zlacker

>>moored+(OP)
People seem to be missing a hugely important fact here:

The level of grift seen in American society today is not normal.

It's worse than what I've seen in other Western countries by a lot.

Do I have hard data to support this? No. But anecdotally, everyone - everyone - I know who visits America has noticed this.

"The people over there are like wolves". "They're shameless". "They're all so focused on money". "That whole culture is just scams on scams on scams". "Christ, they're all so fake!" - All actual quotes, with emphatic expletives removed.

I know it's not a common topic of conversation for Americans, but the world hates us now. We're the number one threat to peace and stability since 2003, and only getting worse. Yes, I am ashamed of us. We had so much potential.

Presidents are grifters now. The military industrial complex is a grift. College is a grift. Healthcare is a grift - to an absurd and horrifying level. Banking is a grift that hurts the poorest the most, far worse than in other countries. The news is a grift. The legal system is stuffed to the brim with grift right up to the Supreme Court and right down to the police on the street.

It's been normalized to an extreme degree, at every level of American society. "I'm a hustler". "Don't hate the player". "Looking out for number one", etc. These are not normal phrases in other countries! This is seen as the sign of a very sick culture, one where to survive you need to fuck over other people; one where fucking people over to "get your bag" is seen as a necessity rather than as an abhorrence.

Again - this isn't normal in other countries. We've always had caveat emptor, but the idea that it's fine and normal to get 8 spam phone calls a day would be absurd in any other wealthy country.

This is, imo, fallout from the relentless attacks on anything that could be construed as socialist or taking care of people - itself a massive grift.

The war on terror was a grift - one that has resulted in trillions of wasted dollars - and it resulted in absolutely no consequences for anyone except the whistleblowers who exposed atrocities, war crimes, and global surveillance.

>>mandma+Ri
I doubt you've lived in other countries long enough to compare those systems based on what you're saying about banking, there's virtually no difference anywhere I've been and I still have a number of foreign bank accounts. Every time I see someone criticize US banking it's based on the assumption that poor people are too stupid to understand that interest is charged on loans or that withdrawing money you don't have incurs a fee. I agree with college and health care being ridiculous in the US and arguably mainstream news too (no wonder they're losing influence to podcasts). Everything else is either nowhere near unique to the US or exaggerated to the level of caricature.

>>slily+Fn
> Every time I see someone criticize US banking it's based on the assumption that poor people are too stupid to understand that interest is charged on loans or that withdrawing money you don't have incurs a fee.

Not stupid, just busy and desperate. And, sure, perhaps less intelligent than the people who are paid vast amounts of money to come up with marketing that's optimized to deceive them, while remaining just "technically honest" enough to avoid catching out too many members of the PMC who might kick up a fuss.

Do US banks still process each day's transactions in largest-first order, so that they get to charge as many insufficient funds fees as possible? (While mouthing the excuse that it's for the customer's benefit, so that their more important transactions like rent are more likely to clear, and in any case it was disclosed in the small print so there's no grounds to complain). That's the kind of thing that's illegal in any other industrialised country, and IMO reasonable to call a grift.