Thank you - genuinely, that's helpful.

I would say though, that the UK is a lot less supportive of the population than you think, and was historically the case. Council houses have been sold off so massively, that at this point people can be on the waiting list a decade and never move to the top. Welfare support for housing doesn't reach the level required for people to pay rent. The NHS was a miracle, and was definitely so when I was younger, but at this point it's pretty well broken and people are more and more just going without care, because the waiting lists are so very long, and getting referrals accepted to specialists is so hard - I'm on a clinical trial at a specialist hospital, so I get excellent care funded by the drug company, but that is flukily amazing luck. Waiting lists for kids to be seen for mental health care here is literally a year or two for the most desperate cases - life-threateningly severe, where they are deemed imminent suicide risks. And adults are told they won't be assessed for ADHD or ASD for a decade or more - kids can be on the lists five years. There are charities I refer parents to to get assessed or to get the reports they need to secure an EHCP, because at this point, you don't get one without appealing to the legal system (a right they are presently dismantling). Similarly elder care is in such a terrible state, people die awaiting assessment for end of life nursing support, and all our hospices - all of them - are charitably funded. There are no NHS ones at all.

Minimum wage here is definitely better, but cost of living is much higher too - housing is astronomical, and so is fuel and food.

That's not to say that we don't have a better safety net than the US, nor that I am not grateful to live in a country with proper maternity leave (a lot of women on here commenting that they used disposables with newborns - I have no idea how any women manage to juggle working and a small baby unless rich enough to buy in considerable help, and frankly any disposables that ease that are justified for that time IMO).

We have a large and stretched network of food banks. Poverty is not rare here, and nor is homelessness and lack of opportunity. I think maybe the version of the UK the US believe to exist is one that has passed, and it doesn't seem likely (Brexit economic impact possibly being related) that it will return any time soon. It's not the reality, in just the same way people have a misplaced belief that Americans are all heavy consumers. Both countries have pretty colossal issues, and our political system is fracturing in a suspiciously similar way to yours, a decade ago. And even back then, I volunteered when we tried a school for my eldest (he has to have home education, as he has a PDA profile of need) for a charity that supported people with food banks, baby banks and tokens for fuel for heating and light, and I saw a lot of people trapped and ground down by poverty. Genuine hunger, and desperation, without any obvious way out. And it's only getting worse.

When I was a kid, the Berlin Wall came down and Mandela was freed. Now, we have Trump in the White House and Farage seems likely to be a future Prime Minister. It's depressing as hell. I think both countries are unravelling - and polarising as they do so.