Netflix does have subs of FMA:BH! I was wrong! But the subtitles are kind of hard to read.

I think America is this way because they think dubbing something is less important. I mean, with an American cartoon, you have a team of people dedicated to the creation of the product. With a Japanese cartoon imported to America, what you have is a team of people who just want to market it to an American audience. My suspicion is that since the cartoon is already made, they just hire whoever they can to get it out there to American audiences.

My housemate my_daroga has also mentioned the status of a lot of Japanese voice actors vs American ones. This may be partly because animation is more mainstream in Japan, but housemate pointed out that some people have become celebrities in Japan on the merit of their voice-acting, whereas in America, some celebrities voice act, but that's not how they get famous. As I understand it, voice-acting is just more respected in Japan, so it seems like there's more time and effort involved and more quality control. I do think that American cartoons are getting better re: voice-acting, but compared to Japanese a lot of American cartoons still make me cringe.

(Speaking of Avatar, Zuko's voice was HORRIBLE to me for quite some time. Now I LOVE it and wouldn't have him any other way, but it really took me a long time to get over the idea that it was bad voice-acting, and on into the idea that Zuko's kind of a dork and takes himself way too seriously, which is why his voice sounds like that.)