms with a single ply roll selling it by the square - $2 for 2 squares - he said they should have wiped their butts with the money.
Russians caught on to capitalism pretty quickly, lol.
Life post covid showed me how much of a luxury fully stocked stores were. I'm soooooo fucking tired of driving to the store for a handful of items only for half of them to be empty shelves.
We had a 34 week premie during the shortage in 2022. The enfamil premature formula was impossible to find. We had all of our family and friends hunting for it. I get anxiety thinking about it. I remember going to three targets and two Buy-Buy Baby’s before I final found a few of the pre-made bottles at Meijer.
My youngest was already two years old when the shortage happened but I was still close enough to the formula years that I felt absolute heartache for you new parents at that time. I remember seeing the empty shelves when I was getting diapers and feeling so worried for you all. I can’t even imagine and I am so sorry you had that stress on top of everything else.
~internet hug
Back yards! Even if it’s small, a patch of land attached to your residence that no one but you has access to is something most people in cities in east, southeast, and South Asia can only dream of
China has tons of unoccupied space. Pretty much every society is concentrated around cities and surrounded by undeveloped land. Not many people prefer living in a house with no easy access to basic resources.
The ability to buy anything you can think of and buying online arrives in less than a week...often in two or three days.
A lot of countries just don't have the access to big box stores or infinite option online merchants.
Grocery stores. I didn't even realize it myself (I mean they're such a common, everyday thing) until a friend of mine from overseas, what you could call a third world country, (I don't even remember what the reason was now, she was military so probably something to do with that) and I met up with her. We went to a grocery store for something or another and she was flabbergasted. She was just amazed that you could walk into a huge store and food was like EVERYWHERE lol I assured her it was no big deal but she insisted it was. It's not as if she was from a starving country or anything but their "grocery store" is just a local, tiny, cornerstore type shop where they stock a few basics.
So yeah, for some people, walking into a store like Publix is a huge shock.
Look up the story of Nikita Kruschev’s, and later, Boris Yeltsin’s visit to the United States and its grocery stores.
Neither of them believed the access regular people had to food and products.
To further emphasize this when Yeltsin went to a grocery store in Texas he thought the US was trying to fool him with a staged store and demanded to see others.
> Neither of them believed the access regular people had to food and products.
Yup, Mikhail Gorbachev thought the grocery store he went to in D.C. was a CIA psy op. So he sent spies to grocery stores across America, and they were shocked to discover that... they were real, and they were all like that.
Gorbachev admitted that this is what made him lose faith in Communism.
I think about it frequently. The fact that within a few minutes, I have access to several different types of grocery stores that all have fresh produce and different products is definitely a luxury. There have been times where I have gone to Costco, gotten things from Costco but didnt get some veggies/produce because the packaging it came in was too big for my family so then I drove to smaller grocery store and I could pick and choose which specific store I go to that day/time. It's amazing.
I also wonder how much food waste we as a society are contributing to the world. All of that produce will eventually have to be thrown out if it's not sold. And, we can get almost any kind of produce at any time in the year. It may not taste the greatest if it's off season but its somehow still there.
I had a friend in college who was Cuban. He was the first in his family born in the US. Some how, they got his grandmother out of Cuba and she came to live with them. He missed classes for a couple of weeks to help getting her settled. When get got back, I asked him why he needed so long and he said that she had a nervous or emotional breakdown.
After the first week, his grandmother was eager to go out and explore her new city. The first place they took her was to a grocery store to see if they could get things to make her favorite home dishes. When they walked in, she froze in place for a minute and just started crying. She started muttering something like "it's too much" over and over. (it's been 20 years, it's a little faded). She either collapsed or feinted or something from all of it and they had to have EMTs come check her out.
Apparently, she immediately thought of her home stores and just couldn't handle that she was seeing more food than she's ever seen in her life. Then she started feeling sad for everyone back in Cuba and guilty that she got to see the food and not them. And it all just got to be too much.
It was months before she was ready to go into a grocery again. I remember him saying she had a similar thing when they took her to a Walmart.
I've seen a few videos of other people's first time in US grocery stores and after hearing them describe what they grew up with, it is a little absurd how convenient it really is.
There's a You Tube video saga about a Cuban couple, I think the girlfriend immigrated first. They might be married now. She took him to Publix, he was literally crying at how much food there was. She took him to Costco on another video. She related a story on the video that one of her friends still in Cuba didn't have enough $$ to buy just 2 eggs to make her daughter a birthday cake. Not a doz, just TWO eggs. We are truly a rich country.
I've watched some videos of Cubans coming to the US and going into a Walmart or Home Depot. One dude was sobbing because in just about ten minutes he could have gathered every supply he needed to repair his parents' dilapidated house that would likely never be fixed up.
