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Comment by matttproud | Hacker News Reader

I am inclined to agree with the article.

As an American who has lived abroad for a sizable fraction of adulthood while frequently traveling back, the rising level of degradation — the people, public and private goods — in the U.S. simply can’t be ignored or smugly explained away. The country is rotting.

Life looks so hard, the conditions and future tenuous, that my family is making the conscious choice to raise our child abroad. While our American friends miss us to be sure, not a single one has recommended we return — esp. those with children.

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I think people should stop using their personal experiences to support an argument that requires data on a much larger scale.

For example, OC claims there has been an alarming rise in degradation of public infrastructure in the US. Does the hard data really support this? If so, I'd love to see it (seriously). Observations from personal travel are virtually meaningless in this context.

Do you apply this standard to all beliefs you have? It’s interesting that you wrote what you did when you could have done a search and found some answers. From the third link below:

Meanwhile, Americans’ international peers enjoy more efficient and reliable services, and their public investment in infrastructure is on average nearly double that of the United States.....The United States generally lags behind its peers in the developed world. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, in 2016 the United States ranked [PDF] tenth in the world in a broad measure of infrastructure quality—down from fifth place in 2002. That places it behind countries like France, Germany, Japan, and Spain.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=37562

http://theconversation.com/measuring-up-us-infrastructure-ag...

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure

Dive down the rabbit hole:

https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org

The Interstate 35W Bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis 2007, I used that four or more times a day on average shortly before its demise. The story was similar throughout Minnesota and proved poisonous to the then-governor who wanted to starve the state.

For us, we based our decision not on infrastructure alone but rather total system health. We need to be able to adequately commit to maintenance and future-proofing our societies, not kicking the metaphorical can down the road.

Which country are you going to raise your kids in?

Not GP, but I have American friends/acquaintances who have decided to raise kids in Sweden, The Netherlands, and Germany due to issues (either real or perceived) with the US.

I mostly think people with money in the US are unlikely to have much different quality of life than developed European counterparts, though. It's mostly people with fewer resources that are disproportionately worse off.

Even the seemingly wealthy or middle class still conduct crowd fundraisers for critical medical care, funerals, etc. We helped another American friend with one of these recently.

Just this week, a friend who is middle class with chronic but manageable health problems was expressing serious intent on leaving the U.S. precisely because of long-term bankruptcy from medical cost prospects.

The worst thing is that the incentives are perverse. Your chronic pain friend can easily cost a society more than they will return in value, but if society will not take care of its feeble and weak than what value does it have?

If your friend emigrates, they may put a burden on the country they go to. Even if they are productive, the cost of their ailment (assuming its not just ridiculously ovepriced medicine in the US that is in reality really cheap everywhere else, in which case the nation he immigrates to should be overjoyed at the opportunity!) can slow economic growth over if someone with no ailment and the same qualifications emigrated instead.

So the US "sheds" a "cost center" and another country takes on the burden. American companies keep turning over record profits and stock valuations while its poor and sick suffer and die, while other nations are burdened with those America should have taken care of itself with its vast wealth if only it had any morality to care about its citizens.

It’s the overpriced medicine problem.

> If your friend emigrates, they may put a burden on the country they go to.

Not necessarily - old or feeble doesn't mean useless. Brain drain is a real thing ...

In the middle / upper middle class of America, you are likely to have a much higher time demand than in Germany / Canada / France / Europe. Checking the government's mandated annual time off shows that Germany has 29 paid days off per year, while Canada has 16-30-the US has 0 mandatory paid days off per year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

While you probably have PTO in the US, the typical leave is 2 - 3 weeks, many companies will offer unlimited PTO to further obfuscate how much time you are expected to take and avoid PTO payouts.

At the moment, Switzerland.

We speak one of the languages, know enough of the culture and politics, etc. to be inconspicuous and blend into the crowd. More than that, the culture and people and country have grown on us tremendously. :-)

I thought they were extremely restrictive with immigration? Your wife wasn't born there or anything?

More than one quarter of the Swiss population is foreign-born (comparable to Australia, only Luxembourg is ahead among OCDE countries): https://i1.wp.com/oecdinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...

Naturalization in Europe is restrictive if you measure it across all axes:

- Allow time-based naturalization outside of marriage?

- Allow dual or more citizenship?

CH is on the more restrictive end, but it is one of the few European countries to allow either of the above. If you compare outcomes and hurdles, the U.S. has been more restrictive to foreigners coming in than CH (don’t believe me; tell that the the Canadians I know who moved to CH instead of working for U.S. branches due to U.S. not issuing family reunification visa).

So the question to ask: what do you want? Permit to enter, live, and work; permanent residency; citizenship? Each of these things are different.

CH is Switzerland, in case it helps anyone else out.

Their tld is also .ch if anyone hadn't noticed it yet

And it comes from its Latin name, Confoederatio Helvetica, just to be complete. ;)

23% of Switzerland are foreign permanent residents. I'm not sure where you get the idea that Switzerland is restrictive with immigration?

Switzerland is restrictive with naturalization. You can be born here, have spent your entire life here, and still not have citizenship.

