5 ms·

Serious question, but not entirely related to the topic - how are “smart” people in the US preparing for the next 20-30 years? - Assume everything will be fine

• shepherdjerred 7mo ago
  I'd leave the US if the tech jobs didn't pay so much better here. I mostly like the US but the years since Obama have been rough
  • Ylpertnodi 7mo ago
    Pay may be numerically less in the eu, but rather than me trying to convince you, try on youtube: 'why I left the USA for europe'. There are very many.!
    • brianwawok 7mo ago
      And oddly enough plenty the other way.
      • actionfromafar 7mo ago
        That's good to know! Those would be good to look at if one wanted to know why some people move to the US.
      • deaux 7mo ago
        Now let's look at how each of them is trending over time.
    • IncreasePosts 7mo ago
      I've seen a lot of those and commonly the people are academics or in near median paying professions. Do high paid techies make the usa->Europe switch? Generally most of the grievances people have with the US disappear with a high enough salary. Like getting guarantees many weeks of vacation and having great healthcare.
• tsunamifury 7mo ago
  Please list the more serious and stable country if America collapses. I’ll wait. On a serious note; I’m looking at my billion dollar neighbors and they all just are citizens everywhere now. No allegiance to anything but their own pleasure.
  • kakacik 7mo ago
    Lol thats trivial if you actually know history and politics a tiny bit - Switzerland. 800 years of most free citizens in the world (lost that armed part but still valid for whole Europe with maybe Finland having similar numbers). Salaries in tech sector still give you higher overall quality of life than most of US can ever offer. Then you have - extremely beautiful nature at your doorstep, more top notch destinations like Italy and France just at the border, very low criminality compared to US, very good free healthcare, very good free education including top notch public universities, very well functioning social programs. One doesn't have to be ashamed their taxes go to killing innocent civilians half around the world (although at this point US population including folks here seems fine with that). And so on and on and on. Also, you don't spend your whole active life getting it and (almost) burning out for that, 40h/week and then you can live your life and chase dreams and passions.
    • tonfa 7mo ago
      > very good free healthcare Quite a few swiss residents would be happy to have this (or at least some more cost control). There's mandatory health insurance with preexisting condition coverage, but it's not free (tho it's partially tax supported, depending on location and income).
    • tsunamifury 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      • deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      • danny_codes 7mo ago
• onlyrealcuzzo 7mo ago
  I'm investing in property in places that will allow me to get permanent residency without jumping through too many hoops. You theoretically lose yield compared to the S&P average - but if you're hedging your bets against the US possibly going to shit - the S&P is unlikely to perform as well as its historic average IFF that scenario unfolds. Seems like a better hedge than gold, but my crystal ball isn't working.
• bluGill 7mo ago
  I live in iowa - all my electric comes from wind, and I drive an ev or bike. I'm not worried
  • sph 7mo ago
    First they came…
• baggachipz 7mo ago
  D) Die. I'll reach my expected lifespan by then. If possible, move to a serious, stable country before then.
• terminalshort 7mo ago
  Smart people know that you can't predict or plan for anything on anywhere close to that time horizon. The only plan is be adaptable.
  • RealityVoid 7mo ago
    You can build contingencies and hedge bets. You can plan. You just can't predict what will happen so it's playing the odds.
  • paxys 7mo ago
    > The only plan is be adaptable And that's exactly what the question was. You seem to consider yourself in the "smart people" ranks, so what's your big plan for adaptability?
    • terminalshort 7mo ago
      My "plan" is don't make big long term plans
    • vachina 7mo ago
      Own huge swathes of land (there is plenty) and grow your own food.
  • izacus 7mo ago
    Yep, the only thing that's sure is that children of said smart people will suffer their whole life so these smart people could give a bit more money to the fossil barons.
• kilroy123 7mo ago
  I don't know if I qualify for "smart" but my plan has been to keep one foot in the US and one foot in Europe. I saw the writing on the wall long ago. I predicted all of this happening many years ago. I left the US back in 2015. Currently in the UK, and I hope to eventually get dual citizenship. My partner is European, so that is possible too.
  • TheSpiceIsLife 7mo ago
    [flagged]
  • ineedaj0b 7mo ago
    I cannot believe you went to the UK. what? You’re smart and went.. I don’t think anyone on that island has made 1 good decision in 50 years. Thatcher: bad Invasion of Iraq: bad Brexit: bad Human Challenge Trials: good Free Speech: bad Too many immigrants: bad Revolving cascade of PMs who can’t get anything done: bad Listing out a few - I guess I appreciate the Covid stuff. Hmm. still on the whole, I would be in the green longterm shorting everything about the UK. The most interesting cultural export is Bonnie Blue (sign of decline).
• detourdog 7mo ago
  I'm somewhere in the middle and bought an ocean going sailboat.
• danny_codes 7mo ago
  My partner is keeping her foreign citizenship. Just in case.
• micromacrofoot 7mo ago
  there is an absurdly large rush of americans applying for canadian citizenship because canada recently allowed anyone with ancestry, multi-generations back, to qualify
  • gausswho 7mo ago
    Wasn't that revised to a single generation?
    • micromacrofoot 7mo ago
      no, it used to be single generation but now people as far back as 4-5 are getting citizenship — I'm helping others go through the process myself but it's taking months longer than it used to due to the influx
      • gausswho 7mo ago
        How does that work so many generations back? Doesn't Bill C-3 add the additional requirement to demonstrate your parent(s) must have lived in Canada for ~3 years in order to make that path available?
