Why does the U.S still used English system for everyday measurement while almost every other country uses SI units?

Answer 1

In a word, stubbornness. On an official level, the United States converted to SI units in the late 18th century, and since 1959, by law, an inch is exactly 25.4 millimeters. In the late 1970's, President Jimmy Carter tried to push the country to adopt SI units in everyday life, but the backlash against conversion, most especially the backlash against the detailsof conversion, was exploited by President Ronald Reagan, who rolled back all of Carter's metrification initiatives. Those meters and liters and key-low-grams were just unamerican.

Instead of teaching that an inch is about 2½ cm and a liter is a little more than a quart, schools taught that an inch is 2.54 cm and a liter is 33.814 fluid ounces.

Also, apparently it is very important for a mile to be exactly divisible by eleven (480 feet). ANOTHER VIEWPOINT: I think it is fundamentally an 'emotive/cultural' issue with them.History is that early Amercans emanated primarily from Britain as they continued to use the Brit. System. Changing to Metrication is a very major task because it affects so many businesses in a way that costs them a lot of money to make the change . In Australia the plan to change to Metric was worked on for several years before they started to force the community to start using it. It was a brilliant plan and it worked perfectly with no serious problems or consequences whatever. The key part of the plan was to change over 1 unit at a time over a period of about 10 years (I think it was 10) the first change was MONEY,then came LENGTH , then came WEIGHT then things like volume ,density, pressure, etc followed slowly. Land area was the last of all. Americans are an innovative people and they like to lead the rest of the world. They are a very proud nation and do not take easily to being told what to do by other nations . They do not like to copy. They like to lead. They, as a nation, have a tendency to like to be DIFFERENT. they even changed the magnitude of the British gallon, pint, and ounce. They introduced their own standard SCREW THREADS.they have a thread known as SAE, course and fine. These threads were used in industry and especially in Automobiles until at least the 1960's as I recall. When the rest of the world went metric, the American Auto. Industry followed suit, and started putting metric screws into car parts. My private view of USA is that they would feel humiliated if they were told to start using the system of measurement used by nations whom they think are inferior to USA. I also think that there would be powerful protests from a large percentage of proud Americans, if the nations leaders tried to force Metrication upon their nation. Let's be honest about this . Most people regardless of their origins, dislike change of any sort. We are moved out of our comfort zone when we are forced to deal with a major change of some kind or other.