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Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

bbc.com

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Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#281

Post by arcticbull »

davidivadavid wrote: post #277
arcticbull wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily for you the OECD [1] and WHO [2] did just that and the results are awful for America, performing markedly worse than systems that cost one third as much. [1] https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a-Glance-2017-Ke... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_rank...

Great, that's exactly what I was talking about. I'm not sure what warrants that tone, when I was simply stating something obvious (you can't judge a healthcare system by its cost if you don't look at the outcomes). Thank you for contributing more valuable data/information. It's interesting to see that the WHO methodology also got criticized. This points to the complexity of actually picking the right metrics/outcomes…

> I'm not sure what warrants that tone...

Sorry if it didn't come across that way, it was meant to be light-hearted ^_^ tone doesn't always carry well over the internet. I wasn't criticizing you at all.

The OECD data is pretty damning. America leads its peers in obesity, smoking, air pollution and bankruptcies, and lags dramatically (1-2 standard deviations) in consultations skipped due to cost, population coverage, life expectancy, doctors per capita and beds per capita. Mission failed, IMO.

All for the low, low price of twice to three times what most other countries spend.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#282

Post by cpursley »

malandrew wrote: post #259
cpursley wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close. Southern Russia, actually (Krasnodar Krai). It's a neat place off of most peoples radar.

I'm curious to hear more. Are you a Russian national? If not, how is living and working in Russia as a non-citizen? Is corruption not as much of a concern in that part of the country?

I'm a US citizen who's partner is a dual US Russian citizen (and I'm eventually considering becoming a Russian citizen via marriage). Right now I'm on a 3-year business visa, which is pretty straight forward to obtain.

Western media depicts Russia in a much more negative light than how things are actually on the ground. So far I've experienced zero crime and very little antisocial behavior. Russian people are well behaved (the vodka swigging stereotype is greatly exaggerated; we also have great local craft beer and wine) but some are still holding on to some quirky Soviet behaviors that might seem rude to a Westerner. Also, the streets are cleaner than most large US cities and public spaces are nice.

Yes, there are political and curruption problems, but they haven't directly affected me. I'm working for a US company so I can't speak for what it's like working for a Russian company. Prices are generally 40% lower and you can buy nearly anything except good Mexican food (but we have amazing Georgian food). Also, where we are, the climate is similar to the Bay Area (it's a wine region) and the Black Sea coast is beautiful. Overall, my quality of life here is very high VS the US.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#283

Post by arcticbull »

darawk wrote: post #275
arcticbull wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do both diminish your income, but only if you insist on doing things society doesn't want you to do. Driving is optional, smoking is optional, drinking is optional. You can opt out by changing your lifestyle to be healthier and more sustainable -- in which case you'd not pay that tax in either country. Income tax isn't optional.

Sure, but you either are or are not willing to make those changes, and you presumably already have made them to the extent that you're willing. Whatever burden ends up being imposed based on your consumption habits simply is what it is.

True of course, but hard to factor in. If you move from rural America where a car is required the gas tax burden is going to drop substantially if you move to Amsterdam where nobody has cars, even if the gas tax is 3X higher. I definitely see your point, it's not easy to directly translate.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#284

Post by drcross »

throthrothis wrote: post #278
pergadad wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pay taxes abroad the US will still haunt you to show that you paid - and if it's lower than you would have paid back home claim the difference. Many American expats in Europe that have acquired the right for local nationality give up their nationality for that reason.

Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants ? " Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat, regardless of his skin colour or country. But that is not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad. Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians…

In terms of finding things to be angry about this one is the particularly pathetic. Thai people call outsiders Farang. The Japanese are hostile to foreigners of any other nationality. Take up your cause with them first before you start accusing an entire continent with a rich modern history of tolerance of thinking they are superior.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#285

Post by dang »

chewyland wrote: post #131
Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Russian influence wtf are you talking about? you are in EU and NATO, what is the problem?

The problem is Russian influence. They continue to be locusts in EU countries and want everything to be bad and miserable and poor. Source, Canadian living in BG for 6 years.

