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From an European perspective Americans have a much more "if it's broke, leave" perspective. It may be to do with a expansive Western Mythos ("Go West young man
by lifeisstillgood 7y ago
From an European perspective Americans have a much more "if it's broke, leave" perspective. It may be to do with a expansive Western Mythos ("Go West young man"), or with extreme poverty forcing a move ala the dustbowl, or simply that regional differences are low (same language, laws, licensing and currency from coast to coast)
I am not sure if it is a good thing or not - but a huge amount of the problems with States not being able to adjust their currency exchange rates have simply been dealt with by making people in the losing states move to get jobs. (This is what we in EU expect to see with Greece - exchange rates are a much nicer solution)
I was looking for data for this "propensity to relocate" but cannot find anything sensible. It does seem different than rural to city transfers.
- malandrew 7y agoIn the US, development has been very car-centric leading to places that are very very expensive to maintain if there isn't a solid local economy providing a good tax base. In Europe, this is far less of a problem.
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoThis is the Strong Towns argument?
- aidenn0 7y agoIt's also just how big the US is. The 48 contiguous states are more than 4 times the land area of the EU. In many cases areas with booms will expand to fill a lot of space only to collapse afterwards, with no core to hold things together.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoYou have plenty of areas in Europe where nothing happens too. There are areas in East Germany, Italy or Spain where the only option for young people is to leave.
- kube-system 7y agoAmericans tend to relocate very often, relatively speaking to the rest of the world, IIRC. I think there may be some inherent sample biasing going on. I’m here because some European dude a few generations ago decided to move halfway around the world for a chance at a different opportunity, and I’d bet that influenced the risk tolerance of his kids as well.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y agoYou seem to be forgetting that that also generally requires some European gal to come over, too. That's a lot more risk tolerance!