There are straightforward immigration paths to most of the desirable countries within Europe if you can land a job that pays a standard deviation above the mean, which most tech workers can. However, you're still looking at 1/4 of a silicon valley salary.
The game plan should really be more centered around making your money in the US and then moving for the better quality of life or to do something that aligns with your values. I'd say it's the moving wealth part where people are more likely to fall into traps (ever heard of an exit tax?), but even then you're probably still better off hiring a local account (cost me 2k when I first moved to Denmark, and another 2k when I left :facepalm:).
Singapore seems to be a "proxy" between east and west, specifically a way for Chinese companies like Bytedance to get American labor, and a way for American companies to get Chinese labor. Per capita, income is higher than the US. I don't know if tech itself pays better, but they seem to be able to match.
Unfortunately, there isn't demand and there's no such thing as a high demand tech professional anymore. The EU is way over saturated with tech talent and that's unlikely to change.
Exactly and it’s not as if every other country and company in the world doesn’t value profits over everything else. They aren’t going to go on missionary trips feeding starving children.
They aren't really extracting tech talent. Their dream gig is getting a S4HANA project at a pharma company that keeps getting renewed and expanded, not actually building something.
Better public services, free college, free healthcare, better urban planning, more robust protections for privacy, civil liberties, cleaner air and water, less caustic sociopolitical atmosphere, better quality-of-life metrics, better economic mobility, longer life expectancy, more cohesive communities, greater representation in the democratic process, more equitable pay standards, increased paid time off, literally any kind of standard maternal/paternal leave, better medical services, greater scores of general happiness and fulfillment, more stable economic policies, more stable legal frameworks, more like-minded cultural communities, increased freedom to travel to more diverse places with less costs and administrative burdens, stronger social safety nets, better retirement plans, nicer weather with fewer natural disasters, greater diversity in populations, expanded access to rich cultural experiences, more aesthetically pleasing architecture, greater access to "third places", more educated populations, less religious populations, less political polarization, and that's just the off-the-cuff obvious items. Some more subjective than others.
Lower violent crime rates, lower property crime rates, lower drug addiction rates, lower homeless rates, literally any kind of standard mental healthcare, better retirement facilities, subsidized childcare, subsidized geriatric care, less expensive medication, fewer guns, more EV infrastructure, literally any kind of broadly complete passenger rail network, even partially functional immigration systems, better K-12 education outcomes, lower housing costs, more progressive tax systems, and last (for this list) but absolutely not the least for this context: even a vague whiff of the sort of dynamism that made the Bay Area such an exciting place to live in the 1970s-90s, that has since been eroded into a self-satirizing caricature of itself, currently grappling with the loss of 0% interest rates by reverting to creative accounting, layoffs, rent-seeking from users and customers, shameless AI feature-bloat, and increasingly astounding levels of brazen monopolizing, corruption, and fraud.
And it’s “free” only because I would pay more in taxes and probably would take home a third of what I make now and I’m not even at FAANG (been there done that)…
And by stable economic policies do you mean “stagnant”? The EU couldn’t innovate its way out of wet paper bag.
We are talking about software developers. If you make and save enough money - you can create your own safety net.
And you 2/3rds consider themselves Christian - about the same as the US.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rah rah rah America at all, I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels and much of the population is overly religious, bigoted, and naive and cheering as their Dear Leader is taking away services they need just because he “owns the libs”. My still living parents grew up in the segregated South and my 6 foot 3 225 pound step son got crazy looks every time he stepped out of the house in our former home when we lived in what was a “sun down town” as recently as the mid 80s (yes this one https://youtu.be/WErjPmFulQ0?si=NN797D4aDsCGaItb).
But me personally and many of the people who post on HN and are in tech would be far worse off in any other country than here.
"Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rah rah rah America at all, I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels"
The most direct, biting, focused, insightful criticism on America? Americans via familiarity breeds contempt.
Europe has a fundamentally different approach than does America.
Let me work this the other way as a half serious half not serious question to show the possible impasse to making the jump into the other's perspective: how did the bureaucrats in Brussels become so powerful and unbeatable that the UK wanted out?
> how did the bureaucrats in Brussels become so powerful and unbeatable that the UK wanted out?
I don't understand what point you are trying to make, but Brexit was accepted thanks to a lot of misconceptions and downright lies from pro-Brexit politicians. Pretty sure it wouldn't be accepted today, and pretty sure that many voters have come to regret voting for it.
