Why USA is a great Country to live? What we can learn?

Why USA is a great country? I Compiled these answers from people, who went to USA from different countries. I wont name them. See, what we can learn from them…

Mr A is from India

I am from India and moved to the US 6 months back for my graduate studies. For me some things were a revelation. Many things I found surprising in addition to the many things mentioned in other answers are:

• The respect for rules. Even at 2 in the morning if a motorist sees a STOP sign he will stop his car for a moment look around then proceed. Unbelievable! Back in India when I watched this episode of Modern Family Door to Door (Modern Family) I really did not get it. I was wondering, why was Claire so determined to get a STOP sign? What difference does it make? In India we have STOP signs everywhere and nobody cares! But after coming here I realized that being caught not stopping at a STOP sign can cost dearly. Same holds for every other rule.
• The amazingly polite nature of people. It is natural for strangers to greet you and you are expected to greet them back.
• The amazing system of freeways and interstates. If you own a car you can simply decide to drive at a short notice to any destination no matter how far anywhere in the US. I’ve known people who prefer to drive to far away places than take a flight.
• It is also surprising that no matter how remote the area is, the road signs will all be in place and proper.
• A surprising thing is that a one way intercity train ride is much more expensive than a round trip flight ticket most times..!
• How courteous and helpful people sometimes are. I went to a post office during peak holiday season. Even though there was a long line the person behind the counter patiently explained to me all the available options for an international shipment and even suggested to me an inexpensive way of getting it shipped. What is more, he himself provided me an envelope and also wrapped up my package. I never can imagine this happening in any post office back home in India!
• The seemingly opposite scheme of things. Air travel is preferred and is cheaper than a train journey. Automatic transmission is the default on most cars. The manual transmission, referred to as the “stick shift” here is a premium and a car with a “stick shift” is more expensive than automatic transmission! In fact I am willing to bet that most americans will not be able to drive if given a stick shift car.
• There are vast amount of areas in the US which do not have any human settlement for miles at a stretch…!
• How parking and driving is a breeze. You simply do not have to break your head over finding parking spots when you go for shopping as mostly there is ample space! And more over parking is FREE! Yes I’m talking to you Delhi-ites and Bangaloreans!
• How “well behaved” motorists are during peak hours and when there are traffic snarls. No impatient honking or trying to cut lines ruthlessly..! Again learn something Delhi & Bangalore!
• It is absolutely surprising how rarely you will ever hear anyone honk on the roads.
• How pedestrians are respected and have the right-of-way in most places!
• How huge the US is in terms of the total land area. There are states like Wyoming, Montana, New Hampshire, ND,SD where I am told there are no human settlements for miles and miles together. List of U.S. states by population density
• How the division of some states have simply been done on some elementary lines. Most often the division of states has been a vestige of the civil war or it has simply been done by rivers! Yes rivers! Gosh how Indian states could be divided like that!
• How most state capitals are not the same as the most populous/largest city in the state. i bet most foreigners don’t know that the capital of Illinois is not Chicago but Springfield. The most surprising one is the capital of the state of New York is not New York city but Albany!
• How irritating it is for us to get used to the non metric system of units. President Reagan had a chance to subvert this and get the US on the metric system of units but unfortunately that never materialized. Metric Commission
• How resource rich the US is…
• Of course the return policy. No questions asked!
• In the academic context, the lesser obsession with grades and more emphasis on learning what has been taught. Most courses in the university level are oriented around this theme and the professors actually take an interest in teaching and take pains to make sure the students have grasped the concepts.
• It is also very surprising that how aloof and sheltered most americans are from the harsh realities prevailing over most countries in the world. One of my friend who was a TA for a Biology course told me that most students in his class had never heard of a disease named Malaria!
• How swift and effective law enforcement is!
• How expensive healthcare is!
• How heavily people depend on debit/credit cards to pay. I survived for 4 straight months without a single penny in my wallet. This would be unthinkable in India!
• How complex the “tipping” scenario is!
• How healthy market competition has brought some otherwise expensive technologies to the masses. For instance, phones with contracts deliver more services as compared to prepaid ones at almost the same price.
• It is amazing how credit based the entire society is. People are encouraged to purchase stuff on credit. Thats why every retail entity worth its salt has its own credit card..!
• How important your credit history is and how difficult it is to start afresh if you have somehow managed to screw it up.
• The level to which retail has reached here is just unbelievable. All things from electronics to frozen food is available under one roof! Just visit any Target or WalMart and you will be bowled over with the variety of things on sale!

