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Comment by darkclouds | Hacker News Reader

A positive spin but arguably deceitful spin on the state of affairs in the US and UK.

https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-gl...

"A new analysis of global rankings of life expectancy over seven decades shows the UK has done worse than all G7 countries except the USA."

"According to the OECD, state the researchers, the UK recently became the second most economically unequal country in Europe after Bulgaria."

Me personally, I dont even think I'll be reaching retirement age if I continue to live in the UK, and thats not through not wanting to work, but thats because of the how the UK has become. Everything has just got too expensive living in the UK now.

More people died during the period of time energy prices rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK, but you cant point this stuff out to people in the street because they'll have a go back, a form of denial of the situation in the UK.

Its become very dog eat dog, quality of work in decline but costs still going up.

Crime in my experience is also off the scale and the attitude of the police now means I no longer report crimes to them.

So yes this sort of article is portrayed as positive spin but is in fact deceitful spin.

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> More people died during the period of time energy prices rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK

Do you have a source for this? I was looking at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115077/monthly-deaths-i... which made it seem like that wasn't the case. I've seen https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensiv... which shows that more people died from high energy prices than from covid, but only since energy prices went up, not in total.

> More people died during the period of time energy prices rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK

Any source for this? And this seems possibly meaningless at face value.

Total deaths have generally been increasing in the UK since 2011. [1]

I assume that's because of an aging population.

And just glancing at this graph of total deaths with 5 year average [2] I think it's doubtful that excess deaths from the energy crisis exceeded pandemic deaths.

So the statement would have more value if it were about excess mortality rate.

There does seem to be some evidence that non-covid excess mortality rate increased due to the energy crisis (and possibly exceeded covid excess mortality at the time) [3] but I don't think it's clear by how much (especially when you consider there was increased non-covid excess mortality even in the summer).

Other sources speculated on different causes for the excess mortality but it doesn't really seem like anyone knows. [4]

There are some BMJ articles that might better explain it but they're not on sci-hub yet.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/281488/number-of-deaths-...

[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

[3] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensiv...

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64209221

> Me personally, I dont even think I'll be reaching retirement age if I continue to live in the UK, and thats not through not wanting to work, but thats because of the how the UK has become. Everything has just got too expensive living in the UK now.

Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of British and European expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on returning. We've been getting a lot of international applicants (but work from home was supposed to mean Europeans could avoid moving to the "dangerous" US but work for American companies?).

Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK, Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be the ones benefiting from a brain drain of Americans leaving the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreign talent. I recall someone pitching the "Silicon Roundabout" and that Cambridge and Oxford were going to be the new Stanford and MIT.

It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these predictions were. Top destination for UK nationals in Academia was, and still is... the US [0].

[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...

I'm a relatively new immigrant to the US, Seattle area, spaniard but moved from the UK. I'm actually extremely tempted to move back to Spain and my experience in the US so far has been very negative.

Very high cost of living, inflation, uncertainty due to layoffs, salaries down due to a combination of lack of raises and stocks going down, housing price still increasing despite the high interest rates, which have made real estate even more unaffordable. To top things up the green card priority dates for my immigrant class have gone back, so I have even more uncertainty of when I will achieve permanent resident status.

I don't know the circumstances of the people that you describe, but Europe is looking way more attractive than the US. The whole reason why I left Spain was lack of jobs and low salaries, but Covid and remote seem to have incredibly improved the situation (I know from second hand accounts).

The only reason I'm holding on is a combination of sunken cost fallacy and an unjustified optimism in the future. It took me years and tons of effort to move my family to this country, so I'm not ready to give up just yet. I'm also aware than my bad experience is in part due to random circumstances, and if the situation improves (both for me personally, and for the country as a whole) my experience will be different.

Still, I give it a 50%/50% chance that in 3 years I will hate my situation here, give up and move back home.