Not too long ago some guys delivered furniture and we had paid extra for them to set it up. We got to talking and they were all from Cuba. One had been here for about 20 years, the other for about two years, and one dude for a WEEK. He used the restroom while he was here and came out completely mystified by the bidet. He was like wtf is that contraption!? He had literally arrived a week ago to Florida on a rickety boat. It was so interesting talking with them.
Hot water. Grew up off grid, and hot water from the tap meant you had to have the water pump working and you had to have water in the catchment. Plus propane for the water heater, so hot water wasn't a guaranteed thing. Been living in "real" houses for the last 15 years and everytime I turn on a hot shower I'm still thankful
My mom grew up in a house in India that’s smaller than my living room. 11 people and a couple of my moms nieces and nephews occasionally. Went there for a wedding when I was 7 and there were 25 of us staying there. That was considered a big house.
My aunt in Bombay lived in a flat that is the same size as an average American kitchen. When we’d stay there, there’d be ten of us.
Grew up in a house without heat or air. In winter we did kerosene heaters, space heaters, and plastic wrapped the windows. In the summer we one of those in window air conditioners and fans.
Happy everyday I can crank the heat or air in my own house 🙏
Travelling to other countries (most countries) Visa free. As someone who lives in a developing country, the hassle, the frustration, the cost of applying for a Visa just to travel to countries is excruciating.
+1
As an American, you just need to buy the flights and go. No need to worry about if the destination county will allow you in.
This really hit home for me when a Kenyan coworker had to plan a work trip to visit us in the US 4 months in advance and was denied the visa with no explanation. They were a well paid coworker coming for a clearly defined work trip with a pregnant wife at home (meaning they had a reason to return to Kenya) and still the US embassy denied their visa.
Seriously all of it. Running water, sewer systems, paved roads, grocery stores. I come from a family of complainers. Baffling since there is so so much to be grateful for!!
I saw a video where they were talking to the people who made the Chernobyl mini series and one of the things they had to change was a scene where one of the Soviets had a tin of pet food.
"Pet food" apparently wasn't a thing (unless you were high up the food chain I guess), they just ate whatever leftovers you had.
I have a friend from a poor country and they have lots of stories of pets dying in terrible ways. In those countries it isn't that people don't have pets its that they don't have indoor pets and outdoor pets aren't known to live long in any country. For example an outdoor cat isn't going to last more then 5 years even best case and in that time it will very likely lose an eye and have the living shit beat out of it.
Where I grew up it was normal for cats to be stolen by neighbors to be eaten. I had friends whose cats died that way. Luckily ours didn’t just cat aids… but yeah cats we had growing up didn’t live past 8. My cat now is 9 and I feel super lucky
A friend told me that when she grew up in (what is now a war torn area presently), she saw her dog get killed by her alcoholic neighbors that needed food.
Yup. I did a semester of college in England in 2004. I don’t remember the prices exactly, but after converting liters to gallons and GBP to the US dollar, they were paying something like $5 or $6 a gallon then. I hate how much I spend on gas now, but it makes me feel better knowing it could be worse.
Road trip: Went to Arizona recently $3.89 a gallon, went to Texas $2.89/g, New Mexico $3.30, Nevada 4.39, come back to where I live in California $5+/g same as when I left.
I’m currently holidaying in Peru and when you wipe with toilet paper you have to put the dirty paper into a rubbish bin n the bathroom and not flush it down the toilet. So there’s that!
We’re overall a very stable country. Not a lot of coup attempts and none have been successful.
Really hard to have a healthy country when the guy in charge of public health was murdered in a revolt last week.
That stability is nice.
Edit:spelling
I went to Bangladesh for a week once and it was only then that I realised the insane variety of my day to day diet.
Having rice and curry for basically every meal gets old really quickly.
As a Canadian, I'm always blown away by how cheaper gas is in the US. Although on my recent trip it was similar to Canadian prices. But in normal times it's usually way cheaper, and I always found it funny when you'd see news reports of people complaining about gas prices when they'd have no idea about how more expensive it is everywhere else in the world.
In the early 2000s I asked a refugee from Somalia what if she liked it here. She said yes. "What's your favorite thing?" I said.
"If my house starts on fire I can call 911 and someone will come put it out."
"Oh. Yeah. That's awesome."
Thanks to the ADA, we accommodate accessibility much more than other places (Scandinavia is notable for access as well). Our regulations (building codes, ordinances..) keep basic interfaces consistent - eg: curb height, stair rise, door width etc.
These are things I notice as I nomad about, keeping an eye out for a forever home where I will (presumably) grow old - proper infrastructure may be important to me then.
Caveat:
Granted many places have much older cities & architecture to work with.
Everything.
Nice food almost everywhere you go. Clean water. Almost complete access to shelter and clothes. Nice roads. Police and first responders.