Mr B is also from India

First the negative things about USA
1) No one walks or uses public transport: I really thought that public transport should be ubiquitous and the most basic thing in the US (I blame this on wikipedia.org Captain Planet).
Worse, there is no option of public transport outside of big metropolitan areas. Apart from the really big cities, the public transport system is basically a pointless mess of buses and trains, which are sparsely used and not punctual at all. Coming from a city in India where I was used to getting a train every 5 minutes, this came as a shock. I initially thought this was only in Atlanta (where I went to grad school), but I saw this in more and more cities as I traveled more. My ignorance about public transport to be blamed for this.
2) Not every city has skyscrapers like New York City or Chicago: Well, most cities fit this one. Too much Hollywood I guess. Too much suburban sprawl for my liking.
3) Gas is ridiculously cheap for the standard of living of an average American: Seriously, consider this:
Average per capita income in India = $1000 per year
(http://www.financialexpress.com/…)
Average gas price in India per liter = Rs 75
That comes out to Rs 277 (approx $5.5) per gallon.
And here in the US, the per capita income even is way higher and gas prices are cheaper. Yes, I do know that people here use cars more. But then, why don’t we use public transport…because it’s not good enough….vicious circle.
4) Cabs are expensive: Here, cabs are expensive enough to be called only when you don’t have a car/cannot get a ride/no public transport. In India, a cab was public transport and cheap enough to use for everyday commute (no, I do not come from a rich family).
5) There is a lot of poverty in the US: More shockingly, good young Americans are completely ignorant about it. There’s way too much economic segregation in terms of neighborhoods and school districts.
6) School districts: WTF is this? I came from a background where I anyone can go to any school (at least middle and high school) as long as it was based on merit (and you had the money if it was a private school). This led me to interact with people richer than the last 10 generations of my family as well as with people who lived on $100 a month. The school was tax subsidized and there was no school district segregation.
7) A receipt for everything: God save the trees. I do not need a copy of my bill and then a customer copy + merchant copy for every meal.
8) Medical/Education costs: After food, clothing and shelter, I thought medicine and education would be the most important basic needs for man. These should be cheap and readily available. How wrong was I?
9) Unlike most countries, corruption can legally take place (lobbying): Isn’t this a no brainer? I know lobbying is good for a lot of good reasons, but hey, it’s an easy way for the rich/corporations to get their point across and legally get things done.
10) Guns: There are people who believe that having guns is good for reducing crime (yes, statistics prove this too). I understand the argument that for example, break-ins will reduce since thieves will know that home-owners have a gun and can shoot the thief. But I cannot imagine what the social fabric will be if everyone has a gun. How can anyone feel safe to, let’s say, send their kids outside to just go to a store or to go and stroll in the park, with the knowledge that the person next to me has a gun?
11) Biased media: Political bias, economic bias, geographic bias, etc. Clear misuse of freedom of speech. If all I hear is inaccurate news, my perception of the world will be grossly inaccurate. How hard is it to realize this?
12) Economics of a few products/services: $15 for a haircut, waiters get paid only $2.13 per hour or some sub-minimum wage amount, bottled water worth $2, etc. It didn’t make sense to me at first. 15-20% tips at restaurant is a norm… Shouldn’t I have the freedom to choose the amount based on the quality of service and my own financial condition? Sewage bill… What?
Moving on to the pleasantly surprising things:
1) American kids in grad school are smart: Not all kids sit in front of tv/play video games/party all night. I thoroughly enjoyed studying with them.
2) Virtually every business has a website: Including my apartment leasing office.
3) Sports: I enjoy watching football and basketball. The fan following for national leagues is something I had expected, but college sports is very good.
4) The speed at which new technology is adopted: Twitter is faster than an earthquake?
5) True for Silicon Valley at least: Very hard working people. Open-minded and innovative people. It is a pleasure to work with such people.
6) Mixture of cultures: Never short of new restaurants to try. I love this.
7) The opportunities to do volunteer work: Insane number of opportunities…almost overwhelming
8) Bike lanes and sidewalks: Despite the fact that I could be the only person walking or biking in a mile, there are plenty of bike lanes and sidewalks. I wish more people would use them though.