Europe is not a country, and its members enjoy diverse governments, cultures, and policies. The question was why someone might want to exchange maximal compensation for other options, I answered that question. You’re welcome to choose your own priorities, nothing about my reply was prescriptive, or even making any explicit value judgments outside of my own admittedly subjective opinions.
If you (or anyone you care about) is working in the US tech sector on an H1B visa, are you currently better off in the United States? If you’re starting a family? If you’re deeply held personal beliefs run contrary to the local sociopolitical norms? If you want to work as a tech professional in academia? Non-profits? All of these classes are under the explicit threat of the Trump administration. This isn’t some liberal exaggeration, it’s plain to see in their words and actions. If none of that applies to you, then I hope you don’t take that good fortune for granted, as many in your profession right now are not as lucky.
So there are lots of reasons—good or bad from your perspective, they are still perfectly valid—and that was my only real point. I don’t think it’s a good choice for everyone, but I can easily see why many folks in many circumstances would indeed make that choice.
My perspective? I’m 51 years old and empty nester, retired spouse and we travel - a lot. Including extended stays away from home both domestically and internationally.
If you haven’t been reading, many countries in Europe aren’t that friendly to immigrants outside of the EU either and isn’t France still trying to ban Muslim women from wearing Burkinis in public pools? Don’t pretend that most countries in the EU are liberal welcoming paradises free of both race and religious discrimination.
As far as H1B visa holders, I can hold two thoughts at once. The H1B Visa system is all about suppressing wages and you can’t tell me that companies like Amazon (former AWS employee) couldn’t find qualified Americans. But at the same time not begrudge anyone that was hired under the H1B system.
My personal anecdote is that when I saw Amazon starting to Amazon and put me “on focus”, I didn’t break a sweat, didn’t cancel any vacation plans and played the game just long enough to get my next vest and get my “accept $40K+ severance and leave immediately or over work yourself and still get fired with 1/3 the severance.”
Of course I accepted the $40k and didn’t even let my manager complete their sentence about what I could do to stay.
I saw some coworkers here on H1B that busted their ass and let AWS treat them any kind of way because no matter how much they had saved, the clock started ticking once they lost their jobs.
And what is the niche of the niche that wants to work in tech in non profits or academia?
> And it’s “free” only because I would pay more in taxes
I see it like this: it's a spectrum. At one end of it, you have the idealistic communism: "we all get the same treatment" (I know, it's more complicated than that). Which means that you definitely won't be homeless with no perspective, but you won't be mega rich. At the other end, you could have no government and let people pay for everything. No roads, no schools. The mega rich would be fine: they would build their own private roads where it matters, move with a helicopter, and their children anyway will have some kind of private teacher. But the average population is worse off, and the poor even worse.
If you go too much towards that second end (all for the mega rich), you risk a "revolution": if enough people have nothing to lose, they will hunt down the mega rich. Everybody loses.
Obviously, if you are part of the population that is today privileged, you may be happy with an unequal society (because you benefit from it). So if your goal is to be in a better situation than most of the population, and if you can achieve that, then you're better off in the US. Now not everyone is like that. Some people like it if the average population lives better, eats better, is better educated, better informed, less polarised, ... And in that sense, the US is not remotely at the top of the list.
Yes, I pay more taxes than I would if I was in the US, where I could create my own safety net. But that's a feature, not a bug. If I earn more than the average person, I'm happy to contribute more to the public infrastructure, because I can.
> And many countries in Europe are very much polarized if you are a Black person
Of course there is racism everywhere, not sure what you were expecting when you searched for that link. But I'm pretty sure it's worse in the US.
> And you 2/3rds consider themselves Christian - about the same as the US.
It's not about that, again. You can consider yourself a Christian and not be anti-abortion, for instance. Again, the US is worse than many European countries in many regards there.
> I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels and much of the population is overly religious, bigoted, and naive and cheering as their Dear Leader is taking away services they need just because he “owns the libs”.
For many people, that's enough of a reason to prefer other countries.
> And by stable economic policies do you mean “stagnant”? The EU couldn’t innovate its way out of wet paper bag.
This is something where most Americans are simply ignorant. Do you know why the US economy is better? Access to fossil fuels. When you have more energy, you have more money and you can "innovate" more.
