Average American Compared to Average British Citizen || Americans in the UK
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- Опубликовано: 16 дек 2020
- Matthew did some research, and today we are comparing the average American citizen to the average British citizen. Are all our stereotypes confirmed?
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I miss you being in our country. I hope your family are well and staying safe through these trying times.
We missing being in the country as well. : (
Same to you and yours!
I didn’t know they had left ??!! Or how long or why they were here ?
@@phoenix-xu9xj can't seem to get rid of him in a sense 🙂 keeps popping up on here lol
The extra time Americans spend watching TV is probably the commercials
The commercials! Oh man.
I will say, as a younger person (used to youtube and netflix and such) cable television commercials are THE WORST. Even in the UK I couldn't stand all the commercials.
I much prefer to record, then join in 15 minutes after the programme has started, finishing at around the same time. Commercials are a drag.
I take it the house building has temporarily stalled? If so I'm sorry to hear that.
It has! A couple of stalling factors, but we will get back to it eventually. No worries!
@@SchaeferFamilyAdventure I'm not worried beyond the stress it will cause you. Nothing worse than waiting for builders to get on with things.
Hi Matthew, I would suggest a large lump of debt, particularly in the UK, is outstanding mortgage....stats taken from surveys are notoriously inaccurate due to the national sport of lying on questionaires! 😃
One of the Brits main aspirations is to own their own house. Not so, in Germany, Italy, and France hence higher mortgage debt. I don’t know if that is the case in the States for such high personal debt.
Mortgage, of course. Not sure why that didn't occur to me. Thanks Jeff!
Interesting cultural difference. I do remember that about Germany from some of my cultural studies. Thanks for the input!
@@SchaeferFamilyAdventure Add car repayments to that and some families have more than one car at a time.
We don't use lbs but stones which are easier to visualise.
Matthew, I appreciate your honesty in your response to Lee's comment. I empathize 100%.... the RUclipsr life is challenging from a mental health standpoint as well as a "work"/life balance standpoint. I have to remind myself to keep it all in perspective... like about a million times a day! I enjoy your videos and wish I had seen this one earlier! When you posted every Saturday I was good about catching your videos in a timely manner... have you adopted a different upload schedule now, or do you upload whenever you can?
Thanks!
We post when we can these days. We're hoping for twice a month, and once we get a more solid schedule we may start to do more regularly.
The debt thing is probably mortgages.
Just commenting before I've finished watching, but when you talked about income and weekly spend, did that include US health insurance costs? The fact that we pay for Healthcare with taxes rather than having to pay huge medical bills may be important.
I keep hearing that people in the USA don't get/take as many paid days off as we do in the UK, is that true? Or at least they don't holiday as much?
True, there is also a lot of cultural "unspoken" rules about not taking holiday. That is why I expected the numbers to be further (I thought UK numbers would be much lower).
@@SchaeferFamilyAdventure That would only apply in the UK if you were considered in permanent employment. A lot of people now are not on any type of fixed employment contract. Those mainly classified as unskilled. Some less skilled people also have higher wages than people in some professions. The people who put my garden fence in were making about £250 a day. Roofers earn good money. it varies a lot and there are apprenticeships that pay while training for a good salaried job. Lots of variation to take into account.
In the US when you start a new job that is full-time salaried position, you will likely get only 10 days of vacation. Plus about 11 national holidays. I believe this is much lower than the UK and Europe. And I agree with Matthew that there is a bad cultural phenomenon where people don't take their vacation days OR national holiday time off as a badge of machismo or hard-workingness. Crazy!
@TheRenaissanceman65 sounds like several more days off in total.
We probably don't do as much strenuous exercise in the UK but we for sure technically do more exercise in general, as many brits do more walking, where as Americans drive pretty much everywhere, and obviously some of this is due to distance between places rather than all being lazy :)
So, we smoke more, drink more, do less exercise and live longer!
Despite the doom and gloom merchants, we must be getting this right! We are getting the correct balance.
See my my comment above!!! 😄😀👍
Haha! Sleep less too! You seem to be doing something right!
@@SchaeferFamilyAdventure I think my excessive alcohol intake is killing the germs that would normally make others sick......it's my theory and I'm sticking to it!
@@jpw6893 I hadn’t thought of that. I shall add that to my excuses too.