Mr C is an Indian Sikh guy

Just a few observations when I came here. I know a lot more about these now and can imagine why things are as they are. I’ll try to add my observations based on my travel experience:

• Pay for incoming calls and messages (Yes, I mean domestic calls as well) ! When I first got a mobile plan, I confirmed this twice at the AT&T store

• Certain dangerous pockets co-exist in seemingly safe places: It was my 2nd day in SF. In the evening, I got off a bus and started to roam around. And then…without knowing where I was heading to, I happily started walking towards the Tenderloin. One random dude came up to me and the conversation went something like this:
• >   Random dude: Hey man, where you from?
  >   Me: Umm..India
  >   Random dude: Do you know where you are going to? That’s the Tenderloin man, you might not return to India if you go there
  >   Me: My guts shaking, I thanked the random dude (and thought to myself, it would have been quite a story, getting shot or mugged on my 2nd day in the US) This is just one of the experiences that I recall. I generally believe there are a lot of areas that someone can merely stumble upon without knowing how unsafe is that place

• ‘Most’ people are open-minded: America is truly the melting pot of so many different cultures from around the world. People are generally respectful and believe in ‘live and let live’. However, like any other country, there are a few people who are conservative and close minded. I had an unpleasant experience while travelling in a bus which runs on the strip in Vegas. Looking at my turban, a middle-aged woman came to me and started shouting, “What the fuck is he doing in America?”. (She looked a me like I was a terrorist and I’m ready to bomb Vegas any moment ! :D) There were a lots of ohhhhhhhs and other muffled reaction sounds that I heard on the bus while I stared at the woman’s face. I was also taken aback as I had not said anything disrespectful to her. I decided to remain silent while she walked away. Then a random guy came up to me and said, “I am very sorry for what she said. Not everyone in America is like that”. I generally disregard this experience when I frame my opinion on the openness and acceptance of America. Most people I know are tolerant like the random guy that I met in the bus.

• British English: I wholeheartedly agree that its quite unusual for Americans to hear a word which is not part of their usual lingo. As Indians, we’ve inherited the Queen’s English but my generation and younger folks are heavily influenced by American music and TV shows. I had a hilarious experience, when I told my American manager (AM) to schedule one of my recurring meetings fortnightly. Here’s how the conversation went:
• >   Me: Lets schedule a catch-up fortnightly
  >   AM: Fortnightly, what’s that? Sounds Shakespere-ish
  >   Me: Fortnightly is once in every two weeks She was quite amused by this and we shared a good laugh later as well while recalling this incident

• Exorbitant serving sizes of meals: I was amazed by the serving sizes of meals in the US. Having a meal in US meant one of the two things for me:

1. i)   I felt drowsy and did not feel like doing anything
   ii)  I would skip the next meal or deliberately choose to eat only a small portion of the normal meal serving

• Your experience in US depends to a great extent on which place(s) you visit: Apart from the general observations, I truly believe someone’s experience in the US can be really dependent on the places someone visits. For instance, people in the Bay Area seem really helpful to someone new. This might be in stark contrast to what happens in NYC, where nobody gives a fuck and life moves on

• The prevalence of immigrant population which form the American culture: On my first day in SF last year, I enjoyed a good time celebrating St.Patricks Day. I realised how every eat-out and bar that day were flooded with Green I was also amazed by the Mexican influence in LA (in language, people,  culture etc). Needless to say, I’ve met numerous people from India, Pakistan and other Asian countries ranging from cab drivers, college students, people working in the technology sector etc who are settled in the US and making a livelihood as a hard-working American !

• Shoddy public transportation system: Whether I talk about the caltrain/MUNI in SF or the NYC subway, the quality of public transportation was no where close to the quality of the Delhi Metro back home in India. I would say the Delhi Metro ranks higher on almost all parameters: cleanliness, connectivity, speed etc.

Mr D is not from India

• Tipping, it’s just exotic.
• Not any bargains.
• The sky is unbelievably blue.
• Entry fee charge by car, not by the headcount. Not even heard of it before.
• Refills and the return policy. Q: Why would one go for a large cup?
• No vodkas before 21, but all of a sudden alcoholics all around.
• Some must think that drinks are more dangerous than guns ( 21 > 18 ).
• And gun access looks strange enough.
• Car is like necessity here.
• Their kids are on their own after grown up.. exotic.
• Women change their family names after marriage.
• Vegetables are not cheaper (than meat)? (still don’t get it)
• The Government could shut himself down (partially), like some fictional plot.
• Where is the traffic police? Cops handle everything.
• Legal system, culturally happy about suing all sorts of stuff.
• Some obsess with the gym in strong contrast with the obesity problem.
• Customers need to pump gas on their own. Wait, no service in a service kingdom?
• Washing a car doesn’t involve any human labor.
• An excellent higher education system on top of a strangely leisure K-12.
• Schools gives out kids condoms, so hilarious.
• Ok, pots can be legal, it’s extremely strange.
• Well.. ridiculously rich.

