A life in the United States
The most money of the eight, and the largest bills. Medicine that can do almost anything, at a price you may be asked to find yourself.
In One Life, a life in the United States is born in an ordinary American city: Dallas, Toledo, Fresno, Augusta, Wichita or Tacoma. The game measures every other country’s money against this one, so a US life starts with the highest pay of the eight, and the highest prices.
What the game gives you
Children take the school bus. School runs through the grades to high school, and what comes after is a choice with a price: college is the most expensive of the eight countries, and the game makes you pay it, often with loans. Seasons are the four you know, and autumn is the fall.
The money is in dollars. Pay rises with education and seniority the way it does in the world: in the US government’s figures, a full-time worker with a bachelor’s degree typically earns about $1,578 a week, and one with a high school diploma about $966.
Stories only an American life has
Some situations in One Life are dealt only to a life lived in the United States, because they only happen there:
- The month the insurance ends. Between jobs, health cover is a decision with a price.
- The loans. The first student loan payment after the grace period, and, for some, the long road to having them forgiven.
- The match. The 401(k), and whether you take the money your employer is offering to add.
- The acceptance letter. A child’s college: the sticker price, the aid and the loans.
- The facility. A parent who can no longer live alone, and what Medicare does not pay.
- Sixty-two. When to claim Social Security, and what waiting is worth.
Money in the game
The United States is the game’s yardstick. Every other country’s pay, prices, university fees and medical bills are set as a share of the American figure, then shown in that country’s own money. So an American life has, in the game as in the world, the highest pay and the highest prices of the eight. The thing to watch is the gap between them in a bad year: university and medicine are where an American life can lose the most, and the game prices both in full.
What pay buys depends on where you live and how you live. The game works out the money every year — pay, rent, food, the car, the debts, the savings — and the money hole, when it opens, opens fast: a bill that cannot be paid becomes a debt, and a debt becomes a decision.
The odds
The UN estimates life expectancy at birth in the United States at about 80 years (77 for men, 82 for women): lower than the UK, Germany or Japan despite the highest health spending in the world. In the game, the American bargain is the one people describe in life: more money, more opportunity, and more ways for one bad year to cost a great deal.