Yeah, very sadly...
The good bits about the UK were things like if you get stranded abroad by a major travel company collapse the government would fly you home. (Like you'd ever see that in the USA! If you did, you'd have to sign a promissory note to pay for the air fare.) There seems to be some sort of feeling that the collective country needs to take care of its people abroad.
You have the NHS if you become ill, although from our experiences with it the NHS is pretty much functioning as did Medicaid in the States - bare-bones, long waits, restrictions on what they could do or prescribe, etc., but decent basic care. Probably better for true emergencies, as long as it's not anything too exotic that's wrong with you.
The definition of "homeless" here is not what it is in the States. (Here it apparently means you have no permanent home to live in. In the USA it means the equivalent of sleeping rough.) And the UK version of it is not nearly as widespread as in the USA, so if something truly ghastly happened and one lost their ability to work, it's way more likely here that they would
not end up sleeping on a park bench, and dying of an untreated illness, here.
And it's a truly beautiful country (at least the parts we frequent).
There's a lot of competition among the various utility companies so prices for phones, internet, gas, electric, etc., are lower than in the States - and you have options if you don't like the company. You don't see that often in the USA.
Housing is relatively cheap (compared to what we were used to).
Food safety (as in restrictions on GMO, additives, etc.) is good here. As is the required care of the animals in the food chain.
There is a decent public transit system here in the larger cities and cross-country. (Of course, that's comparing with what we've dealt with in the USA, which tends to be poor to absent entirely.)
On the other hand, there is an entrenched "we've always done it like that" or "that's the way it's done" mindset here that just drives me freaking up a wall.
We've encountered a weird "you can't be better than us" sort of thing. We pay extra to live in a good neighborhood with minimal crime and good services. Some of the Daughter's ex-co-workers kind of jibed her with "oooh, posh" in a disparaging way when she said where she lives. (It's not posh by my standards, for sure. But nice enough.) Like she's overstepping her "place". (She put them in theirs rather summarily when they said that sort of thing.) There's a sort of "we're lower working class, not very educated, poor, belligerent, and proud of all that" mindset in a portion of the population here. And they try to smack down anyone who tries to exceed the boundaries. But that might just be a Glasgow thing.
And the lack of opportunity for the Daughter. Brexit is about to make that worse - she will no longer be able to compete for jobs in the EU on a level playing field with other EU candidates. So that perk is evaporating. it does seem as if the Daughter will need to go back to the USA to be able to build a decent career and get her future pension sorted out.
The pay here is abysmal (excepting the usual high-skill/professional fields), and what they ask you to do for it isn't much better. The most the Daughter could hope to get here, now with three degrees, would be less than she was earning ten years ago in the States in the temporary administrative services (typist/receptionist) pool with no degrees, adjusted for time. I was earning three times in the States what I could earn here for a similar job, based on 20+ years' experience.
The education system does not seem to be on a par with what we experienced in the USA. Incoming freshmen to the university here are not anywhere nearly as well-prepared or well-rounded, and the university programs are not as rigorous. (Again, this is only coming from our experience here.) It's lovely that higher education is way less expensive here, but unless you intend to stay here I'm not sure it's going to put you on the same level as someone with credentials from the USA. (This is, of course, excepting the usual bit about Oxford, etc., where connections and institutional reputation carry you.)
A lot (by no means all) of people have a sort of passive thing going - they wait for things to be done for them. They seem to assume the council or the government will sort "things" out. I don't know how to explain it, really. It's kind of the downside to the "hive" mentality. They are supposed to do their bit and then others are supposed to do their bits and never the twain shall meet. Example - after that horrible tower block fire I phoned our landlord and asked about installing a temporary emergency escape ladder (one of those chain ones you throw out a window to hang down the side of the building) because there was only one stairwell for our block of flats. Which would undoubtedly serve as a chimney. The response was that they thought the idea absurd. If the building was on fire we should just wait in our flat until the fire brigade showed up to rescue us. (Ummmm, no!) And it turned out that the fire alarm system was not connected to the fire department or any monitoring service, so if we heard the alarm we were to phone the fire department. (Say what???)
There seems to be a lot of interference by the State in people's lives. Take, for instance, the brain damaged child who the NHS decided had no quality of life and should be unplugged and let die. The parents wanted to take her to Italy for care, and had it lined up, and they had to fight "the authorities" tooth and nail to be able to do that - at their own expense.
People I've talked to seem to expect the school system and teachers to be doing more of what I expect a child's parent(s) should be doing. They send the kid off and then wash their hands of their upbringing, sort of. It's... odd.
Overall, I don't know how to describe it exactly. I get a sense of... stagnation. With twinges of "the class system is still alive and functioning". I have had conversations with persons of various social standings here and I do see a marked difference between the expectations and daily realities of the haves vs the have-nots. I had plenty of dealings with both in the USA, don't get me wrong. But here there's more of a sense of obliviousness - the people in each sphere seem to function unaware, except around the edges, of the reality of the other one. And rather than, as in the USA, the sense that if you work hard and reach you can better yourself and your position, there's a bit more of "who do you think you are, better than the rest of us?" kinda put down if someone tries to improve their lot in life. It's as if they've just given up. Or it never occurs to them to try. (Caveat, the sample size of my contacts is not large, and so I have to generalize heavily.)
And then there's the governments comparison. Which is heartburn-inducing, so I won't.
So, which is "better"? Define better...?
