9 ms·

A positive spin but arguably deceitful spin on the state of affairs in the US and UK. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-global-ranking-

A positive spin but arguably deceitful spin on the state of affairs in the US and UK. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-global-ranking-life-expectancy https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-gl... "A new analysis of global rankings of life expectancy over seven decades shows the UK has done worse than all G7 countries except the USA." "According to the OECD, state the researchers, the UK recently became the second most economically unequal country in Europe after Bulgaria." Me personally, I dont even think I'll be reaching retirement age if I continue to live in the UK, and thats not through not wanting to work, but thats because of the how the UK has become. Everything has just got too expensive living in the UK now. More people died during the period of time energy prices rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK, but you cant point this stuff out to people in the street because they'll have a go back, a form of denial of the situation in the UK. Its become very dog eat dog, quality of work in decline but costs still going up. Crime in my experience is also off the scale and the attitude of the police now means I no longer report crimes to them. So yes this sort of article is portrayed as positive spin but is in fact deceitful spin.

908B64B197 3y ago
> Me personally, I dont even think I'll be reaching retirement age if I continue to live in the UK, and thats not through not wanting to work, but thats because of the how the UK has become. Everything has just got too expensive living in the UK now. Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of British and European expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on returning. We've been getting a lot of international applicants (but work from home was supposed to mean Europeans could avoid moving to the "dangerous" US but work for American companies?). Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK, Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be the ones benefiting from a brain drain of Americans leaving the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreign talent. I recall someone pitching the "Silicon Roundabout" and that Cambridge and Oxford were going to be the new Stanford and MIT. It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these predictions were. Top destination for UK nationals in Academia was, and still is... the US [0]. [0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-brain-trade http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...
- angarg12 3y ago
  I'm a relatively new immigrant to the US, Seattle area, spaniard but moved from the UK. I'm actually extremely tempted to move back to Spain and my experience in the US so far has been very negative. Very high cost of living, inflation, uncertainty due to layoffs, salaries down due to a combination of lack of raises and stocks going down, housing price still increasing despite the high interest rates, which have made real estate even more unaffordable. To top things up the green card priority dates for my immigrant class have gone back, so I have even more uncertainty of when I will achieve permanent resident status. I don't know the circumstances of the people that you describe, but Europe is looking way more attractive than the US. The whole reason why I left Spain was lack of jobs and low salaries, but Covid and remote seem to have incredibly improved the situation (I know from second hand accounts). The only reason I'm holding on is a combination of sunken cost fallacy and an unjustified optimism in the future. It took me years and tons of effort to move my family to this country, so I'm not ready to give up just yet. I'm also aware than my bad experience is in part due to random circumstances, and if the situation improves (both for me personally, and for the country as a whole) my experience will be different. Still, I give it a 50%/50% chance that in 3 years I will hate my situation here, give up and move back home.
  - totallywrong 3y ago
    If you're open to it I feel like the sweet spot right now, specially for Spanish speakers, is to work remotely from somewhere in LATAM, earning in dollars or euros and spending in local currency.
    - throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
      "inequality is bad for you so go move someplace where you can contribute to making inequality even worse for the locals"
      - totallywrong 3y ago
        How is it bad to bring foreign money into a country and spend it on the local economy?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
totallywrong 3y ago
I've noticed the same thing, though I already left quite a while ago. It saddens me because when I first moved there the country provided a lot of opportunity and I grew a ton. I used to really like living there, in London specifically.
86415632 3y ago
> More people died during the period of time energy prices rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK Do you have a source for this? I was looking at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115077/monthly-deaths-in-england-and-wales/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115077/monthly-deaths-i... which made it seem like that wasn't the case. I've seen https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensive-energy-may-have-killed-more-europeans-than-covid-19-last-winter https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensiv... which shows that more people died from high energy prices than from covid, but only since energy prices went up, not in total.
Brybry 3y ago
> More people died during the period of time energy prices rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK Any source for this? And this seems possibly meaningless at face value. Total deaths have generally been increasing in the UK since 2011. [1] I assume that's because of an aging population. And just glancing at this graph of total deaths with 5 year average [2] I think it's doubtful that excess deaths from the energy crisis exceeded pandemic deaths. So the statement would have more value if it were about excess mortality rate. There does seem to be some evidence that non-covid excess mortality rate increased due to the energy crisis (and possibly exceeded covid excess mortality at the time) [3] but I don't think it's clear by how much (especially when you consider there was increased non-covid excess mortality even in the summer). Other sources speculated on different causes for the excess mortality but it doesn't really seem like anyone knows. [4] There are some BMJ articles that might better explain it but they're not on sci-hub yet. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/281488/number-of-deaths-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281488/number-of-deaths-... [2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending2june2023#:~:text=Figure%201 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... [3] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensive-energy-may-have-killed-more-europeans-than-covid-19-last-winter https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensiv... [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64209221 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64209221