But "innovation" is not representative of quality of life. The US "innovates" with a lot of bullshit, or downright destructive technology. As long as is makes money, it's considered that it is good for society in the US. In Europe it's different (whether it's a choice or not, it does not matter). Europe does a lot of great things that contribute to society. If it improves society but doesn't print money, usually it stays in Europe. If the innovation has the potential to print money, usually it gets bought by the US (under some form, being just by having VC money available for that kind of technology).
Before saying "we in America invented all the modern technology", you should inform yourself a tiny bit, and realise that actually, a lot of it comes from the rest of the world. America is really good at making money in an unequal society (meaning that those innovations actually serve making the rich richer and the poor poorer).
Not saying that you should hate the US and love the rest of the world. What I'm trying to say is that many Americans believe that the US is the best country in the world, and more importantly that the rest of the world believes it as well. And that is very wrong: the American lifestyle is not desirable for a whole lot of people. Maybe it used to be in the last century, but not anymore. Not at all.
You seem to not understand how far racism goes in America. Right now the government is screwing over the poorer part of the population by taking away health care in more Rural Republican areas, Medicaid when the rural areas needs it most and Florida (where I live now) is cheering the government on while they kill FEMA even though this state is hit by a hurricane every year (slight exaggeration).
There won’t be a revolution because poor rural America is happy as long as Trump mistreats immigrants and non straight (and especially trans) people and as long as he protects Jews because they believe if Isreal doesn’t exist, Jesus won’t have a place to come back to (no exaggeration). No I don’t have any opinion one way or the other about Isreal vs Palestine.
The American people and especially the poor who overwhelmingly voted for Trump this time are going to get exactly what they voted for.
I would be more than happy for my taxes to support education, universal healthcare, fully funded pre-K, a better safety net etc. I wouldn’t have a problem if my stock returns decreased slightly because corporations paid more taxes to help a better safety net. But on the other hand I did move to state tax free (and warm) Florida when I started working remotely post 2020 and save a good chunk each year.
Why wouldn’t I take advantage of the arbitrage of being on the other side of inequality and make as much money as possible, keep 12 months expenses in savings outside of retirement savings and stack money? I vote for politicians who probably wouldn’t treat me as favorably as far as taxes to help pull others up.
The only people who believe America is the objectively best country are those who are on the other side of income gap like me and those who haven’t actually been anywhere else for any length of time and don’t realize how ridiculous for instance the American health care system
is.
My wife and I have done the digital nomad thing domestically from late 2022-late 2023 only coming home to Florida for Jan-February.
Starting next year, we are going to spend a few months in Costa Rica and/or Panama City every year. I know how good and affordable the public health care system is there (caja) and even paying out of pocket is feasible for many things for health tourism. We are really leaning toward retiring there permanently or at least become legal residents.
> You seem to not understand how far racism goes in America.
Well, I said it was probably worse than in Europe, I did not bound it :).
> Why wouldn’t I take advantage of the arbitrage of being on the other side of inequality and make as much money as possible
If you're in the US it seems like you definitely should, because that's how it works there. My point was that if you're not part of those benefitting from that, or if you don't actually want to live in a country that values this lifestyle, then that's a reason to move to another country.
And many many countries are better than the US if you "don't mostly care about money", if I can say it like that.
On HN I often see messages from US people saying that "Europe is dying" and "Europe cannot innovate". My point is that a large part of the people in Europe would not want to live in the US, and there are reasons for that. And those US people seem to not realise it.
> If you make and save enough money - you can create your own safety net.
Once they finish gutting Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA, your little pile of gold is gonna get plundered quickly if and when you get sick with something that requires long-term care. Creating "your own safety net" is nothing more than an illusion unless you happen to be one of the lucky few oligarchs.
I'd rather live in a country where I know (with high certainty) that I won't die on the street for reasons outside my control.
But you still haven’t said why it doesn’t make more sense to take advantage of making two to three times as much in the US, save money and retire somewhere else instead of taking a huge pay cut and paying more in taxes.
In fact, this isn’t some hypothetical thing from my wife and I. We are already planning to stay in Costa Rica for a few months a year starting next year, I researched how residency works when I retire and how the health insurance works (caja).
But politically, no one messes with old people and take away their benefits.
Once the industry gets more fully deregulated, insurance companies will fall over themselves to institute coverage limits, pre-existing condition checks, and so on. Nobody's gonna cover a decade of chemo or Alzheimer's care for you.
> But you still haven’t said why it doesn’t make more sense to take advantage of making two to three times as much in the US, save money and retire somewhere else instead of taking a huge pay cut and paying more in taxes.
