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Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

"The government won’t say precisely how many American retirees live in Vietnam. Interviews with about a dozen such retirees suggest that some are here on one-year tourist visas; others are here just for a season or two; and still others have qualified for long residence by marrying Vietnamese citizens, as Rockhold did."

It's always odd to read stories like this. There's some kind of implication from the headline, or maybe even that the story was ever written, that there's a significant number of people doing this thing that's highlighted in the story. And then the story invariably will say that the actual number of people doing this thing is not really known, or is pretty low. Seems like you could write this story about so many different groups of people doing a thing. Maybe that's just the point, find a person doing something that's worth writing about and make it a more interesting story? Not really anything wrong with any of it I suppose, it's just usually obvious from the headline that the actual number of Americans retiring to Vietnam is pretty low.

Maybe indication of some kind of new trend, especially after people read this it brings more people over?

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These stories are strange, its like a journalistic slant that I have seen alot of recently whereby costs have gotten so high(in the US) people are now living in previously war-torn countries like kings. Some people are always moving to Mexico or Thailand or another lower cost area from the US, its not news as it has always been happening.

I see no hard statistics or numbers mentioned in this article, just a few stories from individuals who have chosen this move to Vietnam. I feel like its a clickbait type story to scratch the "itch" of people struggling with the skyrocketing cost of living in CA/NY etc and also dealing with record high inflation.

Exactly. "Retire to Mexico" has been a meme ever since "retire to Cuba" became impractical.

It's basically "retire to Idaho/Colorado" but for people of more modest means.

> "retire to Idaho/Colorado"

What happened to Arizona/Florida?

I think they're still extremely common but I'm guessing maybe less so in the circles of people here who may be less into activities like golfing.

> What happened to Arizona/Florida?

Both are overpopulated now. I live in a peripheral suburb outside of Phoenix, AZ, first moving to the state in 2007. My rent has gone up by $500 just in the last 6 months. There's talk among the locals that the water supply won't sustain this growth.

Florida is in much worse shape from what I hear but I can't speak on specifics. I know the cost of living there is insane though. I'd pick Idaho or maybe rural CO if I were to do it over.

South Florida is questionable from a water perspective. Northwest & northeast FL have a bit more flexibility, as they're at the end of river systems.

Per local radio news interviewing a university professor of real estate economics this morning, current prices are retirement surge from other states (due to market run) + supply / demand imbalance (due to firms going bust post-2008 and consequently new starts lagging population growth for years).

Fundamentally, Florida has always been linked to CA & NY via retirement, as FL prices are defined by what you could sell real estate out of state for (e.g. after kids move out).

> South Florida is questionable from a water perspective

Are you referring to fresh water? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floridan_aquifer

The problem for Miami, as I understand it, is that the permeability and depth of the upper aquifer is pretty delicately balanced with sea level.

Higher sea level (even a smidge) results in increased saltwater infiltration into the freshwater aquifers they're drawing from. Which is a problem when you're Miami-sized and growing population.

I think Tampa / Orlando, and certainly Jacksonville and Pensacola, have more favorable geology and surface water.

Between sea level rise and worsening storms I think I'd put off making long term investments in a most coastal areas, but presumably folks retiring won't live long enough to see the worst of what's coming. I'll bet Florida will remain a great place to die for a while still.

It's hard to beat 70/50°F in the middle of winter. And no wildfires! (Disclaimer: occasionally too much water and wind)

Florida definitely has wildfires. I’ve driven through a few going through the middle of Florida.

Upper Florida has to contend with Georgia's farms as they try to accommodate an ever-densifying northeast metro Atlanta.

This happened during the last big drought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-state_water_dispute

We might catch a break from climate change as the amount of water coming from the Gulf increases, but that comes with its own problems. Especially with the polar vortex creeping further south in the cold months.

It's funny when local jurisdictions and/or states tangle with Army Corp of Engineers and/or railroads, and find out just how much authority Congress granted them. Precisely because their job function requires them to work across states.