If you're open to it I feel like the sweet spot right now, specially for Spanish speakers, is to work remotely from somewhere in LATAM, earning in dollars or euros and spending in local currency.

"inequality is bad for you so go move someplace where you can contribute to making inequality even worse for the locals"

How is it bad to bring foreign money into a country and spend it on the local economy?

For one, because if there are enough people to pay higher prices, the market will reflect that and the locals will have to deal with the new costs despite the fact that there are no local jobs paying enough to afford these things. So yeah for people who are already merchants (likely a minority) it's great; everyone else gets poorer. Thus, inequality increases. This is already playing out in US cities.

I won't pretend to know about this stuff. What I can tell you is that, since covid and the advent of remote work, so many countries have been rushing to launch some sort of "digital nomad" visa, precisely to attract this new type of worker. So clearly they've determined the model to be a net positive for the economy.

I cannot pretend to have an adequate breadth of geopolitical knowledge on this topic nor an understanding of the underlying reasons behind the various governments and the advent more recent "nomad visas".

However my knee-jerk reaction is that, the various programs governments will incentivize regarding foreign investment and relocation are not necessarily in the best economic or social interests of the locals for a given area, despite that governments intent.

One story I recall from earlier this year was regarding Lisbon and the backlash against their visa [1]. From the article it's obvious there were other (tax) incentives that existed prior to the nomad visa, however it appears to me that the visa was a turning point in public discourse on the topic, as it incentivized highly paid individuals to relocate to Lisbon (4x the average Portuguese salary).

Though I don't disagree that it could still have been weighed by the government and determined it to be a net-positive still.

[1] : https://www.politico.eu/article/portugal-digital-nomads-bubb...

Portugal has been handing out extremely desirable EU residency to very wealthy people for more than 10 years, in exchange of real estate investment. I don't blame them, together with Greece they were the hardest hit by the last global crisis. But of course that was going to noticeably drive prices up. A lot (most?) of those investments are now airbnbs which is the real problem they have. I don't think this can be compared with the recent wave of nomad visas that are little more than extended tourist permits.

If foreign money decides to entirely stop spending in developing economies and only spends money in developed economies, it seems like the outcome would be even worse. As in, developing economies will never develop and developed economies will continue to hoard all the wealth.

If they're spending money into a local economy, that means the money is flowing into the local economy.

> merchants

hire a whole panoply of people as their business increases.

Classic history lesson is mensa musa, who was so wealthy (at least in terms of gold), wherever he travelled inflation followed in his wake.

That said, I’m not sure there is much literature on the negative economic side of tourism, or work tourism specifically. My suspicion, is that while it tends to create inflationary pressure, it still increases local wealth generally, and rarely are there very extreme negative situations (like locals who live in regions that can grow quinoa that can no longer afford it resulting in serious nutrition issues).

You drive up housing costs

I lived in 5 countries in 10 years, and I'm not up for geo-arbitrage to scrap a few more dollars in my income. If I got a global remote job, rather than moving halfway across the world, I rather move close to my family and friends.

Plus, some countries in LATAM have the same issues we dislike about the US but magnified (e.g. inequality).

It's not geo-arbitrage, the extra income is a side benefit. For me personally, I'm happier in these parts, and I too lived in very many places. I enjoy the slower pace of life, greater sense of community, and lesser individualism. Living in the West today feels like constant competition. But of course it's far from perfect and not for everyone.

> I'm a relatively new immigrant to the US, Seattle area

> I don't know the circumstances of the people that you describe, but Europe is looking way more attractive than the US

The US is giant. I always find it funny when people try to use anecdotal evidence of their lived experience in a single expensive city in the US to describe the entirety of the US, when that is absolutely, unequivocally, not representative of the vast majority of the US. Check out the prices of an apartment in Seattle[0] vs Austin[1], or NYC[2], or Pittsburgh[3], or Indianapolis[4].

