30 “Scams” Americans Think Are Normal, Shared By Non-Americans

As someone from Europe, there are a lot of American things that I don’t really understand, like their obsession with pick-up trucks, massive houses, and football, aka hand-egg. And while I can kind of see why someone would enjoy them, there are certain “normal” Americans things that would be considered flat out scams in other countries.

Someone on Reddit recently asked people to share some “scams” that Americans consider normal

#1

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Megachurches are literal scams. They make a lot of money, saying it’s for the church, then they buy 12 mansions.

#2

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“America is the greatest country in the world.”

#3

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Tipping restaurant servers so the owners of the restaurant don’t have to pay them a living wage.

#4

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The idea that you need to work endless hours and never have time off.

There are plenty of countries where people work reasonable hours, have five-week summer vacations and the economies don’t fall apart.

You are not lazy if you don’t eat at your desk or while driving.

#5

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Somehow, a person who works 65 hours a week at a minimum-wage job just to pay the rent “isn’t working hard enough”. At the same time, an executive whose “work” boils down to signing a few forms, making a couple of phone calls, collecting investment payouts, and playing golf is considered “a hardworking American”.

#6

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Americans thinking that medical procedures are actually that expensive. Fun fact: In a normal country, you don’t pay tens of thousands of dollars.

#7

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College Tuition. Being in debt for thousands of dollars as a young adult just starting their life

#8

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Healthcare, all the way. All those heartfelt stories on people who raised 100,000 for their neighbors surgery, and it’s great, but no one seems to question why that was necessary in the first place. The person in question has insurance and they’re still struggling to pay for this procedure?

Even worst if it’s life-threatening. People have to make GoFundMe’s, petition, all kinds of stuff. To have the basic right to not have to go broke when you see a doctor.

#9

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Millionaires/Billionaires are just like you and me, who just worked harder than everybody else.

#10

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“If you’re not 15 minutes early, you’re late.”
B*tch, that adds up to 65 hours a year you should have paid me for. That is 8 full days of work.

#11

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Really expensive funerals. People are charged astronomically high prices at a time when grief means they’re not prepared to make sound decisions.

#12

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Lawmakers allowed to invest in the stock market.

#13

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Trickle-down economics.

#14

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Getting limited days worth of annual leave per year and then being encouraged not to use it.

#15

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The two party system

#16

Working 50+ hours a week to barely make ends meet, no health care, and no future but you’re ‘free’ so it’s worth it.

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#17

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Advertising medicine. Seriously what the hell?

#18

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Your cellphone plans. In my country, I pay €20 for unlimited calls, SMS, and data. I work in phone sales, and whenever I speak to an American, they cannot believe how cheap our plans are compared to what they pay

#19

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College text books, you pay $400 for a book because you have to have the newest version that’s rarely changed much, and the school might offer you $40 and sell it for $150 used

#20

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Health insurance. Studied abroad in France for a year. When I went to the hospital for urinary retention due to an infection and had to spend the night. The only thing I had to pay for was the antibiotics they gave me to take home for a week which was about $10 for 7 pills. Ours is a joke.

#21

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The price for healthcare in America. For the love of God just travel overseas and compare, like, to any country in the world… And then realize how big of a rip-off it is in America. And it’s all insurance companies fault.

#22

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Charging $1 to add cheese.

#23

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Tax Filing

For the majority of wage earners, the IRS can easily determine how much you owe and tell you, or tell you what you’re owed in a refund. It’s simple.

That they don’t do so is only because tax preparation companies lobby lawmakers to keep the system as it is. Tax preparation companies only exist because they are legally allowed, middle men. They are slow, complicated, costly, and the opposite of free market efficiency.

#24

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The pledge of allegiance was actually an advertisement to sell flags.

#25

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Politicians talk about the need for healthcare, but create legislation for healthcare insurance.

Those are not the same things. In fact, the latter actually is a barrier to the former.

#26

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The push that ‘college is for everyone!’ Also, you aren’t able to default on your student loans, so banks will give them to anyone. Coincidentally, society started telling people that they should all go to college, no matter their situation, right after passing the bill that made student loans impossible to hide from.

#27

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‘Overdraft protection,’ which actually allows the bank to charge you when you use a debit card, instead of just declining the transaction.

#28

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Rent To Own products. (Rent-A-Center, Aarons, Conns, etc..) You end up paying triple or quadruple the value of the product for virtually no other benefit than you’d get if you just saved a little money and bought the product out-right.

#29

Identity theft. The bank fails to properly vet someone they gave money to, and now it’s your problem.

You did nothing, the bank made a mistake. How is that your problem?

And look at credit monitoring companies, they claim they can detect fraud on your credit report. Yet, credit monitoring companies and credit reporting companies are one and the same — literally the same company. So the real message is “pay us and we will not make false reports about you in our credit reports, we have the ability to detect falsehoods, but will only do so if you pay us”. There should be a clear case of libel here. The credit reporting companies often report things that they reasonably know to be false.

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#30

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Paying thousands of dollars for basic dental work