First, it's a question of spending the healthiest and most active years of your life in a place with high QoL vs. waiting until you're older. Second, I don't expect that this scheme will remain viable in the future given the uptick in anti-immigrant sentiment around the world. After all, why would locals want a bunch of foreign seniors siphoning off their social benefits and ballooning local prices? It's an aggressive form of gentrification.
> But politically, no one messes with old people and take away their benefits.
While I am over the 90th percentile for individual income or 85% for household income since my wife has had to work since 2020 at 44 years and my income is our household income, it’s actually lower than someone three years out of school working at BigTech in the US (been there done that).
And why wouldn’t someone who is a software developer in the US not have a high quality of life? I know my quality of life is pretty good. Working remotely is what let me move to Florida and when it gets to crowded with tourists here or gets “cold”, I can just fly down to Costa Rica/Panama City and keep working?
And I bet you a paycheck that the government is going to do something to fix Medicare before it affects old people.
There are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurship in the EU if you don't mind implementing boring, existing tech for more "physical" business owners. It's more that the world of risky VC-funded tech start-ups is somewhat foreign to us.
Such ventures are certainly still out there if you know where to look, but they feel native to the U.S. tech industry in all their facets — for better or worse, I suppose.
There are straightforward immigration paths to most of the desirable countries within Europe if you can land a job that pays a standard deviation above the mean, which most tech workers can. However, you're still looking at 1/4 of a silicon valley salary.
The game plan should really be more centered around making your money in the US and then moving for the better quality of life or to do something that aligns with your values. I'd say it's the moving wealth part where people are more likely to fall into traps (ever heard of an exit tax?), but even then you're probably still better off hiring a local account (cost me 2k when I first moved to Denmark, and another 2k when I left :facepalm:).
Singapore seems to be a "proxy" between east and west, specifically a way for Chinese companies like Bytedance to get American labor, and a way for American companies to get Chinese labor. Per capita, income is higher than the US. I don't know if tech itself pays better, but they seem to be able to match.
Unfortunately, there isn't demand and there's no such thing as a high demand tech professional anymore. The EU is way over saturated with tech talent and that's unlikely to change.
> somewhere more stable and in line with their own values
Where else other than USA does tech pay such a multiple of median salary?
“Huff puff I’m going to leave” is easy. Finding somewhere to actually go isn’t.
Exactly and it’s not as if every other country and company in the world doesn’t value profits over everything else. They aren’t going to go on missionary trips feeding starving children.
Why particularly in tech? Find an industry where EU salaries are better than USA and you’ll have much better traction.
Yeah its called wipro/infosys/cognizant
They aren't really extracting tech talent. Their dream gig is getting a S4HANA project at a pharma company that keeps getting renewed and expanded, not actually building something.
There is a bigger one for research talent. Nothing really exists because until this year, people flowed the other way.
well, only if they are willing to lose 1/3 to 1/4 of US salary and willing to work on boring work.
The Nomad Capitalist guy is basically doing this.
So exactly why would I want to go anywhere else where the compensation is much lower without the cost of living being lower and have higher taxes?
Better public services, free college, free healthcare, better urban planning, more robust protections for privacy, civil liberties, cleaner air and water, less caustic sociopolitical atmosphere, better quality-of-life metrics, better economic mobility, longer life expectancy, more cohesive communities, greater representation in the democratic process, more equitable pay standards, increased paid time off, literally any kind of standard maternal/paternal leave, better medical services, greater scores of general happiness and fulfillment, more stable economic policies, more stable legal frameworks, more like-minded cultural communities, increased freedom to travel to more diverse places with less costs and administrative burdens, stronger social safety nets, better retirement plans, nicer weather with fewer natural disasters, greater diversity in populations, expanded access to rich cultural experiences, more aesthetically pleasing architecture, greater access to "third places", more educated populations, less religious populations, less political polarization, and that's just the off-the-cuff obvious items. Some more subjective than others.
Lower violent crime rates, lower property crime rates, lower drug addiction rates, lower homeless rates, literally any kind of standard mental healthcare, better retirement facilities, subsidized childcare, subsidized geriatric care, less expensive medication, fewer guns, more EV infrastructure, literally any kind of broadly complete passenger rail network, even partially functional immigration systems, better K-12 education outcomes, lower housing costs, more progressive tax systems, and last (for this list) but absolutely not the least for this context: even a vague whiff of the sort of dynamism that made the Bay Area such an exciting place to live in the 1970s-90s, that has since been eroded into a self-satirizing caricature of itself, currently grappling with the loss of 0% interest rates by reverting to creative accounting, layoffs, rent-seeking from users and customers, shameless AI feature-bloat, and increasingly astounding levels of brazen monopolizing, corruption, and fraud.
