The Rise of the Outrageously Long Commute

The guy was born in Brazil, lived there till five, moved to the US, then lived in Brazil for two years as a missionary, and is now doing business there. He probably has a pretty good idea of how beneficial living in Brazil would be for his family.

He's also very wealthy and can afford to give all his kids personal language tutors if he/they want to learn another language. The value of knowing Portuguese in the US is generally not that high (although obviously he's an outlier). They can travel internationally whenever they want. If they moved there, they wouldn't be living or going to school with your average Brazilian, they'd be living in a wealthy neighborhood and going to an English-language international school. They live in one of the wealthiest places in the US, so they probably attend very good schools right now.

Since they're Mormon, many of these kids will end up being missionaries in foreign countries and learning another language anyway and getting a decent perspective on the world outside Connecticut since their living environment as a missionary will be roughly equivalent to the average person wherever they're assigned.

Don't underestimate the importance of high school sports to kids that love them and are in high school. I'd rather my kids have four years of positive team sporting experience than learn Portuguese. One can learn and grow from sports in many ways even if they don't become a professional athlete.

As for what will best help their career, it's probably the stable familiar living environment they currently have at a private school that will best prepare them to get into a good college and do well there. Being good at sports doesn't hurt either for getting into good colleges.

Finally, he can easily sleep in first class for the two direct flights he takes per week and he can spend (potentially, we don't know how much he works on the weekends) Thursday (not sure how much of the day), Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with his family. He can also potentially video conference with them every other evening. And they've probably come with him on occasion.

Cars are already "automatic". Automatic in the sense that I hop on the train and 40 minutes later I'm at work. During the trip I either get started with work or read a book and have tea depending on what's going on. Plenty of people do it, I assume it's the main reason trains have free wifi here.

I still wouldn't consider anything over an hour-long commute, simply because it'd be taking way too much time from the rest of my life.

I don't think that moving a thousand miles or so between 8th and 9th grade was that helpful for me. I suspect that for a lot of the people who make such moves, it is a matter of moving from one suburb to another, with fairly nuanced differences in outlook.

Why do people sacrifice their lives for their work?

It doesn't make any sense.

This is not just a 1% phenomenon. There are plenty of families where one partner commutes 2-3 hours each way on the greyhound bus because they can't find a job in the same town and can't afford to live on a single income.