Nationalistic and ethnic slurs will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: your comment history to HN looks great otherwise. That's the opposite of what we usually see when we moderate an egregious comment and then take a look at what else the user has been up to—so I'm sure you didn't mean to be abusive. Just please don't do it again.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#287

Post by b212 »

felixge wrote: post #169
alipang wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a company in Bulgaria while working remotely for a high-salary EU country, and it's almost shocking to realise how much you spend on taxes in most European countries when you see the difference in your bank account. It's quite a good deal if you want to be a digital nomad since it's an EU country and you can get a really small apartment for almost nothing to use as your official address while travelling. (You'…

Don't you have to spend > 50% of your time in Bulgaria in order to be considered a tax resident there? I suspect a lot of the "too good to be true" tax evasion stories in this thread depend on lying about your true place of residence?

You have to spend less than half a year in your home country to lose its tax residency AND you have to spend over 6 months in some other country. This applies for most if not all European countries: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/taxes/income-taxe...

Therefore such tax optimisations won't work if you can't actually move to the other place and I guess for 99% of us it's not worth the hustle even if it allows you to save much more.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#288

Post by throwaway_law »

y4mi wrote: post #264
throwaway_law wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One reason some are opposed to going to a government paid system is the fact that we spend so much on that where if the costs were simply doubled it'd be a rediculous expense. Or maybe people would realize a County like Germany is able to cover the entire County (2x as many people as Medicare) while spending half the Medicare budget. Then, questions of waste and fraud might pop up, which no one involved wants to hap…

Germany's healthcare is very efficient, but definitely very conservative in the treatments. Issues are often just ignored until they go away. It usually works fine though, so it's not necessarily bad.

>Issues are often just ignored until they go away.

In someways thats part of the reason our Medicare program is so expensive.

In the US we essentially go an entire lifetime without regular/preventative care, then when patients become eligible for Medicare, they have a lifetime worth of chronic illness that is treated on the tax payers dime.

7 out of 10 Medicare have at least 1 chronic condition, and chronic conditions are notoriously expensive to treat. Whereas nearly 100% of chronic conditions could be avoided if the patient had regular/preventative care (for example identifying prediabetics or patients with high blood pressure, or heart disease) while they were young enough to make the lifestyle changes to avoid these conditions altogether. Our system is essentially designed to ensure patients are both chronically ill and expensive before they are eligible for coverage.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#289

Post by agapon »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #201
barry-cotter wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland gets to plenty of immigrants. I doubt it’s the only former Warsaw Bloc nation that’s true of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians_in_Poland In January 2016 the Embassy of Ukraine in Warsaw informed that the number of Ukrainian residents in Poland was half a million, and probably around one million in total. Ukrainian Ambassador to Poland, Andrii Deshchytsia, noted that Ukrainian professionals enjoy good r…

Is Ukraine that bad? Is it the looming Russian threat, the ethnic divide, a really bad economy, or an even worse corruption problem?

It's that you can get much better pay in Poland. Especially for lower skill jobs, higher skill jobs are not that different. It's easy to get legal employment and residence. The countries are close culturally and linguistically. And, of course, Poland is better developed -- materially and societally -- so the quality of life is better too. I think that at this point Ukraine can provide as many workers / migrants as Poland can absorb. And Poland can absorb a lot -- after its own big wave of emigration farther to the West.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#290

Post by RealityVoid »

jhoechtl wrote: post #128
simonh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has opened an office in Bucharest, mainly hiring tech workers. Windows and Unix admins, DBAs, app support but I'm sure other areas as well. I'll be hiring my first employees over there soon. From what I understand, salaries over there in these areas are comparable to elsewhere in Europe as various tech companies have opened offices there as well, but I'm just beginning to learn more about the economy as a…

Salary is one thing. How is work attitude combined with usabke education?

I am from Romania. It varies greatly. Some devs are awesome, some less so. I'd say the quality is on par with the German engineers I encountered in my field. Experience shows though, so places that people have had chance to work in a field for longer will be better so I expect expertise will be localized.

The education system pretty much sucks here, IMO, but most good devs got so by being interested in their field. I would say fresh grads as worse than those in other countries.

I find it interesting that the best people tend to cluster together. I live in one of the bigger cities in RO and in my field it seems everyone knows everyone and the most experienced ones tend to hang together.

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