Why, indeed?
Shhh... don't tell them about Japan. We have most of the above!
In all seriousness, the language barrier among other things makes it a pretty big challenge to permanently move here.
Well duh! You coulda just said Europe is about equality of outcomes through high taxes (nothing is "free").
That's not a passive-agressive insult. To the contrary Europe made its mind up and does it.
And it’s “free” only because I would pay more in taxes and probably would take home a third of what I make now and I’m not even at FAANG (been there done that)…
And by stable economic policies do you mean “stagnant”? The EU couldn’t innovate its way out of wet paper bag.
We are talking about software developers. If you make and save enough money - you can create your own safety net.
And many countries in Europe are very much polarized if you are a Black person (https://fra.europa.eu/en/news/2023/black-people-eu-face-ever...)
And you 2/3rds consider themselves Christian - about the same as the US.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rah rah rah America at all, I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels and much of the population is overly religious, bigoted, and naive and cheering as their Dear Leader is taking away services they need just because he “owns the libs”. My still living parents grew up in the segregated South and my 6 foot 3 225 pound step son got crazy looks every time he stepped out of the house in our former home when we lived in what was a “sun down town” as recently as the mid 80s (yes this one https://youtu.be/WErjPmFulQ0?si=NN797D4aDsCGaItb).
But me personally and many of the people who post on HN and are in tech would be far worse off in any other country than here.
"Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rah rah rah America at all, I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels"
The most direct, biting, focused, insightful criticism on America? Americans via familiarity breeds contempt.
Europe has a fundamentally different approach than does America.
Let me work this the other way as a half serious half not serious question to show the possible impasse to making the jump into the other's perspective: how did the bureaucrats in Brussels become so powerful and unbeatable that the UK wanted out?
> how did the bureaucrats in Brussels become so powerful and unbeatable that the UK wanted out?
I don't understand what point you are trying to make, but Brexit was accepted thanks to a lot of misconceptions and downright lies from pro-Brexit politicians. Pretty sure it wouldn't be accepted today, and pretty sure that many voters have come to regret voting for it.
You've made my point for me. Brexit is much more complicated than you suggest just as trump in the US is very complicated.
Sure, the world is complicated. I'm not convinced it helps the discussion a lot, but that is a valid point.
Europe is not a country, and its members enjoy diverse governments, cultures, and policies. The question was why someone might want to exchange maximal compensation for other options, I answered that question. You’re welcome to choose your own priorities, nothing about my reply was prescriptive, or even making any explicit value judgments outside of my own admittedly subjective opinions.
If you (or anyone you care about) is working in the US tech sector on an H1B visa, are you currently better off in the United States? If you’re starting a family? If you’re deeply held personal beliefs run contrary to the local sociopolitical norms? If you want to work as a tech professional in academia? Non-profits? All of these classes are under the explicit threat of the Trump administration. This isn’t some liberal exaggeration, it’s plain to see in their words and actions. If none of that applies to you, then I hope you don’t take that good fortune for granted, as many in your profession right now are not as lucky.
So there are lots of reasons—good or bad from your perspective, they are still perfectly valid—and that was my only real point. I don’t think it’s a good choice for everyone, but I can easily see why many folks in many circumstances would indeed make that choice.
My perspective? I’m 51 years old and empty nester, retired spouse and we travel - a lot. Including extended stays away from home both domestically and internationally.
If you haven’t been reading, many countries in Europe aren’t that friendly to immigrants outside of the EU either and isn’t France still trying to ban Muslim women from wearing Burkinis in public pools? Don’t pretend that most countries in the EU are liberal welcoming paradises free of both race and religious discrimination.
As far as H1B visa holders, I can hold two thoughts at once. The H1B Visa system is all about suppressing wages and you can’t tell me that companies like Amazon (former AWS employee) couldn’t find qualified Americans. But at the same time not begrudge anyone that was hired under the H1B system.
My personal anecdote is that when I saw Amazon starting to Amazon and put me “on focus”, I didn’t break a sweat, didn’t cancel any vacation plans and played the game just long enough to get my next vest and get my “accept $40K+ severance and leave immediately or over work yourself and still get fired with 1/3 the severance.”