My understanding is Americans get 2 weeks or 10 days of paid holiday per year, whereas here in the UK I get 6 weeks or 30 days paid holiday, the average is approx. 25 days. I agree some of the stats appear a little unexpected, but not knowing how the data was collated it’s hard to fairly compare. I do hope you’re staying safe and well over your side of the pond. 😀
It is tough with all data, isn't it? I did expect that we would have a much higher "average" number of hours worked each week. But I suppose you take that time off and spread it out over 52 weeks, and it isn't a much?
We are trying our best to stay safe! Hope you are doing the same!
@@SchaeferFamilyAdventure We have just heard today that the South East hospitals have all but filled up and patients are being moved outside to lower infection rate areas where possible. That would be non COVID cases. While not on total lockdown we are now more restricted with meeting other people again and certain facilities have been closed again. Locally the problem is doubling each week. Sending children back to school seems to have been the main cause of this in the older age groups. Mass testing is expected to be extended over the next few weeks.
They rarely get maternity leave and definitely not much sick leave or compassionate leave .
With regards to the education system, i'm not saying your stats are wrong but i've also read and heard a few times that it's easier and not as in depth in the states, so in reality it's probably not that different, and most education in the states seems to be about the states, where as here there's a lot of stuff
Education: A lot of US institutions lowered the passing grade due to fewer people passing UK has a higher passing grade.
Exercise: US drive everywhere where as UK walk a lot more but dont class it as exercise
I wondered if that was true for people in the UK. Like "I wasn't exercising, that's just my commute."
Whereas the U.S. "I went for a wee bit of a walk around the block....that's my 30 minutes of exercise today!"
Obviously, there are so many areas where those figures shed no light on significant possible differences. Quality of life. Stress Levels. Uncertainty for the future/levels of [in]security in health, employment, personal finances, housing etc., likelihood of bankruptcy, physical security "on the street". And the feeling of how much control one has over one's life etc.
Hi, As your preamble suggested, averages are not a good representation, butt a reasonable starting place..
I think, for weight, maybe median maybe better.
For average income, a more useful comparison maybe the hourly rate of pay, determined by Annual income divided by number of hours worked in a year, this should take care of sick pay, holiday pay and national holidays etc.
How do we each define 'drunk', for these stats? Do we include pint lifting as exercise?
UK debt is mainly mortgage, not surprising given high house prices, but generally the debt is against an increasing asset. Our student loans are also part of this, but can be written off after 20 or 30 years (not sure).
On exercising, many UK workers, in cities will commute by bus, train etc, often walking to and from these, we would not normally call this exercise, but compared to US, where most/many will drive to work.
Please note his is not a gripe just some observations about where some issues might be.
Good clarifications. I do think you are right about many of them - sometimes hard to find the stats I was hoping for.
I think I knew how they defined drunk when I did this video, but I can't quite recall now how it was defined. I think it was based on blood alcohol percentage estimates, but honestly not sure.
The infant mortality rate in the USA is 6.2 per 1000 live births compared to 4.8 in the UK. This would seem to have some significance in the overall life expectancy figures. Compared with other OECD countries, the U.S. ranks No. 33 out of 36 countries.
Debt does that cover mortgage
Probably. I looked again, and consumer debt is also at an all time high (for both countries) but not quite this high!
That debt figure probably includes mortgage debt.
Now I've been locked out of the live stream. Sorry guys.
Haha, no issue. I was playing with the "premier feature" not sure if it is better or not.
51 times a year drunk? sounds very high.. and I drink regularily but I am not drunk by my own standards that often. What is the definition of drunk?
Even though the U.S. has a higher rate of "educated" people, I think Brits are generally more aware of the world and society and history. Have you ever watched the Jay Leno (and many other) "people on the streets" interviews? Lordy, Lordy, it's shocking and embarrassing to note what people DON'T know about the world and their country's history. As for exercise, I think Americans do more "organized" exercise (gyms, classes, etc.) than Brits, but Brits walk far more than we do but don't consider it exercise. It's just their way of life.
