Well I am not surprised, Look at who you have running the country. I have no interest In going to to visit ever again and I love the US but not with him or any of his cronies in charge.
Maybe I'm becoming (or already cynical), but I'm increasingly tired of the genre of posts/reels/TikToks where someone moves to Vietnam, Portugal, Thailand, Mexico, etc. and comes back with profound observations about how "people there really know how to live" and how life is simply better there.
A lot of "I've discovered a better way of life abroad" stories seem to quietly assume continued access to US wages, US assets, US equity compensation, or US retirement savings.
> A lot of "I've discovered a better way of life abroad" stories seem to quietly assume continued access to US wages, US assets, US equity compensation, or US retirement savings.
What’s the issue with that? You obviously have lower income in the rest of the world, the US is literally the wealthiest country. If you can benefit from US income and live in places that suits you better it’s clearly a pretty good situation.
If you instead get a local wage you will still be in a good position, people leaving the US are generally with college education and high income. Maybe less wealthy but that’s ok, you don’t have to literally have the highest income in the world to be good.
I suspect some people moved there years ago with the lower cost of living little money around the time/since of the four-hour workweek tim ferris movement . Some countries do not allow public criticism, so of course they would make videos of wonderful places to live hoping to scratch income-wise by after some moving there with no backup plan. Just a little critical thinking.
I can understand the just indiehacker and mvp/yolo it, but there is real risk there and I'd question the wisdom of that.
Soon there will be restrictions on this. If the data ever gets presented and catches public opinion then i suspect the restrictions will start coming and salary caps based on expat workers will start to deter them from leaving. Quite the contradiction if you want people to stay. We all know this is the attitude of the admin ATM.
The trump admin changes to passports for transgender people have already caused problems for transgender americans who either want to travel or are already abroad.
Europe gets romanticized way too much. Healthcare often means months of waiting and very hit-or-miss doctors. Bureaucracy is worse, salaries are lower, and there are plenty of stupid laws and corruption too.
It is probably better if you value slower life, more vacation, and working less. But it is not some obvious upgrade over the U.S. Just a different set of problems.
To add some nuances, as someone living in Germany, it’s correct you might have to wait months for a medical appointment, but not for emergencies. Psychiatrists, psychotherapists are generally overbooked and you likely have to wait 3-6 months (sometimes more), which isn’t great if you are in a bad place. However if we are talking about breaking something, you can get everything happening quickly and efficiently.
Personal anecdotes:
I had to wait 6+ months to get an actual diagnostic when I had a pretty bad depressive episode. Everybody around me shares that same experience. The eventual diagnostic (adhd with high anxiety) didn’t cost me anything. And I pay 15€ every 3 months or so for my meds.
When I got a lumbar disc herniation that required urgent medical intervention I got brought to a hospital immediately, got MRI scans, multiple days in hospital with an assigned physiotherapist, bunch of prescribed medication. Everything was done extremely way quickly. The whole thing, including the ambulance, drugs they injected to be able to move me, scans, hospital bed, crutches, and medication cost me around 40€. And something like 30€ for the month of physiotherapy that followed.
I have a high incomes and am self-employed so pay a bit more than 900€ a month for the public health insurance, which is the maximum here (the fact we have a cap instead of a pure percentage of income doesn’t make any sense to me, I should be paying way more). Insurances manage everything automatically.
Agreed that German doctors are really hit or miss, though that has been the case everywhere I lived
In the US, most specialists are booked out 6 months. It seems impossible to find a mental health care provider that accepts insurance and is taking new patients. You can get prescribed mental health drugs from your primary care physician.
That's just my experience and I have health insurance provided by one the world's richest employers, I pay 4,318.86/yr in premiums for our family with a multi-thousand-dollar deductible.
Maybe if I was a very rich person in a poorer area that still happens to have a hospital, I'd have an easier time scheduling healthcare but I'd have to make that choice over moving abroad.
I imagine a lot of people are happy to just have access to medical care that doesn’t bankrupt them to be honest. Especially if they have children with medical conditions, or chronic conditions of their own etc.
I was lucky enough to visit the US before Trump's 1st term back in 2015. I even considered working there. Sure, the customs and TSA were uncomfortable experiences, but that's nothing compared to what my dual-citizenship colleague had on a recent trip.
They were taken into a backroom for questioning at Houston airport for hours with no explanation and ultimately let go with no apologies, nothing. The "crime" was using their European passport, methinks. They are not going back to US after that experience.
> it shall be unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid United States passport.
Lots of americans and others, show up here in Nova Scotia (and other places) and try and settle down, many are what I call "lifestyle refugees", and are often well off but traumatised by something or the other, but as the merry pranksters say, "wherever you go, there you are", then there are the "helpers" who are bringing some sort of idea that nobody is unaware of, another category is the wealthy , self centered, city type moving to a rural area and inevitibly trying to claim a shared right of way, or "common land" as there own, and loosing there fluffy minds when they are told that they cant even sue somebody, happens like clockwork.
Luckily there are also a good number of people who move for love, or true oportunity, or just to be in a quieter place, and they do just fine, and plenty of multigenerational dual citizenship familys, who move back and forth
I left over a decade ago, but I actually considered coming back around 2024, so I put some research into it. The result was grim.
- I'm now married to a non-American who is not white. We're not confident in the immigration process, to say the least
- Both of us are self-employed; the quote for decent (not good, I mean aggressively mediocre) insurance was very high
- Housing costs in any city we wanted to live in were very high; YMML on this obviously, but it covers a lot of cities
- Any social ill, irritation, etc that was annoying me around 2010 is unsolved with no signs of progress
- Extreme political polarization (actually a both sides thing)
- The rise of aggressive Christian nationalism (very much a one side thing)
- A horrifying pace of growth in political corruption
Everywhere has its bad points and none of these are necessarily worse than a randomly chosen second country. I think the final deciding factor is just vibes; I feel like America is declining, the culture I was born into is warping, and I don't particularly want to watch it happen from the inside, now that I'm already on the outside.