I wouldn't say that either is overpopulated. Arizona, in particular, has plenty of water and is sparsely populated. It has more square miles of mountains than Switzerland.

However, it may not have enough water to keep the huge cotton, alfalfa, and other water intensive crops growing. Agriculture is a huge industry in Arizona and it takes a lot of water to grow water intensive crops in the desert. This is done because water is extremely cheap and the sunshine gives you more harvests per year, and the lack of rain doesn't damage cotton. That's an issue of depleting aquifers via over-farming rather than too many people moving into the state and wasting too much water on showering and cooking.

Another issue for the Phoenix metro is sprawl. But again, that's not a question of too many people so much as too many wanting to live on large per-person plots of land all connected to the Phoenix metro. You can be rural and have large individual plots in the Verde Valley or other more rural areas and you can have urban areas with higher density, but trying to make low density urban areas doesn't scale very well.

Plenty of water just need to stop all the agriculture...

I recently learned that an ex-brother-in-law made bank from Bitcoin and retired to Mexico (he is around 50). To be honest I mostly associate Mexico with cartel kidnappings and killings, so I was shocked that he would choose Mexico to retire to, but apparently retiring to Mexico is a meme?

And it's not limited to the USA either. If you read British news, they write about expats who "retired" to Portugal.

Mexico has dental clinics and pharmacies that are ideal for older people.

> And then the story invariably will say that the actual number of people doing this thing is not really known, or is pretty low.

I think some people are also using the wrong types of visas and not wanting to make their identities public to avoid trouble. Especially the "tourist visa" people in the article. I knew people (pre-pandemic) who would participate in "visa runs" in Thailand. I tried a visa run once, but suspect that I did it repeatedly it would arise suspicion. There are also longer educational visas in Thailand, and some educational programs advertise how little time commitment is required (since actual learning didn't seem to be the point).

At least in Thailand visa runs are commonplace for a whole host of different folks. Some people I knew got into a little trouble, however by and large it wasn't frequent.

That being said, in Thailand there would be no need to for retirees as they have a retirement visa scheme that allow for renewal in country.

Business startup visas as well which work pretty well. But it takes effort to get everything organised.

The system is a bit odd in Vietnam due to its nominally communist status. You generally talk to a visa agent who goes to the relevant government department to sort it and you are in theory part of a tour group though it's a bit of a loophole. In practice once you have your visa they let you in without problems - I've know people staying on repeating 3 month tourist visas for years.

The Thai's system is different.

I also find these articles odd because of the tension between what I assume are the liberal values of the authors and the nature of the moves. Cheap and luxurious expat living is bankrolled by the relative poverty of the native people. Yeah, having a bunch of servants has it’s charms. When I was a kid in Bangladesh my dad worked for a Planned Parenthood affiliate. We had a cook, a nanny, a maid, and a driver on what was maybe the equivalent of a $65,000 salary today. But that’s possible because people are poor. My dad has this story where he sent our cook’s teenage son with some money to get some cigarettes. And he couldn’t bring himself to buy them because a pack cost as much as what he was paid in a week. In my mind people who want to live that kind of lifestyle are kind of morally defective.

Highly agree. Why would you want to just keep up the cycle of poverty? Especially the fact that this guy is 66 and had kids with a Vietnamese woman who is most definitely 40 years younger than him. I see it all too often where white men take advantage of south east Asian women and live comfortably by keeping others in poverty.

Keeping others in poverty by spending in the local economy and employing locals?

I mean gentrification is a thing but it takes a lot of demand in the area

> take advantage

You are assuming that these hypothetical "south east Asian women" are being exploited due to their contrast with "white men" i.e.:

- They are not white

- They are women

And they are being exploited solely because of these factors. This is both racist and sexist, which is just entirely a bad starting point for a view of the world. Everyone that you speak of has agency and makes choices. Perhaps you feel one side has been coerced, but frankly I do not see it from what you've pointed out here. All I see is people using the agency they have to make life choices that they think are best. That's a good thing.