        • micromacrofoot 7mo ago
          That new law is only required for people applying after the law went into effect (so, babies at this point). I have a feeling there may be more changes coming due to the rush of applicants, but they are incredibly unlikely to revoke anyone who successfully applies before that happens.
  • hedora 7mo ago
    I frequently see billboards in the SF Bay Area encouraging professionals to move to Canada. My main concern is that it might not be far enough away.
    • micromacrofoot 7mo ago
• csomar 7mo ago
  > - Assume everything will be fine and America will remain a global economic superpower. My guess is 2/3 of the country at lease believe in that. > - Plan an exit to a more serious, stable country. Only the Top 0.1% are eligible. Probably only half of them are prepared. The other half are blind. > - Some option in the middle of the two to hedge your bets? That's the same cohort of the half of 0.1%. These people are not betting against the US as much as they are hedging their bets. They'll remain in the US till it's clear that the downward spiral is inevitable.
• ineedaj0b 7mo ago
  They seem to be buying a nice house/condo in a good area and having kids. Investment wise they are doing well. They often own multiple homes. They are not “smart” if they think a civil war will go down.. that’s poorly read people imo, sentiment pushed by the group that lost elections. And sooo context unaware. Could these people name any politics outside the US? Nope. Clueless, which is why they lost the election. Some very smart friends are making investments in SA irt building factories.
  • lobsterthief 7mo ago
    People believe X can’t happen there until it happens. Tale as old as time.
• hedora 7mo ago
  Mostly, we're looking at global warming maps and trying to figure out whether we're in a spot that'll be habitable in 30 years, assuming worst-case climate projections (which are more optimistic than current trajectories). There aren't that many good places to move. Shorter term, we need to rotate investments out of USD. There are two obvious problems with exiting to a more stable country: (1) we'd be putting ourselves on the business end of a large gun being held by a madman (2) when things really hit the fan, will it actually be more stable for American expats?
  • throwawayqqq11 7mo ago
    I will always wonder why the elites prefer building bunkers when they have been politically overrepresented the whole time.
• jbxntuehineoh 7mo ago
  I'm finally getting around to acquiring that EU citizenship I'm eligible for. Not that I'm necessarily planning to leave, but it can't hurt to have the option.
• scarecrowbob 7mo ago
  [please excuse this exploratory fiction, as I am recovering from running a chainsaw all morning and am feeling old and tired] I'm almost 50 and mostly retired except for work I like doing (producing musical events or performing). About the time my kiddo graduated high school, I moved to a rural area far from cities, and about 18 months ago I bought some land that had primitive shacks on it. I spend a lot of time reading history. I assume that the US fails eventually; not because I have any illusions about surviving that house fire, have a lack of awareness of the mass death that would cause, or fantasies about how I'd be able to function in some post-US world. That assumption comes out of watching the capitalists strip the wiring from the walls of US soft power along side watching the fact that it's 85 degrees in March at 6500 feet here... "climate isn't weather" is true, but I'm not an idiot and we didn't have a real winter this year. The failure of the US is terrifying, not because I and my community would mourn the loss of some glorious and benevolent order, but in the way that the death of my estranged parents was terrifying: we are no longer doing things because we're forced by the fantasy of belonging to some larger political order, but now have to choose what to do. Having read a lot about what the US has done in the world, I believe that a) it's unethical/racist/genocidal / exploitative in almost all its actions and b) I think the only actual hope for climate change is the end of the US as a world order. I don't know if the end of that order is sufficient to fix the ecosystem, which I feel is on the verge of some calamitous changes, but it certainly seems necessary. Not having control over that failing system, and not having a lot of fantasies about belonging to the polis associated with that system, it's perhaps easier for me to look at its failure modes more clinically than I might have when I was 25 and saw it as an impenetrable solid face; I've moved downstream from Fisher's statement, and now it's much easier to see a possibility for the end of capitalism (or at least the uni-polar US world order) than the end of the world itself. Not that it's the actions of a bunch of angry and over-educated leftists who would bring it about, but as has always been understood by Marxists (among whom I do not count myself), the failure leading to its dissolution are the inherent contradictions of capitalism itself. Which makes me feel amazingly hopeful, actually. I don't have any real political power (beyond my affinity group), so it's nice to know (like Duncan instead of MacBeth) that these things could maybe take care of themselves without me doing anything I don't find ethical. Because I believe that there is a future for humans, I spend a lot of time organizing with folks even when I think the short-term goals aren't super useful: for instance, doing ICE Watch support with local folks, shooting a lot of guns with folks who understood the wisdom of John Brown, or just being available to help out folks who have politics oriented around direct action. I have been spending most of my time clearing the scrub oak from various parts of the land where I live to make the wildland fire interface a little less terrifying. I build a pretty sturdy solar power system here. I've spent the last couple of months getting my head into programming the esp32 and its peripherals. I got a ham license and have been working on building radio systems. Hopefully I will figure out how to get an underground cistern next month, and then act on the septic permit I got last year. Other than that, I assume that things aren't going to change much in my life time... I just sit here in my shack playing banjo and hoping for the best. Prognostication should be illegal and all, but I suspect that Trump will probably kick off in 6 months from a stroke, the Dems will elect Newsom, and then they won't do a damn thing to change anything, and we will be fighting the facists under worse conditions when they finally find a pretty face to solidify them. So I look forward to dying of Super Ebola-fluenza at age 65 in the middle of a mid-June snow-hurricane near Bluff, UT while supporting a bunch of anarchist 30 year-olds in a drone-powered trench line while they fight the "Western Slope Fascist Front". But I bet I'll still be driving my Tacoma to that battle...