 Hey, welcome back to my YouTube channel, guys. Today we're going to talk about five lies that America has told me. Now, this is not a bashing of the US. I love the US. I'm from the US. But with that being said, there's no perfect place. And so you're not gonna wanna miss this video. And in fairness, I will do a video on things that New Zealand can do better as well. So you're gonna wanna subscribe below because you're not gonna wanna miss that one and you're definitely not gonna wanna miss this episode. And you're definitely gonna wanna watch the whole thing because I think all of my points are going to be quite relevant and interesting. So subscribe below, stay tuned, here we go. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is a great all-in-one platform to get your business online quickly. Now, the first lie I would like to talk about and I have talked about in the past is America is the greatest country on earth. How many of you have heard that? I mean, I think that honestly, as an American, you are fed that early on. We are pledging allegiance to the flag when we are children. This is just what we do. We are always talking about it being the greatest. And so with that said, there's so many people in America that don't travel, don't even consider living somewhere else because they think they're in the best place. Well, I'm here to tell you, I actually don't think that that's true. Now, America is a great country, but there are also many great countries and just they don't do things the same that just make some different. There's just different ways of doing things and they're all valuable. And so that is what I'd like to talk about today. I live in New Zealand. If you don't know me, we are a family of six. I have moved to New Zealand. I've been here for six years and we love it here. We love New Zealand. Now, New Zealand, is it perfect? America isn't perfect, okay? But New Zealand doesn't go around also saying it's the greatest place on earth. In fact, they probably air on the other side where they're just a little bit, you know, nervous and sensitive about their country, but we will go into that in another video. So make sure that you subscribe below. So America being the greatest country on earth, it is great. I think I'm gonna go back to the values that America holds back when it's like four, you know, the early settlers and the, you know, constitution and then declaration of independence and the people that just kind of came in and just wrote about what's valuable in America, right? We've talked about freedoms, freedom of religion, freedom of speech. They're concerned about just being able to establish themselves independently. And so what you're gonna see is that the values in the U.S. are the same. They have just continued through the years that this is what we value, that we think that we're the greatest because we've pulled away weak and function on our own and not only do we function on our own, but we are a superpower really in the world. Basically because we spent a lot of money on defense, but other than that, you know, we have a lot of influence in the world and they feel very, very proud of that as they should. There are some really great and amazing things about that, but it isn't everything. People talk about anybody outside of, you know, the U.S. as socialists or, you know, and there are bad places. There isn't like the greatest thing, but like for example, New Zealand is social democracy. It isn't the same as socialism, okay? We are a democracy here and we just believe more and caring for the community than just individual needs. And you'll just notice that at its core. And I think it really comes from the Maori people in New Zealand and how they value accepting anybody that arrives. This is the most amazing place if you are not from New Zealand. Now, I know people have had bad experiences and not everybody in New Zealand is perfect, but as a general rule of thumb, people are treated very well as outsiders. Whereas I don't know that you get that in the U.S. I think it might have been early on settlers and everybody was moving here from all over the place, especially Europe, but, you know, now it's more like, you know, if you're not American, you know, so it's definitely not as accepted. Whereas here it's like, oh, it's cool. What can you add to our culture? What can you bring? You have cool food. You have cool ways of doing things. And it's just really great and really accepted. Your difference is accepted to the point where if they like you, they call you auntie because you're part of their family. People here have no problem extending their family way beyond blood, okay? And I think that there's definitely people in the U.S. that do that too, but it's not as a culture, it's not as common as a whole in a culture. So that's point number one. And number two, universal healthcare, socialized healthcare is bad and is not good at all. And let me tell you, I have lived in it for six years. It is not perfect, but it is really great in so many ways. So just because the U.S. decides to use insurance companies that, you know, make really all the money so that they can have a million specialists and they can, you can get to a doctor or specialist at any point doesn't mean that your healthcare system is amazing, okay? It's great for people that can afford it, but at the same time, you could have an accident, you could, something could happen to you that's way beyond your control and you could actually go bankrupt. And this is an actual problem. Like this is actually true. People hesitate, they make decisions in their life based on healthcare. Whereas in New Zealand, it's looked at as just a human right that you should be taken care of if you're sick, if you have an accident, when you have a baby, this should not be something that can cause you to go broke, that you could get these huge bills. It's definitely out of control. And I think that at least 80 or 90% of Americans would agree with me that the healthcare system is messed up and it needs to be fixed. Do I know the solution? Is it as easy as doing something that Canada does, that New Zealand does, Australia does? You know, New Zealand isn't that big. So it's a little bit hard to compare that, but there's plenty of healthcare systems around the