Yes, I agree with what you are saying. Brits and Europeans walk loads more than Americans. When I lived in Los Angeles, it was a joke that people would drive down the block rather than walk. It's kind of true in the US in general. As for education, I also agree that Brits know loads more about history and society than Americans in general... here is MY personal theory on this. I think Brits learn those topics more in their education BEFORE uni. Here in the states, you can graduate high school and know (have retained) next to no info about history, politics, geography. DEFINITELY world history/geography, as there is a lot of apathy and lack of education on those topics. And once you get to uni, you can graduate with an engineering degree like I did, and even get a master's degree like I did, and still be woefully uninformed about history, politics and geography! I have a channel that compares US and UK things and discusses Britain in general. I have been amazed at how incredibly well informed and erudite my mostly-British subscribers have been . Either my channel just happens to attract the most intelligent well-informed folks in Britain (which seems preposterous) or Brits in general are just more educated sounding than Americans! And one last comment... Brits seem to use larger vocabularies than Americans. Many Americans seem to use the smallest number of words possible. They will even tease people that use "big words"... where Brits seem to regularly use a wide vocabulary. I've not observed "big vocabulary" taunting in the UK, so you'll have to tell me if you have seen that.
Just a quick note. When British people say 'asian' we mean from India or Pakistan.
What does .9 of a child look like?
Please be careful when talking about being educated and holding a degree. For example only 36% of Danes in that age group hold a degree, and for Germans is 27%. Yes, the USA tops everyone, but I would struggle to say they have better critical thinking, or standards of literacy and numeracy than, for example, the Netherlands - 34%. I think there's a very wise American who made a quote about lies, damn lies and statistics, although I think he may have been misquoting a British prime minister
What happened to the house project? 7 videos and then nothing!
Obesity levels gets mentioned a bit both sides of the pond that's because of cheap junk and processed food
As always, a thoughtful and interesting piece. As Matthew said at the start, "averages" can be misleading. When talking about income the figures can easily be distorted by those at each end of the spectrum. For example there are clearly more "super rich" in the US (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, etc.) I would suggest 'mean' income is a far better way of comparing income levels country by country. Also, the one big omission from Matthew's comparisons is the murder rate. I think your risk of being murdered is roughly 20x higher in the US compared to the UK (I may be a bit wrong on this, but it's something like this level). This means that Americans understandably feel far less safe in their homes, and generally, than British people. I think British people tend to not understand this.
5 ft 9 for men not women!
What's the point of a degree? I can't see one.
An American degree B.A., in say English, even from a top university is ABOUT equivalent to a an "A" level G.C.E. in the U.K. Almost all US teachers,especially in high schools, have a masters degree, which is uncommon in the U.K.
Much rather be in the UK rather than USA with all their guns. Awful.
OK. So I do have ONE rather large point here. You say more Americans have degrees, Actually the Lowest American Degree is rated around the World as lower than the OND/HND in the UK. I first came across this in Scotland, when I lived there for several years. I dated a Scottish girl for a while, who had grown up in the USA, and she had a college degree, BUT could not get a job back here in Europe when competing against HND/OND qualified students, because she had to take further tests if she got a job offer to show she was at the required education level, so she was also then doing tertiary education here, having done it in the USA. SO actually at English universities there are some 2.9 million English university students Whilst the USA has less than 6 times that of the UK, at only 14 million University places for American students. The Students abroad is even closer with 22 thousand UK students studying in Foreign universities, and 56 thousand US students studying in Foreign universities. The UK population is 67 million, whilst the USA population is 331 million. So on the Whole Tertiary education including Diplomas is higher in the UK than in the USA, as are comparative to population size numbers for these qualifications. The UK also spends 1.5% more on education than the USA as part of the budget/per GDP.
How do you know that Americans have a higher level of education? Have you actually studied the differences between the levels and quality of the education.. I've spoken to MANY Americans over time and I must say that when asking them questions on world affairs, History, Grammar..etc. They really don't know much, they don't even know much about their own country!
Also,how can the percentages be correct when there are millions of Americans in a vast country,whereas the UK is tiny compared to the US.. with MILLIONS less of people.
Basically on this subject, I beg to differ.☮️
Matthew, I am an average man and suprised to find I have 1.9 arms! How interesting!
What makes the English what they are:
ABOUT ENGLAND
English culture and norms of its behaviour are founded on the uninterrupted continuity of it’s history, it’s class system, it’s language, and it’s religion.
