8 ms·

Apart from working in tech. Is there a reason to move to US for an average bloke?

mike-cardwell 8y ago
As a Brit, the only thing that would really draw me to America is the fact that they speak English and I can pick a state where the weather is nice. There are two absolute things that would stop me though: The lack of annual leave, and the lack of social healthcare. Maybe if I ever get rich I'd move, but I really don't want to be a poor to averagely wealthy American. I'd rather be a poor to averagely wealthy Brit. [edit] My brother moved to Orlando a few years ago, and I love visiting for the weather and Theme parks. I took a greyhound bus from Tampa one day and an immigration officer came on the bus and aggressively demanded to inspect my passport. Pretty crazy. I've never been randomly forced to prove I'm allowed to be in the UK in the nearly 40 years I've lived here. Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that. I wasn't so much the visit in Orlando -- it was you using a Greyhound bus, which put you in the "possible illegal immigrant/poor person to abuse" category in the eyes of the cop. They'd be much less likely to stop and ask you anything if you were just driving there yourself, or merely walking around Orlando.
  - mike-cardwell 8y ago
    Yeah, I did wonder if that was it. I've since discovered that busses are a thing that only poor people do in the US.
    - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      Or to rephrase it, it's one of the most affordable ways to travel longer distances.
    - chapium 8y ago
      Regional bus services are popping up and including amenities like wifi, friendly customer service, and stops for breaks (usually once every 2-3 hours). Greyhound service is abysmal however, and a last resort economically.
    - sh87 8y ago
      That is such a tragedy.
    - djrogers 8y ago
      Not all busses, but greyhound - yes..
  - gsnedders 8y ago
    I forget where, but I remember my father telling a story about being the only white on a Greyhound bus (and not in the South, IIRC) in the 60s or 70s, and the guy he ended up sitting next to being a bit uneasy about him being there, until he realised my father was some professional foreigner who didn't drive and not someone there to cause trouble.
- icantdrive55 8y ago
  Yes--every government employee stereotypes, and profiles. Government employees=federal, state, and local. It's embarrassing, and I'm questioned all those days in grade school I repeated the Pleadge of Allegiance. If I had a do over; I would have high tailed it to Europe, or Canada in my twenties.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  > The lack of annual leave If you're coming over to work in a knowledge field like tech that's less of an issue, pretty much all of those jobs have decent levels of vacation. This year (my 4th year at the company) I have 31 days off (26 base + 5 rolled over from last year) not counting bank holidays and that's going up again when I hit 5 years. The portrait of the US as a PTO-less hellscape is very true for retail/sales/blue collar workers but the situation is better in many fields.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Unless I am reading that wrong that's 26 days off/year which is still better than I have had at any tech company. My first tech job had 2 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick leave. Next 2 where 16 days total comp bumped to 18 + 2 floating holidays. UK has a legal minimum of 28 days off, but as with any minimum many are significantly higher.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Plus 52 weeks of weekends. Funny how we always leave that out when accounting work. So its 26 days + 10 federal holidays (in the US) plus 104 weekend days == 140 days off work a year. Somebody posted about how medieval peasants had way more days off than us today - but it turns out it was about equal, considering everything.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - Retric 8y ago
        365-144 = 225 which is far more than the 150 for medieval peasants quoted here: https://nypost.com/2013/09/04/medieval-peasants-got-a-lot-more-vacation-time-than-you-economist/ https://nypost.com/2013/09/04/medieval-peasants-got-a-lot-mo... The other half of the US equation is many people don't take their full vacation days either though direct pressure or informal social norms. Working weekends are also very common.
- mercutio2 8y ago
  Just to trade anecdote for anecdote: I’ve ridden lots of greyhound buses, and never once been asked for my passport in the US (or any form of ID by a police officer; since I’m a US citizen, it’s not like I would have had a passport to present). But, as it happens, I have been asked for my passport by British authorities on a train ride once in the early 2000s. Presumably if I’d had a British accent they wouldn’t have expected me to have a passport on my person. I suspect both of us experienced relatively rare events!
CalRobert 8y ago
Nursing comes to mind. I generally think of it as a high-stress but also pretty highly-paid profession in the US (can do 100k+). In Europe pay is shockingly, appallingly, pathetically low (true of tech as well, but you can get out of that if you push hard enough, and I find the work culture superior). I mean, I left the US, but my general experience has been that if you work in the dregs (and I've been there) you're better off in Europe, but if you work in a somewhat well-paid field, you'll make more in the US (whether you're "better off" is a more complicated question). Not sure what opportunities there are for a former MP like yourself though.
sorokod 8y ago
It's a heaven for gun collectors.
Blackstone4 8y ago
If you are in highly educated, able to work, and are in the right field (i.e. software), life for the majority of individuals who fall into this category is better in the US than many other countries. On the other hand if you're dirt poor, have no education, bad health.... you may be better off in Scandinavia or Western Europe. This includes tech, engineering and other professions. For instance you can get a graduate mechanical engineering job and start earning ~$70k and live in an area where housing costs ~$150k-$200k for a small, detached, ~2-3 bedroom house with garage and garden (2.85x ratio). You can also get amazing weather :) Mechanical engineers in the UK start on ~£25k in areas where a small house will cost £300k-£400k. That's a ratio of pay to house price of 16x versus 2.9x in the US. Anecdotal I know but powerful.
- gehwartzen 8y ago
  You almost exactly described my life in Richmond, VA; Mechanical Eng. Grad making 80k/yr, in a detached 2br $210K house, great weather + 1.5hr drive from D.C., mountains, & beach :D I can't complain.
- Balero 8y ago