When I lived in Seattle, I was paying around $1900 a month for a microstudio with around 600 square feet. According to the website I pasted below, that would get you a 4 bedroom apartment in Indianapolis (which sounds about accurate, I'm currently spending less than that for a 1400 square foot 2 bedroom apartment on the east coast).

In other words, it would be like if I moved to London and then declared the entirety of Europe (not just the UK because the US is around 96% the size of all of Europe[5]), and then declared that Europe just isn't for me because of how expensive it is in London, and how the culture is and... etc.

Now, I'm not denying your experience and I believe you 100% having lived there myself. I also am not going to pretend picking up and moving across the country is something you can just do at a whim's notice. I'm only cautioning against extrapolating your experience on this single city to describe an entire country that is almost the size of the entire continent of Europe.

[0]: https://www.renthop.com/average-rent-in/seattle-wa

[1]: https://www.renthop.com/average-rent-in/austin-tx

[2]: https://www.renthop.com/average-rent-in/new-york-ny

[3]: https://www.renthop.com/average-rent-in/pittsburgh-pa

[4]: https://www.renthop.com/average-rent-in/indianapolis-in

[5]: https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/euro...

Someone from Europe and who likes European culture will probably be OK in Seattle (except for the problems the OP cited). They're not going to be happy living in Pittsburgh or especially Indianapolis. You're entirely ignoring the quality of life and culture differences that come with these different places. There's a reason people want to live in NYC and Seattle, and not in Indianapolis.

100%. I'm also a Spaniard and immigrating next year to Bay Area and I can say that I'd only move to a handful of cities in the US. The cultural shock was too hard in places outside major metros. And I've lived in South East Asia!

E.g., around CalPoly most people just... Went home after work? No meeting up to do something, have a drink, etc. They just went home and stayed there. I found it super strange.

It is an unfortunate trend that the United States is becoming so individualistic that even socializing and having friends is passé.

I wouldn't call it "passé" as such, I think it's just very difficult because everyone is basically going in wildly different directions and there's no unity or commonality. Why spend a lot of time and effort being friends with people that you have absolutely nothing in common with, and frequently find to have repulsive opinions?

The comment I'm replying to mentions europeans in Silicon Valley, so probably their experience is closer to mine in Seattle than someone in Alabama.

Other than that I explicitly address in my comment that my experience is particularly bad and I'm willing to give this country a fair try. However, if the answer is to cut my salary in half and move to Pittsburgh, at that point I rather return to southern europe.

The UK shot itself in the foot hard with Brexit, and has become a quite undesirable place for many for that reason. Doesn't mean that the US is necessarily doing great.

Which part of the US? It's so dramatically different from city to city, state to state.

Software developer or equivalent income capable tech job, remote, university city/town. It's a fairly easy set-up (unless you're already very rooted somewhere). They're relatively inexpensive to live in (you can actually buy a real house at $100k per year!), and there are tons of safe choices (specifically with a low murder rate). Primary downside is far weaker food/nightlife/etc. vs what you get in major cities.

I still dont get why they did it. To me it was the most stupid thing any country did in my lifetime and am still mad about it.

Because reactionaries successfully channeled discontent about declining material conditions into a reductive scapegoating of the EU and faced no meaningful opposition from what is now a center-right Labor Party, post Blair.

>> Because reactionaries successfully channeled discontent about declining material conditions into a reductive scapegoating of the EU and faced no meaningful opposition

Yes. From the Left as well as the Right. Jeremy Corbyn is an example of the former.

>> ... from what is now a center-right Labor Party, post Blair.

Labour Party.

It seems traditional party politics were not the primary factor. There were Leavers on both Left and Right. Centrists were less likely to be Leavers than those on the wings of their party.

Demographic factors were more determining of a Leave vote than political affiliation: Age (older vs younger), region (England/Wales vs Scotland/N.Ireland), population density (rural vs urban), income (low earning vs high earning)

I suspect a big part of it was that voters didn't seriously consider that Boris Johnson might have been lying to them when he said it would be good.