908B64B197 3y ago

> Me personally, I dont even think I'll be reaching retirement age if I continue to live in the UK, and thats not through not wanting to work, but thats because of the how the UK has become. Everything has just got too expensive living in the UK now. Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of British and European expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on returning. We've been getting a lot of international applicants (but work from home was supposed to mean Europeans could avoid moving to the "dangerous" US but work for American companies?). Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK, Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be the ones benefiting from a brain drain of Americans leaving the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreign talent. I recall someone pitching the "Silicon Roundabout" and that Cambridge and Oxford were going to be the new Stanford and MIT. It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these predictions were. Top destination for UK nationals in Academia was, and still is... the US [0]. [0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-brain-trade http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...

angarg12 3y ago
I'm a relatively new immigrant to the US, Seattle area, spaniard but moved from the UK. I'm actually extremely tempted to move back to Spain and my experience in the US so far has been very negative. Very high cost of living, inflation, uncertainty due to layoffs, salaries down due to a combination of lack of raises and stocks going down, housing price still increasing despite the high interest rates, which have made real estate even more unaffordable. To top things up the green card priority dates for my immigrant class have gone back, so I have even more uncertainty of when I will achieve permanent resident status. I don't know the circumstances of the people that you describe, but Europe is looking way more attractive than the US. The whole reason why I left Spain was lack of jobs and low salaries, but Covid and remote seem to have incredibly improved the situation (I know from second hand accounts). The only reason I'm holding on is a combination of sunken cost fallacy and an unjustified optimism in the future. It took me years and tons of effort to move my family to this country, so I'm not ready to give up just yet. I'm also aware than my bad experience is in part due to random circumstances, and if the situation improves (both for me personally, and for the country as a whole) my experience will be different. Still, I give it a 50%/50% chance that in 3 years I will hate my situation here, give up and move back home.
- totallywrong 3y ago
  If you're open to it I feel like the sweet spot right now, specially for Spanish speakers, is to work remotely from somewhere in LATAM, earning in dollars or euros and spending in local currency.
  - throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
    "inequality is bad for you so go move someplace where you can contribute to making inequality even worse for the locals"
    - totallywrong 3y ago
      How is it bad to bring foreign money into a country and spend it on the local economy?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

totallywrong 3y ago

I've noticed the same thing, though I already left quite a while ago. It saddens me because when I first moved there the country provided a lot of opportunity and I grew a ton. I used to really like living there, in London specifically.

86415632 3y ago

> More people died during the period of time energy prices rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK Do you have a source for this? I was looking at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115077/monthly-deaths-in-england-and-wales/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115077/monthly-deaths-i... which made it seem like that wasn't the case. I've seen https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensive-energy-may-have-killed-more-europeans-than-covid-19-last-winter https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensiv... which shows that more people died from high energy prices than from covid, but only since energy prices went up, not in total.

Brybry 3y ago

> More people died during the period of time energy prices rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK Any source for this? And this seems possibly meaningless at face value. Total deaths have generally been increasing in the UK since 2011. [1] I assume that's because of an aging population. And just glancing at this graph of total deaths with 5 year average [2] I think it's doubtful that excess deaths from the energy crisis exceeded pandemic deaths. So the statement would have more value if it were about excess mortality rate. There does seem to be some evidence that non-covid excess mortality rate increased due to the energy crisis (and possibly exceeded covid excess mortality at the time) [3] but I don't think it's clear by how much (especially when you consider there was increased non-covid excess mortality even in the summer). Other sources speculated on different causes for the excess mortality but it doesn't really seem like anyone knows. [4] There are some BMJ articles that might better explain it but they're not on sci-hub yet. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/281488/number-of-deaths-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281488/number-of-deaths-... [2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending2june2023#:~:text=Figure%201 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... [3] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensive-energy-may-have-killed-more-europeans-than-covid-19-last-winter https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensiv... [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64209221 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64209221