How is your life in the US better than the UK?
Mar 29th 2015, 1:11 pm
#436
Joined: Dec 2001
Location: Dixie, ex UK
Posts: 52,448
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
The slight problem with the lowest prices is that below somewhere between $40k and $50k buyers fall foul of the lender regulatory prohibition on lending where the up-front cost of getting the mortgage exceeds a certain percentage of the mortgage cost. I.e. they are effectively unmortgageable. $50k is certainly doable.
Mar 29th 2015, 1:28 pm
#437
Lost in BE Cyberspace
Joined: Jun 2008
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 10,678
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
The slight problem with the lowest prices is that below somewhere between $40k and $50k buyers fall foul of the lender regulatory prohibition on lending where the up-front cost of getting the mortgage exceeds a certain percentage of the mortgage cost. I.e. they are effectively unmortgageable. $50k is certainly doable.
Mar 29th 2015, 1:52 pm
#438
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Joined: Apr 2011
Location: Ohio
Posts: 1,834
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
Sorry to hear about your wife's lay off.
In today's global economy, it is very difficult to compete if costs are high. Germany restructured in the 2000s eliminating minimum wage and other employee protections and has fared the best of all the big EU economies since the 2008 crash. The UK has been restructuring since the 80's and has also done well but a significant number of workers are now on "zero hour" contracts.
The world has been going through an evolutionary change since the '70s and overall countries that have resisted change the most have suffered the most.
The Silicon Valley pays high wages, good benefits, good PTO, and usually severance when employees are laid off. However those are company policies and could change in an instant if the companies becomes uncompetitive (especially from foreign competition).
In today's global economy, companies will almost always move to where they can produce products cheaper. In the US, foreign car manufacturers opened plants in the south since Detroit labor unions were too restrictive. Prior to GM and Chrysler going bankrupt, it was estimated that cars from Detroit were $2,000-$4,000 more expensive than equivalent cars manufactured in the south or overseas.
It does suck but the world has changed. China only became a world economic power because it went from a welfare state to a dictatorial capitalistic state with few worker protections. South Korea also has few worker protections. Both of those countries have caused havoc with the Japanese economy for the past 35 years which previously caused havoc with the western economies. The world is in a continuous cycle of changing competition producing winners and losers.
Consumers are the driving force. Sometimes consumers will pay more for products made in their country but even in Japan where consumers would seldom buy foreign products since it was unpatriotic, consumers are now buying Korean or Chinese products since the price can be half the price of locally produced products.
In today's global economy, it is very difficult to compete if costs are high. Germany restructured in the 2000s eliminating minimum wage and other employee protections and has fared the best of all the big EU economies since the 2008 crash. The UK has been restructuring since the 80's and has also done well but a significant number of workers are now on "zero hour" contracts.
The world has been going through an evolutionary change since the '70s and overall countries that have resisted change the most have suffered the most.
The Silicon Valley pays high wages, good benefits, good PTO, and usually severance when employees are laid off. However those are company policies and could change in an instant if the companies becomes uncompetitive (especially from foreign competition).
In today's global economy, companies will almost always move to where they can produce products cheaper. In the US, foreign car manufacturers opened plants in the south since Detroit labor unions were too restrictive. Prior to GM and Chrysler going bankrupt, it was estimated that cars from Detroit were $2,000-$4,000 more expensive than equivalent cars manufactured in the south or overseas.
It does suck but the world has changed. China only became a world economic power because it went from a welfare state to a dictatorial capitalistic state with few worker protections. South Korea also has few worker protections. Both of those countries have caused havoc with the Japanese economy for the past 35 years which previously caused havoc with the western economies. The world is in a continuous cycle of changing competition producing winners and losers.
Consumers are the driving force. Sometimes consumers will pay more for products made in their country but even in Japan where consumers would seldom buy foreign products since it was unpatriotic, consumers are now buying Korean or Chinese products since the price can be half the price of locally produced products.
