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Comment by tao_oat | Hacker News Reader

The population of the US (328 million) is roughly 55 times that of Denmark (5.8 million).

There are an estimated 30 to 35,000 Danes living in the US [1] (not Americans with Danish ancestry, which seems irrelevant). By your own logic re: voting with your feet, it seems the conclusion should be the opposite.

[1]: Embassy of Denmark in DC, cited on https://wise.com/us/blog/how-to-adjust-to-life-in-the-us-as-...

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> The population of the US (328 million) is roughly 55 times that of Denmark (5.8 million).

Your logic is reversed. Assuming that the US and Denmark have equally favorable living conditions, and the US population is 55 times larger, there would be a 55 times higher chance of a US citizen deciding to jump the fence than the other way around. The fact that this is not happening, shows that the US is perceived as a more desirable place to live.

It could also mean that most Americans think the US is the world, and they don't know that Denmark exists.

Or that it's easier for more Danes to migrate to the US than vice versa because they're more familiar with the language and culture of the US than vice versa.

There are so many potential reasons; it's silly to draw conclusions about what country is "better" (on some underspecified scale) based on just migration stats.

I find the argument about the familiarity of cultures very strong, and you're likely onto something there.

This back and forth is so ... weird. You are trying to somehow use one metric of population and migrations to measure what I have to think is quality of life. Why not then just use studies that tried to measure this? Do you reject them because all Scandinavian countries score higher than the US?

I don't reject anything - there's no question that the median citizen lives a more comfortable life in Scandinavian countries than in the US. But there's a nuance to human nature that might be difficult to admit, and that's that people are inherently ambitious, to the point that both things can be true at the same time:

1) The median Scandinavian citizen is living a more comfortable life than the median US citizen

2) As a Scandinavian citizen, you're more likely to want to live in the US than as a US citizen to want to move to a Scandinavian country.

If you found this exchange weird, I hope you didn't find me disrespectful or anything of that sort, but more like challenging some long-firm beliefs that have been repeated so many times that it's difficult to hear any other point of view. And if you still don't agree with me, that's totally fine - I might very well be wrong. The whole point of being on HN is to hear POVs that are contrarian and hopefully thoughtful.

I think your 2) can easily be misconstrued to mean something else. At least, "want/desire" does not logically follow from migration stats. There are way more important factors that affect this metric.

Not to mention that a generally poor population are stuck in the US, while for the upper income brackets actually have it OK in the US. While in Scandinavia, almost everyone has the means to travel the world. Even store clerks, or otherwise "minimum income workers".

I would agree with that - the US population that has the means to leave doesn't have the incentive to do so, and those who have the incentive don't have the means. Conversely, the Danes who are too ambitious for the way that Denmark is set up likely have the means to leave.

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