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Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

#21

Post by AnimalMuppet »

version_five wrote: post #4

I'm in Canada and the US is very appealing to me. More money, more personal freedom, better healthcare, more choice of food and other goods. I understand there is lots of disparity and some people are very badly off there, and I hear bad things about certain cities (but I'd want to do my own research before I believe what I read online). Overall though, if you're well off, the US is very appealing. Just to add, recen…

> more personal freedom

This is big to me (and not in a "muh freedum!" way). My perception is that in the US, you can just do something. Start a business. Start a political party. Start a protest. Change your name. Change your face. Change your profession. Change your religion. Change your gender. Some of those may be non-trivial, and you have no guarantee of success, but you can do them in the US easier than you can anywhere else.

I said "my perception", because I haven't lived anywhere else, so... yeah. My perception.

Re: Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

#22

Post by dataflow »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #19
dataflow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Losing my job is insanely scary (losing healthcare) While this might be unusual, as I understand it, nothing really prevents you from getting your own insurance. Even if your health insurance premium were to cost $1000/month (which it likely doesn't), if your pay bump would be > $12k/year (+ tax) by moving as a SWE (which it probably would be), you could still go without a job for a whole year and still maintain yo…

It has been a while since I've lived in the US, but I think it is completely possible to pay $1000/month for health insurance. For a single person, a family is more. Employers subsidize your insurance, after all. I was paying couple hundred a month for two people - subsidized - and that was years ago. A family plan was even more. Even then, you have to have money to use it. On top of the insurance premiums, you'll ha…

Oh, for a family it can definitely be more; I was citing numbers for a single person. For a single person it depends on your age I think. If you're young then it doesn't need to be anywhere near that high, but it of course gets higher as you get older.

Re: Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

#24

Post by version_five »

Mattasher wrote: post #16
version_five wrote: post #4

I'm in Canada and the US is very appealing to me. More money, more personal freedom, better healthcare, more choice of food and other goods. I understand there is lots of disparity and some people are very badly off there, and I hear bad things about certain cities (but I'd want to do my own research before I believe what I read online). Overall though, if you're well off, the US is very appealing. Just to add, recen…

We moved from Toronto to Florida at the beginning of last year. Could not be happier with the decision. The US used to be much more of a monolith, now there are huge differences between the states. All of Canada is still in a mass hysteria that will continue for years.

Yes, I think the difference has been much more clear recently. Both countries have hysterical people, but in Canada everyone is forced to go along with the lowest common denominator whereas in the US you appear to have much more freedom to ignore them

Re: Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

#26

Post by heavyset_go »

Depends. A heart attack in the US can cost over $1 million to survive, and can very easily bankrupt small business owners and those in the middle to upper middle classes.

Cost of living has been increasing at rates that engineer compensation has not kept up with at all, especially in cities.

In many EU countries, you get 35 days of paid vacation mandated by law, along with 6 months to over a year of maternity and paternity leave. In the US, you get no such guarantee, and undercurrents of the Protestant work ethic are very well and alive in our culture. Sometimes new hires are expected to not take any paid vacations for the first first year of their employment. There's also a strain of private authoritarianism when it comes to employment in the US, by default, some employers treat their employees like property, and can seemingly dictate the terms of employees' off-time. Stemming from this are expectations of being on-call, but without the benefits of things like accruing overtime, being paid time and a half or with handsome bonuses that workers elsewhere tend to demand. All in all, workers' rights in the US are dismal compared to many first-world countries.

Truthfully, if I were younger and didn't have ties to the US, I would look into emigrating to the EU if they'd take me.

Re: Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

#27

Post by busterarm »

Mattasher wrote: post #16
version_five wrote: post #4

I'm in Canada and the US is very appealing to me. More money, more personal freedom, better healthcare, more choice of food and other goods. I understand there is lots of disparity and some people are very badly off there, and I hear bad things about certain cities (but I'd want to do my own research before I believe what I read online). Overall though, if you're well off, the US is very appealing. Just to add, recen…

We moved from Toronto to Florida at the beginning of last year. Could not be happier with the decision. The US used to be much more of a monolith, now there are huge differences between the states. All of Canada is still in a mass hysteria that will continue for years.

I moved from New York to Florida a few months ago and feel much the same. I have previously lived in Toronto and always thought of it as like New York but worse.

Every day that I live in Florida feels like one of the best decisions I've made in my life so far.

That said, the US has never been the best place to live.

Copenhagen beats every city I've ever been to by miles.

Re: Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

#28

Post by jpgvm »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #20

Regardless of the salary, I have never seen a place as beautiful as the West Coast, specifically the cities of San Diego, LA and SF. It still gives me goosebumps and watering eyes today when I land there. It might be that I am conflating the opportunities that the area has given me with the actual beauty, but I don’t think so. And I was born and raised in the beautiful Mediterranean coast in Europe.

Heh. Come to Australia. West coast is nice but has nothing on Australia or New Zealand when it comes to beauty.

Re: Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

#29

Post by vmception »

Very large place and most of its advantages don't require being here.

For developing nation immigrants, US can be appealing.

For natural/existing US citizens, the US is a good starting point to leverage in more developed nations.

Salary discussion is a bit limiting, better to just be rich enough. Have capital. If you must live off of what you earn you just want to earn more from one area and spend less in another area, so the answer to that is “yes”.

Re: Ask HN: Is the US still the best place to live?

#30

Post by heavyset_go »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #19
dataflow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Losing my job is insanely scary (losing healthcare) While this might be unusual, as I understand it, nothing really prevents you from getting your own insurance. Even if your health insurance premium were to cost $1000/month (which it likely doesn't), if your pay bump would be > $12k/year (+ tax) by moving as a SWE (which it probably would be), you could still go without a job for a whole year and still maintain yo…

It has been a while since I've lived in the US, but I think it is completely possible to pay $1000/month for health insurance. For a single person, a family is more. Employers subsidize your insurance, after all. I was paying couple hundred a month for two people - subsidized - and that was years ago. A family plan was even more. Even then, you have to have money to use it. On top of the insurance premiums, you'll ha…

> It has been a while since I've lived in the US, but I think it is completely possible to pay $1000/month for health insurance.

I just looked on healthcare.gov, and any plan that is comparable to a plan an employer would give you costs over $900 a month in premiums alone. The plans start to get "good", if you can call them that, at $1k. The last time I used COBRA, my premiums were $2k.

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