Of course, last time we had a casual world of work, we also didn't have people trying to take out a mortgage and cash-flowing their lives via debt. The two to me seem basically incompatible, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
As for healthcare via the employer, the sooner that goes away, the better (and if it could take the whole for-profit insurance industry with it, then great
) It amuses me when people say they don't want benefits from the gubment because Freedom and Independence, but then get terribly upset when their employers try to back away from being paternalistic, operating a shared cost-risk group plan, and generally taking care of them.
Mar 29th 2015, 8:07 pm
#439
Account Closed
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 0
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
Problem with retail jobs and benefits is they can be incredibly hard to qualify for and actually get them.
I worked for Target when I did live in the US and while for a retail job it wasn't bad, they did make it difficult to actually qualify for benefits. You needed to work an average of X amount of hours over X period of time.
Lets just say they schedule in a way to maximize the amount of time you work, but to keep you below the qualifying mart for benefits. Effectively only having supervisors and managers actually getting them.
Costco seems to be the exception as they hire full-time from the get go.
I am not even sure we could immigrate to the US as I don't think my income is sufficient to sponsor a spouse, along with not sure if the US would let her move over with medical issues. (not sure what the rules are specifically)
She can work part-time but relies on disability to top up her income since she is limited to 20 hours a week and sometimes less if she has a flare up health wise. So its a good back up to have disability as I don't have the earning power to support an entire household.
I imagine the pay is lower as well in the South? I know a friend in MO who works night audit at a hotel and they pay 8.30/hr. Not sure if that is the going pay or if that hotel is extra cheap.
Pay in hotels vary all over the spectrum depending on owners/management type.
Work for a hotel owned by an individual who only owns that 1 hotel, pay will be a lot lower then if you work for a company who owns many hotels or contracts to a professional management company who has thousands of employees, they tend to pay more.
I worked at a Marriott hotel for a while in California and my hotel was a franchise still like most hotels are, but Marriott managed it, and we all worked for Marriott so our pay was better, 12/hr for most.
Across the street there was another Marriott but it was managed by the owner, and they paid pretty much everyone min. wage or slightly above.
I worked for Target when I did live in the US and while for a retail job it wasn't bad, they did make it difficult to actually qualify for benefits. You needed to work an average of X amount of hours over X period of time.
Lets just say they schedule in a way to maximize the amount of time you work, but to keep you below the qualifying mart for benefits. Effectively only having supervisors and managers actually getting them.
Costco seems to be the exception as they hire full-time from the get go.
I am not even sure we could immigrate to the US as I don't think my income is sufficient to sponsor a spouse, along with not sure if the US would let her move over with medical issues. (not sure what the rules are specifically)
She can work part-time but relies on disability to top up her income since she is limited to 20 hours a week and sometimes less if she has a flare up health wise. So its a good back up to have disability as I don't have the earning power to support an entire household.
I imagine the pay is lower as well in the South? I know a friend in MO who works night audit at a hotel and they pay 8.30/hr. Not sure if that is the going pay or if that hotel is extra cheap.
Pay in hotels vary all over the spectrum depending on owners/management type.
Work for a hotel owned by an individual who only owns that 1 hotel, pay will be a lot lower then if you work for a company who owns many hotels or contracts to a professional management company who has thousands of employees, they tend to pay more.
I worked at a Marriott hotel for a while in California and my hotel was a franchise still like most hotels are, but Marriott managed it, and we all worked for Marriott so our pay was better, 12/hr for most.
Across the street there was another Marriott but it was managed by the owner, and they paid pretty much everyone min. wage or slightly above.
Apr 2nd 2015, 7:23 am
#440
Lost in BE Cyberspace
Joined: Jun 2008
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 10,678
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
Some of my friends that lived in the Geneva area didn't have phone service and they weren't scheduled to get phone service for 7 years but the phone company said they could get phone service within a year if the residents of the area paid for running the street cables up front and then the telephone company would use that payment to pay their monthly bills until the money ran out. The cost was over 6 months salary up front but residents were behind the eight ball and many chose to pay the upfront money. For a while I lived in the Jura mountains about 30 minutes outside of Geneva but didn't have phone service. Once I had to make a call to Geneva so I went to the local village and made the phone call and was shocked at the cost. I later found out that there weren't any direct phone lines from Geneva to the Jura and that all calls went through Paris and that was why a call of 30 miles cost a lot of money and the quality was extremely poor
In the early '70s, phone companies around the world were monopolies and you had to use the phone that they supplied, there weren't any phones on the private market for sale, and in most countries it was against the law to install a non phone company provided phone. The Swiss phone company supplied phones like the following.