Exaggerate, embellish, etc., sure, but not outright lie.

Cambridge Analytics, probably.

Clap for Carers during Covid was a national psychological experiment to measure conformity. Brexit was the closest you could get to resurrecting the Nazi party in the UK 60 years later as another conformity experiment.

How do you measure conformity across a country?

TV Set top boxes being paused at 8pm on Thursday, wifi connected devices seeing a weakening signal, social media posts.

The internet is a security services and big businesses surveillance tool wet dream.

Whats been interesting since is how various websites and their algorithms are being used to challenge your view point. What Eli Pariser highlighted in his Ted talk 12 years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s) has grown to all the major US tech companies because if everyone has their nose in a device connected to some website, the state can control people in deniable spooky hacker ways.

Remember intelligence is a cheaper and easier form of nipping problems in the bud before you have to puts boots on the ground, beit military boots or police boots, and at least here in the UK every element of the state is involved in surveillance, including the NHS and the educational system.

The cultural urban rural divide became too large, and this phenomenon is playing out everywhere in the west.

From the lens of economics, EU doesn’t seem to be doing great either.

https://www.ft.com/content/80ace07f-3acb-40cb-9960-8bb4a44fd...

Sure, Brexit wasn't good for the EU either. It's a negative-sum event.

That's in addition to the sudden shock from the invasion of Ukraine, making it politically necessary to switch fuel even at cost which your linked article starts with.

My hot take is that there’s a lot of wonderful things about Europe but the economy is not one of them. And that’s by choice.

Europe is vast, culturally much more diverse than US for better and worse. States have almost absolute independence, so they don't adapt to rules from above if they don't want to, there is no easy 'federal' lever to ie enforce laws everywhere, voting is democratic and representatives are very diverse, nothing like 2-party US system.

Economy in the west is not that stellar mainly due to much more focus on social aspects, more paid time off, free education including universities, free healthcare, we take care of the poor, disabled etc. Of course none of this is free, we all pay for it. Economies in the east have their own issues, relatively poor and corrupt is never a good mix.

Some people don't give a fuck about anybody else, its just me or just the closest ones, and for those US system looks much better and numbers alone do support it. Only to the point when societal issues hit back. Or you want to raise kids, and they want to study on university. Or not to worry about your health issues, which will inevitably come to all of us unless you die suddenly without any prior health issues.

So yes its by choice, but I don't think most folks understand that choice, done for them in the past, without them having a say.

Yeah well said. But I wonder if the choice would continue to look good to Europeans if the economic consequences continue as in the article I mentioned for another 15, 30, 45 years etc.

Pretty much impossible to forecast.

There's a thing I remember but not well enough to search for, where someone was asked to forecast the challenges the UK was about to face, and they went through the decades of the 20th century showing how the biggest and most obvious fears of each period had basically nothing to with how events actually unfolded.

It wasnt this https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/...

What did Brexit do to the UK, and why is the rest of Europe nearly as bad off?

Brexit caused the UK to not be in the free trade area commonly called the EU, which meant that the EU didn't have convenient trade with the UK and the UK didn't have convenient trade with the EU.

A global pandemic happened simultaneously with this.

And an energy crisis.

Free markets are always good for prosperity. Trade barriers, not so good.

Citation needed.

What happened to Putin's economy when we decided that we'd protect the Russian economy from foreign competition.

Importantly, it’s lack of trade barriers but all the rest of the mix, too. Ie if one part of a bilateral trade deal doesn’t honor IP rights of the other side there’s problems. Also linking countries with hugely different wage levels can be destabilizing to the more developed. Those factors probably could have been mitigated.

here you go. Enjoy! https://www.controller.com/listing/for-sale/222886783/2003-c...

>Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of British and European expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on returning.

