If you are comparing the US to third world nations and places where dictators do their dictating, then fair enough.
But unapproached by anywhere else in the world?!?!
Get a grip, you are talking complete and utter nonsense.
Back to the OP, I’ll tell you what amazed me in the US, well, actually, New York is the only place I’ve been to in America. But I liked it so much I went twice!
When you buy something in a shop, the price is on it, then you go to the till and then they add tax.
I’ve never seen that anywhere before. Is the same thing done all over America?
I understand American taxes can differ from state to state, but if I’m in a shop in New York, the till is surely in New York as well, so it tickles me that the price you pay has to be recalculated when you get to the till.
That’s true, but the prices of items are typically mandated by corporate headquarters in places outside New York (or whatever city/state you’re in). Obviously they are not going to work out what the price would be with sales tax included in every jurisdiction they trade in. And if retailers had to work this out for every single item in the store before they were able to stick a price tag on it, they’d never get any work done.
It’s a pain for the customer, but you get used to it.
First, you greatly overestimate the power of the smaller states. House seats are divided so that they have roughly the same population, about 600,000 right now. Thus, larger states get many more seats in the House of Representitives than smaller states do.
To balance that, every state has an equal voice in the senate, and the electoral college is a combination of the two. But since the House is 4 times as large as the senate, larger states still have a much greater voice in presidential elections.
Really, I don’t see why you begrudge a state like delaware having 3 electoral votes when larger states have 25 or more.
I’ve heard that explanation before, ruadh, and I still don’t really understand it.
OK, Say I have a shop in a particular city and the tax in my city is 17.5%.
The goods come in from the out of state headquarters I have to price them.
So I price them with the pre-tax price.
Then a customer comes in and I have to multiply the price on the price tag by 1.175 to tell him what he owes me.
I have to repeat that operation at the point of sale for every single item, for every single customer, every single day.
Surely it is more efficient to look at the pre-tax price and attack the pallet loads of goods at the stock inward point and price them all up at (pre-tax price x1.175)?
The items have to be priced up anyway, and the time spent to stick a price tag on is exactly the same, whether the price being stuck on is the pre-tax price or the price including tax.
I - as the shop keeper - know of course, that the people who come into my shop in my city are used to multiplying things in their head by 1.175. So presumably no body really minds it, as it is the way things have always been amd everyone in this city is proficient at their 1.175 times table.
But I - as the foreigner **curly chick ** - found it baffling the first time I encountered it and was sure that I was being taken for a ride by the slick New York shopkeeper who had spotted me for a visiting mug he could rip off!!
You are correct. With today’s computerized systems, it would be no problem at all to set the prices to include tax. You could do it before the prices are sent from the central system or on arrival at the store. The store system knows what all the taxes are for its location.
However, there would be a rounding difference. Currently, the prices of all the items in the transaction that are taxable are added together and the tax applied to that total. This can give slightly different results from calculating the tax on each item individually.
(I work for a company that develops POS software).
Because I think that a person’s vote should have the same weight no matter where they live. Your whole response assumes that states are voting - you even added the title that says I think that minority votes have no value (for some reason the titles disappear in preview so I can’t see what it says exactly). This is exactly the opposite of what I am saying. I am saying that everyone’s vote should have equal value. I don’t care which state they live in.
One of the things ruadh mentioned that you’re overlooking, curly, is that products might be advertised nationally, but always taxed locally: “Widgets, only $9.99!” or “Try the new McShitburger - now only 99c!” It would be simply prohibitive to tailor such a campaign to individual tax districts. Furthermore, if the Acme company wants to print a bargain price on its anvils, it really can only print “$300!!!” - there’s no other practical choice.
No, cash registers are pre-programmed with the amount of tax so all you have to do is hit one key when you’re totalling everything up and it does it all for you. It’s really quite simple - a lot simpler than it would be to figure out the plus-tax price on each item individually.
Late to this cool thread, so just some random thoughts:
One thing that impressed me (in the true, neutral sense of the word) was seeing President Clinton with the Australian Prime Minister. I forget the occasion, but the national anthems of both countries were played. Prime Minister Howard simply stood to attention, both hands by his sides, for the Australian anthem, as y’ do. When the American anthem started, Clinton placed his hand on his heart. If the Australian had done that, he would have been labelled an insincere blowhard. This is no criticism of what is obviously standard US practice (I generally admire your pride in your country), just that it’s odd to Australian eyes. I found it just a bit ‘too much’.
Well, says a lot of non-US dopers. If you check the NADS and G’Dope boards, you’ll find a common theme that we get the impression that all you have to say to an American is that you are considering, heaven forbid, having a second beer, and you’ll find Alcoholics Anonymous cards being slipped into your pocket. Sure college students and whatnot drink a lot in every country, but finishing a Friday at work with respectable mortgage-and-two-point-three-kids thirty and fortysomethings from the office having ten pints at the pub seems not to happen in the US, unless it’s some sort of rare occasion.
