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Americans are retiring to Vietnam

latimes.com

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Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#181

Post by iudqnolq »

baddox wrote: post #167
arcticbull wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One word: accountability. Your employer is not accountable to you, you’re at best a cost center. Your government is accountable to you via process known as democracy.

Democracy clearly, empirically does not imply that the government is accountable to you.

[Citation needed]

And I'm asking you not just to show that a bunch of bad stuff has happened, but that in its totality at least one country most people would consider a democracy (a good but imperfect shortcut for this is if Freedom House rates them as such) has essentially no accountability.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#182

Post by arcticbull »

baddox wrote: post #167
arcticbull wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One word: accountability. Your employer is not accountable to you, you’re at best a cost center. Your government is accountable to you via process known as democracy.

Democracy clearly, empirically does not imply that the government is accountable to you.

No, it, literally and directly does, that's the definition of it. Your representatives are accountable to you via vote. If not that, then what do you think democracy even means?

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#183

Post by iudqnolq »

pcurve wrote: post #59
TurkishPoptart wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good thing is, American government has sensible reciprocal arrangement with many countries that offer national pension system that you don't necessarily have to wait until you hit full retirement age to live abroad and collect social security checks from there. I did not know this. How does this work?

We have agreement with the following countries. (Vietnam isn't one of them) https://www.ssa.gov/international/agreements_overview.html In a nutshell, all national pension systems work pretty much the same way in that, the longer you put into it, the more you get out. There is also minimum that you have to put in. For the U.S., it's 40 points (or 10 years). Let's say you work 9 years in the U.S. but then decide to pac…

I'm surprised by how well written the social security administration article is. I found it interesting and readable enough to read all the way through, which I absolutely wasn't expecting.

Our tax dollars at work, I guess.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#184

Post by baddox »

arcticbull wrote: post #182
baddox wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy clearly, empirically does not imply that the government is accountable to you.

No, it, literally and directly does, that's the definition of it. Your representatives are accountable to you via vote. If not that, then what do you think democracy even means?

I think democracy generally means that the population elects representatives who establish policy. That’s certainly true. But in what sense is the government actually accountable to an individual in any meaningful sense? If you are wronged by a democratic government do you honestly believe that you have a remotely decent chance of holding the government accountable? And how about for individuals who are among the least fortunate in society?

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#185

Post by baddox »

iudqnolq wrote: post #181
baddox wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy clearly, empirically does not imply that the government is accountable to you.

[Citation needed] And I'm asking you not just to show that a bunch of bad stuff has happened, but that in its totality at least one country most people would consider a democracy (a good but imperfect shortcut for this is if Freedom House rates them as such) has essentially no accountability.

Well, if you think that showing many many examples of democratic governments wronging individuals and then not being held accountable for those wrongs (including many examples of long-standing systematic wrongs, not just one-off extreme cases) is NOT sufficient evidence for the claim “democratic governments are not accountable to you,” then I don’t know what evidence would satisfy you.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#186

Post by iudqnolq »

bane wrote: post #73
tehlike wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Turkey but living in US for 10 years now, and plan to retire in a low-cost area within the US, despite the fact that Turkey would have been much cheaper - but states is home now. I don't think what you say is remotely true, though. Sure if you plan to live in high-cost areas in Europe, healthcare would be expensive, but taking Turkey as an example, the healthcare is very reasonably priced even in top privat…

> I don't think what you say is remotely true I think you exactly confirmed what I said.

I don't. Care to expand on that?

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#187

Post by colechristensen »

trianglem wrote: post #133
colechristensen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just got billed $22,000 for a rabies course and I have good insurance. Four rounds of immunoglobulins are expensive.

Did you "get billed" that much in that this is what you now owe?

Or did you get a "bill" that listed before-insurance numbers which nobody pays and might as well be spit out by a random number generator?

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#188

Post by coconut_crab »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #101
fxtentacle wrote: post #62

That guy must have been incredibly lucky with the timing. When I researched housing prices in the nice areas of Saigon in 2018, 50 square meter 1 bedroom apartments were sold at $300,000+. And "sold" here means you rent it perpetually from the development company to circumvent that 50-year land ownership limit. But that can put you at risk in case said company folds. Oh and I've also heard a lot of stories about Viet…

>>>Oh and I've also heard a lot of stories about Vietnamese women becoming rather disenchanted of hip cool American backpackers, the latter of which presumably read articles like this and decided to try their luck. The backpacker area of Saigon is considered more like a slum that you try to avoid at night. Hanoi's French Quarter is the same way, and I'm glad the local women are hip to the game. They'll ask you "where…

>>>>>>One other thing that the article dangerously omits is the fact that food hygiene and/or safety testing is still pretty much non-existent even in the richest parts of Vietnam.

>>>I've also spent about 6 months in Vietnam, cumulatively over 6 six trips. I've gotten brutally sick on 5 of those 6 visits. The lack of sanitation is the #1 reason I don't think I could EVER live there, no matter how much money I had. You can't escape the E.Coli in every ice cube and tap water supply, the open-sewer streets, and the choking air pollution.

You will get used to it, eventually. Would be faster if you have a local to tell you what's safe and what isn't. I rarely get food poisoning, not even during that time I had to eat shit, literally (google 'thắng cố', 'nậm pịa' if you are curious). Surely half of Vietnamese street food won't meet western hygiene standards, but then your digestive system will adapt to it.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#189

Post by colechristensen »

technofiend wrote: post #152
trianglem wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got billed $22,000 for a rabies course and I have good insurance. Four rounds of immunoglobulins are expensive.

Now you know why I'm waiting to see my PCP despite having earlyish symptoms of heart disease. Should I have a heart attack it's better to leave my wife a cheap, dead corpse and a life insurance payout rather than an expensive out of work husband. That's the calculus of the American medical system.

Are you uninsured?

Get checked. Think about it. If you're worried about money you will spend less if you catch and manage something early than if you're late and whatever you have doesn't kill you but makes you very sick.

If you're not insured, get insured. Financial planning via expecting death is just foolish.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#190

Post by iudqnolq »

baddox wrote: post #185
iudqnolq wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Citation needed] And I'm asking you not just to show that a bunch of bad stuff has happened, but that in its totality at least one country most people would consider a democracy (a good but imperfect shortcut for this is if Freedom House rates them as such) has essentially no accountability.

Well, if you think that showing many many examples of democratic governments wronging individuals and then not being held accountable for those wrongs (including many examples of long-standing systematic wrongs, not just one-off extreme cases) is NOT sufficient evidence for the claim “democratic governments are not accountable to you,” then I don’t know what evidence would satisfy you.

Let me guess: you're thinking of civil foreiture and qualified immunity in the US?

I don't dispute the US is non ideal, I do dispute that as a whole the government is unaccountable. For example, what do you think would happen if Gavin Newsome (governor of California) had someone killed for disrespecting him? That's the kind of thing really unaccountable governments get away with.

So I'm asking you to not only show that bad things have happened and not been adequately punished, but that the government is fundamentally as unaccountable as a reference unaccountable government, like the U.S.S.R under Stalin or Britain under Oliver Cromwell.

Yes, that's an extreme requirement. But you made an extreme claim when you said not just that democracies are insufficiently accountable to be completely just but that they are unaccountable.

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