world that are run really well that are not insurance-based and pay-based. And so I really think that if you're an American and you're watching this, that, you know, to really kind of rethink that. Like I think that people like, they hesitate to call an ambulance because of how expensive it can be, anywhere from $250 to $1,500, depending on your insurance. People don't go to the doctor because they don't have insurance. People stay in jobs that they hate for years and years and years because they have good insurance. Like you guys need to take a step back and think about your values here. What's important to you? There's a lot of happiness that happens around your job. And if you're stuck in a dead-end job because of healthcare, it's not good. And so I just think that Americans need to re-have the conversation and open their eyes to ways that other people are doing it very successfully in large countries as well, and just have another look at it, point two. And number three, to be a good worker, a hard worker, a team player, means that you have to work an enormous amount of hours way over what you're contracted for. You can't take sick days. You can't go pick up your kids at school. You can't take your holiday even though you're given very little. You don't get any maternity leave. Like this is Americans associate hard work with giving your life. What kind of feels like giving them your blood to your job. And that is just not good. That's just not good. And I personally, I'm a hard worker. I am an entrepreneur. I have the drive. I have the ambition. I can be very successful in the American society, right? And so when I come to New Zealand and they value family time, can you tell you the arguments I've had with my boss or coworkers, people like, no, when you're on holiday, we are not calling you. We, you do not have your phone. You do not have your work computer. And I'm like, it's all right. I can just answer a couple of calls, you know? And they're like absolutely against it. They have a different value system around it. And that has just taken me a while to get used to. Now you can, you jump in, you come here, you love it, but you really, it's really actually hard to get over. It's hard to be like, it's not hard to be like, I can go pick up my kids or to end my work day at four o'clock or five o'clock, whatever it's agreed upon, that's easy. It's the taking the vacation to valuing time off, to saying, hey, it's good. It's good to take more than two weeks of holiday to actually take three or four weeks. And so this whole idea that in order to be a hard worker or a team player that you need to work all the time is just not true. We're overvaluing that, then happiness, then rest. We're all sitting there stressed out, overworked, hitting burnout, whatever words you wanna use. I don't think we need to get all caught up in words, but we're not happy at the end of the day when we're working like maniacs, right? And that balance, balance is also a hard word I don't love either, is hard to do. But it really is nice when you live in a country, in a society, in a culture that values more than your work is unbelievable. I cannot say enough about this. It enables you to be the person that you wanna be. You're actually motivated to work harder. You're just more on it. You just love it because it doesn't take everything to give to it. And then people don't get fired or lose their job because of economic reasons and then have no idea who their identity is. That doesn't happen here. You have a lot more stuff that fills your identity. In fact, if you go to like a party here, if you get together, people don't talk about work. Nobody asks you what you do for a living. I had some of the closest friends in my life for years, for two years, had no idea what they did for a living. That just wouldn't really happen in the US. And so like it's hard, it's different. So people coming from other countries, coming to visit America, people never taking time off to hang with them is weird. It's a concept like, hey, there's more to life than just working, and that's just true. And we need to value happiness. We need to value that people have lots of interests in their life, and that's a good thing. And so I challenge you, if you're in the States, if you're in America, if you own a company, if you have any influence over that sort of area, the HR area of your company, think about it. Look at what other people do of other countries and laws around that is just really, really valuable. I don't know about you, but I have been putting off creating my website until I found my solution with Squarespace. You guys are going to love this product. They have so many beautiful templates to choose from. You just pick your template and then you go in and just add the details of your business. And literally within one day, I was able to get my website up and running. Another feature that I love on Squarespace is that they have this social sharing where my community can just go right out into my YouTube channel, my TikTok channel, which is where most of my content exists. And so it's really nice that it can connect directly from Squarespace. Other features that Squarespace offers that are really great is their, the fact that you can collect donations, you can do email campaigns from it. It's just overall really great. I personally also love the analytics. I always like to know what's going on behind the scenes. Who's really reaching me on my webpage and that's just such a nice feature as well. I highly recommend that you check out Squarespace. Take some time today to go to squarespace.com and check out your free trial. And then when you're ready to purchase your website or your domain, you get 10% off with the link below. And number four, consumerism. Consumerism is not the ideal that you think it is. Now I love a good sale. I love the variety of shopping in the U.S. I pretty much haven't bought anything since I've been to the U.S. because I don't really like that there's no choices here. And I just like all the stuff in the U.S. because it's so cheap. But let me tell ya, I don't miss the consumerism. The constant feeling like you have to buy more that you can't miss the sale that it's just such a big part of your life shopping. And also in the U.S. that it's weird