Due to bilateral treaties, immigration from EU countries is quite easy nowadays, but for citizens of non-EU countries, far less so. Almost 90% of resident foreigners are European: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Switzerland

Yes, but naturalization isn’t immigration.

It was super easy for me to get a working visa to Switzerland when I had a job there, and I’m not EU. Anecdata for sure, but I was hardly the only non-European around. There were even plenty of war and economic refugees around, far more than I ever encountered in the states.

I don't think "extremely restrictive" is the right word.

If you're an EU citizen you have the right to live there no questions asked.

If you're not EU, you can live there to pursue gainful employment so long as your employer can show that you have skills they can't obtain from within Switzerland or the EU.

If you can get a job, you'll be given either an L permit, which is "temporary" but can be exchanged for a B permit after 2 years, which can then be renewed indefinitely. After 5 years, if you can demonstrate integration (criteria vary by canton), you can get a C permit, which is permanent (essentially a green card).

As a skilled worker, I actually found Switzerland to be substantially more friendly than the US, though a lot of the hard work was handled by my employer.

Switzerland is kind of made to appeal to rich foreigners who spend money. Not too long ago, most people here were very poor. A lot of problems are hidden.

Being a foreigner on the ground, I think the reality is more mixed:

CH appeals most to rich and upper-middle class foreign tourists, but I distinguish between “visitor” from “foreigner living there”.

In terms of the latter group, I don’t think CH attempts to appeal: practically all paperwork is in local language with no attempt at furnishing anything in the language of my mother tongue. Further, your immigration status factors into contracts: subscriptions (telephony), rental agreement, etc. We were once turned down for an apartment because of it. Throughout my time abroad, a common trend is that expats (note: first use of that word) don’t bother to learn local language and are typically unhappy. Those that do attempt to are far happier. Does a host country afford and coddling for the former? I’ve never seen evidence of that no matter how rich. Is it hostile? No.

The story could be different for the super rich who live there like Tina Turner and former Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but that is not the circumstances of our family nor any other family we know by a long-measure. Citizenship cannot be bought here either. I think for a few million it is purchaseable in Austria or Hungary.

But at the end of the day, in my top-level reply, I had stated “at the moment.” We have lived elsewhere in the world, and the assessment of the overall problems the U.S. are facing would have been identical. The decline is palpable.

> Throughout my time abroad, a common trend is that expats (note: first use of that word) don’t bother to learn local language and are typically unhappy.

In Switzerland, that's no longer going to be an option. They recently implemented a change that requires you to learn at least A1 level (super basic) German in order to keep your B-permit.

As a recent arrival on a B-permit, I think it's a good idea.

Comparing San Francisco to similarly sized Marseille; I would suggest that Europe doesn’t necessarily have to answers either. I lived near Avignon and half of the storefronts in that town are boarded up. You’ll find a similar story across much of France. Paris, Marseille and Lyon suburbs often look like war zones and while the US has some similar areas, there are still plenty of places that don’t. Those that like to compare Europe to the US often look at the capital cities such as Paris as examples, but fail to look beyond the surface. France has considerable decay and economic malaise. Two of my kids were born in France and while it’s a nice place, the opportunity there doesn’t even come close to the US.

Using France as a representaiton of Europe isn't really sensible. And Europe as a representation of life outside the US even more so.

Travelling to France feels similar to travelling to the US to me. Horrible infrastructure (especially Paris IMHO). Similar feelings for some other European countries, Italy at the forefront.

Better models are places like the Nordics, New Zealand, Singapore. But more middlingly, Canada, Germany, Taiwan, all outclass life in the US or France. Heck, I'd even say China are doing a lot better in many regards (they have their own issues of course, but many aspects are strong).

I would disagree and say is the best representation of Europe. High output similar to Germany, and Sweden. High unemployment in the realm of Spain and Italy. While other countries sit on various points of different graphs (education, unemployment, immigration, GDP, etc) France just kind of sits near the center of most of them.

Having spent 10 days in France and driving from Paris to Lyon to Nice, this doesn’t jive with my experience at all. French cities were clean and nice. French villages look pristine and well managed. Unlike some of the broken rural areas in the US.

I've spent my vacations in rural France every year for the last 10 years or so. There are certainly some problems — smaller places just don't feel very dynamic economically. On the other hand, the French seem to have a vastly better life/work balance, and I really enjoy their unhurried way of life, even though as a customer, it's not always to my benefit. The one place in the US that reminds me most of this is the Big Island of Hawaii.

On the other hand, I’ve been to the following places and thought they were pretty good (although the commonality of graffiti in Europe was a big surprise):

* Roterdam * Amsterdam * Köln * Hannover * Heidelberg * Magdeburg * Berlin * Frankfurt (both of them) * Suhl * Zürich * Nuremberg * Strasbourg * Luxembourg * Bologne * Venice (even outside the touristy bits) * Barcelona * Torrevieja * Helsinki * Adelaide * Cairns

And yes, I know not all of those are in Europe; this is generically “nice places”. I’d name places in the UK if the UK government wasn’t currently digesting its own brain.

