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My experience meeting Americans abroad is that most of them feel extremely surprised and cheated when they see how people live in other countries. Prior to mov

My experience meeting Americans abroad is that most of them feel extremely surprised and cheated when they see how people live in other countries. Prior to moving, they usually did not even consider that the change could be an upgrade. They come expecting a worse but cheaper place where they could live an adventure, and only after the fact they consider staying. I would say that your comment about not being possible to level up is an example of that. Yes, the US has the largest economy, but by that logic, the second best place to move to would be China, which I think you would probably not agree with. An immigrant would not consider macroeconomic data, but rather make judgments calls such as “I am a teacher. How likely am I to get hired? What salary can I expect? Can said figure buy me a good life in that country?” And I think that under those terms many Americans would have a lot of alternatives to level up to. It just seems that the possibility does not even register.

wahern 4y ago
> And I think that under those terms many Americans would have a lot of alternatives to level up to. The standard of living of even the bottom quintile of Americans is surprisingly high, even compared to other rich nations. This is often misused by conservatives to reject initiatives to improve economic equality, but that doesn't make it any less factual. Combined with the difficulty of moving internationally, let alone the difficulty of establishing oneself as a migrant once you get there, and the fact that those with the greatest reason to move will be the ones with the least means in terms of assets and marketable skills, I don't think the current situation is at all surprising. To the extent Americans are surprised by the standard of living elsewhere, I suspect that says more about American prejudice than anything of economic substance. Americans can be shocked because we're a very insular nation--knowledge about other countries is filtered through our culture wars, where the reality of living conditions elsewhere are variously exaggerated or diminished according to the motivations of our political and cultural factions. (The same is true to varying extents in other nations, but being so large, wealthy, and culturally hegemonic globally, America is one of the few countries that can be remain so insular and ignorant almost passively. Other large countries, like China or Russia, seem to have similar levels of ignorance, except they must rely much more heavily on deliberate censorship to prevent reality from intruding.)
crazygringo 4y ago
> most of them feel extremely surprised and cheated when they see how people live in other countries As an American who has lived in several countries around the world... I think there are two parts to this. First is that everyone's always impressed by the things that are better in other countries. Americans are absolutely envious of free healthcare, maternity, four weeks paid vacation, subsidized day care, and so on. But when Americans start talking about moving somewhere else, then they discover that after-tax salaries are only a fraction of what they make back home. That getting a decent apartment requires "connections" or years of waiting. That so many of the conveniences and efficiencies taken for granted in the US are nowhere to be found. Funnily enough, ex-pats often go through a first 6 months of "everything here is better!!" followed by another 6 months of "damn, everything here sucks because it's so much worse". But really, any "extremely surprised and cheated" I would chalk up mainly to "the grass is always greener". Americans (like everyone else) know about the problems at home, but it takes time to learn what the problems are elsewhere. (Also, nobody's talking about GDP overall, GDP per capita would be the statistic, so the competition would not be China.)
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  For many countries who nominally have free healthcare, the service is so abysmal that people would rather pay the expensive private healthcare than possibly die due to worse treatment
  - spacedcowboy 4y ago
    I've had the misfortune to be knocked off a motorbike in the UK, when my knee just .. burst apart on impact, and also knocked off an e-bike in the US. I drive a car now :) Both were pretty much the same in terms of treatment. The UK had a harder job patching me back up because I was more broken, but they did it very well indeed, and the after-care/rehab was far more in-depth - because it was more needed, of course, I only broke an arm in the US. A few things stick out as memorable. - Running around checking insurance for all the post-event stuff (I had bruising on a significant chunk of my body, there was a lot of "fixing" that to do) and making sure various doctors were in-network was a major frigging hassle in the US. Not particularly what I wanted to be focussing on... - The (probably overworked) Dr in ER asked me if I was allergic to anything while he cut my clothes off, and I replied "cars, apparently" - thinking that it might be useful to show I wasn't dazed and could still think properly. No, that was a mistake - I got a 5-10 minute lecture on how this wasn't funny, this place was a hospital etc. etc. I just shut up, we all have bad days - I wasn't having a great one myself that day. But the quality of actual medical care was pretty much the same, maybe with the slight edge to the UK because of how well they fixed up the mess that was my knee - sufficiently so that it doesn't even "ache in the rain", and cycling was something I could do without thinking twice.. The experience though - that was much nicer in the UK. No worries about anything... Need an ambulance when I couldn't walk ? No problem, one was sent. Have a nurse pop around to do some physio for the months afterwards when I was out of the wheelchair ? Great, we'll do that. And of course, no paperwork, or chasing/arguing with people whose job it is to prevent you getting care, because that costs money. So, no, the service is not "abysmal". The service is fucking excellent. The US could learn a thing or two...

