6 ms·

It's simple, move to a nordic country if you can, but if you are rich stay put in the US.

dopamean 8mo ago
being rich is pretty great almost anywhere in the world including the nordic countries. it's only "better" in america if you value having a huge gap between you and the poorest people in the country.
- WarmWash 8mo ago
  Being rich in the US has the benefit of giving access to the widest array of utilities meant for rich people.
  - kakacik 8mo ago
    You should travel a bit my friend. Ever been to Monaco? Switzerland? And few others. Tons of americans there/here, but they are mostly not coming back and have strong political opinions to base such decisions on. Once you are not poor, whatever it means, folks get very different priorities. There are no trends of rich people thinking about moving to US from here in Switzerland for example, unless they want really to start some startup and already aim very high (but then Asia offers much more for less money, there is no US moat I could see). US as a country these days is mostly despised, thanks to your current government and its behavior. Of course some US folks see it differently but but thats emotional view of home-is-always-best. Or literally prefer heavily class-based society based on wealth - we don't do that in Europe anymore.
    - WarmWash 8mo ago
      You're confusing rich destinations with rich home bases. The NYC metro area alone has 3x more billionaires than Switzerland and Monaco combined (although Monaco has only two.) This isn't about politics or anything like that. The US simply offers the broadest range of services (vertically and horizontally) for ultra wealthy individuals, and extremely friendly capital environments.
- cocoto 8mo ago
  Completely false, the money to help the poorest people comes from the rich ones, so you are poorer if the gap is smaller. But at some point too many poor people can make a country hard to live for the richest (crimes for example)
  - mullingitover 8mo ago
    This statement is equally true if you swap poor and rich.
  - michaelmrose 8mo ago
    The richest or the merely rich can trivially insulate themselves from meaningful risk even in crime ridden hell holes. As far as the rest of us in the US crime has been on a steep decline for decades regardless of the blip in 2020. There are only ever too many poors in America by virtue of inequality.
  - mmooss 8mo ago
    > money to help the poorest people comes from the rich ones It comes largely from the middle and working classes, who pay a higher tax rate than wealthy people. > many poor people can make a country hard to live for the richest (crimes for example) I'm not convinced that poverty causes crime. It might be lack of public services, such as health care, shelter, food, education (creating social mobility), safety net, etc.
- the_fall 8mo ago
  I think the US is markedly better for people in certain professions who want to become rich. This is obviously not true for the general population, but the amount of cash that's chasing profits in tech means that a non-trivial percentage of SF Bay Area techies have a shot at financial independence (let's say, $10M in the bank). This is certainly not true for IT workers in most of the EU. But if you already have enough to never need to work again, you should be fine in almost any liberal and politically stable country, and there's something to be said about moving to a lower CoL place where you can afford a nicer home, etc.
  - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
    CoL is very low in the US and QoL is very good. Just obviously not near the coast. For some reason many Americans forget that most of America is not in San Francisco.
    - showerst 8mo ago
      I'd argue that QoL in middle America is not great compared to similarly priced places in the EU. Americans have worse health outcomes (including lifespan), travel far less and have less time off, and retire later. That said, you do get much more space, nicer housing stock, (arguably) better access to education, and generally more 'stuff', so it's a tradeoff.
      - michaelmrose 8mo ago
        The education is available to those who don't live here. The more "stuff" is not a fair trade for anything else mentioned.
        trimethylpurine 8mo ago
        Yeah. Education is absolutely broken.
      - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
        I live a few months out of each year in Europe. Usually max out my 90 day stay with ABnB. It's a hard life in Europe. My friend owns 11 bars that are packed 24/7 on a Mediterranean shoreline. He is what anyone would call successful. But he lives in a little apartment and drives a beat up old Mercedes, not because he's modest but because that's what "rich" looks like in Europe. If you ask him, he'll tell you that taxes ensure that you can never be rich in Europe. My friend in middle America owns one bar, multiple houses, multiple cars, kids in private school. And what's mind blowing is that no one in America would consider him "rich." That's just middle class America. I'd love to visit wherever you're going to point to as a counter example. Let me know where I'm headed this summer. Btw I checked about health outcomes. It's actually only true if you look at America as an average. Middle America has much better health outcomes. Look at Utah for example. Again, point was that middle America isn't like the coasts.
- HPsquared 8mo ago
  A random person living in America has a higher chance of becoming rich than in most other countries.
  - jghn 8mo ago
    However, despite the fact that we live in a country full of temporarily embarrassed millionaires, it is still a low %age chance of actually happening
    - twoodfin 8mo ago
      Apparently, 25% of Americans over age 50 are millionaires by wealth, and so if you don’t expect those figures to go down, your odds of living to be a millionaire are pretty good! https://www.fool.com/retirement/2024/05/27/heres-how-many-millionaires-there-are-in-america/ https://www.fool.com/retirement/2024/05/27/heres-how-many-mi... Yeah yeah, illiquid household wealth … but millionaires nonetheless.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - michaelmrose 8mo ago
    This is untrue. Here is a measure of upward mobility. We are 27 out of 82 right below Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
    - HPsquared 8mo ago
      That index measures a lot of things, most of which aren't related to the probability of a random person becoming rich.
- glitchc 8mo ago
  It's better to be rich in the US because you can cut ahead of the line in virtually every segment if you have the money.
  - Analemma_ 8mo ago