Well they are employing locals with the best job they can get so it can’t be that bad

So it's better to NOT employ poor people than to employ them? Your logic is .. curious at best. I think that there's a better argument for paying them more than they could expect normally.

> Cheap and luxurious expat living is bankrolled by the relative poverty of the native people.

How are expats employing locals at local wages (instead of at the equivalent wages in their home countries) being "bankrolled" by poverty? They contribute more money (and more directly) to people in poor countries than the people living in Western countries whose houses are filled with goods made by poor people in countries they probably couldn't locate on a map.

> We had a cook, a nanny, a maid, and a driver on what was maybe the equivalent of a $65,000 salary today. But that’s possible because people are poor.

If your cook, nanny, maid and driver didn't work for your family, what do you realistically think they would have done to earn income?

Are people in Bangladesh poor because the tiny community of Western expats living there hire cooks, nannies, maids and drivers and don't pay them what they would earn in those roles in the US or Europe? Or are people in Bangladesh poor because of the country's troubled history, overpopulation, low urbanization, corrupt and ineffective institutions, etc.?

> In my mind people who want to live that kind of lifestyle are kind of morally defective.

Those are really strong words.

In your mind, are people in the West who buy and use products manufactured on the cheap in poor countries every single day of their lives also morally defective?

Edit:

You mentioned that your dad worked for a Planned Parenthood affiliate. Poor countries often desperately need knowledge, skills and experience that are in short supply locally, in all areas from medicine to infrastructure.

At the same time, it can be very difficult to find skilled foreigners willing to relocate to these countries and contribute their skills for the benefit of these countries. Even with high salaries, a cook, nanny, maid and driver, life in a place like Bangladesh is not going to appeal to the vast majority of Westerners.

So employers often help arrange for expats to have benefits, like household help, to incentivize people to come.

I've seen a lot of resentment towards tech workers in tech-hubs for bringing up the cost of living. They're blamed for bringing up the prices with to their outsized spending power allowing them to push up the prices beyond what locals can afford.

Expats in poorer country exceed this by at least an order of magnitude or two in relative spending power. I wouldn't be surprised if a high density of expats would cause resentment among the locals due to the resulting gentrification.

I've lived in numerous developing countries and while I can certainly think of a number of places where gentrification pushed locals out of certain neighborhoods, I've never seen expats doing this on the scale I witnessed in the US.

It's a complex issue.

First, expats are not a homogeneous bunch. In a lot of developing countries in SE Asia, for instance, the expat communities are not made up of large numbers of truly affluent people. Generally, the expats who live in the expensive buildings/houses and employ local help (maids, cooks, etc.) work for large companies (in higher-level roles), embassies and NGOs. The majority of the "digital nomad" types don't actually live affluent lifestyles in my experience. Sure, they make a lot more than the locals, but they're not spending $3,000/month on an apartment in Bangkok or HCMC. This doesn't mean they don't have an effect on local economies, but there just aren't enough expats in fast-growing, fast-developing cities to cause negative gentrification effects like you see in places like the SF Bay Area.

Second, in some places, like Bali, the economies are totally built around the presence of foreigners (expats, "semi-permanent" foreign residents and foreign tourists). Take them away and the locals suffer massively. Bali has been absolutely bleeding because of COVID. I guarantee you if you asked the average Balinese person if they want "normal" to return (which means a heavy foreigner population), they would tell you "yes x10000000000000".

Finally, a lot of developing countries, while still poor, have fast-growing economies and there is a lot of development taking place that is driven by the growing wealth and urbanization locally. I worked in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) for a time and while you could see the effect expats had in a neighborhood like BBK1, other neighborhoods were clearly changing more as a result of the growing wealth of locals and increased urbanization (people coming from the countryside to find opportunity in the city).

It's unclear to me why this is bad. The expat is not the cause of those people's poverty. The relationship between paid servants and employee should be mutually beneficial, as each gets what they desire, money on one hand, and convenience or more free time on the other.