History
Apart from early incursions by Scotland, England hasn’t been invaded since 1066. Beginning in the 18th Century, it created the greatest empire the world has ever seen, exporting it’s language to become the closest thing to a global lingua franca. By the mid-19th Century the Empire covered 25% of the globe and England was, by a significant margin, the richest country in the world; in the 20th Century, it fought and won two world wars. There is a widely-held view amongst it’s political classes that, in the 20th Century, as it declined from being a world to a regional power, it became, to the USA, it’s offspring, what Greece was to Rome.
Much of England, its cities, towns, villages and countryside have existed, largely unchanged, for hundreds of years. The climate is temperate, the landscape settled and the wild-life congenial. It is roughly the size of the State of New York, forming 70% of the land mass of Great Britain which it shares with it’s much smaller constitutional partners, Scotland and Wales. ln 2019 the population of this small country was estimated to be 56 Million, one sixth of the USA. France, England’s closest neighbour is 25 miles across the English Channel. England has no land borders.
Class
England became a monarchy in 927 AD and, apart from a brief, five year dictatorship in the mid-1600s, has been one ever since. A constitutional monarchy for over three hundred years, England’s government has evolved gradually with power shifting from the monarch and the nobility to the commons, eventually becoming a parliamentary democracy. Today it is part of the United Kingdom together with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The principal seat of government is the House of Commons at Westminster together with a mainly advisory House of Lords. Whilst the peerage, as the great families of the nobility are known, and the landed gentry, continue to own historic great estates, today’s principal land-owners are the Government and the Anglican Church.
Language
English is the largest language by number of speakers, and the third most-spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned it as a second language than there are native speakers. As of 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English.
English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms, brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century, are collectively called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman Conquest. During three hundred years of Norman rule, English was influenced by Old French, in particular through its Old Norman dialect. William the Conqueror and his successors never developed a working knowledge of English and it was not well understood by the nobility.
The metrical chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (1260-1300)
Thus came -- lo! -- England into Norman's hands, And the Normans could not speak anything except their own speech, And spoke French as they did at home, and their children did also teach, So that high men of this land that of their blood come Hold to all that speech that they took of them; For unless a man knows French, men think little of him. But low men hold to English and to their own speech yet. I suppose there be none in all the countries of the world That do not hold to their own speech, save for England alone, But yet it is well for a man to know both, For the more a man knows the more he is worth.
The origins of present-day English words, estimated as:
French: 28.30%
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Germanic languages: 25%
reflect their origins and social under-pinnings directly and indirectly. Swear words and curse words like shit have a Germanic root, as likely does fuck, though damn and piss come from Old French and ultimately Latin. The more technical and polite alternatives are often Latin in origin, such as defecate or excrete (for shit) and fornicate or copulate (for fuck). ‘Cow’ is from the German and ‘Pig’ is old English whereas ‘beef’ and ‘pork’ are from Old French/Latin
Religion
The Church of England (C of E) is the national state church. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain by the third century, and to the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury. The English church renounced Papal authority when Henry VIII failed to secure an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aregon in 1534. The English Reformation accelerated under Edward VI’s regents, before a brief restoration of papal authority under Queen Mary I supported by King Philip of Spain. The Act of Supremacy in 1558 renewed the breach, and the Elizabethan Settlement charted a course enabling the English church to describe itself as both catholic and reformed. Twelve bishops including the church’s leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, have seats in the House of Lords.
England is a nominally christian but largely secular country with 25 million baptised Anglicans, 8 million non-Anglican protestants and 4 million catholics. Approximately one million christians attend a church service at least once a month and over 3 million go to church at Christmas.
The Church of England is the owner of a vast swathe of England’s land and historic properties. These include a range of historic and modern church buildings, parsonages, glebe land (land owned by a Diocesan Board of Finance as an investment with the returns being used to provide money to pay the stipends of parochial clergy in the diocese), churchyards, closed churches and investment property.
There is an anglican church in every city, town and most villages across the country. Many of these buildings are of architectural significance, e.g cathedrals and ancient churches. Many others have been modified for secular use and are centres of community use. The Church of England is, in many ways, the face of the English way of life, largely un-changed for centuries.
'England has no land borders'? Except of course with Scotland and Wales. You appear to be confusing England with Britain.