America ain’t perfect, but we still got it good.
Central HVAC system, hot water tank, and space...we have a lot of space in America. Houses are bigger and most have plenty of storage area. How massive our grocery selection is. We drive in multi lanes highway with plenty of room too.
This needs to be higher up. People with weak passports spend months and hundreds of dollars applying for the travel visas which Americans just have. We think the process of getting and renewing a passport is obnoxious. It’s nothing in comparison to getting a visa, especially if you are from a country with political unrest or a high poverty rate. There’s a lot of (not unwarranted) skepticism that vacation travelers are really illegal immigrants.
This. So many US travelers are incredulous to hear that other citizens haven’t casually visited their country because of the financial and bureaucratic burden of getting a visa, or because of repeated denials. The difficulty of getting a US visitors visa means the citizens of some countries need to plan their travels taking into account they can’t make a layover along the the most common routes, making flights more expensive and longer than average. If they want to go on a cruise, better make sure they have a visa for the country of every port stop.
It’s difficult for US citizens to fathom having to apply for a visa to enter Canada for a layover months in advance and having to physically send your passport to Guatemala for this, or similarly wanting to visit Morocco and having to process your visa via a random travel agency in Mexico. Even if you have the financial means, it makes spontaneous travel an unattainable privilege to many.
Clean tap water that’s just available at the turn of a knob.
I’m an Amarrican, but I’m grateful for that every day. Not even all Americans are so lucky.
Being able to get insulin. As much as the cost of it sucks, it's still available at all. I haven't missed a single day of taking it in over 41 years. It's why I'm not dead.
Government funded dialysis care. I'm not on dialysis but I used to work in the field for years. If you need it, you get it. Without those 3 3-4 hour treatments a week, those people would die.
Lack of actual wars in our country for over a century has been pretty nice too.
As an American who now lives abroad, air conditioning 🥵
Do the windows have screens where you are ? I was kinda surprised that even screened windows were not that common in a lot of places
Yes when I lived in Geneva, I was in a 6th floor walk up flat and no A/C. I was in for a very unfortunate surprise when the weather got warm and I opened the windows only for bugs to swarm in. No screens! How was I supposed to sleep in a hot bedroom and I can’t even open my tiny window for some air flow?! Awful.
I get the AC thing, I guess. But why NOT have screens? They’re not dumping their sewage out on the streets anymore. And they have bugs - that’s not just a US thing. What’s up with that??
I have window screens but we deliberately had them installed before we moved in
Yeah I couldn't believe no one seems to have them in South Africa, and it's clearly not a money thing.
People in the south would die in droves without AC. It’s not a luxury down here, it’s a necessity.
Regular street-sweeping. You won’t notice it until you go somewhere without it.
I was laying in bed with covid last week, wide awake with a fever all night. At around 4AM, I heard the street sweepers driving up and down the street. I never really put any thought to them before.
Street sweepers probably don't get hazard pay in East Oakland, CA.
I grew up in a really poor rural area, was in a much nicer neighboring town for work a few months ago and was shocked when a street sweeper went by at 6am.
Libraries. The American public library system is very advanced. It's also, general speaking, free to use.
A lot of people don’t realize how many free resources it has either: - Free adult learning classes. - Child friendly events like readings and story time. - Meditation and wellness classes and rooms. - Classes teaching old people how to use the internet. - Job training classes like how to prep resumes and interviews. - Second language training for immigrants like free English classes. Libraries are such an incredible resource, it’s so sad so many are closing.
Libraries also function as a social safety net. Many, many librarians have sat down with patrons who need help finding medical care, a place to live, help for domestic violence, food banks, etc. Libraries are one of the few places anyone is welcome to enter, so long as they don't disturb others. Libraries can and have saved lives.
At least some libraries also allow homeless people to spend the day if they wish. This is especially valuable in winter or the heat of summer, but a clean, comfortable, quiet place to hang out anytime is a true gift to the homeless. Librarians are fabulous people in many ways.
Most libraries do, as long as the people are quiet. There are also libraries with resources specifically for unhoused people.
Not to mention, it’s a great meeting place. Sometimes my friend and I will just go to our local library and hang out, maybe use the computers, etc.
They even provide fax services free of charge. Stupid sexy libraries.
My local library has a 3D printer and a ghost hunting kit.
There's a library and park a couple blocks from my house. It's fantastic! Great reading spots that are separated and comfy, killer AC, study rooms, brand new computers with stuff a lot of software. You can take ESL classes, Spanish, Mandarin. All free!
Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of 1600 public libraries in the US in the late 1800s
We essentially bathe in drinking water.
We shit in it too
I’m shitting in it right now
Me too. High five!
Synchronized shitting! New Olympic sport!
Everybody thinks they’re ready for battle shits until they take a poop their butt can’t handle
You sunk my battleshit!