True. I for one have never felt the urge to sew a Canadian flag on my backpack.
As an Australian child, I was taught to signal I had finished by placing the fork and the knife side-by-side straight up the middle of the plate. If I have not finished, but need a free hand, it’s fine to rest one or both utensils on the edge of the plate with the base of the handle touching the table.
Yes, it’s the region around Tamworth in northern New South Wales.
Pardon?
Okay, yes we’re aware there’s another one. I’m aware of the geographical location of the US New England. I could generally name the states in it, maybe missing one or including maybe one wrong’un max. I know that New York isn’t one though.
I am surprised at Americans’ lack of knowledge at their own geography. Yes, I know that’s a generalisation, but the “six gajillion percent of US school children can’t point to the United States on a map” stories are not uncommon here. I can remember being given a blank map of the world and having to enter the names of thirty or forty nations, and hesitating only over which was Iran and which was Iraq, then breathing a sigh of relief when I got it right because I thought the teacher might have laughed at me. I was ten. Also, I was not exceptional - all the kids did very well in the quiz.
In Australia, Americans are all called Yanks. Almost all the time. Deal with it - it’s not a slur.
If we defer to your Southern origins by not using the term in your presence, it probably means we don’t know you, or worse, don’t like you. If you make friends with us, we’ll call you a Yank, probably moreso if we know you’re from the South. If we really, really like you, we’ll call you a ‘Yank bastard’. Please don’t be offended.
Not uniquely American. I was taught that way. I still have aged relatives who were products of a depression childhood (including my own parents).
This has been discussed so much over the years on these boards, that I’m confused. I will make an admission: I forget who says what, and what I’m supposed to say. Usually, it’s just “I’m goin’ to shake hands with the unemployed”, or “Hey Daaaave! Where’s yer dunny? I need a slash.”
Regarding dining etiquette: I have to admit I don’t often see fellow Americans “signalling” that they’ve finished with the “cutlery pointing at 10:20 or 3:45” layout, so I was kind of surprised to see it labeled specifically as an Americanism (when I’d always figured it was a universally western custom). Anyway, it sounds like the “12:00” layout is pretty similar, just pointing the cutlery in a different direction. Unless I’ve entirely misunderstood the whole discussion, which wouldn’t be the first time.
As for the napkin thing, you would only put it on the table when you’ve finished the whole meal, not between courses. When I finish the meal, I lay it to the side of the plate (though I’ve seen people lay it on top of the plate too).
There are a lot of “Americanisms” that are actually regionalisms–like the unsweetened tea thing. As other posters have pointed out, you only find that in the North (it’s a “Yankee” thing). As for the whole “switching fork from left to right hand” practice, I’m not sure how prevalent it is throughout the US–I was taught to eat that way, and most native southerners do so. I haven’t traveled out west, however.
My mom finds the “European” custom of keeping the fork in the left hand rude, but I must admit that find it much more convenient to eat that way-- it seems clumsy to switch things back and forth. But it’s taken me a long time to get over my conditioning, and I still sometimes revert back to the “switching hands” method.
I’m not sure if this is an Americanism, but how about baggers at the grocery store? In the southern U.S., grocery stores almost always have a bagger–a guy (usually) who stands behind the cashier at the checkout lane and bags your groceries for you (and sometimes will even take them to the car for you!). If there’s not a bagger, then the cashier will usually bag your things for you. When I’ve shopped at supermarkets in Britain and Europe, on the other hand, I’ve almost always bagged my own groceries.
Baggers exist in many parts of the US, including New York and California.
My first truly embarrassing expat experience was the first time I went grocery shopping for my flat in London, bought about three bags’ worth of stuff … and only noticed after I’d paid for it that there was nobody there to put it in bags for me :o
Keeping it in the spirt of America v/s Europe at least, I’d like to offer a quote from one of my friends (and it does hint at America’s roots in Puritianism):
“America glorifies violence and demonizes sex while Europe glorifies sex and demonizes violence.”
Which leads me to ask… from that qualification, who is more civilized?
One small thing that I haven’t seen mentioned yet in this thread is: generational numbers in names (e.g. Joseph Q. Public IV). What makes this stand out to a non-American is that as far as I know the rest of European-culture countries only number monarchs. This conveys a (wholly undeserved, I am sure) impression of megalomania to people who first see such a name.
I assume that you see all kinds of benefits of labelling schoolchildren as dumb, ugly, and unable to perform certain tasks. I suppose you would consider it naive to believe that any person has the potential of contributing something of value to the community and the society if given the proper psychological mindset as well as the opportunity to learn any skills.
