> (and scary dangerous - where are the switches? where is the Earth? though the EU are also typically unswitched)

well the bottom prong on a cord is the ground and anything that is not a wallwort is polarized nowadays so that the neutral and hot are always on the right wire.

by switched you mean it has a fuse in the plug? if so that's not something that america does. we have 15A circuits going to different parts of the house and if there is a possibility of water immersion there will be a GFCI circuit breaker or outlet installed to protect all downstream outlets. overall it works well enough that there aren't a massive number of deaths caused by it. usually you have do something exceptional to be electrocuted.

edit: the kettle I have is 1500 Watts and at 120 volts it's ~12A of current.