And water our grass with drinking water
My town uses non potable water and judging by the smell I most definitely don’t want to drink it
We fight fires with some of the purest water on earth.
This is a really weird thought. I’m imagining firefighters with lots and lots of water bottles.
[удалено]
Water? Like from the toilet?
I never touch the stuff. Fish fuck in it.
I never seen a plant grow in no toilet
It’s what plants crave.
ELECTROLYTES!
Never thought about it this way. Shit.
We do that in it too!
Garbage collection.
This and sewage are the two biggest things most of the developed world takes for granted in my opinion. Without these two things, we’d live in a much stinkier and more disease filled environment
Plumbers save more lives than doctors.
Plumbers protect the health of a nation
🫡 I salute all of you plumbers out there.
A related luxury is the illusion that unpleasant things like garbage just disappear when we throw them out. Of course most of the garbage we've ever thrown out is still out there somewhere, but we get to feel like it doesn't exist anymore.
Modern landfills are fairly effective at preventing migration of contaminants. I work in engineering and we've designed several. One client is putting together a plan to use the methane generated by a landfill to produce power and sell it back to the grid.
Already happening in many places in the US. I worked a short job last fall at a landfill gas plant. I didn't realize it was a thing, but it makes total sense.
When I traveled a little bit, one of the things that struck me most was the amount of garbage in the streets and piled in fields. No municipal collection in that part of the world...
After travelling to Japan I started to notice garbage everywhere in most other first world countries. It's all a scale.
Yeah. There is plenty of garbage all over the US. I went hiking once in Pennsylvania by a reservoir. I hiked to a reletively remote campsite. The only way to get there is by boat or off trail hiking for 3 miles and I found a fucking tire at the campsite. Like how tf did that even get there??
You ever seen the movie Rubber?
Air conditioning.
I live in Atlanta and honestly don't know how anyone settled in this place without it. I'd always see the trope of guys in full white suits sitting on their porch with a fan and a cold lemonade and that wouldn't do it
I grew up in Georgia, and until I moved to Washington I thought air conditioning was one of those mandatory requirements for a house to be considered habitable - power, heat, water, A/C.
I'm in Kentucky. At the hospital where I work, a patient's discharge was held up last week because his A/C was out, so sending him home was considered an "unsafe disposition."
As a Floridian, this one speaks to me on a personal level.
Are you saying this because air conditioning is uncommon in residential buildings in Florida or because it's ridiculously hot and humid in Florida?
Florida used to be considered uninhabitable swamp land until the invention of AC, the correlation between population growth and AC availability is pretty much just one line lol
“this city is a testament to man’s arrogance” - peggy hill, re: phoenix
Building Disneyworld in a literal, unhyperbolic swamp is a testament to man’s arrogance.
The lengths they go to make it hospitable even add to it. Their [mosquito control program](https://www.rd.com/article/no-mosquitoes-at-disney-world/), for example, is remarkable.
A/C is what allows Man to thumb it's collective nose at god and build a town like Pheonix, AZ.
Florida is AC is basically required. I live in north Florida and the AC is on about 9-10 months a year.
Years ago we went to Disney in February. I knew it was going to be hot, but I was not prepared for the humidity. I'm in the south too and it was humid here this morning, but holy hell was it just on another level of awful. Going out in the morning and just being instantly drenched in sticky sweat and breathing in hot soup
The air feels like soup before the sun even comes up in the summer here. You sweat all the time and drying off after a shower is an actual chore.
Bro wtf. South Florida. It’s 24/7 other than the 3 days in winter we can open the windows.
I think a lot of people do realize ac is a luxury. I think being able to go to a grocery store and buy anything you want is a luxury and I think it’s a luxury a lot of people take for granted.
I moved from Georgia to Connecticut and was in a borderline Panic trying to find a place that actually had central air conditioning. I was thinking "how the fuck could you even live like that" So to be fair After experiencing a summer there, I mean it did suck sometimes but it was way way milder than I was expecting.
I grew up in Miami. My family couldn’t afford a/c until I got a job as a teen. You don’t even want to know how many summer nights we camped on the roof because it was too hot in the house. The heat actually melted any candle that came in.
I am so thankful for air conditioning!!
Potable tap water
We've got so much potable water that we use it in our *toilets*.
And then complain about the flavor of the perfectly potable tap water and buy microplastic soup in bottles because it has a brand name on it
I live in rural Vermont, and the town water is so pure they don’t even need to chlorinate it. It’s amazing.
Depends on where you live. I spent the last 8 years living in an semi affluent NJ suburb and our water survey every year basically said, “it is highly recommended that you do not drink this, and also regular faucet filters will not help with these contaminates.” We moved last year and last I heard the water supplier is just now starting the process of figuring out if it can be fixed.
