4 ms·
First, I'll say that the USA enjoys an absurd quality of life - but only in some aspects. Infrastructure, transparency, and just shit working is really amazing
by asimpletune 5y ago
First, I'll say that the USA enjoys an absurd quality of life - but only in some aspects.
Infrastructure, transparency, and just shit working is really amazing in the USA. Plus, access to USA markets is incredible. Being able to have same day delivery of groceries is mind blowing to people abroad. So, I really consider all of it, not just roads and bridges, as part of our 'infrastructure' and it's really good in the USA.
That being said, there are a lot of things that money can't buy, and culture is one of those things that's virtually priceless. It just takes time to develop. I don't mean to imply the USA doesn't have culture, of course it does, but it doesn't have X, or Y, or Z country's cultures.
I stayed in Mexico for about 11 months for example and I can honestly say I just 'felt' happier. Yes, sometimes I was super pissed because everything was broken: sometimes there's not water, power is constantly browning out (I really mean on a continuous basis), and the government in the south of mexico can be a mess. These kinds of things get perpetuated and affect the citizens as well over generations... yet still, Mexican culture was amazing and I enjoyed my quality of life there.
This is unfortunately something that's hard to put into numbers, but obviously there are proxies for it like the numbeo list in this thread. It's a personal subject though ultimately, because it's a qualitative assessment, so that's why I hesitated to "speculate", but thanks for asking :-)
That being said, I'm now in Italy and I got to say I like it even more here. Northern Italy in so many ways has the best that all of Europe has to offer. You can basically drink the alps on tap, any where you go, people are super duper smart, kind, hilarious, passionate, and then there's the food and all that other stuff. It's a lot more expensive here (for reference one could live easily in the south of mexico, like Oaxaca City, for about $500 USD if they wanted or $800 USD if they didn't feel like messing around with finding an affordable place), but it's also much cheaper than living in San Francisco was, and again the quality of life is much higher.
I actually think in general professionals will reach a point in the USA where they'll start spreading out, just like this article says, but it won't be limited to domestic destinations. Other countries, with aging populations, will start to attract these people, and they'll go abroad and start businesses and families. This is how the world has always worked. Italy for example was the pinnacle of the world now 2 times in history, they're kind of used to it, but the USA is just beginning its journey.
Sorry, that was probably a little meandering, bear with me, but hopefully that's satisfactory? I'm totally happy to talk more, I'm just not sure what people are interested in hearing, if anything haha. Ok have a nice day everyone.