Of course I accepted the $40k and didn’t even let my manager complete their sentence about what I could do to stay.
I saw some coworkers here on H1B that busted their ass and let AWS treat them any kind of way because no matter how much they had saved, the clock started ticking once they lost their jobs.
And what is the niche of the niche that wants to work in tech in non profits or academia?
> And it’s “free” only because I would pay more in taxes
I see it like this: it's a spectrum. At one end of it, you have the idealistic communism: "we all get the same treatment" (I know, it's more complicated than that). Which means that you definitely won't be homeless with no perspective, but you won't be mega rich. At the other end, you could have no government and let people pay for everything. No roads, no schools. The mega rich would be fine: they would build their own private roads where it matters, move with a helicopter, and their children anyway will have some kind of private teacher. But the average population is worse off, and the poor even worse.
If you go too much towards that second end (all for the mega rich), you risk a "revolution": if enough people have nothing to lose, they will hunt down the mega rich. Everybody loses.
Obviously, if you are part of the population that is today privileged, you may be happy with an unequal society (because you benefit from it). So if your goal is to be in a better situation than most of the population, and if you can achieve that, then you're better off in the US. Now not everyone is like that. Some people like it if the average population lives better, eats better, is better educated, better informed, less polarised, ... And in that sense, the US is not remotely at the top of the list.
Yes, I pay more taxes than I would if I was in the US, where I could create my own safety net. But that's a feature, not a bug. If I earn more than the average person, I'm happy to contribute more to the public infrastructure, because I can.
> And many countries in Europe are very much polarized if you are a Black person
Of course there is racism everywhere, not sure what you were expecting when you searched for that link. But I'm pretty sure it's worse in the US.
> And you 2/3rds consider themselves Christian - about the same as the US.
It's not about that, again. You can consider yourself a Christian and not be anti-abortion, for instance. Again, the US is worse than many European countries in many regards there.
> I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels and much of the population is overly religious, bigoted, and naive and cheering as their Dear Leader is taking away services they need just because he “owns the libs”.
For many people, that's enough of a reason to prefer other countries.
> And by stable economic policies do you mean “stagnant”? The EU couldn’t innovate its way out of wet paper bag.
This is something where most Americans are simply ignorant. Do you know why the US economy is better? Access to fossil fuels. When you have more energy, you have more money and you can "innovate" more.
But "innovation" is not representative of quality of life. The US "innovates" with a lot of bullshit, or downright destructive technology. As long as is makes money, it's considered that it is good for society in the US. In Europe it's different (whether it's a choice or not, it does not matter). Europe does a lot of great things that contribute to society. If it improves society but doesn't print money, usually it stays in Europe. If the innovation has the potential to print money, usually it gets bought by the US (under some form, being just by having VC money available for that kind of technology).
Before saying "we in America invented all the modern technology", you should inform yourself a tiny bit, and realise that actually, a lot of it comes from the rest of the world. America is really good at making money in an unequal society (meaning that those innovations actually serve making the rich richer and the poor poorer).
Not saying that you should hate the US and love the rest of the world. What I'm trying to say is that many Americans believe that the US is the best country in the world, and more importantly that the rest of the world believes it as well. And that is very wrong: the American lifestyle is not desirable for a whole lot of people. Maybe it used to be in the last century, but not anymore. Not at all.
You seem to not understand how far racism goes in America. Right now the government is screwing over the poorer part of the population by taking away health care in more Rural Republican areas, Medicaid when the rural areas needs it most and Florida (where I live now) is cheering the government on while they kill FEMA even though this state is hit by a hurricane every year (slight exaggeration).
There won’t be a revolution because poor rural America is happy as long as Trump mistreats immigrants and non straight (and especially trans) people and as long as he protects Jews because they believe if Isreal doesn’t exist, Jesus won’t have a place to come back to (no exaggeration). No I don’t have any opinion one way or the other about Isreal vs Palestine.
The American people and especially the poor who overwhelmingly voted for Trump this time are going to get exactly what they voted for.
I would be more than happy for my taxes to support education, universal healthcare, fully funded pre-K, a better safety net etc. I wouldn’t have a problem if my stock returns decreased slightly because corporations paid more taxes to help a better safety net. But on the other hand I did move to state tax free (and warm) Florida when I started working remotely post 2020 and save a good chunk each year.