Mr E is from Europe

I ‘m English and have been living in Seattle for a couple of months. Here’s some observations
Groceries are incredibly expensive.
Everyone I spoke to in England assumed everything was dirt cheap in the US. But fresh food and groceries are at least twice the price of middle of the road shops in the UK. The US makes waitrose look cheap.
People handing over credit cards in bars.
In bars I’ve been in the situation where everyone hands over their credit cards and the bar staff keep track of how much everyone has spent and will hand you back a bill at the end of the night. This doesn’t happen anywhere else. In England you’d not trust the bar staff to do this at all – they’d probably steal your card.
Credit cards using signatures/magnetic strips
Everywhere in Europe uses chip and pin. Some places are going towards contactless payment. In the US you use a magnetic strip on your card and have to sign for everything. It’s about ten years out of date compared to everywhere else.
The standard of driving
Americans all seem to be really awful at driving. Oddly it seems as though teenagers go through hours and hours of learning to pass a test and then instantly forget everything as soon as they’ve passed.
“Jaywalking”
You’re not allowed to just cross the road when it’s safe? Crazy. You’d get nowhere in a city like London if you had to follow the rules you do in the US. No one believes you can get arrested for crossing the street.
Driving everywhere..
I walk around a mile to get to work. A lot of people in the office are amazed about this and often insist on giving me a ride home (despite it taking longer than walking). In theory everyone knows this is the case from movies/tv series/etc. But no one quite believes that it’s true.
The huge choice yet small range in grocery stores
Go to a grocery store. Pick a category of product (like pasta sauce). There’ll be ten types of pasta sauce from five different manufacturers to make an overall choice of 50 types of pasta sauce. But there won’t be any pesto.
There’s a huge range of choice in a narrow category. For just about everything.
How low taxes are
Everyone in America whinges about how high their taxes are. They aren’t. Taxes are incredibly low. No one from Europe will understand why Americans are complaining.
Taxes are stupidly complicated
Until you get to America no one realises just how complicated taxes are.
In England it goes like this: “Do you have any reason not to be on the normal tax code? No? Here’s £10k in non taxable allowance and we’ll sort everything out automatically.”
In America it seems like this: “Are you single, married or the head of a household (without defining what a household is)? Oh, and have you had any deductions (here’s a list of a thousand things that you could add on)? By the way, please prove these deductions are real. And get an accountant to look over everything otherwise we’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks”. It’s stupid and over complicated and people outside America don’t know how bad it is.
The price of petrol
Petrol is around $9 a (US) gallon in England. No one from England can believe how cheap fuel is in America. Stop complaining when it’s $3.50 a gallon.
Entr´ees
In the rest of the world entr´ee means “starter”. I was shocked at the portion sizes and was wondering where the menu for the main course was when I came over here.
Black Friday/Cyber Monday
People buy things they don’t need and just because everyone else is buying stuff. And then there’s riots and shootings because people want to buy things they don’t need? Are you all crazy?
New hobbies
A lot of Americans seem to take up a new hobby, buy all the gear, use it once and then leave it lying around in a cupboard. What a waste of money.
Parks
A block of grass with a few trees isn’t a park. It’s just a patch of grass. When it starts to get to a few acres then perhaps we can call it a park.
Cheques (or checks)
You still use these things? They’ve been obsolete for years in Europe.
Small boxes of cereal
An odd one, but considering portion sizes its always a surprise to find that boxes of cereal are so small in America. You can get 1kg boxes of cornflakes in England but in the US 500g is considered to be a large box.
Everyone is friendly
According to most americans at work Seattle people are actually quite rude, which I find odd because everyone I’ve spoken to here has been incredibly friendly compared to the vast majority of places in England.
Drinking age
An intern at work was saying he couldn’t go to the pub with us. I assumed it was because he was allergic to something or religious or something. It turns out he wasn’t 21. So you can vote, get married and serve in the military but can’t have a beer? Seriously?
Imperial measurements
Even England doesn’t use this nonsense any more (except for road signs where it’d cost too much to change them all to km and pints of beer (where a pint is a real pint and not the mini pint you get in the US)). Just get over it. Metric measurements are just *better*.
Tipping
It seems odd that staff in restaurants don’t earn enough without tips. That just makes no sense. Also, in England (and Europe) you wouldn’t tip unless you were in a restaurant and then you might give about 10%. In the Us you’re expected to tip *everywhere*, even to someone selling you a pint of milk in a shop.

Guys, there is so much information here. It is not researched by me. Lots of content is from WEB. I am not responsible for any wrong info, as I never went there.