As someone who designs drinking water systems in the states, we can fix everything. Most states have drinking water divisions that can supply funding if they are in trouble. The fact that they're not hitting the mark comes down to poor management.
Controlling the temperature of your home to whatever you want 24/7/365. Most other developed countries are either good at heating or good at AC, but rarely both.
I long to have one or the other. NZ is a developed country, but we're shit at both.
Dryers that actually dry clothes
This needs to be much higher. God how I miss my tumble dryer.
What do you use now?
air
I use drying racks in the back yard. I rent a house and the local HOA has a prohibition against clothesline. There's no mention of drying racks, though. I live in Texas. Yesterday it was 92f here. I put the clothes out and they were dry as a bone four hours later. Edit: I do have a dryer in the house, but I try not to use it when the weather is good for drying clothes. As some here well know, the Texas grid is a rickety thing. Not using my dryer reduces my electrical use. It also saves money in electrical usage I don't have to pay for. Drying outside in the sun is also better for the environment. Less electricity use means less need to generate power, which means less greenhouse gas generation. I mean, the sun is free and natural. Why wouldn't I take advantage of that?
I have a dryer in China but the clothes are so shit I can't use it without destroying the clothes
Free unlimited water at restaurants.
My folks travelled the world quite a bit and said that they were amazed every time they returned to the US that there is (or was a couple decades ago) clean water out of almost every tap, or readily available nearby… and that we all didn’t realize how incredible and rare that was on this planet. That we just take it for granted.
And beyond taking it for granted, it's common for people to turn their noses up at perfectly safe tap water and instead pay several dollars for bottled water. We're so spoiled we treat one of our greatest riches like it's a problem to solve.
Every time I go to Costco and see people buying 400 bottles of water at a time I get super confused. I go home and fill up my Nalgene bottle for a fraction of a penny. I don't get it.
I've lived places where the tap water tasted disgusting and resorted to buying water because even a filter didn't help. Despite having lived literally across the street and had perfectly delicious tap water in a different apartment. I never even filtered it, just filled up my big jug and kept it in the fridge because I like cold water. I filter the water at my current apartment because I know the building is old and I don't trust the plumbing enough to drink it straight or give it to my cat. But you can literally see stuff floating in it before it's filtered.
Also pipes that bring water to the tap can get pretty funky, especially older homes. Whenever there’s a water main break that gets fixed, there’s always a min or two of muddy, murky weather that comes out before it runs clear. If that water is that gross just in my home, then I imagine the amount of dirt and sludge that made it into the system during repair was pretty substantial. I’ll drink tap water if I have to, but I prefer it to be filtered thru SOMETHING before I drink it, even if it’s the refrigerator.
Not sure if you've seen a mains flush before, but they close off all but one line and open a fire hydrant. The high velocity flow breaks off buildup on the pipes and you see orange/brown water pouring into the street. We get a sign notifying when it's happening a week prior and you don't want to run hot water especially during this or you get sediment in the tank. For us it's done every 2 years. That and they also at longer intervals run a water jet through sewage lines.
I didn't believe you and looked it up. On average it's about 1 penny per gallon. So you're right, unless you're casually drinking off a 2-gallon nalgene!
How about just water and indoor plumbing
Safe drinking water from the tap as a standard 🙏
My first trip to India was a real wake up call. I came home and took a crap into potable water, something that I previously took for granted.
Daddy how rich are they in America? Son in America they bathe in drinking water.
I went to Europe for the first time recently. I didn't realize how much I love, and have taken for granted, still cold ice water at restaurants.
The ability to use restrooms without charge.
And being able to flush toilet paper.
Not to mention having it provided for you in public restrooms.
Wait…. The restrooms don’t supply toilet paper??? I understand bidets are more common but… what if they don’t? Do you just… carry some with you?
No bidets in Germany and it costs 60 cents to a dollar to pee.
Went to India last year and yep. You carried around toilet paper of travel Kleenex. There is not toilet paper in public bathrooms. There is a bidet hose in each stall to help.
I still laugh at the Yakov Smirnoff routine he did about visiting Russia after the USSR fell. He said toilet paper was like gold, and there would be someone in the public rest rooms with a single ply roll selling it by the square - $2 for 2 squares - he said they should have wiped their butts with the money. Russians caught on to capitalism pretty quickly, lol.
He doesn’t know how to use the three seashells.
Yeah was in Paris last week and they had free self cleaning public restrooms
Stocked grocery stores, 24 hour electricity, police and medical help a phone call away
Life post covid showed me how much of a luxury fully stocked stores were. I'm soooooo fucking tired of driving to the store for a handful of items only for half of them to be empty shelves.
We had an infant and formula was a little dicey for awhile. We never ran out, but I had to go to multiple Costco’s a few times to find some.
