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Comment by mike-cardwell | Hacker News Reader

As a Brit, the only thing that would really draw me to America is the fact that they speak English and I can pick a state where the weather is nice. There are two absolute things that would stop me though: The lack of annual leave, and the lack of social healthcare. Maybe if I ever get rich I'd move, but I really don't want to be a poor to averagely wealthy American. I'd rather be a poor to averagely wealthy Brit.

[edit] My brother moved to Orlando a few years ago, and I love visiting for the weather and Theme parks. I took a greyhound bus from Tampa one day and an immigration officer came on the bus and aggressively demanded to inspect my passport. Pretty crazy. I've never been randomly forced to prove I'm allowed to be in the UK in the nearly 40 years I've lived here. Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that.

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>Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that.

I wasn't so much the visit in Orlando -- it was you using a Greyhound bus, which put you in the "possible illegal immigrant/poor person to abuse" category in the eyes of the cop.

They'd be much less likely to stop and ask you anything if you were just driving there yourself, or merely walking around Orlando.

Yeah, I did wonder if that was it. I've since discovered that busses are a thing that only poor people do in the US.

Or to rephrase it, it's one of the most affordable ways to travel longer distances.

Regional bus services are popping up and including amenities like wifi, friendly customer service, and stops for breaks (usually once every 2-3 hours). Greyhound service is abysmal however, and a last resort economically.

That is such a tragedy.

Not all busses, but greyhound - yes..

I forget where, but I remember my father telling a story about being the only white on a Greyhound bus (and not in the South, IIRC) in the 60s or 70s, and the guy he ended up sitting next to being a bit uneasy about him being there, until he realised my father was some professional foreigner who didn't drive and not someone there to cause trouble.

> The lack of annual leave

If you're coming over to work in a knowledge field like tech that's less of an issue, pretty much all of those jobs have decent levels of vacation. This year (my 4th year at the company) I have 31 days off (26 base + 5 rolled over from last year) not counting bank holidays and that's going up again when I hit 5 years.

The portrait of the US as a PTO-less hellscape is very true for retail/sales/blue collar workers but the situation is better in many fields.

Unless I am reading that wrong that's 26 days off/year which is still better than I have had at any tech company.

My first tech job had 2 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick leave. Next 2 where 16 days total comp bumped to 18 + 2 floating holidays.

UK has a legal minimum of 28 days off, but as with any minimum many are significantly higher.

Plus 52 weeks of weekends. Funny how we always leave that out when accounting work. So its 26 days + 10 federal holidays (in the US) plus 104 weekend days == 140 days off work a year.

Somebody posted about how medieval peasants had way more days off than us today - but it turns out it was about equal, considering everything.

365-144 = 225 which is far more than the 150 for medieval peasants quoted here: https://nypost.com/2013/09/04/medieval-peasants-got-a-lot-mo...

The other half of the US equation is many people don't take their full vacation days either though direct pressure or informal social norms. Working weekends are also very common.

That figure for medieval peasants is for a very short period of time after the plague when labor was in short supply. Not at all indicative of the quality of life you could expect as a peasant.

It's a bit weird because they recently lumped sick days and vacation PTO into one generic pool. It's nice because it gives way more time to just take off without faking sick.

Most places significantly cut total vacation time as part of the conversion and you still need a reserve to cover sick days anyway.

The loss of sick days also tends to get people to show up to work sick which is terrible downside IMO.

> The loss of sick days also tends to get people to show up to work sick which is terrible downside IMO.

True though we're 90% hot/hotel seating now so pretty much everyone is setup to work from home if they're sick-ish and don't want to use a day.

Perhaps but the way a lot of British people view things is quite inverse to Americans: Instead of thinking of ourselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" like a lot of Americans do, we think of ourselves as having "temporarily escaped poverty."

Meaning we view other countries through their most disadvantaged and genuinely believe that that could be us one day. If America treats their poorest badly, we believe they'd treat us badly if we ever had a bad run of luck.

The UK used to be a country of strong social safety nets, I'm not sure what it is today -- I don't recognise it (without getting overly political).

Same here. Work for a US company and get 24 paid vacation days per year plus the 13 or so stat holidays.

Every 5 years you get an additional month off for that year.

Just to trade anecdote for anecdote: I’ve ridden lots of greyhound buses, and never once been asked for my passport in the US (or any form of ID by a police officer; since I’m a US citizen, it’s not like I would have had a passport to present).

But, as it happens, I have been asked for my passport by British authorities on a train ride once in the early 2000s. Presumably if I’d had a British accent they wouldn’t have expected me to have a passport on my person.

I suspect both of us experienced relatively rare events!

Yes--every government employee stereotypes, and profiles. Government employees=federal, state, and local.

It's embarrassing, and I'm questioned all those days in grade school I repeated the Pleadge of Allegiance.

If I had a do over; I would have high tailed it to Europe, or Canada in my twenties.

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