    Why would you think this exclusive to the US? This is true everywhere (arguably it’s true tautologically, it’s practically what “being rich” means).
    - glitchc 8mo ago
      As an example: Healthcare. In a public, single-payer model, no amount of money can jump the queue.
      - throw-the-towel 8mo ago
        Go abroad for treatment, problem solved.
        glitchc 8mo ago
        Sure, to a country like the US right? Then why not stay there?
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
      - UncleSlacky 8mo ago
        Private healthcare exists alongside the public system in many places.
- CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
  Looking at migration trends for billionaires (so not billionaire creators but rather billionaire magnets) over the last 30 or so years - synthesis of various sources: Top attractors are London (non-dom era), Singapore, Dubai, Miami, Austin, SF, NYC, Hong Kong (pre-[1]) Top repellers/outmigration are London (post-abolition of non-dom), Moscow, Hong Kong (post-[1]), China, high-tax zones in Europe, India, developing nations For places that are in both lists but at different times, you can see the massive impact of public policy (non-dom tax haven, Chinese hand) [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hong_Kong_national_security_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hong_Kong_national_securi...
  - ifwinterco 8mo ago
    SF and NYC are the surprising ones there, because the rest are low tax (0-25% income tax, give or take). Goes to show it is possible to tax people quite a lot and still be an attractive place to live, but you do need to bring something special (which in 2026 means "be the centre of the world for either tech or finance"). If you're good at that stuff but still very much second tier (London), the tax rate seems to matter a lot
lazyeye 8mo ago
Sweden is in massive social decline due to stupid and incompetent immigration policies. https://youtube.com/shorts/FMrmtZujIp4 https://youtube.com/shorts/FMrmtZujIp4
- marginalia_nu 8mo ago
  Immigration policy is rather a consequence of a demographic pyramid[1] that isn't really looking much like a pyramid anymore. Socialized health care and pensions is really dependent on able-bodied working-age people outnumbering the old and infirm by a pretty large margin. Lax immigration policies were thought a solution to that, though I think almost anyone would agree (non the least the immigrants themselves) that the implementation of this solution was bungled fairly spectacularly. Regardless of the merits of immigration as a solution, the nordics are very much, along many other western countries, kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place with regards to the demographic distribution. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Sweden_population_pyramid.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Sweden_p... (it's actually looking a bit better now. For a while it had a very sort of unfortunate buttplug shape)
  - toxik 8mo ago
    Meanwhile, having children is more difficult than ever. Preschools are asking parents for their attested work schedules, just so they don't sneak an hour of leeway between work and picking up kids... What a bait and switch that was, fool everyone that society will provide, nobody has to stay at home, then inch by inch, little by little, take those things away. Let the rich have their tax breaks though, lest they leave for another social democratic paradise. Sorry, it's tough seeing this play out in real time.
    - marginalia_nu 8mo ago
      It think anyone with any experience of it will agree that Swedish bureaucracy and policy making is, generously put, as misguided as it is bumbling, but whatever the cause of the declining birth rates is, any explanatory model also needs to account for why it is also happening in South Korea and Japan, along with the nordics and a bunch of other places. I doubt young adults in in Seoul are skipping kids because of Swedish preschool policies.
Herring 8mo ago
Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-04-02/wealth-mortality-gap https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-04-02/wealth-mortality-gap In some specific cases, the mortality rates of the wealthiest Americans were roughly equivalent to the poorest individuals in countries like Germany/France/the Netherlands. https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-03/richest-americans-have-lower-life-expectancy-than-europeans.html https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-03/richest-a...
- oulipo2 8mo ago
  Exactly. At some point the greedy rich people will realize that their well-being immediately depends on the well-being of others around them, and that at some point if you want to increase YOUR longevity (/quality-of-life, /pleasure, etc) you need to increase EVERYONE's longevity (/quality-of-life, /please, etc)
- ifwinterco 8mo ago
  The crazy thing is this is with Americans being generally extremely puritanical when it comes to alcohol and tobacco by European standards. What on earth are they doing over there that's so crazily unhealthy you can have no fun and still only live as long as a beer swilling chain smoking European working class person?
  - buckle8017 8mo ago
    Traveling vastly larger distances by automobile. That's the difference.
    - ifwinterco 8mo ago
      Yep combined with eating a lot - being puritanical about all other vices won't help you much if you eat 5000 kcal/day and don't walk anywhere
  - Herring 8mo ago
    You're European? You guys shipped over all your individualist (aka antisocial) people to the US. They have no idea how to work together to build a society, can't trust each other, so all they do is hustle and pray that having money will insulate them from each other. Doesn't work.
twoodfin 8mo ago
I think the point made by the article is that in either case you’ll be deeply invested in financial markets.
RupertSalt 8mo ago
What is the annual quota for naturalizing poor Americans up there? Or should I just overstay my visa? How much welfare will they hook me up with?
SoftTalker 8mo ago
If you're not rich, you'll need to bring a needed skill and be employable. They are not interested in people coming in just to claim social benefits and contribute nothing back.
michaelmrose 8mo ago
How does the bottom 50%, those most effected, move anywhere.
- Herring 8mo ago
  Guess they'll just have to learn to vote in their interests.
  - michaelmrose 8mo ago
    Lots of us have always done so and are equally fucked
    - Herring 8mo ago
      Yeah I'm not happy about it either. Moving to a different country, sometimes learning a different language, is hard.