TLDR: First, deportation. Second: Americans realizing they lose nothing by moving abroad, enjoy cheap housing, cheap healthcare, cheap ... while still holding US jobs at US wages.
That is a problem for the counties they flock too.
Portuguese might not mind tourists that spend money in the country, but I know they do not like rich foreigners living there, driving up prices for housing and everything else.
People should consider migrating to other countries than Italy, Spain and Portugal:
Poland, Hungary and Romania are great places to live.
South Germany and Austria are also great and a bit easier to get by when only using English or consider Croatia if you are up for a bit more adventure.
I laughed at the couple who listed their reasons for leaving: healthcare costs, university costs, housing costs, school shootings threatening their kids, having to work so much they never saw their kids, having to own multiple cars, etc etc and then they say "But we aren't rejecting the American system" after listing all the parts of the american system they rejected.
I hate it when americans use the false statistic of comparing waiting times for healthcare between the usa and another country. It's a false statistic because in the united states, there are a great many people who need healthcare but can't afford it so their waiting time is inifinity truncated only by the fact that they'll eventually die. If their wait times were averaged in with all the americans who are rich enough to see a doctor, the stats wouldn't look so rosy.
In a universal healthcare system the average wait times might be higher but every single person gets the healthcare they need.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 45.7 ms ] threadA lot of "I've discovered a better way of life abroad" stories seem to quietly assume continued access to US wages, US assets, US equity compensation, or US retirement savings.
What’s the issue with that? You obviously have lower income in the rest of the world, the US is literally the wealthiest country. If you can benefit from US income and live in places that suits you better it’s clearly a pretty good situation.
If you instead get a local wage you will still be in a good position, people leaving the US are generally with college education and high income. Maybe less wealthy but that’s ok, you don’t have to literally have the highest income in the world to be good.
I can understand the just indiehacker and mvp/yolo it, but there is real risk there and I'd question the wisdom of that.
It is probably better if you value slower life, more vacation, and working less. But it is not some obvious upgrade over the U.S. Just a different set of problems.
(I'm hungarian)
That's exactly it, right? Self-sorting among those suitably positioned to emigrate and who have tastes more aligned with European norms?
That sounds more like pragmatism than romantacism.
Personal anecdotes:
I had to wait 6+ months to get an actual diagnostic when I had a pretty bad depressive episode. Everybody around me shares that same experience. The eventual diagnostic (adhd with high anxiety) didn’t cost me anything. And I pay 15€ every 3 months or so for my meds.
When I got a lumbar disc herniation that required urgent medical intervention I got brought to a hospital immediately, got MRI scans, multiple days in hospital with an assigned physiotherapist, bunch of prescribed medication. Everything was done extremely way quickly. The whole thing, including the ambulance, drugs they injected to be able to move me, scans, hospital bed, crutches, and medication cost me around 40€. And something like 30€ for the month of physiotherapy that followed.
I have a high incomes and am self-employed so pay a bit more than 900€ a month for the public health insurance, which is the maximum here (the fact we have a cap instead of a pure percentage of income doesn’t make any sense to me, I should be paying way more). Insurances manage everything automatically.
Agreed that German doctors are really hit or miss, though that has been the case everywhere I lived
That's just my experience and I have health insurance provided by one the world's richest employers, I pay 4,318.86/yr in premiums for our family with a multi-thousand-dollar deductible.
Maybe if I was a very rich person in a poorer area that still happens to have a hospital, I'd have an easier time scheduling healthcare but I'd have to make that choice over moving abroad.
They were taken into a backroom for questioning at Houston airport for hours with no explanation and ultimately let go with no apologies, nothing. The "crime" was using their European passport, methinks. They are not going back to US after that experience.
The UK has recently implemented the system
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2d9yk2kpjo
Canada
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
Australia is just a should
https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/entering-and-leaving-austral...
NZ requires an endorsement of not travelling on an NZ passport
https://www.immigration.govt.nz/process-to-apply/once-you-ha...
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1185#b
- I'm now married to a non-American who is not white. We're not confident in the immigration process, to say the least
- Both of us are self-employed; the quote for decent (not good, I mean aggressively mediocre) insurance was very high
- Housing costs in any city we wanted to live in were very high; YMML on this obviously, but it covers a lot of cities
- Any social ill, irritation, etc that was annoying me around 2010 is unsolved with no signs of progress
- Extreme political polarization (actually a both sides thing)
- The rise of aggressive Christian nationalism (very much a one side thing)
- A horrifying pace of growth in political corruption
Everywhere has its bad points and none of these are necessarily worse than a randomly chosen second country. I think the final deciding factor is just vibes; I feel like America is declining, the culture I was born into is warping, and I don't particularly want to watch it happen from the inside, now that I'm already on the outside.
Portuguese might not mind tourists that spend money in the country, but I know they do not like rich foreigners living there, driving up prices for housing and everything else.
People should consider migrating to other countries than Italy, Spain and Portugal:
Poland, Hungary and Romania are great places to live.
South Germany and Austria are also great and a bit easier to get by when only using English or consider Croatia if you are up for a bit more adventure.
I laughed at the couple who listed their reasons for leaving: healthcare costs, university costs, housing costs, school shootings threatening their kids, having to work so much they never saw their kids, having to own multiple cars, etc etc and then they say "But we aren't rejecting the American system" after listing all the parts of the american system they rejected.
In a universal healthcare system the average wait times might be higher but every single person gets the healthcare they need.