It's not like wealthy people in developed countries don't have servants who are comparatively poor. Multiples of those servants salaries are spent on frivolous amusements. What's the better alternative? That they not spend money on staff and instead hoard it, depriving others of job opportunities? Hand out bags of money for no reason?

I understand your economic arguments. But I still think that anyone who would want to leave their relatively egalitarian western society to live among such inequality is morally defective.

And the social stratification in third world countries is completely different than what you have in America. For awhile we used a cleaning service run by someone who lives in our subdivision. In these third world countries, the lives of affluent expats and the natives who serve them pretty much don’t intersect at all except through the service relationship.

> But I still think that anyone who would want to leave their relatively egalitarian western society to live among such inequality is morally defective.

Open up your closets, cabinets, etc. How many of the goods you own are made in the West? How many are made in places like China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc.?

How can you say that Western society is "relatively egalitarian" when the majority of the goods Westerners consume are produced in poor or developing countries where inequality is the rule not the exception?

For heaven's sake, for decades, the West has literally shipped its trash to these countries for disposal or "recycling".

The West is only "relatively egalitarian" so long as you pretend that the West is a closed, self-contained society. In reality, the West has outsourced poverty, ultra-abusive labor practices, corruption, pollution and environmental destruction to countries most of their citizens can't locate on a map. Out of sight, out of mind.

If a Westerner is "morally defective" for choosing to live in poor, polluted, corrupt countries, what should one make of the Westerners who wouldn't want to even visit them but have no problem filling their lives with products made in them?

> In these third world countries, the lives of affluent expats and the natives who serve them pretty much don’t intersect at all except through the service relationship.

Ever lived in, say, the SF Bay Area? The dynamic between the affluent and the people who serve them isn't as different in the West as you make it out to be. The hotshot FANG engineer making $400,000/year and living in a $2.5 million house in Cupertino likely isn't "intersecting" with the cook at a Chipotle who shares an apartment with 3 other people in the worst neighborhood in the East Bay and commutes with multiple people to Mountain View every day.

> Ever lived in, say, the SF Bay Area?

I would never live in the Bay Area. I lived in DC, and the economic inequality was soul sucking. It was especially depressing only ever meeting non-white/Asian people in service roles. I got my family the heck out of there.

> In these third world countries, the lives of affluent expats and the natives who serve them pretty much don’t intersect at all except through the service relationship.

How is this any different from in the US (or anywhere else, really)? Most well-off (or even just "comfortable") people don't mix much with low-income folks, outside of service relationships.

That’s untrue for huge swaths of America. In the Iowa town where my wife grew up, the doctor’s kid went to the same school as the poorest kids in town, because there was only one school for everyone. Even here in Annapolis, there’s e.g. not really any place to eat in town that nearly everyone couldn’t afford to go at least on a special occasion.

> In the Iowa town where my wife grew up, the doctor’s kid went to the same school as the poorest kids in town, because there was only one school for everyone.

But the same would be true if you decide to live in the countryside or smaller city in a developing country. In major cities everywhere in the world, including the West, affluents can and often do live in bubbles. This has nothing to do with expats.

From my experience, it's still true in rural areas. I lived in the middle of nowhere, and the doctors' kids didn't go to the same school as the poorest kids in town. Typically, one spouse didn't work and would handle ferrying the kids significant distances to get to a better school.

Country clubs were also popular among the wealthy, and they had restaurants most people couldn't access. Golfing was a sign of wealth, since the only nearby golf course was at the country club.

Hobbies also divided people. One family friend had his own airstrip and planes. Riding horses was another popular and expensive hobby, and many chose to pay those less well-off to take care of their horses in the stables.

Homes were a huge division. Labor was cheap, so it wasn't uncommon for the doctors to live in homes so large that they basically couldn't be sold when they wanted to move.

Time was also a big differentiator. Wealthy families spent a lot more time away from home, driving an hour or so to get to the closest major city to shop at larger grocery stores with more exotic ingredients, or going to ethnic restaurants, or going to shows/concerts/etc. That was enabled by only having to have a single working spouse and/or hiring a maid. Almost all the well-off families had maids.