Anecdotally, as an American expat in SE Asia and Australia for the past 14 years, I've NEVER met a British expat who's keen to return. Tax, crime, weather, etc.

Quite a self-selecting sample, though. Presumably most of the ones that did feel strongly that they wanted to return would have done so

Where have you heard all that stuff? At pro-immigration pitches before elections? What is this hostility towards top foreign AI talent someone supposedly has to be afraid of?

The 2016 predictions were political and not based on reality. Changing H1B rules to make income requirements stricter isn't exactly "hostile to foreign talent". top talent will go to the US as long as it pays the best with the most opportunities.

I agree that the 2016 predictions were political but the underfunding of USCIS and the insane backlogs have started to have an impact on our R&D pipeline, though none of this is going to other European countries - the talent is returning to India and China instead.

Anecdotally, a very good friend of mine who's an Indian national did his BS and PhD in EE (specifically in VLSI and Semiconductors) from a Tier 1 program (ie. Cal, MIT, Stanford, UIUC) and was working with a major Semiconductor company. His F-1 wasn't converted to H1B (or his O-1 app was messed up) so now he's heading back to India with a chip on his shoulder and 10+ years of experience in a technology we are trying to regain expertise in.

This same story happened with Chinese immigrants 10-15 years ago, with the 2008 recession causing a number of Chinese nationals to lose work sponsorship and thus return to China. A lot of those guys ended up founding major startups, becoming professors at top Chinese institutions, and advisors to the Government there.

Problem with Commonwealth countries are

* while salaries are higher than eg most of Europe, they're still nowhere near the US - US salaries are often at least double (or more, a lot more)

* their cost of living and taxes are high

* they're backwards and insular (maybe you think the US is too, but the US has 350 million people, Australia has like 25, lol, so insular takes on a whole new meaning there)

* they're not as diverse as the US (sure, London is diverse, but still, the diversity of the US smokes them all, so many different cities here with so many different demographics, climates etc etc)

I'm saying that as a Scandi who's lived in UK, Canada, Australia and now US. Of course the US has a lot of problems too, but as a destination for skilled immigrants, the others don't even compare IMO.

> they're backwards and insular

Care to expand on this?

Montréal and Toronto have become hubs for AI. That prediction was reasonably accurate.

You need to distinguish between which education systems produce people who innovate, vs which countries' capital markets companies get floated on. Compared to the US, the EU doesn't have any large cohesive stock market.

We will soon see how differing national attitudes to strong/weak regulation on AI (vs say data privacy) decide where the investor money goes; just like how national energy and regulatory policy on crypto mining in the last 5 years decided where mining moved to. There's lots of fashionable chatter about AI regulation, but I'm going to predict that there isn't anything like even a weak transnational treaty, meanwhile the 2024(/25) US/UK/Canada elections will see AI-driven exploits pushing the limits.

And the UK is now chasing the tail end of the crypto boom with a promise to have weaker regulation. [0]

[0]: Prof G Markets: ... Andreessen Horowitz’s London Office https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPVQPAb6_Ic&t=25m47s

Montreal yes. Toronto I'm not so sure.

Few years ago we acquired something in Montreal related to AI, and it's interesting because when we tried to get the team to relocate to California many weren't interested. A lot of the key personnel ended-up moving, but they still kept a significant presence in the city. Even today, when hiring they'll have engineers indicate early in the process they won't ever move (despite pretty much everyone considered for that office being eligible for an O-1 due to the nature of the work being done there).

What's interesting is we opened a satellite location in Toronto and it was a completely different experience. First thing people asked coming into interviews was about relocating to the US and if we could sponsor their visa. The demographics also skewed heavily toward recent immigrants to Canada.

The irony was, the Toronto location was opened specifically to house developers that simply couldn't pass the higher bar for US immigration.

I've noticed the same thing, though I already left quite a while ago. It saddens me because when I first moved there the country provided a lot of opportunity and I grew a ton. I used to really like living there, in London specifically.

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