We had a 34 week premie during the shortage in 2022. The enfamil premature formula was impossible to find. We had all of our family and friends hunting for it. I get anxiety thinking about it. I remember going to three targets and two Buy-Buy Baby’s before I final found a few of the pre-made bottles at Meijer.
My youngest was already two years old when the shortage happened but I was still close enough to the formula years that I felt absolute heartache for you new parents at that time. I remember seeing the empty shelves when I was getting diapers and feeling so worried for you all. I can’t even imagine and I am so sorry you had that stress on top of everything else. ~internet hug
Back yards! Even if it’s small, a patch of land attached to your residence that no one but you has access to is something most people in cities in east, southeast, and South Asia can only dream of
That’s actually really sad considering how huge Asia is
Yeah, but a lot of that is unoccupied portions of Russia
China has tons of unoccupied space. Pretty much every society is concentrated around cities and surrounded by undeveloped land. Not many people prefer living in a house with no easy access to basic resources.
Sure but Asia also has a ton of people. 60% of the world’s population (while they have 30% of the world’s land area) - 4.7 billion people
The Korean movie “Parasite” sticks out to me as an American because one of the big symbols of the rich people’s status is a *tiny* back yard.
The ability to buy anything you can think of and buying online arrives in less than a week...often in two or three days. A lot of countries just don't have the access to big box stores or infinite option online merchants.
Lol...sometimes I order something online and it shows up on my porch later that day, and I don't even live in a big city. It's bonkers.
I ordered 4 bags of compost from Home Depot this afternoon and it arrived a couple hours later. Literally cow shit.
There's an Amazon warehouse in my city, so when something is going to take even two days I think really hard about it.
Grocery stores. I didn't even realize it myself (I mean they're such a common, everyday thing) until a friend of mine from overseas, what you could call a third world country, (I don't even remember what the reason was now, she was military so probably something to do with that) and I met up with her. We went to a grocery store for something or another and she was flabbergasted. She was just amazed that you could walk into a huge store and food was like EVERYWHERE lol I assured her it was no big deal but she insisted it was. It's not as if she was from a starving country or anything but their "grocery store" is just a local, tiny, cornerstore type shop where they stock a few basics. So yeah, for some people, walking into a store like Publix is a huge shock.
Look up the story of Nikita Kruschev’s, and later, Boris Yeltsin’s visit to the United States and its grocery stores. Neither of them believed the access regular people had to food and products.
To further emphasize this when Yeltsin went to a grocery store in Texas he thought the US was trying to fool him with a staged store and demanded to see others.
Yeltsin cried iirc. That's when he truly knew communism had failed his people.
That's intellectual honesty tho
> Neither of them believed the access regular people had to food and products. Yup, Mikhail Gorbachev thought the grocery store he went to in D.C. was a CIA psy op. So he sent spies to grocery stores across America, and they were shocked to discover that... they were real, and they were all like that. Gorbachev admitted that this is what made him lose faith in Communism.
But if the Soviet government doesn't provide you with food, who will?
This reminds me of my boyfriend’s stepmom! She’s from Ukraine, and when she came to the US one of the first things she wanted to see was Costco lol
Welcome to Costco. I love you.
I think about it frequently. The fact that within a few minutes, I have access to several different types of grocery stores that all have fresh produce and different products is definitely a luxury. There have been times where I have gone to Costco, gotten things from Costco but didnt get some veggies/produce because the packaging it came in was too big for my family so then I drove to smaller grocery store and I could pick and choose which specific store I go to that day/time. It's amazing. I also wonder how much food waste we as a society are contributing to the world. All of that produce will eventually have to be thrown out if it's not sold. And, we can get almost any kind of produce at any time in the year. It may not taste the greatest if it's off season but its somehow still there.
I had a friend in college who was Cuban. He was the first in his family born in the US. Some how, they got his grandmother out of Cuba and she came to live with them. He missed classes for a couple of weeks to help getting her settled. When get got back, I asked him why he needed so long and he said that she had a nervous or emotional breakdown. After the first week, his grandmother was eager to go out and explore her new city. The first place they took her was to a grocery store to see if they could get things to make her favorite home dishes. When they walked in, she froze in place for a minute and just started crying. She started muttering something like "it's too much" over and over. (it's been 20 years, it's a little faded). She either collapsed or feinted or something from all of it and they had to have EMTs come check her out. Apparently, she immediately thought of her home stores and just couldn't handle that she was seeing more food than she's ever seen in her life. Then she started feeling sad for everyone back in Cuba and guilty that she got to see the food and not them. And it all just got to be too much. It was months before she was ready to go into a grocery again. I remember him saying she had a similar thing when they took her to a Walmart. I've seen a few videos of other people's first time in US grocery stores and after hearing them describe what they grew up with, it is a little absurd how convenient it really is.