The fissure still exists, it just comes out in different ways since the local market can't sustain a single $50/plate restaurant.

I lived in a developing country (China) for 9 years and could never bother with a maid if even a cleaning service. The logistics were just too huge for me, as a non native, and it didn’t seem to be worth it. I had friends who had babysitters, but more the part time kind and labor costs rose rapidly in the last decade. But the biggest thing is: the expats were often seen as poorer than many of the natives. The rich Chinese in Beijing had drivers, maids, etc… it wasn’t so common for the foreigners. I’ve felt the same way in Manila, Bangkok, the only place that seem to be where foreigners come out as the rich people are tourist towns (like Phuket, Bali, Boracay) designed completely around extracting their money. But admittedly, none of those places are truly third world.

I've lived in London and Vietnam. I don't think living in the relative poverty of Vietnam is a moral problem. The people will still be relatively poor if you don't go there and keep your eyes shut to the issues. Going there actually reduces local poverty as you can spend money there and benefit them rather than spending it London and benefiting millionaire property owners mostly.

I say relative poverty because most people there aren't that badly off and their economy is booming, growing far faster than the UK one.

People also complain about rich "Chinese/Russian/Middle Eastern" expats buying up all the property in large Western cities too.

My in-laws lived in Central America back in the 50s, as my father in law worked there for a large international bank. They did have a live-in maid and a cook. My mother in law said at first it made her feel uncomfortable, but was told in no uncertain terms that Americans who could afford help but didn't hire help were seen as selfish. The locals needed the work.

No doubt there are people who hire local help and are terrible about it, but I think so long as the employed people are treated humanely, with empathy, and paid as good or better than local rates, there isn't a problem.

> My mother in law said at first it made her feel uncomfortable, but was told in no uncertain terms that Americans who could afford help but didn't hire help were seen as selfish.

Yes, because Americans aren’t even seen as the same kind of human in these countries. These societies often have rigid class structures even among the locals—my family is Bangladeshi, but affluent and our servants definitely didn’t think they were our equals—much less between locals and European/American foreigners.

The locals are reacting rationally to the situation. But what kind of person would want to leave an egalitarian society and live like that, just so they can be at the top of the pecking order?

So, we shouldn't do business with folks of lower means, is that right? And to avoid doing so we should restrict ourselves to particular heterogeneous countries, with geographic boundaries that aren't particularly effective at that goal. Spending money in places it is needed rather than already concentrated is morally defective because the spender might also benefit from the transaction?

(Believe I read something similar once about folks trying to help the homeless. If the helper benefited one iota as well, the helper was branded a "monster.")

I don't believe this is a healthy or valid take. We should all be helping each other, and a win/win situation is the best outcome imho. Because it incentivizes more.

> what kind of person would want to leave an egalitarian society and live like that, just so they can be at the top of the pecking order?

To play devil's advocate, say it's not about having servants or "living like a king", but about having the freedom to do things that don't make money.

How many bad things are done because someone thought it was "necessary" to pay rent, or to afford college for their kid?

If, instead of optimizing ad engagement to pay a mortgage in Palo Alto, I buy a modest house, outright, in a little Columbian town nobody's heard of, and open an ice cream shop out of the first floor, is that so bad? There's an electrician on YouTube who did that.

Or if I spend my days building strange concrete domes and planting banana trees? There's another guy who does that.

Or running a backpacker hostel that employs (and pays fairly) a local cook and a maid? Probably a lot of us have stayed at such a place.

I had friends who backpacked through South America after college. They ran into an American who, one day in the States, said "fuck it", got in his pickup truck, and started driving south. Eventually he fell in with an Amazon tribe; he doesn't speak the language too well, but he has the truck and he knows how to drive, and that's how he contributes. He's much happier now. Who knows what he'd had to do to pay rent in America.