wahern 4y ago

> And I think that under those terms many Americans would have a lot of alternatives to level up to. The standard of living of even the bottom quintile of Americans is surprisingly high, even compared to other rich nations. This is often misused by conservatives to reject initiatives to improve economic equality, but that doesn't make it any less factual. Combined with the difficulty of moving internationally, let alone the difficulty of establishing oneself as a migrant once you get there, and the fact that those with the greatest reason to move will be the ones with the least means in terms of assets and marketable skills, I don't think the current situation is at all surprising. To the extent Americans are surprised by the standard of living elsewhere, I suspect that says more about American prejudice than anything of economic substance. Americans can be shocked because we're a very insular nation--knowledge about other countries is filtered through our culture wars, where the reality of living conditions elsewhere are variously exaggerated or diminished according to the motivations of our political and cultural factions. (The same is true to varying extents in other nations, but being so large, wealthy, and culturally hegemonic globally, America is one of the few countries that can be remain so insular and ignorant almost passively. Other large countries, like China or Russia, seem to have similar levels of ignorance, except they must rely much more heavily on deliberate censorship to prevent reality from intruding.)

crazygringo 4y ago

> most of them feel extremely surprised and cheated when they see how people live in other countries As an American who has lived in several countries around the world... I think there are two parts to this. First is that everyone's always impressed by the things that are better in other countries. Americans are absolutely envious of free healthcare, maternity, four weeks paid vacation, subsidized day care, and so on. But when Americans start talking about moving somewhere else, then they discover that after-tax salaries are only a fraction of what they make back home. That getting a decent apartment requires "connections" or years of waiting. That so many of the conveniences and efficiencies taken for granted in the US are nowhere to be found. Funnily enough, ex-pats often go through a first 6 months of "everything here is better!!" followed by another 6 months of "damn, everything here sucks because it's so much worse". But really, any "extremely surprised and cheated" I would chalk up mainly to "the grass is always greener". Americans (like everyone else) know about the problems at home, but it takes time to learn what the problems are elsewhere. (Also, nobody's talking about GDP overall, GDP per capita would be the statistic, so the competition would not be China.)

cuteboy19 4y ago
For many countries who nominally have free healthcare, the service is so abysmal that people would rather pay the expensive private healthcare than possibly die due to worse treatment
- spacedcowboy 4y ago
  I've had the misfortune to be knocked off a motorbike in the UK, when my knee just .. burst apart on impact, and also knocked off an e-bike in the US. I drive a car now :) Both were pretty much the same in terms of treatment. The UK had a harder job patching me back up because I was more broken, but they did it very well indeed, and the after-care/rehab was far more in-depth - because it was more needed, of course, I only broke an arm in the US. A few things stick out as memorable. - Running around checking insurance for all the post-event stuff (I had bruising on a significant chunk of my body, there was a lot of "fixing" that to do) and making sure various doctors were in-network was a major frigging hassle in the US. Not particularly what I wanted to be focussing on... - The (probably overworked) Dr in ER asked me if I was allergic to anything while he cut my clothes off, and I replied "cars, apparently" - thinking that it might be useful to show I wasn't dazed and could still think properly. No, that was a mistake - I got a 5-10 minute lecture on how this wasn't funny, this place was a hospital etc. etc. I just shut up, we all have bad days - I wasn't having a great one myself that day. But the quality of actual medical care was pretty much the same, maybe with the slight edge to the UK because of how well they fixed up the mess that was my knee - sufficiently so that it doesn't even "ache in the rain", and cycling was something I could do without thinking twice.. The experience though - that was much nicer in the UK. No worries about anything... Need an ambulance when I couldn't walk ? No problem, one was sent. Have a nurse pop around to do some physio for the months afterwards when I was out of the wheelchair ? Great, we'll do that. And of course, no paperwork, or chasing/arguing with people whose job it is to prevent you getting care, because that costs money. So, no, the service is not "abysmal". The service is fucking excellent. The US could learn a thing or two...