AT&T in the US were supplying phones like the following.
Several Swiss and I were back in the US on training classes and when a Swiss guy was moving out of his apartment, AT&T was there to disconnect his phone and the Swiss guy asked if he could purchase the phone and the AT&T employee said "If the phone disappears, I didn't notice" so the Swiss guy took the phone and was probably one of the few people in Switzerland that had that type of phone.
Cell phones in the early '80s looked like this.
And progressed to look like this through the mid '90s.
Also when I was in Geneva in the late '60s, Laundromats had a washing machine, a spinning machine, and a dryer. When using the Laundromat, the clothes first went in the washer, then the spinner, and then the dryer.
Apr 2nd 2015, 8:37 am
#441
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Joined: Jun 2008
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 10,678
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
At the back was an opening that someone could walk in and the inside looked like this.
The following was it's specifications.
Comparing those specifications to today's computers, a low end laptop has a 1 GHz clock and 4 GB of memory which would make the laptop 27.5 times faster based on clock speed and have over 1,000x more memory. However the instruction set on the low end laptop has been optimized, has a large amount of L1 and L2 cache (high speed memory), and a streamlined memory bus which likely makes it at least another 10x faster.
Current desktop PCs can have a clock speed of up to 4 GHz, 8 cores (processors), and 64 GB of memory which would likely make those PCs at least 2,000x faster and 8,000x more memory.
For mathematical calculations, the '60s computer performed 36 million floating point operations per second and the fastest desktops today can perform over 100 billion floating point operations per second or over 2,700x faster and graphics processor units (all laptops and PCs have a graphics processor unit) can perform floating point operations even faster. Graphics processing units can perform floating point operations faster since they are designed to perform vector processing (repetitive mathematical processing needed for graphics processing) and not general processing.
Without this fast improvement in technology, almost everything we use today from credit and debit cards, self checkout stations, pay at the pump, normal phones, cell phones, navigation devices, HD TV, cable and SAT, the internet (banking, bill pay, electronic transfers, online brokerages, etc.), WI-FI, and car, airplane, and appliance advances would either have limited uses or not be possible to use.
Without miniaturization, those improvements in speed would not be possible since a signal takes 1 billionth of a second to propagate through 1 feet of wire and a billionth of a second is 1 clock cycle of a 1 GHz clock and typically most computer instructions in today's processors are executed in one clock cycle. A 4 GHz processor typically executes instructions in 1/4th or a billionth of a second and if the processor has 8 cores, it could be executing instructions in 1/32nd of a billionth of a second which is the same time it take for a signal to propagate through 1/3rd of an inch of wire. Therefore the more they can pack into a the chip, the smaller the chip, and faster they can increase the clock speed, the faster the processor. The first microprocessor had 3,500 transistors on the chip and today there are over 2.2 trillion transistors in an Intel i7 desktop processor chip.
Last edited by Michael; Apr 2nd 2015 at 10:03 am.
Apr 2nd 2015, 9:02 am
#442
Account Closed
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 0
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
Would have hated to be the person who had to fix those wires....lol
I don't know all the in's and out's of it all, but in the mid to late 60's airlines started to roll out computers for their reservations and other functions. Must have cost them a pretty penny back then to do all that.
When I started in the late 90's airlines were still using archaic systems that took a hell of a long time to become proficient in, not user friendly at all back then. (now pretty much all airlines in NA use a windows overlay making it simple to use, point and click.)
If passengers could see all the stuff we had to do just to print a ticket, they would have understood why it all took so long.
Computers similar to this, but not identical, printers like this and screens that looked like the bottom.
Too bad they used such outdated stuff, didn't prepare me for anything...lol....Some hotels still use very outdated systems but they work, so no need to replace them.