Why wouldn’t I take advantage of the arbitrage of being on the other side of inequality and make as much money as possible, keep 12 months expenses in savings outside of retirement savings and stack money? I vote for politicians who probably wouldn’t treat me as favorably as far as taxes to help pull others up.
The only people who believe America is the objectively best country are those who are on the other side of income gap like me and those who haven’t actually been anywhere else for any length of time and don’t realize how ridiculous for instance the American health care system is.
My wife and I have done the digital nomad thing domestically from late 2022-late 2023 only coming home to Florida for Jan-February.
Starting next year, we are going to spend a few months in Costa Rica and/or Panama City every year. I know how good and affordable the public health care system is there (caja) and even paying out of pocket is feasible for many things for health tourism. We are really leaning toward retiring there permanently or at least become legal residents.
> You seem to not understand how far racism goes in America.
Well, I said it was probably worse than in Europe, I did not bound it :).
> Why wouldn’t I take advantage of the arbitrage of being on the other side of inequality and make as much money as possible
If you're in the US it seems like you definitely should, because that's how it works there. My point was that if you're not part of those benefitting from that, or if you don't actually want to live in a country that values this lifestyle, then that's a reason to move to another country.
And many many countries are better than the US if you "don't mostly care about money", if I can say it like that.
On HN I often see messages from US people saying that "Europe is dying" and "Europe cannot innovate". My point is that a large part of the people in Europe would not want to live in the US, and there are reasons for that. And those US people seem to not realise it.
> If you make and save enough money - you can create your own safety net.
Once they finish gutting Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA, your little pile of gold is gonna get plundered quickly if and when you get sick with something that requires long-term care. Creating "your own safety net" is nothing more than an illusion unless you happen to be one of the lucky few oligarchs.
I'd rather live in a country where I know (with high certainty) that I won't die on the street for reasons outside my control.
And most people still have private insurance…
But you still haven’t said why it doesn’t make more sense to take advantage of making two to three times as much in the US, save money and retire somewhere else instead of taking a huge pay cut and paying more in taxes.
In fact, this isn’t some hypothetical thing from my wife and I. We are already planning to stay in Costa Rica for a few months a year starting next year, I researched how residency works when I retire and how the health insurance works (caja).
But politically, no one messes with old people and take away their benefits.
> And most people still have private insurance…
Once the industry gets more fully deregulated, insurance companies will fall over themselves to institute coverage limits, pre-existing condition checks, and so on. Nobody's gonna cover a decade of chemo or Alzheimer's care for you.
> But you still haven’t said why it doesn’t make more sense to take advantage of making two to three times as much in the US, save money and retire somewhere else instead of taking a huge pay cut and paying more in taxes.
First, it's a question of spending the healthiest and most active years of your life in a place with high QoL vs. waiting until you're older. Second, I don't expect that this scheme will remain viable in the future given the uptick in anti-immigrant sentiment around the world. After all, why would locals want a bunch of foreign seniors siphoning off their social benefits and ballooning local prices? It's an aggressive form of gentrification.
> But politically, no one messes with old people and take away their benefits.
Evidently not: https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-03-republicans-cutting...
While I am over the 90th percentile for individual income or 85% for household income since my wife has had to work since 2020 at 44 years and my income is our household income, it’s actually lower than someone three years out of school working at BigTech in the US (been there done that).
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
And why wouldn’t someone who is a software developer in the US not have a high quality of life? I know my quality of life is pretty good. Working remotely is what let me move to Florida and when it gets to crowded with tourists here or gets “cold”, I can just fly down to Costa Rica/Panama City and keep working?
And I bet you a paycheck that the government is going to do something to fix Medicare before it affects old people.
EU generally speaking is dying out (in terms of tech).
There are no system factors in place that would suggest any significant growth of innovation, entrepreneurship or hi tech advancements.
Isn’t it obvious?
Only military industry will get budgets and attention. But only until the war is over.
There are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurship in the EU if you don't mind implementing boring, existing tech for more "physical" business owners. It's more that the world of risky VC-funded tech start-ups is somewhat foreign to us.
Such ventures are certainly still out there if you know where to look, but they feel native to the U.S. tech industry in all their facets — for better or worse, I suppose.
How many companies did you open in EU vs north america?
How do you enjoy EU bureaucracy?
No, it's not obvious.
Open your eyes, look for stats about innovative companies, check out the level of socialism, bureaucracy and tax in different countries. For starters.