  Good pay and cheap housing is a pretty strong drawing force.
- rayiner 8y ago
  But you still have to live in a country where (1) a bunch of people don't have adequate public services; (2) a bunch of people don't want people in (1) to have adequate public services; (3) because of the threat of people in (1) possibly getting adequate public services, the people in (2) make the government completely dysfunctional; and (4) because they have PTSD from (3), the people aligned with the people in (1) also make the government completely dysfunctional. The people are nice but the society is acrimonious and divided, and it grates on you.
- refurb 8y ago
  That's why I moved to the US. If you're well educated and have good job prospects, many of the chief complaints about the US disappear. Sure, healthcare is still a huge pain in the ass, but you've got access (and ability to pay for) some of the best healthcare in the world. One of the big drivers is if your career is something you'd like to maximize. The opportunities here are some of the best in the world as is the compensation. If I had stayed in my home country I would have had pretty limited prospects even at the top of my game.
yodsanklai 8y ago
There are lot of reasons (and also a few good reasons not to). It's a huge and an extremely diverse country, so there are probably places that match your lifestyle, your political views and so on... It's also a country where you can feel at home even as an immigrant.
GlennS 8y ago
Having a different life experience, encountering different attitudes? That said, I've just emigrated from the UK to Australia, and we didn't really even consider the US when we were picking countries.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  What could have been more attractive about Australia than the US?
rmc 8y ago
TV, and film opportunities are certainly better in USA than UK.
danielvf 8y ago
If you have values that are out of place in Europe. For example, schooling your kids at home is not only absolutely forbidden in Germany - but when I was in Germany, people reacted as if I was suggesting making a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, 9% of students in North Carolina are homeschooled. Or, I have an German, non-tech acquaintance living in the US South. He loves it. He gets to live on a farm, buy giant sniper rifles, and go to long range shooting competitions. In much of Germany these would be both unaffordable and the sign of deeply dangerous mind.
- refurb 8y ago
  Is shooting that looked down upon in Germany? It might not be as common as in the US, but my understanding is that there is a decent number of people involved, similar to Switzerland.
  - danielvf 8y ago
    I might be wrong on that. Wikipedia says Germany has 1.4 million legal gun owners, out of a population of 82 million so it can't be that common.
    - refurb 8y ago
      Not thinking it's common, but not so rare as to be viewed as freakish. I assume it's similar to the US where it's more common in certain segments of the population (ex-military, rural, etc).
    - Balero 8y ago
      So it's less popular than football, but probably about as popular as tennis or badminton.
vincentmarle 8y ago
I was born as a second-generation immigrant in the Netherlands. Even though I was born and raised there, the fact that you’re an immigrant and always will stay an immigrant (aka second class citizen) is constantly reminded to you by the media, politics and every other institution and hampers your growth in life everywhere you go. When I later on in life moved to the US, as an actual immigrant, I’ve felt immediately way more accepted and at home than in the country I was born and raised in. Of course, the US is far from perfect, don’t get me wrong (if I were dark skinned this would probably be a different story) but its mostly merit-based society definitely works for me.
cwperkins 8y ago
Civil unrest around the world. We have peace here, which is a lot more than places in the middle east, sub saharan africa, and places in central/south america can say. Quality of life is high here compared to the rest of the world and there is a strong social welfare system. One thing I find particularly interesting these days is the prospect of Land Expropriation without compensation in South Africa. I will oversimplify it, but it is essentially the state expropriating land from farmers and redistributing it to the poor majority.
toasterlovin 8y ago
From discussions with Europeans, salaries for many white collar workers, not just tech, are like 2x higher in the US.
- novaRom 8y ago
  This is true. And net salaries are 3x higher. Say, an average tech Joe from Munich is getting home only 3 to 4 thousands of dollars after taxes (48%, it includes social security, etc.), but renting a studio costs almost the same as in San Fran. All other costs are similar or more expensive in Europe. Even healthcare is more expensive in Germany: if both parents are getting more than 3k USD after taxes each, then each of them need to pay around $900 (!!!), thus $1800 per month HEALTH INSURANCE per family. Good thing is that your employer pays around 50% of that costs, but even $900 health insurance is not as cheap in comparison with USA, right? Day care, kindergarten - costs depend on your income. The more you earn the more you pay. On average it's around $800-$1000 per month/child for public kindergartens (assuming your net monthly income is over 3k USD) or $2000-$3000 private.
Isamu 8y ago
The beer. The sheer local variety, quality, and abundance is officially out-of-control now. Funny, because not that many years ago the beer in US was among the worst in the world.
jimmaswell 8y ago
A few things that come to mind: lower COL, individual liberties, food culture, outstanding diversity of geography, easier to get around by car, no GDPR if you want to run a website.
- oblio 8y ago
  You're casting a pretty wide net there, mister. The EU (if you want to just consider one "entity") is big enough to counter all those except for well, the GDPR :p And regarding the food culture, you'd get many, many bewildered stares from my French and Italian colleagues with that statement :)
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    Part of what I mean is you can easily find "authentic" Italian/whatever food in the US - it's the big "melting pot" or "salad bowl" or whatever you want to call it. As far as I know taxes, especially on fuel, are almost always higher in the EU compared to the US.
    - oblio 8y ago
      I doubt the average Italian would call the US version authentic :p And this works both way, you can find US food (or Indian, or whatever) in Europe. It’s not the 1930’s anymore :) Fuel is expensive but cars are smaller and generally much more fuel efficient. People move around just fine :)

