At some point, you need to have the mean to finance these services, so stagnating GDP is not that good.
Edit: I suppose it isn't just the transit and the architecture and the safety that's the draw. Many in America, even if they're "conservative" (whatever that means today), are willing to pay more in taxes if it means free health care and a functioning bureaucracy.
Learning is 99% for yourself to socialize and thrive, and maybe 1% showing respect. I think actions speak louder than words, and being kind and respectful can take many forms.
I say this because I’ve seen first hand how travelers, expats and tourists from the Anglosphere self-limit at least a bit more than us who grew up speaking less common languages. We’re used to the discomfort and misunderstandings, and hand gesture our way through sometimes. I’d say most Europeans can relate to this strongly. (Of course, we always joke about the French, who refuse to speak English even if they can, but I think even that’s a dated stereotype these days)
Best of luck with your plans.
You're getting absolutely hosed if you move here for tech work. It's great if you're on government jobs, minimum wage/unionized jobs and living in rent controlled flats though and need frequent government support but if you're a skilled professional, living on real estate off the private market, then basically anywhere else in Europe is better bang for your buck than here.
As an expat there I don't think quality of life in Vienna is that WOW to be honest, it's just that it keeps being promoted by The Economist every year at winning this title they invented, based on some random requirements they set up, to the point I feel it's basically and ad paid by the city of Vienna (Austria already pays a lot for such international advertisements to support their tourist industry) to lure expats to wage-dump themselves and work here and cover the labor shortages (the "most livable city" title comes up a lot in job ads targeting foreigners).
It's basically the Canada of Europe: high real estate costs , low wages, with generous subsidies and social nets for the less well off Austrians.
In the end these labels are pretty useless, the underlying problem is pretty easy to describe, is the system sufficiently just and cost effective or not. It doesn't really matter if it's market-based or it's done through some magic lottery system.
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That said, services are suffering from cost disease big time. Healthcare and education badly needs productivity increases, otherwise quality has to drop to get back to sustainable funding levels.
Next will be Kier Starmer for Labour who main promises seem to be to keep the policies of the incumbents.
(Health used as an illustrative area but this applies across the board).
Kier Starmer thinks Corbyn lost because he was a Socialist. It was about Brexit. "Get Brexit Done" was a master class in political expediency. Even Boris was wise enough to sprinkle a little "socialism" with his levelling up policies.
Kier Starmer looks like he's going to score an own goal in the last minute of extra time.
Shouldn't a stagnating GDP translate to a stagnating quantity/quality of services? If things are getting worse while GDP stagnates, it appears that there is a gross mismanagement of the same amount of resources.
And I'd dare to say, that this mismanagement typically boils down to the privatization of (previously) predominantly publicly-operated sectors. A soon as the publicly-operated provider shuts down, profiteering starts.
The USA providing security guarantees is not freeloading, it's USA's strategy to hegemony, it's how the USA has kept it...
Investing in defence without participating in wars (or to defend your hegemony) is just a waste of taxpayers' money, it's money that could go to healthcare, to education, or to any other improvement in quality of life of your citizens. I'm very glad that Europe hasn't been burning trillions of dollars on stuff just made to kill people.