I don't know all the in's and out's of it all, but in the mid to late 60's airlines started to roll out computers for their reservations and other functions. Must have cost them a pretty penny back then to do all that.
When I started in the late 90's airlines were still using archaic systems that took a hell of a long time to become proficient in, not user friendly at all back then. (now pretty much all airlines in NA use a windows overlay making it simple to use, point and click.)
If passengers could see all the stuff we had to do just to print a ticket, they would have understood why it all took so long.
Computers similar to this, but not identical, printers like this and screens that looked like the bottom.
Too bad they used such outdated stuff, didn't prepare me for anything...lol....Some hotels still use very outdated systems but they work, so no need to replace them.
Last edited by scrubbedexpat091; Apr 2nd 2015 at 9:04 am.
Apr 2nd 2015, 11:22 am
#443
Lost in BE Cyberspace
Joined: Jun 2008
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 10,678
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
I was digging through those wires many times to either find a lose wire causing intermittent problems or sometimes even to shorten or lengthen the wire to make the signal arrive on time when it was suppose to be there.
In the 1960s, airlines start rolling out computerized reservation systems and some used IBM mainframes and IBM 3270 terminals. The IBM 3270 terminals were wired to the mainframe by dedicated landlines at the airline reservation desks.
Some of the airlines chose a cheaper route and used ANSI terminals (dumb terminals like the one's you showed) and different software/hardware for the mainframes.
Prior to 1976, travel agents had to make phone calls to the different airlines to book tickets but then United started offering dial up terminals to travel agents to get into their system and then other airlines followed. This created a bit of a problem for independent travel agents since they needed two terminals in the office to get to all the different airline reservation systems.
The IBM 3270 terminal was considered a smart terminal since it was designed to support Cobol (the most common business language at that time) applications where dumb terminals were just dumb and not designed for any particular language. The IBM 3270 terminal was considered smart since the application would send a screen to the terminal with fields and when the user filled in the fields and hit the send key, all the fields would be sent to the mainframe. A dumb terminal doesn't know what a field is and each time a character is entered at the keyboard, it sends that character to the mainframe and the mainframe decides what to do and often saves the character and sends it back to the terminal to be displayed.
When the PC became popular, off the shelve software quickly became available for dumb terminal emulations so that travel agents could have a PC in their office and get rid of the dumb terminal. In the mid '80s, I wrote a dumb terminal emulator that supported about 30 different dumb terminals. It took a little longer to produce the software for the IBM 3270 terminal but I wrote an IBM 3270 emulator in the late '80s for DOS and another for Windows when it became available in the '90s. Once those were available, then travel agents could buy a PC and software for both a dumb terminal and a IBM 3270 terminal and get rid of the other two terminals from the office.
The IBM 3270 terminal communicated synchronously and the dumb terminals communicated asynchronously. Therefore when communicating using the IBM 3270 emulator, communications was via an asynchronous modem and when communicating with the dumb terminal emulator, a synchronous modem was needed and therefore both were connected to different serial ports on the PC in the travel agent's office.
The following is the IBM 3270 terminal.
I don't know all the in's and out's of it all, but in the mid to late 60's airlines started to roll out computers for their reservations and other functions. Must have cost them a pretty penny back then to do all that.
When I started in the late 90's airlines were still using archaic systems that took a hell of a long time to become proficient in, not user friendly at all back then. (now pretty much all airlines in NA use a windows overlay making it simple to use, point and click.)
If passengers could see all the stuff we had to do just to print a ticket, they would have understood why it all took so long.
Computers similar to this, but not identical, printers like this and screens that looked like the bottom.
Too bad they used such outdated stuff, didn't prepare me for anything...lol....Some hotels still use very outdated systems but they work, so no need to replace them.
When I started in the late 90's airlines were still using archaic systems that took a hell of a long time to become proficient in, not user friendly at all back then. (now pretty much all airlines in NA use a windows overlay making it simple to use, point and click.)
If passengers could see all the stuff we had to do just to print a ticket, they would have understood why it all took so long.
Computers similar to this, but not identical, printers like this and screens that looked like the bottom.