I’d give Budapest a miss thought. Even the street with all the embassies on is literally falling down and has barriers to keep the pedestrians safe from falling masonry.

It's Rotterdam - double t.

Whoops. Thanks, too late to edit now.

Also Cairns and Adelaide are australian.

This is so out of touch with reality. You have traded an insanely rich country for another super insanely rich country and called it a day. This in no way can even start a productive discussion.

Huh? Why? I'm an American who had traded America for Germany. It's no panacea but it is a marked improvement along multiple axes. That's real and unambiguous. Which is, I think, worth discussing.

Because it's just not comparable. Different settings and different environment.

You cant move around in Europe if you are an average folk like you can in the US. Moving around in Europe means almost a life time commitment to the language and the country and that does not always pay off.

Wow, "lifetime commitment" to a language or a country sounds harsh.

I think you can achieve a working level of any (European) language in around one year. And today we have Google translation in our phones, the job is 10x easier.

Nowhere is a "lifetime" commitment, but if you like a place, might just stay there.

Have you ever tried to become fluent in a language ?

I dont think you have even a clue about how hard european languages are and how hard it is to integrate.

I speak 3 languages non-natively, 2 at C1 level at least for oral comprehension.

So yeah, I have done that.

Yea I have seen people claiming they speak C1 when in fact they dont. Do you work profesionally with those languages?

I speak C2 Spanish and C1 French. I have certifications for both. I'm currently learning Italian, and expect to move from A2 to C1 within a year.

Its really not that hard if your study correctly and you're able to spend significant time in a country that speaks the language.

Why would you want to?

What improved in your opinion?

Way more free time because of mandated holiday and a culture of taking it. Better maintenance of a rich social life post children because of a more handsoff attitude toward child rearing, and higher prioritization of "adults only" time. Less hassles in general because it's a less scammy and litigious society. The "default option" for many basics like health insurance and retirement just works, and is structurally simpler. Basically, more time, less hassles.

I'm interested in this topic because my father was a German citizen when I was born, which entitles me to German citizenship. (I've lived in the US all my life.)

Over half of German GDP stems from exports, which is a huge fraction and which is only possible because of the Eurozone and because of the Bretton Woods system. The Bretton Woods system was created by the US to help fight the Cold War by encouraging free trade and the US particularly since the election of Trump is not interested in supporting the system anymore. The Eurozone and the European Central Bank's monetary policy have been preventing the economies of the countries on the periphery of Europe from developing, and those countries will either withdraw from the Eurozone or at least force changes to monetary policy that will be detrimental to Germany's exports.

So it looks like Germany's exports will fall, maybe drastically. Taxes on the profit that German companies make on these exports is how Germany pays for its social programs.

When the economy gets bad in Germany, young Germans cannot find jobs. (France is the same way.) This youth unemployment has gotten so bad once or twice during the postwar period that people start worrying about riots and other kinds of social upheaval, which makes things bad for everyone, not just people needing to find a job. Youth unemployment never gets that bad in the US.

I don't see any challenges to the US similar to those 2 challenges facing Germany.

Although I concede that I probably would have been better off if I had moved to Germany 30 years ago in my 20s, let's see if you still think Germany is markedly better than the US in 15 years.

Export is not "only possible" due to the Bretton Woods system, and the rest of your thoughts on exports are just pure unfounded speculation. Germany makes sought-after goods and will continue to do so for all of our lifetimes. They will export and sell them one way or another. Of course there will be ups and downs, but really drastic changes? I highly doubt it, even if the Euro(zone) were to implode, which is looking increasingly unlikely.

Post war Germany has never had significant youth unemployment, and worries about "riots and social upheaval" because of that unemployment? That's a pretty outrageous claim.

Why is it out of touch? The US is a rich country, Switzerland (where the parent now seems to be living) is richer on some measures, this isn't apples and oranges though.

Because you cant replicate the questionable success of Switzerland in a country like the US of A.

You could try to converge and force others to foot the bill but sooner or later it would damage the industries that make you money.

Switzerland is an anomaly not the norm in Europe and other countries are paying dearly for Switzerland's success.

But you couldn't replicate the 'questionable'?! Success of the US elsewhere.

Most rich countries have some kind of USP. That isn't an argument that they shouldn't try to replicate the more successful elements of other nations.

Germany is an anomaly in Europe, France also, along with Britain, Ireland, Italy, etc, etc.

Can you ? USP is not a silver bullet and it is mediocre at best. I paid shitloads of money in austria for a mediocre healthcare. I pay far less for healthcare in Korea which is superior in every way.

We never “called it a day.” We remain active on social, justice, and political issues from abroad. In fact, we are beginning the process to incorporate a small 501c3 around civic engagement and betterment. We spent a decent fraction of our pretax income on the aforementioned effort alone in 2018.

Nevertheless, when taking the whole risk and probability matrix into account, neither my spouse nor I feel confident that the U.S. will turn itself around successfully to warrant an all eggs in one basket approach. The United States would need to stop acting like a petulant family at war with itself and start taking better care of itself and its people.

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