to wear the same thing more than once. Or like the same thing like multiple days in a row. Or you have to have the new clothes for the new season. And that just doesn't happen in New Zealand. Like people value taking care of things. I mean, there's actual shops in Wellington where you can get your shoes fixed. They can fix this so you don't just get rid of things. They're very much into reviving what you have. Wear it until you really can't or fix it if you can. And it's just very good. It's just very good for the environment. It's good for your pocket, for your money. Like you're not spending money all the time. And so it's just, it's not, it doesn't bring happiness. Like so many people think, oh, I could just get this. It'll make me happy if I get this card. It'll make me happy and it's just not true. It's like we all kinda know it's not true. But like, we still want it because it's valued in our society, especially in the US, it's very valued kind of what you have and what you don't have. You know, even at any economic level, there's that people value certain things. And so it isn't that people don't value things here in New Zealand, but yeah, it's just so great to not have that consumerism, to not be spending that money to wearing the same clothes year after year and being okay with that. Because you know what everybody else does? Like all of my closest friends, I know their entire wardrobe, entire. So I would know when they got a new shirt because it's not often and it's great. It's great for raising children in that. It's really great. It saves parents a lot of money. And it's just not a real good thing to value as a society. So it's just my challenge to you today is to think about that a little bit. And number five. Last, but certainly not least, the lie of freedom. That freedom above all things is the most valuable trait. Because I think that everybody has a different definition of freedom. Okay, let me just tell you a quick story. My first year that I lived here, it was the 4th of July and I was talking to some friends in there and they were like, oh, happy 4th of July. And I'm like, yeah, you guys are still working for the queen. We broke away from England a long time ago. Suckers or whatever. And they looked at me like, we don't actually think that that's freedom as you think it is. They think it as like, why not work together? Why not, you know, combine forces for the greater good because that's very much a cultural accepted value here in New Zealand. And so that's how they look at it. And like to me, it was like, wait, what? You don't want just like your own rights. America is very individualistic focused in terms of freedom, but a lot of countries are more working together and collectivists and the way that they look at things. And that has a lot of freedom in it. A lot of freedom that we're looking for. Some of the freedoms that you really don't have in the US are a couple of things. Safety, feel very unsafe. I think really no matter where you are, there's levels of a safety that you just, you don't have other places, people don't understand. It stresses me out when I think about somebody from New Zealand going to the US because there's just a lot of cues that they're not gonna know, okay? Your kids can't go to school without active shooter training or a bulletproof backpack or walking through security when they get to school. That's not okay. That's not freedom. That's not freedom for your children. So that one really is not good. Education, so expensive. Higher education specifically, so expensive. Why are we making education so expensive? And it's just not valued enough in society to make it free whereas a lot of countries do make it really affordable and free and that's to me also as an educator has a lot to do with freedom for somebody being able to have the ability to learn and to learn their entire adult life. And then kind of what I mentioned before about healthcare, just the fear of medical, there's a lot of fears in American culture. Another one that doesn't speak freedom to me is I am an entrepreneur, I am a small business owner and it is very hard to succeed in the US as a small business owner because it's pretty much run by five main companies and so they don't have the economics for small businesses to succeed well. Also, what I have found in addition to the economics is that there's a level of unethicalness that you have to overcome that is not, I just wasn't willing to do that in my business. Now that isn't everything, it isn't like you can't, it's a capitalist society and I'm not against capitalism because I am a business owner and I see that it's amazing what Amazon has accomplished. It's amazing what all these different things have accomplished, but is it good as a level of freedom? Is it good that all these big businesses that can just trample on all the little ones, like it's just not set up for small businesses to succeed in my opinion. And so yeah, so this overvaluing of freedom is what I have really struggled with and to try to understand and so would love to know your thoughts. Would love to know your thoughts on all of what I've had to say. I know that many of you are gonna have and I haven't covered everything in detail because I'm trying to keep this to a reasonable length but I've just kind of started to highlight it. I wanted to start the conversation. I wanted to hear what you have to say about. So please comment below and let me know your thoughts. Well, I hope you enjoyed my video today. Please, I hope that nobody is overly offended. We're just opening up the conversation. We're having thoughts. I am just really a believer in someone being honest and let's just deal with issues. Let's just talk about them together. So please comment below, let me know your thoughts and thank you again for Squarespace for sponsoring this video and make sure that you click the link below if you want 10% off your website or domain. But yeah, so you're definitely gonna wanna subscribe below and stay tuned because I will overview in the next couple of weeks my thoughts about New Zealand and some of the pros and cons of that. And I also will be highlighting what I experienced in the healthcare sector. So you're gonna wanna stay tuned for that detail. Have a good week. I'll see you next week.