Too bad they used such outdated stuff, didn't prepare me for anything...lol....Some hotels still use very outdated systems but they work, so no need to replace them.
Some of the airlines chose a cheaper route and used ANSI terminals (dumb terminals like the one's you showed) and different software/hardware for the mainframes.
Prior to 1976, travel agents had to make phone calls to the different airlines to book tickets but then United started offering dial up terminals to travel agents to get into their system and then other airlines followed. This created a bit of a problem for independent travel agents since they needed two terminals in the office to get to all the different airline reservation systems.
The IBM 3270 terminal was considered a smart terminal since it was designed to support Cobol (the most common business language at that time) applications where dumb terminals were just dumb and not designed for any particular language. The IBM 3270 terminal was considered smart since the application would send a screen to the terminal with fields and when the user filled in the fields and hit the send key, all the fields would be sent to the mainframe. A dumb terminal doesn't know what a field is and each time a character is entered at the keyboard, it sends that character to the mainframe and the mainframe decides what to do and often saves the character and sends it back to the terminal to be displayed.
When the PC became popular, off the shelve software quickly became available for dumb terminal emulations so that travel agents could have a PC in their office and get rid of the dumb terminal. In the mid '80s, I wrote a dumb terminal emulator that supported about 30 different dumb terminals. It took a little longer to produce the software for the IBM 3270 terminal but I wrote an IBM 3270 emulator in the late '80s for DOS and another for Windows when it became available in the '90s. Once those were available, then travel agents could buy a PC and software for both a dumb terminal and a IBM 3270 terminal and get rid of the other two terminals from the office.
The IBM 3270 terminal communicated synchronously and the dumb terminals communicated asynchronously. Therefore when communicating using the IBM 3270 emulator, communications was via an asynchronous modem and when communicating with the dumb terminal emulator, a synchronous modem was needed and therefore both were connected to different serial ports on the PC in the travel agent's office.
The following is the IBM 3270 terminal.
Last edited by Michael; Apr 2nd 2015 at 11:56 am.
Apr 2nd 2015, 12:26 pm
#444
Account Closed
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 0
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
I was digging through those wires many times to either find a lose wire causing intermittent problems or sometimes even to shorten or lengthen the wire to make the signal arrive on time when it was suppose to be there.
In the 1960s, airlines start rolling out computerized reservation systems and some used IBM mainframes and IBM 3270 terminals. The IBM 3270 terminals were wired to the mainframe by dedicated landlines at the airline reservation desks.
Some of the airlines chose a cheaper route and used ANSI terminals (dumb terminals like the one's you showed) and different software/hardware for the mainframes.
Prior to 1976, travel agents had to make phone calls to the different airlines to book tickets but then United started offering dial up terminals to travel agents to get into their system and then other airlines followed. This created a bit of a problem for independent travel agents since they needed two terminals in the office to get to all the different airline reservation systems.
The IBM 3270 terminal was considered a smart terminal since it was designed to support Cobol (the most common business language at that time) applications where dumb terminals were just dumb and not designed for any particular language. The IBM 3270 terminal was considered smart since the application would send a screen to the terminal with fields and when the user filled in the fields and hit the send key, all the fields would be sent to the mainframe. A dumb terminal doesn't know what a field is and each time a character is entered at the keyboard, it sends that character to the mainframe and the mainframe decides what to do and often saves the character and sends it back to the terminal to be displayed.
When the PC became popular, off the shelve software quickly became available for dumb terminal emulations so that travel agents could have a PC in their office and get rid of the dumb terminal. In the mid '80s, I wrote a dumb terminal emulator that supported about 30 different dumb terminals. It took a little longer to produce the software for the IBM 3270 terminal but I wrote an IBM 3270 emulator in the late '80s for DOS and another for Windows when it became available in the '90s. Once those were available, then travel agents could buy a PC and software for both a dumb terminal and a IBM 3270 terminal and get rid of the other two terminals from the office.
The IBM 3270 terminal communicated synchronously and the dumb terminals communicated asynchronously. Therefore when communicating using the IBM 3270 emulator, communications was via an asynchronous modem and when communicating with the dumb terminal emulator, a synchronous modem was needed and therefore both were connected to different serial ports on the PC in the travel agent's office.
