I did the opposite and found the us much better. Pay and opportunities are infinitely better, people are friendlier, having a car is much easier and more convenient.
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I'd be curious to hear some first hand experiences of those who've made the move to Europe and what you think of the process and considerations one should make.
A few questions to start the conversation:
- Where do you live?
- What's the biggest sacrifice you had to make (i.e. pay, housing, friends, etc.)
- What have you gained?
...if you're lucky enough to be among the privileged.
Low income Americans have it much worse than low income Europeans on probably every single metric you can come up with.
For basic things like vacations, parental leaves, access to basic healthcare, &c.
I've seen skidrow in LA and some parts of SF and NY, this is third world country tier, it looked like war times refugees camps
It's not, I just didn't specify it because for me it's logical, I highly doubt OP wants to move to Belarus, but yeah go ahead and pick the absolute poorest and least likely countries anyone would immigrate to when they say "Europe" and tell me about moving goal posts ...
"average", "money", yeah sure, the average american probably make more money. And yes you're right, the poorest Americans make more money than the poorest Europeans, but money isn't all. Otherwise nobody would ever complain, they'd be as happy than Norway, which is obviously not the case. https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric...
If quality of life = being able to afford material goods then sure, but I guess that's were Europeans see the world in a different way. I'll take min wage, job security, healthcare, free education, more vacation days, paid sick leaves, paid parental leaves, guaranteed minimum incomes, &c. If you're a min wage worker in the EU you have a much less stressful life than in the US, it's not even comparable. They're at least half a century late in term of social/workers right
And there are absolutely places as bad if not worse than skid row in the European Union. e.g. Romani ghettos. Are we talking about the REALLY poor poor people, or just ordinary, say, 10th-percentile-level poverty? Are we comparing Skid Row in Los Angeles to Fakulteta in Sofia, Bulgaria? Or are we comparing poor trailer park minimum wage life in Alabama to poor rural minimum wage work in Romania?
And of course all this assumes "normal" full time salaried wage work for a large corporation, unless you want to add in seasonal labor or subsistence agriculture or running your own business or family-owned business work or unpaid internships or apprenticeships or contract work or gig economy work and whether any of those count as poor and whether it counts to say they do or don't have certain benefits under what conditions.
Also, just checking, but are we counting US territories (e.g. Puerto Rico)? That might change my opinion.
If we are comparing sub-territories then, why on earth would OP want to move to Mississippi? Or LA? Or NY? If OP moved to, say, New Hampshire or Vermont, not only would they make more money but they would have some of the highest qualify of live anywhere on the planet.
> If quality of life = being able to afford material goods then sure
New England states have similar labor / worker rights to the EU; Massachusetts has something close to universal healthcare (although not exactly, then again every country's version is different), CT has paid family and medical leave, New York has free community college, all of New England is LGBTIA+ friendly at the legislative level, etc.
> but I guess that's were Europeans see the world in a different way
I am Albanian and my family moved here when I was 6 months old. I am not defending America for nothing, I know what we left behind. You can claim that living in Germany, France, etc. is better but that is like saying buying a house in Beverly Hills is better than buying a house in Compton. Obviously rich countries are always going to be better to live in regardless of what treaties or unions they sign. The beauty of the United States is that you can get comparable quality of life results in certain areas while having military protection everywhere.