being rich is pretty great almost anywhere in the world including the nordic countries. it's only "better" in america if you value having a huge gap between you and the poorest people in the country.

WarmWash 8mo ago
Being rich in the US has the benefit of giving access to the widest array of utilities meant for rich people.
- kakacik 8mo ago
  You should travel a bit my friend. Ever been to Monaco? Switzerland? And few others. Tons of americans there/here, but they are mostly not coming back and have strong political opinions to base such decisions on. Once you are not poor, whatever it means, folks get very different priorities. There are no trends of rich people thinking about moving to US from here in Switzerland for example, unless they want really to start some startup and already aim very high (but then Asia offers much more for less money, there is no US moat I could see). US as a country these days is mostly despised, thanks to your current government and its behavior. Of course some US folks see it differently but but thats emotional view of home-is-always-best. Or literally prefer heavily class-based society based on wealth - we don't do that in Europe anymore.
  - WarmWash 8mo ago
    You're confusing rich destinations with rich home bases. The NYC metro area alone has 3x more billionaires than Switzerland and Monaco combined (although Monaco has only two.) This isn't about politics or anything like that. The US simply offers the broadest range of services (vertically and horizontally) for ultra wealthy individuals, and extremely friendly capital environments.
cocoto 8mo ago
Completely false, the money to help the poorest people comes from the rich ones, so you are poorer if the gap is smaller. But at some point too many poor people can make a country hard to live for the richest (crimes for example)
- mullingitover 8mo ago
  This statement is equally true if you swap poor and rich.
- michaelmrose 8mo ago
  The richest or the merely rich can trivially insulate themselves from meaningful risk even in crime ridden hell holes. As far as the rest of us in the US crime has been on a steep decline for decades regardless of the blip in 2020. There are only ever too many poors in America by virtue of inequality.
- mmooss 8mo ago
  > money to help the poorest people comes from the rich ones It comes largely from the middle and working classes, who pay a higher tax rate than wealthy people. > many poor people can make a country hard to live for the richest (crimes for example) I'm not convinced that poverty causes crime. It might be lack of public services, such as health care, shelter, food, education (creating social mobility), safety net, etc.
the_fall 8mo ago
I think the US is markedly better for people in certain professions who want to become rich. This is obviously not true for the general population, but the amount of cash that's chasing profits in tech means that a non-trivial percentage of SF Bay Area techies have a shot at financial independence (let's say, $10M in the bank). This is certainly not true for IT workers in most of the EU. But if you already have enough to never need to work again, you should be fine in almost any liberal and politically stable country, and there's something to be said about moving to a lower CoL place where you can afford a nicer home, etc.
- trimethylpurine 8mo ago
  CoL is very low in the US and QoL is very good. Just obviously not near the coast. For some reason many Americans forget that most of America is not in San Francisco.
  - showerst 8mo ago
    I'd argue that QoL in middle America is not great compared to similarly priced places in the EU. Americans have worse health outcomes (including lifespan), travel far less and have less time off, and retire later. That said, you do get much more space, nicer housing stock, (arguably) better access to education, and generally more 'stuff', so it's a tradeoff.
    - michaelmrose 8mo ago
      The education is available to those who don't live here. The more "stuff" is not a fair trade for anything else mentioned.
      - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
        Yeah. Education is absolutely broken.
    - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
      I live a few months out of each year in Europe. Usually max out my 90 day stay with ABnB. It's a hard life in Europe. My friend owns 11 bars that are packed 24/7 on a Mediterranean shoreline. He is what anyone would call successful. But he lives in a little apartment and drives a beat up old Mercedes, not because he's modest but because that's what "rich" looks like in Europe. If you ask him, he'll tell you that taxes ensure that you can never be rich in Europe. My friend in middle America owns one bar, multiple houses, multiple cars, kids in private school. And what's mind blowing is that no one in America would consider him "rich." That's just middle class America. I'd love to visit wherever you're going to point to as a counter example. Let me know where I'm headed this summer. Btw I checked about health outcomes. It's actually only true if you look at America as an average. Middle America has much better health outcomes. Look at Utah for example. Again, point was that middle America isn't like the coasts.
HPsquared 8mo ago
A random person living in America has a higher chance of becoming rich than in most other countries.
- jghn 8mo ago
  However, despite the fact that we live in a country full of temporarily embarrassed millionaires, it is still a low %age chance of actually happening
  - twoodfin 8mo ago
    Apparently, 25% of Americans over age 50 are millionaires by wealth, and so if you don’t expect those figures to go down, your odds of living to be a millionaire are pretty good! https://www.fool.com/retirement/2024/05/27/heres-how-many-millionaires-there-are-in-america/ https://www.fool.com/retirement/2024/05/27/heres-how-many-mi... Yeah yeah, illiquid household wealth … but millionaires nonetheless.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- michaelmrose 8mo ago
  This is untrue. Here is a measure of upward mobility. We are 27 out of 82 right below Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
  - HPsquared 8mo ago
    That index measures a lot of things, most of which aren't related to the probability of a random person becoming rich.
glitchc 8mo ago
It's better to be rich in the US because you can cut ahead of the line in virtually every segment if you have the money.
- Analemma_ 8mo ago
  Why would you think this exclusive to the US? This is true everywhere (arguably it’s true tautologically, it’s practically what “being rich” means).
  - glitchc 8mo ago
    As an example: Healthcare. In a public, single-payer model, no amount of money can jump the queue.
    - throw-the-towel 8mo ago
      Go abroad for treatment, problem solved.
      - glitchc 8mo ago
        Sure, to a country like the US right? Then why not stay there?
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - UncleSlacky 8mo ago
      Private healthcare exists alongside the public system in many places.
CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
Looking at migration trends for billionaires (so not billionaire creators but rather billionaire magnets) over the last 30 or so years - synthesis of various sources: Top attractors are London (non-dom era), Singapore, Dubai, Miami, Austin, SF, NYC, Hong Kong (pre-[1]) Top repellers/outmigration are London (post-abolition of non-dom), Moscow, Hong Kong (post-[1]), China, high-tax zones in Europe, India, developing nations For places that are in both lists but at different times, you can see the massive impact of public policy (non-dom tax haven, Chinese hand) [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hong_Kong_national_security_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hong_Kong_national_securi...
- ifwinterco 8mo ago
  SF and NYC are the surprising ones there, because the rest are low tax (0-25% income tax, give or take). Goes to show it is possible to tax people quite a lot and still be an attractive place to live, but you do need to bring something special (which in 2026 means "be the centre of the world for either tech or finance"). If you're good at that stuff but still very much second tier (London), the tax rate seems to matter a lot