The following is the IBM 3270 terminal.
In the 1960s, airlines start rolling out computerized reservation systems and some used IBM mainframes and IBM 3270 terminals. The IBM 3270 terminals were wired to the mainframe by dedicated landlines at the airline reservation desks.
Some of the airlines chose a cheaper route and used ANSI terminals (dumb terminals like the one's you showed) and different software/hardware for the mainframes.
Prior to 1976, travel agents had to make phone calls to the different airlines to book tickets but then United started offering dial up terminals to travel agents to get into their system and then other airlines followed. This created a bit of a problem for independent travel agents since they needed two terminals in the office to get to all the different airline reservation systems.
The IBM 3270 terminal was considered a smart terminal since it was designed to support Cobol (the most common business language at that time) applications where dumb terminals were just dumb and not designed for any particular language. The IBM 3270 terminal was considered smart since the application would send a screen to the terminal with fields and when the user filled in the fields and hit the send key, all the fields would be sent to the mainframe. A dumb terminal doesn't know what a field is and each time a character is entered at the keyboard, it sends that character to the mainframe and the mainframe decides what to do and often saves the character and sends it back to the terminal to be displayed.
When the PC became popular, off the shelve software quickly became available for dumb terminal emulations so that travel agents could have a PC in their office and get rid of the dumb terminal. In the mid '80s, I wrote a dumb terminal emulator that supported about 30 different dumb terminals. It took a little longer to produce the software for the IBM 3270 terminal but I wrote an IBM 3270 emulator in the late '80s for DOS and another for Windows when it became available in the '90s. Once those were available, then travel agents could buy a PC and software for both a dumb terminal and a IBM 3270 terminal and get rid of the other two terminals from the office.
The IBM 3270 terminal communicated synchronously and the dumb terminals communicated asynchronously. Therefore when communicating using the IBM 3270 emulator, communications was via an asynchronous modem and when communicating with the dumb terminal emulator, a synchronous modem was needed and therefore both were connected to different serial ports on the PC in the travel agent's office.
The following is the IBM 3270 terminal.
Back then customer service training was 4 weeks in class at HQ and then 4 weeks OJT in a hub, and then to your home airport.
Even ramp was a 3 week training course back then..
Hardest job I had was that CSR job and learning all those codes we needed to know, I have forgotten most but they were so random, string of numbers and symbols, some quite long.
The simple one's I remember were LA$R 6-flight-name 2flight number. I have forgotten most, been too many years now.
May 8th 2015, 9:28 am
#445
Forum Regular
Thread Starter
Joined: Feb 2010
Location: Sussex
Posts: 98
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
In the light of today's election results, I imagine there might be some Brits turning their attention to this board...
May 8th 2015, 12:54 pm
#447
Just Joined
Joined: Apr 2015
Location: Guildford, UK
Posts: 15
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
Indeed you're right. We'll probably make our decision this weekend on taking up a US job offer & to be honest after the election result there's not a lot to keep me in the UK.
May 8th 2015, 1:06 pm
#448
I have a comma problem
Joined: Feb 2009
Location: Fox Lake, IL (from Carrickfergus NI)
Posts: 49,598
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
So, the Tories won, but over here politics is even more ****ed up. 'Far left socialist' Obama (not my words, hence the inverted commas) is barely left of Cameron and have you seen what the Republicans consider worthwhile candidates these days?
That being said, the cost of living is better here and your dollar will go further than your pound did in most places. But if you're basing your need to move on election results, consider if you really want to leave the NHS for the utterly farcical nonsense that passes for healthcare provision over here ...
May 8th 2015, 1:32 pm
#449
Joined: Dec 2001
Location: Dixie, ex UK
Posts: 52,448
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
Or were you pinning your hopes on a UKIP majority government?
Last edited by Pulaski; May 8th 2015 at 1:37 pm.
May 8th 2015, 1:33 pm
#450
Joined: Apr 2005
Location: Milwaukie, Oregon
Posts: 9,966
Re: How is your life in the US better than the UK?