These are communist dictatorships and have nothing to do with the democratic socialism as practised in many free European nations and, indeed, to a small extent in the United States itself.
You forgot “poms.”
On the silverware thing, I was born and raised in the midwest. My parents, however, are from India, so I grew up eating with my right hand at the dinner table. When it came to learning the use of knife and fork, at a young age I taught myself what turns out to be the “European” method – fork in right hand, knife in left, no switching. When people tried to teach me the “proper” method, I thought they must be crazy. The switching method seemed to me to be the most inefficient, nonsensical thing I’d ever seen.
Countries are not represented in the World Series. The World Series is a commercial event wholly owned by Major League Baseball, a profit-making enterprise, not a country. This enterprise has 30 member organisations (clubs) that field teams. These clubs are privately owned corporations, not countries, and their principle interest is in profit. Some of the teams profit quite nicely without ever seriously competing for the championship, and that’s just find with them. They do not represent countries. Their players come from all over the world based on negotiations for salaries and benefits. They barely “represent” the localities in which their home fields are located.
Professional baseball is said to have started in 1869 – well, kind of. Professionalism did exist before, but the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first openly, all-professional club. The National League was founded in 1876 as the first “major league.” There have been half a dozen or so other major leagues, but the only other one to survive is the American League, which was founded as the (minor league) Western League in 1899 or 1900 (can’t remember exactly). The Montreal Expos began play in the National League in 1969 and the Toronto Blue Jays began play in the American League in 1977. So, there are the dates. But, as I stated above, professional baseball clubs are nothing more than commercial enterprises and don’t represent nationalities or countries.
Not true. See Snopes. Calling it the “World Series” was something that is common for publicizing commercial enterprises, especially in the 19th century. It’s not a claim on any particular characteristic or status. In legal terms it’s called “mere puffery.”
No, but politicians have to do it constantly in order to maintain their popularity. In order to win and hold office in most places in America, politicians are obligated to repeatedly wave the flag and display their allegiance to Christianity. I think the point is that this is not true in other countries.
Actually, it was the fear of giving power to the general populace. Under the original Constitution, only the U.S. House of Representatives was popularly elected. The rest of the federal government was appointed by an elite, which was what the Electoral College was meant to represent.
In my view, the provisions in the Constitution that prevent the majority from oppressing the majority are very good. However, the general pattern is that “no matter what the majority says, you can’t make the minority do X.” The Electoral College system is different. It explicitly gives more votes in an election to a minority based solely on geography. To me, this is a travesty of democracy.
First, if you look at the figures I posted before, you’ll see that the numbers work out to be quite a bit more disproportionate than you suppose. Furthermore, it’s not just a matter of states. Frankly, I don’t give a toss about states when it comes to voting for president. I want my vote to count just as much as every other person’s vote. I don’t care how big or small their states are, it should be one person, one vote. To top it off, when my state chooses a candidate different from the candidate I chose, my vote doesn’t count at all. That’s what I begrudge most of all.
Yes. My guess is that it makes sense for the merchant to keep his or her records clear on exactly how much tax was collected for each item. As a purchaser, I also prefer an itemized receipt. Also merchants often like to use certain figures for pricing (like those ending with “.99”) and adding in the tax beforehand would blow the benefit of this. And I suppose for those who object to taxes on a philosophical basis, it allows the merchant to emphasize that this portion of your bill was the government’s fault. Another thing, when it comes to paying for meals, most people tip for only the pre-tax value.
I don’t think very many people actually calculate the exact final price in their heads before going to the register. Why bother?
You missed my point, which was that the term in American slang is “Yankee,” not “Yank.”
It seems perfectly logical to me. If you have a father and son who are otherwise named identically, then how do you tell them apart? What if a grandparent or an uncle has the same name? Just putting the number there seems to me to be the easiest way to keep it clear. Then you don’t have to go through additional circumlocutions to make sure you’re identifying the right person.
In that sense, I wish our current president and his father, the ex-president, had names that were even more similar. That way we could correctly identify them as “Sr.” and “Jr.” instead of having to say “George H. W. Bush” and “George W. Bush,” especially because most people don’t know what the elder Bush’s middle names are.
Not a good example: actual use of a generational number beyond “3rd” or “III” is extremely rare (I’m a genealogist, and I’ve never seen it happen). Two friends of mine in college used the “III” desgination for good reasons. They had the same names as their fathers and grandfathers, both of those ancestors were still alive and well, and living in the same city as them. The grandfather was either John Smith Sr. or just John Smith, the father was John Smith Jr., and the son was John Smith III. The “Jr.” or “III” distinction was a necessity for mail or phone calls that came to my friends’ homes when they were growing up.
When both the father and grandfather are dead, most men with “III” drop it.
