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Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

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Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#181
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about, health care for the elderly is terrible! I guess you've never had to take care of an old person in the US? And never been exposed to northern European healthcare?

I think the issue isn’t the wilingness to spend. It’s the lack of willingness to make it effective .

The reason its not effective is because most of the money doesn't actually do anything, that's literally what profit is

Profiteering leeches resources from a system to benefit a small number of people at the expense of the rest of the healthcare system

In my opinion, please excuse my language, but it's fucking insane

Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#182
post #78

Realistically, you will need to earn NYC wages to afford living in NJ, but employers in and around Princeton expect to pay workers half of those wages. It's also a culturally devoid area and highly car dependent. You'd have a better bet freelancing in either Philadelphia or New York.

Hi, ok I thought that Princeton was everything but "culturally devoid". Do you mind elaborating on that?

Having lived there, in my experience it was mostly wealthy people and their adult children that lived there, and it was your typical upper middle class suburb. It's a boring, at least to me, monoculture compared to the two cities it sits between, or even New Brunswick. If you didn't come from money, it was an insular place to be. The people I knew, and myself, couldn't wait to get out of there.

Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US just took away the constitutional right to bodily autonomy. Can you point to, say, the UK's constitutional right to bodily autonomy so I can compare? I assume that there will be one as not having a strong constitution guaranteeing these rights is massive internal oppression that is very scary. Also: speaking of the UK and taking away its citizens rights... ever hear of Brexit? >Europe is not at war. War in Uk…

People are mostly just pointing out the very objective losses to quality of life in the US compared to Europe, which is a fair answer to the original question. And day to day quality of life has nothing to do with geopolitics for most people. US just simply ranks far lower than Central Europe and the Nordics in these measurements. A lot of it is just city planning and infrastructure.

Norway has 5 million people, insane gas reserves, is a monoculture of ethnically similar people, has basically no immigration to speak of, and owns 2% of every publicly traded country worth a damn. I can’t believe anyone would point to this country smaller than a single metro area of the USA as something that is replicable.

Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - and as an American I support withdrawing all aid so the Europeans can defend themselves and pay for all of its costs.

That's a pretty coarse-grained granularity. How about: "As a Californian, I support withdrawing all aid, so the east coast can defend itself."

The USA is a country of states. Europe is a continent of sort-of linked countries. I don’t want to pay for them anymore given how much they pretend armed defense is unnecessary. Good luck to them but I don’t think we should be paying for their defense.

Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the black people there seem so positively surprised and very kind when you ask them something as a white dude Where were you? I live and grew up in the south east, and have always chatted with my black neighbors / clerks / coworkers / etc when out and about. It’s so normal that I can’t imagine a response of surprise.

I'm here in the south too, and the way my friends up north and out west talk, they seem almost more segregated than the south.

Private schools--or neighborhoods with a good school system--are basically about segregation. Every single black child I've ever seen--with one notable exception--had a super arrogant streak, in one case it was a one-time thing, in every other case like holy shit (though another one I sometimes had good conversations with, it just varied). Like out of nowhere, spitting in my path in US--that's racial bullying on their part, they're trying to impress white boys--literal white boys, white males under the age of 18--that they can even intimidate white men. So then what? What's the endgame of those underage black boys? What are they trying to accomplish? Whom else are they trying to impress?

And so then you just want to avoid them, because nobody can punish them without undergoing that which Americans and especially Californians are most afraid of--being accused of racism.

California is built with this form of segregation in mind--highways, no sidewalks, no public bathrooms, extortionate rent (huge percentage of income, 40% is common) with the homelessness that is its direct consequence, crazy zoning (you could economically build 60-story skyscrapers anywhere in Palo Alto), concrete everywhere with many places inaccessible except by car, hospitals out to fuck you, firmatage, terrible public transport--all out of fear of harm from minorities which can believe it or not be out to get whites--have that specific intent of harming whites, and they get convicted for hate crimes but those crimes never make the news--which they never punish, only prevent.

Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#186
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would double check this - assuming your wife will be going over on an H1B or L1 visa (edit: correction: L1 can get you an L2 as a spouse), as a spouse you would not be allowed to work in the US.

As the spouse of L1 you get an L2 which lets you work for any employer including yourself as long as the L1 is active. With the L2 you get an EAD on arrival and do not have to wait for months to get it.

A friend of mine moved to US on L1, with his wife. It took them 5 years before the wife got EAD (work permit). It is possible that they fucked the process up, and it can be done faster, just wanted to mention it here.

Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the black people there seem so positively surprised and very kind when you ask them something as a white dude Where were you? I live and grew up in the south east, and have always chatted with my black neighbors / clerks / coworkers / etc when out and about. It’s so normal that I can’t imagine a response of surprise.

I'm here in the south too, and the way my friends up north and out west talk, they seem almost more segregated than the south.

I am European, I have stayed in the US many times and I think some parts of Europe have more racial problems than the US. For example, I have some Asian friends who used to work with me in Scandinavia and moved to the East Coast as they felt like second class citizens.

Another big problem in Europe is the way talent is valued. It is much more important to have good connections and to belong to the upper class. Simply compare the salaries between engineers here and there. Only management gets a good compensation. This explains why innovation is somewhat stifled.

Things are changing and there are some exceptions. For example, Switzerland shares many of the desirable traits of EU and US, but few of their issues. Stockholm and Berlin have nice startup scenes, and so on. However, the rate of change has slowed down dramatically due to COVID, the housing bubble and inflation rates.

Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#188
post #181
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue isn’t the wilingness to spend. It’s the lack of willingness to make it effective .

The reason its not effective is because most of the money doesn't actually do anything, that's literally what profit is Profiteering leeches resources from a system to benefit a small number of people at the expense of the rest of the healthcare system In my opinion, please excuse my language, but it's fucking insane

Unfortunately it's starting to happen here too. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to make these arguments at the rate we're privatizing and contracting out things... Might end up just as bad here in the long term.

Re: Ask HN: Europe to East Coast, does it make sense to move at 50?

#189
Interesting to hear peoples perception of America on here. A lot seems to be based off a short visit or reading online comments of disgruntled Americans. Additionally, some of the issues outlined, such as the gym membership issue, I have never experienced in my entire life nor know anyone who has had that issue.

If you have visited you probably went to one of 3-4 cities or a tourist attraction, neither is really indicative of how most Americans live.

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