121–130 of 254 posts
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I find the idea that employers should have anything to do with healthcare quite revolting. Healthcare should be a deal between you and the government for which you should pay taxes. This and some other reasons are why I cannot fathom living in the US under 250K a year.
Why? Why is one large bureaucracy better than the other?
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I don't really understand this. Max out-of-pocket for insurance plans now is very reasonable. If you can afford a $250k house, you can afford the max out-of-pocket cost for many many years.
Don't you also have to pay the actual insurance premium as well? Before you even get to the out-of-pocket costs? I have friends in the US who pay thousands a month for health insurance premiums.
This sounds like an entire family with a higher-level plan, correct? Higher-level plans have correspondingly reduced out-of-pocket maximums, to the point where the out-of-pocket maximum can be as low as $2000/year — so your premium is nearly your entire spending.
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This obsession with cheap places to live intrigues me. In Memphis, TN you can rent a decent apartment in a shitty part of town for $300 a month. And Memphis isn't even close to the cheapest big city in the US. In Birmingham Alabama, you can't get just as hot as you can in Vietnam, and your rent will be pretty similar. Yes, healthcare and food are more expensive, but not that much. And you'll spend less on those two t…
You don't have to do anything to keep your American citizenship. You can't get rid of it without a significant amount of effort.
But yeah that also wouldn’t require coming back to the US necessarily
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I'm not sure it's limited to Asian women. I believe those old white dudes who can afford it are just trying to avoid dating the stereotypical modern western girls. Here in Germany, rich guys go for a Czech, Turkish or Italian wife if they hope to have plenty of kids. And it's no secret that British guys will travel all over Europe to try their luck at dating, because apparently most aren't too happy with the supply a…
The dynamic is that these old white men aren’t actually that rich by Western standards but are by SE Asian ones, so they don’t have the status or wealth to attract a young attractive western woman but do in SEA. If they were actually rich they wouldn’t need to retire overseas to stretch out their retirement.
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$250,000 is more or less the median price for a house that size in Ames, IA, a university town which regularly shows up on various "Best Places to Live" lists.
This obsession with cheap places to live intrigues me. In Memphis, TN you can rent a decent apartment in a shitty part of town for $300 a month. And Memphis isn't even close to the cheapest big city in the US. In Birmingham Alabama, you can't get just as hot as you can in Vietnam, and your rent will be pretty similar. Yes, healthcare and food are more expensive, but not that much. And you'll spend less on those two t…
The Bi-coastal Americans in this article will take communism on a bankroll over the Bible Belt, take a hint
One piece of information the article doesn't acknowledge is that property rights in Vietnam aren't the same as they are in the US. So if a foreigner "buys" an apartment in Vietnam, they can only have it for up to 50 years. In other words, it's an asset that is steadily decreasing in value, and not one that the "owner" can necessarily hand down to the next generation at a higher or the same value unless changes are ma…
One piece of information the article doesn't acknowledge is that property rights in Vietnam aren't the same as they are in the US. So if a foreigner "buys" an apartment in Vietnam, they can only have it for up to 50 years. In other words, it's an asset that is steadily decreasing in value, and not one that the "owner" can necessarily hand down to the next generation at a higher or the same value unless changes are ma…
Are you sure that’s how it works? I thought the distinction was ownership versus lease. You lease it for 50 years, but in the end you can sell the actual property to a citizen or sell it to a non-citizen who will get a 50 year lease.
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It’s not but the old white man/submissive younger Asian woman dynamic is one of those uncomfortable stereotypes that ring true
Except for the submissive part. Go ahead marry into an Asian family I double dog dare you.
That's why there's the saying in my country that roughly translates to something like "Woman is key of the household (because she keeps all the money)". One of the traditional duties (there are five of them) of a wife is to control and distribute money in the way that is fair (among family, her parents and in-laws).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The dynamic is that these old white men aren’t actually that rich by Western standards but are by SE Asian ones, so they don’t have the status or wealth to attract a young attractive western woman but do in SEA. If they were actually rich they wouldn’t need to retire overseas to stretch out their retirement.
Personality arguments aside: if we assume that “buying” an asian wife is an uncomfortable stereotype, doesn’t “status or wealth to attract a young attractive western woman” fall into the same category? What’s the difference (except life cost multiplier/divisor) that makes one uncomfortable and the other comfortable?
Both are uncomfortable stereotypes, but we find the latter more acceptable because Western masculine ideals traditionally interpret the male in that situation as expressing his virility and alpha-dog status (while denigrating the woman as a gold-digger and whore.) Although many people are creeped out by the age differential if it's wide enough, it's expected both that older, powerful men will attract younger women, and that younger women will be attracted to the money and power. It's a sentiment expressed and reinforced throughout Western media and culture.
Meanwhile the Asian version of the stereotype has connotations of the failure of masculinity on the part of the male, as only a step above hiring a prostitute, as well as implications of pedophilia and sex-trafficking.