If i had to guess, it’s probably less money (certainly right now that’s the case) and more to do with all the bureaucracy.

That Forbes article is 6 years old. Money has been the issue for a long time. On top of a dwindling and almost nonexistent middle class, traveling abroad from the US is just more expensive than traveling abroad from a European country because we have to cross huge oceans.

You can wake up tomorrow and drive all the way across america, with basically no paper work. I would be surprised if many people in america even had valid passports to be honest.

With travel to Europe being so expensive for Americans, our foreign destinations of choice have historically been Mexico or Canada. Americans didn’t used to need a passport to travel to Mexico or Canada, and even some Caribbean countries, as long as we went by land or by sea (flying always required a passport). We could just drive or take a cruise there like we were going to any other state. After 9/11, the government began pushing the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, and in 2007, passports became mandatory even for driving to Mexico and Canada. So instead of going through the hassle of getting a passport, a lot of Americans are just choosing not to travel outside the country at all.

Not to mention all the work you have to do in preparing overseas accommodations. And potential language barriers. Traveling outside of the US has got to be like 10x more difficult than traveling inside the US.

It really is. And since we don’t make it mandatory to learn a foreign language in school (unlike most European countries), the language barrier is a big deal.

I also imagine that if people DO travel outside, they’re going to go on a big trip, to see a lot of things, and it’s going to be more expensive. It’s just how that kind of thing tends to work. It’ll be some shit like a wedding, for example.

Which puts overseas travel out of reach for most Americans.

If you think of the government like a restaurant, it makes more sense. Pretty much every restaurant has to deal with vermin, to varying degrees. Most of the time, the restaurant keeps it under control through regular cleaning, but you still see a roach every now and then. Maybe even a rat. So you set traps and you kill the fuckers. If it gets too bad, you hire a professional to come in and exterminate. If you’re diligent, the rats and roaches are extremely rare, your food is protected, and the customers never see vermin. But if you walk into a restaurant and see a rat crawling across the dessert display in broad daylight, that restaurant has a HUGE fucking problem. They have an infestation. The rats are eating well, and have become unafraid of being seen.

These monumental fuck-ups like Pete Hegseth are vermin. They are rats and roaches that are brazenly crawling all over the tables, out in the open in broad daylight. If this is what we the customers see, then what’s behind the walls and in the kitchen and in the dry goods storage is a thousand times worse. The American restaurant is infested. It needs to be tented and fumigated.

Imagine trying to justify killing babies by claiming babies are involved in combat.

America is a huge fucking country. If you want to have interesting travel, there are PLENTY of places you can go within america alone.

I would love for this to be the answer for why most Americans don’t travel internationally. The US is massive, and it’s one of the most geographically diverse countries on earth. Just look at this list of ecoregions of the US. Also, damn near every nationality you can think of has made a home here, and they brought their culture with them. There are Congolese enclaves in North Carolina, Somalian enclaves in Minnesota, Cambodian enclaves in California, Indian enclaves in New York, Finnish enclaves in Oregon, French enclaves in Alabama… The list goes on and on. It’s actually insane how much beautiful variation there is here, both geographically and culturally.

Unfortunately, the real reason most Americans don’t travel abroad is far more depressing. The numbers that Dogiedog64 was citing come from a survey conducted by OnePoll, which wound up in this Forbes article.

In fact, survey results showed 76 percent of the respondents wanted to travel more than they do currently. The reasons they gave for why they don’t are what you would expect: mainly due to a lack of finances or just feeling unprepared and ill-equipped to venture forth into unknown territory. More specifically, 63 percent of Americans who have never left the country said an international trip would be out of their price range.

When you consider that nearly 40% of Americans can’t cover an unexpected $400 expense, it starts to make sense that so many Americans don’t travel abroad. It’s heartbreaking that we basically invented “grind culture”, and yet most of us can’t afford the same kind of vacation that a minimum wage worker in Denmark gets.

I don’t know, but it just doesn’t roll off the tongue the way “cold turkey” does.

“Quitting cold turkey” - I never actually thought about this one, but apparently it’s directly related to addiction (which seems kind of obvious now that I do think about it). When you quit an addiction abruptly, you sometimes get that cold goosebump skin like a cold turkey.

The Wikipedia entry on that one is a fun read. I’ve heard most of these possible origins before, but nobody is actually sure of the true origin of the phrase. It’s kind of frustrating, but also pretty neat that we still use a phrase long after we forgot where it came from.

“Bless your heart” is such a sneaky Southern saying.

Interesting. I always thought it was because the rain was so heavy it drove all the strays to seek shelter, so people noticed a lot more cats and dogs in front of their homes. I think a grade school teacher told me that when I was a kid. I like the dead animal version better.

Albania.

Moving abroad (I’m American). It was something I’d been planning for a few years anyway, and I’m super glad I got the ball rolling when I did. I’ve lived abroad before and loved it, and plan to make it permanent this time, which is a little intimidating, but also exciting.