As a Brit, the only thing that would really draw me to America is the fact that they speak English and I can pick a state where the weather is nice. There are two absolute things that would stop me though: The lack of annual leave, and the lack of social healthcare. Maybe if I ever get rich I'd move, but I really don't want to be a poor to averagely wealthy American. I'd rather be a poor to averagely wealthy Brit. [edit] My brother moved to Orlando a few years ago, and I love visiting for the weather and Theme parks. I took a greyhound bus from Tampa one day and an immigration officer came on the bus and aggressively demanded to inspect my passport. Pretty crazy. I've never been randomly forced to prove I'm allowed to be in the UK in the nearly 40 years I've lived here. Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that.

coldtea 8y ago
>Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that. I wasn't so much the visit in Orlando -- it was you using a Greyhound bus, which put you in the "possible illegal immigrant/poor person to abuse" category in the eyes of the cop. They'd be much less likely to stop and ask you anything if you were just driving there yourself, or merely walking around Orlando.
- mike-cardwell 8y ago
  Yeah, I did wonder if that was it. I've since discovered that busses are a thing that only poor people do in the US.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Or to rephrase it, it's one of the most affordable ways to travel longer distances.
  - chapium 8y ago
    Regional bus services are popping up and including amenities like wifi, friendly customer service, and stops for breaks (usually once every 2-3 hours). Greyhound service is abysmal however, and a last resort economically.
  - sh87 8y ago
    That is such a tragedy.
  - djrogers 8y ago
    Not all busses, but greyhound - yes..
- gsnedders 8y ago
  I forget where, but I remember my father telling a story about being the only white on a Greyhound bus (and not in the South, IIRC) in the 60s or 70s, and the guy he ended up sitting next to being a bit uneasy about him being there, until he realised my father was some professional foreigner who didn't drive and not someone there to cause trouble.
icantdrive55 8y ago
Yes--every government employee stereotypes, and profiles. Government employees=federal, state, and local. It's embarrassing, and I'm questioned all those days in grade school I repeated the Pleadge of Allegiance. If I had a do over; I would have high tailed it to Europe, or Canada in my twenties.
rtkwe 8y ago
> The lack of annual leave If you're coming over to work in a knowledge field like tech that's less of an issue, pretty much all of those jobs have decent levels of vacation. This year (my 4th year at the company) I have 31 days off (26 base + 5 rolled over from last year) not counting bank holidays and that's going up again when I hit 5 years. The portrait of the US as a PTO-less hellscape is very true for retail/sales/blue collar workers but the situation is better in many fields.
- Retric 8y ago
  Unless I am reading that wrong that's 26 days off/year which is still better than I have had at any tech company. My first tech job had 2 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick leave. Next 2 where 16 days total comp bumped to 18 + 2 floating holidays. UK has a legal minimum of 28 days off, but as with any minimum many are significantly higher.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Plus 52 weeks of weekends. Funny how we always leave that out when accounting work. So its 26 days + 10 federal holidays (in the US) plus 104 weekend days == 140 days off work a year. Somebody posted about how medieval peasants had way more days off than us today - but it turns out it was about equal, considering everything.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 8y ago