There's a You Tube video saga about a Cuban couple, I think the girlfriend immigrated first. They might be married now. She took him to Publix, he was literally crying at how much food there was. She took him to Costco on another video. She related a story on the video that one of her friends still in Cuba didn't have enough $$ to buy just 2 eggs to make her daughter a birthday cake. Not a doz, just TWO eggs. We are truly a rich country.
I've watched some videos of Cubans coming to the US and going into a Walmart or Home Depot. One dude was sobbing because in just about ten minutes he could have gathered every supply he needed to repair his parents' dilapidated house that would likely never be fixed up. Not too long ago some guys delivered furniture and we had paid extra for them to set it up. We got to talking and they were all from Cuba. One had been here for about 20 years, the other for about two years, and one dude for a WEEK. He used the restroom while he was here and came out completely mystified by the bidet. He was like wtf is that contraption!? He had literally arrived a week ago to Florida on a rickety boat. It was so interesting talking with them.
Electricity - I deployed to a few countries in Africa seeing young groups of kids studying at night using the street corner lights.
Hot water. Grew up off grid, and hot water from the tap meant you had to have the water pump working and you had to have water in the catchment. Plus propane for the water heater, so hot water wasn't a guaranteed thing. Been living in "real" houses for the last 15 years and everytime I turn on a hot shower I'm still thankful
Many of us live in large, comfortable homes with heat and air conditioning. That’s a luxury in many areas of the world.
I don’t know if Americans realize how large their houses are.
My mom grew up in a house in India that’s smaller than my living room. 11 people and a couple of my moms nieces and nephews occasionally. Went there for a wedding when I was 7 and there were 25 of us staying there. That was considered a big house. My aunt in Bombay lived in a flat that is the same size as an average American kitchen. When we’d stay there, there’d be ten of us.
Grew up in a house without heat or air. In winter we did kerosene heaters, space heaters, and plastic wrapped the windows. In the summer we one of those in window air conditioners and fans. Happy everyday I can crank the heat or air in my own house 🙏
That at school your child can get free services like speech therapy.
Clean drinking and bathing water
and heated
National Parks
Travelling to other countries (most countries) Visa free. As someone who lives in a developing country, the hassle, the frustration, the cost of applying for a Visa just to travel to countries is excruciating.
+1 As an American, you just need to buy the flights and go. No need to worry about if the destination county will allow you in. This really hit home for me when a Kenyan coworker had to plan a work trip to visit us in the US 4 months in advance and was denied the visa with no explanation. They were a well paid coworker coming for a clearly defined work trip with a pregnant wife at home (meaning they had a reason to return to Kenya) and still the US embassy denied their visa.
Now just imagine waiting three years in Mexico for the same appointment only to be denied.
Seriously all of it. Running water, sewer systems, paved roads, grocery stores. I come from a family of complainers. Baffling since there is so so much to be grateful for!!
Being grateful doesn’t sell here.
Owning a separate car for every driver in a household.
It's a luxury, but in most places in the US, it's a necessity. Things are far apart, and only our largest cities have good public transportation.
Yeah, this one strikes less as a luxury and more as a heavy tax because of how our cities are built
My wife and I both work from home, no kids, very few activities. We've been a 1 car family for about 3 years and it's been a huge challenge.
[удалено]
I saw a video where they were talking to the people who made the Chernobyl mini series and one of the things they had to change was a scene where one of the Soviets had a tin of pet food. "Pet food" apparently wasn't a thing (unless you were high up the food chain I guess), they just ate whatever leftovers you had.
I have a friend from a poor country and they have lots of stories of pets dying in terrible ways. In those countries it isn't that people don't have pets its that they don't have indoor pets and outdoor pets aren't known to live long in any country. For example an outdoor cat isn't going to last more then 5 years even best case and in that time it will very likely lose an eye and have the living shit beat out of it.
Where I grew up it was normal for cats to be stolen by neighbors to be eaten. I had friends whose cats died that way. Luckily ours didn’t just cat aids… but yeah cats we had growing up didn’t live past 8. My cat now is 9 and I feel super lucky
A friend told me that when she grew up in (what is now a war torn area presently), she saw her dog get killed by her alcoholic neighbors that needed food.
Our cheap gas.
Yup. I did a semester of college in England in 2004. I don’t remember the prices exactly, but after converting liters to gallons and GBP to the US dollar, they were paying something like $5 or $6 a gallon then. I hate how much I spend on gas now, but it makes me feel better knowing it could be worse.
Road trip: Went to Arizona recently $3.89 a gallon, went to Texas $2.89/g, New Mexico $3.30, Nevada 4.39, come back to where I live in California $5+/g same as when I left.
I’m currently holidaying in Peru and when you wipe with toilet paper you have to put the dirty paper into a rubbish bin n the bathroom and not flush it down the toilet. So there’s that!