What if all I want to do is walk around, and drink tea, and chat with people? What if I'm somehow tired and bored at the same time?

What if I get a donkey and work as a traveling children's library?

Do I have to keep my position at the top of World Empire, or can I just take my good fortune and use it to drop out and chill?

I'm no savior, but maybe I can get a well drilled or something. Maybe I need the water too. Or maybe I can do the bushes in the local park, if everybody else is too busy with some other thing that earns dinero.

Hell, there's a white girl on YouTube who met a Maasai dude in Africa, married him, and now lives there doing... I don't know what, but it can't earn much. Granted I think she's going to be a little more independent than is, uh, traditional in that culture. But he's like, "ok, whatever, I have a good wife". Doesn't demand much, is happy.

Surely if you're born inside the harem, with all its advantages, there's got to be a way out.

Hell, if I'm an American, maybe me leaving creates a slot at a company that'll be filled by an H1B, and the circle of life continues. "Have at it, brother; I'm done."

It's also a potential way to raise a family and have time for your kids.

Yeah the harm with employing people is not in hiring them and benefitting from their work. Rather, it is in exploiting them--cheating them on wages in one of many ways, ordering them to do harm, having dangerous working conditions, degrading them, those are only a few examples. And exploitation in these forms exists according to the local context of the foreign land, and simultaneously is strongly informed by American views. Both.

I have seen many instances when expats try to treat foreign workers much better than they need to, but it does not work at all for either party. The intention is still worth indulging, however, in ways that aren't mutually harmful. It's just difficult sometimes.

But it can be done. And it's beautiful when it is done.

There may be harm in diverting human resources from uses that are more productive in the long term. The best arguments I've heard for minimum wage run in a similar vein, and perhaps there's some parallels to the "resource curse".

Back in the day aristocrats paid people to keep their coats on the shelf. It wasn't like they couldn't do it themselves. It was expected from aristocrats to support such jobs so that the lower classes can have some employment.

> My dad has this story where he sent our cook’s teenage son with some money to get some cigarettes. And he couldn’t bring himself to buy them because a pack cost as much as what he was paid in a week.

This is odd... Did none of the working class smoke (surprising), or were there vast differentials in price between different kinds of cigarettes?

When I spent a couple months in northern India about 20 years ago a lot of people smoked what seemed like self-rolled cigarettes (or at least they looked different that the kind of cigarettes that you get in the west). Western cigarette brands were also available.

Seems like you could write this story about so many different groups of people doing a thing.

You can, and the World, Lifestyle, etc. sections of newspapers like the LA Times often do. It's just a personal interest puff piece.

Retiring to a cheaper country isn't a new trend, it's just more difficult than retiring to Florida for Americans or Southern Europe for Europeans so most people wouldn't go to the effort.

It's really not at all difficult for Europeans to retire to Southern Europe.

It's not even that difficult for Americans to retire to Southern Europe.

As long as you do not need the Greek authorities to do something for you...

Unless you want to stay longer than allowed by a Schengen visa,

or if you want to open a local bank account,

or access local healthcare,

EU banks don't want US citizens as customers however residents have a right to a basic payment account. Details at https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr...

US did this to themselves, FATCA et al pushed very aggressively by US government through regional/EU governments. Same goes for ie Switzerland, land for US retirees on very opposite wealth spectrum compared to this article. Now there is like 1 bank in the land of banks that accepts US citizens.

And first part of the OP's statement is true - its easy to retire into southern Europe from wealthier parts of Europe. Quality of life, safety, healthcare etc is usually more than fine.

FATCA is a terrible law. It's like they're machine-gunning people who try to get over the Berlin Wall.

So, practical question for Americans living in Europe: Are you able to just forgo local banks and use an internationally-minded US bank for everything? One without international fees? Can you just get your paychecks deposited there, say? Does this make anything impossible? Say, getting a mortgage?

