The USA is not slack !. Its just not up its self like some in british aviation.
The Ground exams may be much harder to get in the UK but this is just so much JAA sh1t most of the stuff is thirty years out of date and the new stuff so vauge as to be usless.
When it comes to the flight test the FAA system is much harder and required you to think in real time rather than the trained monkey approach of the JAA . OK so the FAA may let you push the limmits a bit more on alt & hdg but this is only when the examiner has asked you to divert to a place that you have never seen before and you are trying to get the Jepps out.
Its all a far cry from the UK IR where you have done all the options in training and all is telegraphed well ahead of time.
Both the FAA CPL/IR and Flight engineer tests were much harder tests of real practical airmanship than the very structured tests that the CAA dreamed up.
The American system has about the same accident record as the UK so why are these people so gash ? they are clearly not littering the USA with aircraft wrecks !.
The answer is that they are not .........its just a few of the europeans are so far up them selfs that that cant see the truth or have to invent this supiriority to fuel there own ego's .
The last question I have is why if the British are good with aircraft why dont we build any aircraft ? ( all we can do is subcontract to the French at Airbus )