Comment by angarg12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by angarg12 | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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