      365-144 = 225 which is far more than the 150 for medieval peasants quoted here: https://nypost.com/2013/09/04/medieval-peasants-got-a-lot-more-vacation-time-than-you-economist/ https://nypost.com/2013/09/04/medieval-peasants-got-a-lot-mo... The other half of the US equation is many people don't take their full vacation days either though direct pressure or informal social norms. Working weekends are also very common.
mercutio2 8y ago
Just to trade anecdote for anecdote: I’ve ridden lots of greyhound buses, and never once been asked for my passport in the US (or any form of ID by a police officer; since I’m a US citizen, it’s not like I would have had a passport to present). But, as it happens, I have been asked for my passport by British authorities on a train ride once in the early 2000s. Presumably if I’d had a British accent they wouldn’t have expected me to have a passport on my person. I suspect both of us experienced relatively rare events!

CalRobert 8y ago

Nursing comes to mind. I generally think of it as a high-stress but also pretty highly-paid profession in the US (can do 100k+). In Europe pay is shockingly, appallingly, pathetically low (true of tech as well, but you can get out of that if you push hard enough, and I find the work culture superior). I mean, I left the US, but my general experience has been that if you work in the dregs (and I've been there) you're better off in Europe, but if you work in a somewhat well-paid field, you'll make more in the US (whether you're "better off" is a more complicated question). Not sure what opportunities there are for a former MP like yourself though.

sorokod 8y ago

It's a heaven for gun collectors.

Blackstone4 8y ago

If you are in highly educated, able to work, and are in the right field (i.e. software), life for the majority of individuals who fall into this category is better in the US than many other countries. On the other hand if you're dirt poor, have no education, bad health.... you may be better off in Scandinavia or Western Europe. This includes tech, engineering and other professions. For instance you can get a graduate mechanical engineering job and start earning ~$70k and live in an area where housing costs ~$150k-$200k for a small, detached, ~2-3 bedroom house with garage and garden (2.85x ratio). You can also get amazing weather :) Mechanical engineers in the UK start on ~£25k in areas where a small house will cost £300k-£400k. That's a ratio of pay to house price of 16x versus 2.9x in the US. Anecdotal I know but powerful.

gehwartzen 8y ago
You almost exactly described my life in Richmond, VA; Mechanical Eng. Grad making 80k/yr, in a detached 2br $210K house, great weather + 1.5hr drive from D.C., mountains, & beach :D I can't complain.
Balero 8y ago
Good pay and cheap housing is a pretty strong drawing force.
rayiner 8y ago
But you still have to live in a country where (1) a bunch of people don't have adequate public services; (2) a bunch of people don't want people in (1) to have adequate public services; (3) because of the threat of people in (1) possibly getting adequate public services, the people in (2) make the government completely dysfunctional; and (4) because they have PTSD from (3), the people aligned with the people in (1) also make the government completely dysfunctional. The people are nice but the society is acrimonious and divided, and it grates on you.
refurb 8y ago
That's why I moved to the US. If you're well educated and have good job prospects, many of the chief complaints about the US disappear. Sure, healthcare is still a huge pain in the ass, but you've got access (and ability to pay for) some of the best healthcare in the world. One of the big drivers is if your career is something you'd like to maximize. The opportunities here are some of the best in the world as is the compensation. If I had stayed in my home country I would have had pretty limited prospects even at the top of my game.

yodsanklai 8y ago

There are lot of reasons (and also a few good reasons not to). It's a huge and an extremely diverse country, so there are probably places that match your lifestyle, your political views and so on... It's also a country where you can feel at home even as an immigrant.