lazyeye 8mo ago

Sweden is in massive social decline due to stupid and incompetent immigration policies. https://youtube.com/shorts/FMrmtZujIp4 https://youtube.com/shorts/FMrmtZujIp4

marginalia_nu 8mo ago
Immigration policy is rather a consequence of a demographic pyramid[1] that isn't really looking much like a pyramid anymore. Socialized health care and pensions is really dependent on able-bodied working-age people outnumbering the old and infirm by a pretty large margin. Lax immigration policies were thought a solution to that, though I think almost anyone would agree (non the least the immigrants themselves) that the implementation of this solution was bungled fairly spectacularly. Regardless of the merits of immigration as a solution, the nordics are very much, along many other western countries, kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place with regards to the demographic distribution. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Sweden_population_pyramid.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Sweden_p... (it's actually looking a bit better now. For a while it had a very sort of unfortunate buttplug shape)
- toxik 8mo ago
  Meanwhile, having children is more difficult than ever. Preschools are asking parents for their attested work schedules, just so they don't sneak an hour of leeway between work and picking up kids... What a bait and switch that was, fool everyone that society will provide, nobody has to stay at home, then inch by inch, little by little, take those things away. Let the rich have their tax breaks though, lest they leave for another social democratic paradise. Sorry, it's tough seeing this play out in real time.
  - marginalia_nu 8mo ago
    It think anyone with any experience of it will agree that Swedish bureaucracy and policy making is, generously put, as misguided as it is bumbling, but whatever the cause of the declining birth rates is, any explanatory model also needs to account for why it is also happening in South Korea and Japan, along with the nordics and a bunch of other places. I doubt young adults in in Seoul are skipping kids because of Swedish preschool policies.

Herring 8mo ago

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-04-02/wealth-mortality-gap https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-04-02/wealth-mortality-gap In some specific cases, the mortality rates of the wealthiest Americans were roughly equivalent to the poorest individuals in countries like Germany/France/the Netherlands. https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-03/richest-americans-have-lower-life-expectancy-than-europeans.html https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-03/richest-a...

oulipo2 8mo ago
Exactly. At some point the greedy rich people will realize that their well-being immediately depends on the well-being of others around them, and that at some point if you want to increase YOUR longevity (/quality-of-life, /pleasure, etc) you need to increase EVERYONE's longevity (/quality-of-life, /please, etc)
ifwinterco 8mo ago
The crazy thing is this is with Americans being generally extremely puritanical when it comes to alcohol and tobacco by European standards. What on earth are they doing over there that's so crazily unhealthy you can have no fun and still only live as long as a beer swilling chain smoking European working class person?
- buckle8017 8mo ago
  Traveling vastly larger distances by automobile. That's the difference.
  - ifwinterco 8mo ago
    Yep combined with eating a lot - being puritanical about all other vices won't help you much if you eat 5000 kcal/day and don't walk anywhere
- Herring 8mo ago
  You're European? You guys shipped over all your individualist (aka antisocial) people to the US. They have no idea how to work together to build a society, can't trust each other, so all they do is hustle and pray that having money will insulate them from each other. Doesn't work.

twoodfin 8mo ago

I think the point made by the article is that in either case you’ll be deeply invested in financial markets.

RupertSalt 8mo ago

What is the annual quota for naturalizing poor Americans up there? Or should I just overstay my visa? How much welfare will they hook me up with?

SoftTalker 8mo ago

If you're not rich, you'll need to bring a needed skill and be employable. They are not interested in people coming in just to claim social benefits and contribute nothing back.

michaelmrose 8mo ago

How does the bottom 50%, those most effected, move anywhere.

Herring 8mo ago
Guess they'll just have to learn to vote in their interests.
- michaelmrose 8mo ago
  Lots of us have always done so and are equally fucked
  - Herring 8mo ago
    Yeah I'm not happy about it either. Moving to a different country, sometimes learning a different language, is hard.