alt-text

It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn’t use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).

Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America’s little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:

The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram

[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]

ISO 216 A series papers formats

AO

A1

A3

A5

A7

A6

Et.

A4

Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We’re not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.

Source: Financial Times

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
69 points

We involve third parties to help spy on our transactions.

It’s OK, they charge us for the privilege.

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

Wtf?

Also are banks just dumb or what? Has it crossed their greedy minds that they also can charge to make transfers?

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

What’s pictured there is when people use Venmo to pay for something instead of just transferring money between friends. The fee is paid by the seller. Banks already do this for traditional sellers in the US which is why you’ll see signs asking for cash instead of cards.

And tax evasion. But I don’t care as long as the tamales are good.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Do Visa, Mastercard, etc, not charge transaction fees in Europe? The only place I’ve been where there’s no transaction fees paid by the vendor is China.

permalink
report
parent
reply