What I don't like about the USA is that they work a lot

When you meet someone who has left their homeland in Latin America, and you start to ask them how things have been for them, how they feel in the United States of America, they will most likely tell you that they find everything better than in their country wher they come; but he only doesn't like one thing and he exclaims to you: the bad thing is that here you have to work like a donkey! Then you listen to the interlocutor, without doing a brief analysis or simple reflection and asking yourself: Could it be that this person is enslaved and they don't even pay him anything, and why doesn't he report it to the police authorities? No, the attitude is to respond: Aha, it's true, I agree with you, there is too much work done here! And, later on, the jokes begin, yes, the same ones we find on social networks.

There is a principle of capitalism that says: "the boss buys your work time", so don't try to slack off at your workplace, since, "that time does not belong to you, but to your employers." Maybe in Latin America it is customary to waste time on activities that do not correspond to the pay they receive and when working in the USA, they think that they are being exploited and no, what happens is that they are only knowing the true duty of the job well done.

The other impression where a false conclusion can be drawn is the relationship between salary and cost of living. In general, Latin Americans have historically attempted to live a low-cost existence, that is, leaving material aspirations and ambitions aside, in most cases influenced by beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church, which taught among its acolytes that loving riches was a sin, and therefore hell would be their final destination.

What is noticeable in everyday reality is that those who work to live day to day, only to pay the bills, without hope of a future linked to savings and investment, will sadly give up their job.

When one has these parameters, beliefs and patterns rooted in the psyche, when comparing the reality of the countries of origin with the North American socioeconomic reality, it results, at least for the subject who thinks about it, as a society in which one feels and at the same time he thinks and finally comes to believe that he is a slave to work and someone is enslaving him. That's where the false and unhealthy opinion that is repeated so much within the Latin community would come from: "What I don't like about the USA is that they work a lot."

Author: Miguel Ángel Moreno Villarroel