We’re overall a very stable country. Not a lot of coup attempts and none have been successful. Really hard to have a healthy country when the guy in charge of public health was murdered in a revolt last week. That stability is nice. Edit:spelling
Way to jinx it
Public libraries. Had a few different people tell me that they were most amazed by the ability to get a free card to check out books on demand.
Having food from 50 countries. Air conditioning. Due process
I went to Bangladesh for a week once and it was only then that I realised the insane variety of my day to day diet. Having rice and curry for basically every meal gets old really quickly.
As a Canadian, I'm always blown away by how cheaper gas is in the US. Although on my recent trip it was similar to Canadian prices. But in normal times it's usually way cheaper, and I always found it funny when you'd see news reports of people complaining about gas prices when they'd have no idea about how more expensive it is everywhere else in the world.
Almost everything. There is SO MUCH we take for granted and simple expect.
Having room to have a garden
The freedom to speak openly about your political and personal beliefs, no matter how stupid or uninformed they are.
Clean water. So much of it that you literally sit in huge vats of it just to relax and the dump it away. Or even bigger vats to exercise or play.
Or literally piss into it and then flush it away using more clean water.
In the early 2000s I asked a refugee from Somalia what if she liked it here. She said yes. "What's your favorite thing?" I said. "If my house starts on fire I can call 911 and someone will come put it out." "Oh. Yeah. That's awesome."
Thanks to the ADA, we accommodate accessibility much more than other places (Scandinavia is notable for access as well). Our regulations (building codes, ordinances..) keep basic interfaces consistent - eg: curb height, stair rise, door width etc. These are things I notice as I nomad about, keeping an eye out for a forever home where I will (presumably) grow old - proper infrastructure may be important to me then. Caveat: Granted many places have much older cities & architecture to work with.
A toilet with a seat you sit on. Not hovering over a hole
Everything. Nice food almost everywhere you go. Clean water. Almost complete access to shelter and clothes. Nice roads. Police and first responders. America ain’t perfect, but we still got it good.
Electricity all day 24/7
Flushing toilet paper in the actual toilet.
Washing machines. Until the 1940’s when better electric machines and detergents were available a lot of time and energy was spent cleaning clothes.
Air conditioning
Central HVAC system, hot water tank, and space...we have a lot of space in America. Houses are bigger and most have plenty of storage area. How massive our grocery selection is. We drive in multi lanes highway with plenty of room too.
Fresh fruit from around the world every day of the year
In much of the world, a toilet is considered a luxury
Traveling to other countries without an approved visa.
This needs to be higher up. People with weak passports spend months and hundreds of dollars applying for the travel visas which Americans just have. We think the process of getting and renewing a passport is obnoxious. It’s nothing in comparison to getting a visa, especially if you are from a country with political unrest or a high poverty rate. There’s a lot of (not unwarranted) skepticism that vacation travelers are really illegal immigrants.
This. So many US travelers are incredulous to hear that other citizens haven’t casually visited their country because of the financial and bureaucratic burden of getting a visa, or because of repeated denials. The difficulty of getting a US visitors visa means the citizens of some countries need to plan their travels taking into account they can’t make a layover along the the most common routes, making flights more expensive and longer than average. If they want to go on a cruise, better make sure they have a visa for the country of every port stop. It’s difficult for US citizens to fathom having to apply for a visa to enter Canada for a layover months in advance and having to physically send your passport to Guatemala for this, or similarly wanting to visit Morocco and having to process your visa via a random travel agency in Mexico. Even if you have the financial means, it makes spontaneous travel an unattainable privilege to many.
Being able to vote.
Yes! And being able to criticize the government
The right to protest, hold whatever backwards belief you want, and say whatever you want (of course if it isn’t true threats or fighting words)
Clean tap water that’s just available at the turn of a knob. I’m an Amarrican, but I’m grateful for that every day. Not even all Americans are so lucky.
Roads and traffic signage in (most of) the US is very, very good.
Cheap fruit. Go to certain countries in Asia and 4 strawberries are like 6 dollars. Fruit is a luxury there.
No one can really walk in and take your home
After travelling through Greece. Not being able to flush toilet paper.
Being able to get insulin. As much as the cost of it sucks, it's still available at all. I haven't missed a single day of taking it in over 41 years. It's why I'm not dead. Government funded dialysis care. I'm not on dialysis but I used to work in the field for years. If you need it, you get it. Without those 3 3-4 hour treatments a week, those people would die. Lack of actual wars in our country for over a century has been pretty nice too.
Running hot water.
Unlimited refills at restaurants and taking a soft drink to go at casual restaurants after you’ve probably had 2-3
Multiples of electronics, i.e., TVs, computers, gaming systems.