I’ve followed you for a long time and enjoy your vlogs. But you rarely seem to interact with your followers. You’ve got some interesting comments on here. It would be worth reacting to them as an acknowledgement.
Hey Lee! Thanks for following!
I'm glad you've been enjoying our content, and sorry you feel like we don't interact enough. I'll be honest about why on a couple of counts (mostly because I think it may be helpful for others who may feel the same). A breakdown of my (probably way to long) answer.
First: How we normally interact.
Second: A couple reasons we don't do more.
First: Normally (though not always) we try to respond to every comment that comes in the day we post the video. That doesn't always happen the first day we post, but we catch up and answer al of those comments. Recently we have been responding to all comments that come in the week after (or so).
We do READ every first level comment ever posted. (ie. comments that aren't responses). Partially, that it the fault of the youtube "creator" app. It is hard to easily see comments on all our videos that come in as responses, and we aren't notified about those in youtube creator.
Second: We only read and don't respond to every comment that comes in after the first day, partially because I would be spending literally hours responding to comments if I responded to all of them, especially if I was trying to respond to responses as well. Even as only a small/medium sized channel, we often get a hundred or more comments in a day (not trying to brag, just showing the scale of what we do).
The other reason, to be really frank, that I don't respond to all comments, is because my mental health can't afford to! We get a surprising (surprising to the general public, not to anyone familiar with youtube comments) number of REALLY negative comments. I am being really honest when I say that those comments effect me more than I would like to believe. It is actually kind of hard to separate my self worth as a person with the comments that random strangers around the world make about me. It takes enough energy to sort and allow comments through, that as a way to set boundaries on myself I don't take the time to comment on almost anything after I sort it.
Some videos I don't even look at comments on anymore (5 things we don't like about the UK and the driving video, to name a couple) because the comments tend to be vehemently negative.
Lastly, I have lots of life outside of youtube. I like making videos (it is enjoyable) but it is more hard work for me to consistently respond to comments. Its all a balancing act, of course, but early in my youtube career (I mean...earlier) I was constantly responding to internet trolls and good comments alike. I've decided to spend more time on family, career, and hobbies, instead of comments.
Thanks for commenting, and for watching! We really do appreciate it.
Sorry for the WAY-TO-LONG comment, and the over sharing.
@@SchaeferFamilyAdventure
Thanks for the reply Matthew. I do appreciate it. I understand why you won’t react to the trolls. But if you do read all the comments - why not at least press “like” for the positive ones? The thing is, is you’re asking us all for feedback at the end of the video. Yet you’re saying you don’t want to spend time on the comments - because of family commitments and also mental health reasons. Which is totally understandable. So why not just turn the commenting off? And what I’ve found with yourself and other youtubers - is that the only way to get a response is to be critical (that’s not the reason I did it though). I’ve made a critical comment and you’ve just spent more time replying to me than to any other comments I’ve ever made in the past. Which I wasn’t expecting (I hasten to add). Like I say - I do appreciate it though. I wish you and your family well. Take care.
Mostly I don't turn commenting off (and I spend time still sorting and allowing comments) is because there is lots of good community being built in the comments section of our videos -- and lots of helpful corrections, conversations, etc. that happen as a resource for people who are interested in differences in our cultures.
The reason I responded to your comment (or part of the reason) was because it came so quickly after the launch of the video, I recognized your name (as I have read lots of your other positive comments before), and it was a bit cathartic for me personally!
We really do appreciate everyone's positive comments, and don't want to lose the positivity in the comments section - the comments arent so much for us, as for the rest of our community.
Matthew has been really great about responding to comments as far as I have seen. In comparison, there are LOTS of even small RUclipsrs that don't bother. This annoys me to no end, because as a small RUclipsr I often spend 20+ hours a week editing, and a good 10-15 hours commenting... EVERY DAY. ALL DAY. I applaud Matthew's honesty about the time it takes as well as the mental health toll.
Thanks for the support!
Average height of 5'9" is I assume for a man? I have manly height! LOL
Thankfully my weight is below average.
5'9" for everyone! Men/women combined.
Wow british people do drink a lot of alcohol.
You stopped doing the content and moved back to America thinking the fan base would join. That’s not how it works sadly, now you’ve transparently gone back to old content while being in America. Yikes