I have a German bank and am a US citizen. No problems here. I've seen this reposted online on several occasions but living here and knowing other Americans here I've not actually heard any stories of people being denied a bank account. No idea if it would work but I suppose you could use something like Wise to bank here - it gives you an IBAN like a normal bank so it should work.

See my comment below but again - this is reposted online everywhere but I've yet to encounter this even one time in my 10 years here that US citizens get denied an account or get complaints from their bank about FACTA.

I just Google'd "europe retirement visa". Many, many hits. Most Southern European nations have reasonable options. The GP post is valid to me. About healthcare: I have no idea how that works, but surely it will be cheaper than the United States.

In Italy you just get free (=public) healthcare. When we visited a few years ago with our then-baby son he developed a fever and we took him to a pediatric hospital & were treated without anyone asking to see any health insurance or talking about cost. We just got in, got treatment and got out at the end.

Yeah its actually hardest for foreigners to retire in Florida since the US is one of the few countries that doesn't offer retiree visas. Canadians have it relatively easy, usually splitting time between the two countries since they can spend 180 days at a time in the US on a B-2 tourist waiver.

Also health insurance issues. Most “snowbird” insurance is only cost-effective because they expect to G(you)TFO back to your government insurance if anything happens and discontinue your policy if anything happens. And often any medical condition needs to be stable to qualify in the first place.

I’m aware of a lot of Canadians that look further south to get away every winter to avoid a lot of health and tax related issues.

I’m thinking about retiring to Guam for that reason: Medicare is still valid there, not as cheap as SEA, but cheaper than most of the USA. Who knows, it’s a long way for me.

> Maybe indication of some kind of new trend, especially after people read this it brings more people over?

There's reporting on a trend and there's trying to create the trend.

It's often hard to tell which it is, especially when you have PR consultants who work with corporate press outlets to spin, imply, shape, and create a narrative that is plausible and has a few supporting data points.

It's the PR equivalent of "fake it until you make it"

Its more "fake it to make it"

Headlines omit some grammar which readers infer themselves, meaning that most people will read "Americans retiring to Vietnam for..." as:

Americans are now retiring to Vietnam for...

When another valid reading is:

Here are some Americans retiring to Vietnam for...

I don't know about "new". I know two different people who decided on early retirement in Vietnam, one a decade ago and the other almost that long.

> “ doing this thing that's highlighted in the story. And then the story invariably will say that the actual number of people doing this thing is not really known, or is pretty low. Seems like you could write this story about so many different groups of people doing a thing.”

Think of it from the perspective of the community of people who believe the ideology

How do you survive in these foreign lands as an expatriate? Through a community of like minded people, with networking and mutual support.

Special communities love to share their stories, or you may say they’re not just spectators but participants in their community.

Once you get your head around that, then consider all the people who don’t share their stories, and instead live in the _default_ world.

>Seems like you could write this story about so many different groups of people doing a thing.

Yes, there's a lot of questions about this type of article. Why about Vietnam when Americans go to many other countries or even US states for cheaper retirement? Why put "healthcare" before "decent standard of living" in the title? Why make it sound like a lot more people are doing it when the author really has no idea how many people are specifically going to Vietnam for healthcare and decent standard of living? Why is it in the "World & Nation" section rather than Travel? Is the author trying to plant a seed of some sort or make a statement, or is it just boring filler to fill pages in a slow news day?

This is the LA Times we're talking about - Manage your expectations accordingly.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this while I was traveling and would come across large numbers of people who are in really niche communities and the math didn't make sense to me. The obvious answer in reteospect is that the world is huge and a tiny percentage of people doing anything equals a large number of people. If 1 in 10,000 Americans are doing this that's still a huge group.

“Americans are being crushed by falling grand pianos”

There should be some variant of Betteridge's law[0] for headlines like this, where you insert some arbitrary, small number into the headline:

"5 Americans are retiring to Vietnam, for cheap healthcare and a decent standard of living" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

I cannot read the article because there is a paywall, but does the author imply that it is a new trend? It can be worthy of coverage even if it isn't trendy, provided the author does not cast it as such.

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