GlennS 8y ago

Having a different life experience, encountering different attitudes? That said, I've just emigrated from the UK to Australia, and we didn't really even consider the US when we were picking countries.

jimmaswell 8y ago
What could have been more attractive about Australia than the US?

rmc 8y ago

TV, and film opportunities are certainly better in USA than UK.

danielvf 8y ago

If you have values that are out of place in Europe. For example, schooling your kids at home is not only absolutely forbidden in Germany - but when I was in Germany, people reacted as if I was suggesting making a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, 9% of students in North Carolina are homeschooled. Or, I have an German, non-tech acquaintance living in the US South. He loves it. He gets to live on a farm, buy giant sniper rifles, and go to long range shooting competitions. In much of Germany these would be both unaffordable and the sign of deeply dangerous mind.

refurb 8y ago
Is shooting that looked down upon in Germany? It might not be as common as in the US, but my understanding is that there is a decent number of people involved, similar to Switzerland.
- danielvf 8y ago
  I might be wrong on that. Wikipedia says Germany has 1.4 million legal gun owners, out of a population of 82 million so it can't be that common.
  - refurb 8y ago
    Not thinking it's common, but not so rare as to be viewed as freakish. I assume it's similar to the US where it's more common in certain segments of the population (ex-military, rural, etc).
  - Balero 8y ago
    So it's less popular than football, but probably about as popular as tennis or badminton.

vincentmarle 8y ago

I was born as a second-generation immigrant in the Netherlands. Even though I was born and raised there, the fact that you’re an immigrant and always will stay an immigrant (aka second class citizen) is constantly reminded to you by the media, politics and every other institution and hampers your growth in life everywhere you go. When I later on in life moved to the US, as an actual immigrant, I’ve felt immediately way more accepted and at home than in the country I was born and raised in. Of course, the US is far from perfect, don’t get me wrong (if I were dark skinned this would probably be a different story) but its mostly merit-based society definitely works for me.

cwperkins 8y ago

Civil unrest around the world. We have peace here, which is a lot more than places in the middle east, sub saharan africa, and places in central/south america can say. Quality of life is high here compared to the rest of the world and there is a strong social welfare system. One thing I find particularly interesting these days is the prospect of Land Expropriation without compensation in South Africa. I will oversimplify it, but it is essentially the state expropriating land from farmers and redistributing it to the poor majority.

toasterlovin 8y ago

From discussions with Europeans, salaries for many white collar workers, not just tech, are like 2x higher in the US.

novaRom 8y ago
This is true. And net salaries are 3x higher. Say, an average tech Joe from Munich is getting home only 3 to 4 thousands of dollars after taxes (48%, it includes social security, etc.), but renting a studio costs almost the same as in San Fran. All other costs are similar or more expensive in Europe. Even healthcare is more expensive in Germany: if both parents are getting more than 3k USD after taxes each, then each of them need to pay around $900 (!!!), thus $1800 per month HEALTH INSURANCE per family. Good thing is that your employer pays around 50% of that costs, but even $900 health insurance is not as cheap in comparison with USA, right? Day care, kindergarten - costs depend on your income. The more you earn the more you pay. On average it's around $800-$1000 per month/child for public kindergartens (assuming your net monthly income is over 3k USD) or $2000-$3000 private.

Isamu 8y ago

The beer. The sheer local variety, quality, and abundance is officially out-of-control now. Funny, because not that many years ago the beer in US was among the worst in the world.

jimmaswell 8y ago

A few things that come to mind: lower COL, individual liberties, food culture, outstanding diversity of geography, easier to get around by car, no GDPR if you want to run a website.

oblio 8y ago
You're casting a pretty wide net there, mister. The EU (if you want to just consider one "entity") is big enough to counter all those except for well, the GDPR :p And regarding the food culture, you'd get many, many bewildered stares from my French and Italian colleagues with that statement :)
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  Part of what I mean is you can easily find "authentic" Italian/whatever food in the US - it's the big "melting pot" or "salad bowl" or whatever you want to call it. As far as I know taxes, especially on fuel, are almost always higher in the EU compared to the US.
  - oblio 8y ago
    I doubt the average Italian would call the US version authentic :p And this works both way, you can find US food (or Indian, or whatever) in Europe. It’s not the 1930’s anymore :) Fuel is expensive but cars are smaller and generally much more fuel efficient. People move around just fine :)