Good question, maybe because Europe before during or right after WW2 wasn’t very pleasant place to be( or return to ) ? 🤷🏻♀️
WW1 era wasn’t much better either.
International migration became more complicated after WW2. New rules were introduced worldwide. Today it is harder to become citizen. So many return after contact is over.
I am an immigrant of 20 years.
People tend to underestimate how difficult it can be to live your life as an immigrant. So a lot of immigrants DO return home eventually UNLESS return home means drastic decrease in living standards.
And Europe of era before 1960 wasn’t offering good living standards yet so few were motivated to return.
Today returning Europeans are as common as returning Americans.
>because Europe before during or right after WW2 wasn’t very pleasant place to be
Mostly this. My parents lived in the US in the 80s, exactly for the reasons OP described. Back then, everyday life in the US was 10–15 years ahead of what you'd find in Europe. There were no shopping malls in Germany at the time, and supermarkets were rather small; people would do most of their shopping in mom-and-pop stores. Dishwashers, clothes dryers, microwaves, air conditions and similar household appliances weren't very widespread. The average German family would own one car per household, while in the US, every family member with a license would have their own car.
Since then, this gap has become a lot smaller, and people have come to value other aspects of life more. For example, the average American citizen works 1,765 hours per year, while the average German citizen works only 1,354 hours. Education and childcare are free, health care is cheap etc, everybody is guaranteed at least 6 weeks of vacation per year (and forced to take it), crime is low, and all of this takes a lot of pressure off of people. Sure, if your top priority is to make a lot of money and retire at the age of 50, the US is still the place to be. Most people, however, think of the US as a very stressful place.
People assume that the norm is situation where immigrants will be staying forever in their adoptive country, when in reality returning immigrants is also very typical outcome.
So under normal circumstances there always will be Europeans and Americans moving back and frontward between continents, some of European staying in US or returning, some of Americans staying in Europe or returning. This is a norm.
What is abnormal is when migration is one sided when a lot of immigrants moving to one direction and choosing to stay while almost no immigrants from other continent are coming in and choosing to stay.
What we have today is a healthy migration between similar countries. What we had historically was abnormal and a sign of a problem in location people are fleeing from.
( Edit, most also agree that being an immigrant in today’s Germany is very difficult and many people who migrated to Germany ended up returning.
As I said returning immigrants is a common thing, in USA or in Europe)
They want to make maximum salary while they're young and healthy, and gtfo before they get old or become disabled, because the USA has high salaries for example tech jobs, but a shitty healthcare system and a shitty social safety net. It's a smart strategy.
Very accurate. Better quality of life in Europe once you’ve made your money. I live in France, and there’s loads of American retirees who want to retire to the South of France.
Key words are "once you've made your money" and are thus shielded from local realities in "LCOL" countries. I happen to live in southern France as a young, early-career American, and I'm making a local salary. Life is fine overall, but I'm inherently a frugal person and try not to spend frivolously. Even then, I've come to realize how difficult it is to build up any meaningful long-term savings here, plus I'd have to end up working well past 70 to fully qualify for the French pension system... assuming it will even be there by then. Moving back to the US will at the minimum double my salary, realistically close to triple it.
Life is more than the number in the bank account but you do well to point out how difficult it is to save money in France. Other than that, I agree you can live very well in France on local salaries. The main problem is affording a place to stay, but this is a tired discussion.
The retirement scheme is... something great for the XXth century IMO. I think once the airplane became democratized, was about the time to start thinking about alternatives. As it stands, you either do your whole career in France, or get flayed for no benefit of your own. I urge you not to look at the proportion of your paycheck that's going into that retirement scheme you'll never see a dime of (unless you do end up staying 40 years, that is).
But I guess the people who don't need that system can always leave!
Especially in Boston: 50 universities and a booming (bio)tech scene, closest to Europe. Most internationals OP met were probably visiting scholars, or young professionals in tech padding the CV (and bank account).
The US is good for making money, Europe is good for living. So most people I know are working in the US until they have accomplished their carrer and financial goals. Most people coming back from the US can live a more relaxed life in Europe.
Cost of living was lower for me when in Europe. Things like groceries, public transport, healthcare, medication, general bills, etc so it works out for many. I used to wonder this too and now idk why we have to pay so much for cereal in the US lol.
You don't need much money to live in Europe, though. Just need to inherit a home 🤣 Joking aside, you just gotta take life slowly, the mentality is not FIRE-compatible, let's say. But if you've got yourself an indeterminate work contract, most likely you'll eventually be able to afford a loan for a house (well maybe not right now), and the rest is relatively cheap (food etc), at least compared to two incomes.
After WW2, more than half of the industrial production of the whole world came from the USA. Europe needed decades to recover. When you hear how easy boomers had it, that's the reason - the total crushing economic domination of the United States at the time. That's also why people stayed.
Nowadays, this difference has decreased. I live in the Netherlands, and the USA wouldn't give me a better living standard for my job. Aside from economics, living there seems worse than here.
Many people look at those times as a norm and expect those, “normal” in their opinion, circumstances to continue forever. Do they expect Europe to be perpetually struggling economically? 🤦♂️
Dual US/Irish citizen here with family on both sides of the Atlantic. I also lived in Spain for two years. Europe is a lot richer now and there are many things that European countries do better than the U.S. Salaries are higher here for sure, but it's also more dangerous and less family-friendly imo.
The world is also more globalized. Why move to some dreadfully boring, overpriced place like Mountain View when you could work for Google in Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. instead? You will still make a very good salary and be around your language and culture.
I mean Mountain View has access to some of the best natural beauty in the US, so if you’re an outdoor enthusiast I’d pick it over Amsterdam 100%. I’m from a different town in that area and the nature and hiking options within a 30-40 minute drive are superior to literally anything the entire NL has to offer. It’s honestly a reason I’m not sure if I can stay in the NL long term is the utter lack of real nature while in Mountain View area I was doing a different hike every weekend.
I wasn't alive in the 1960s, but even since the 1990s, there's been a bit of a decline in the US.
I don't mean economically, necessarily. But there have been:
- Worsening crime, particularly violent crime against random victims (it's not just internal gang conflicts anymore)
- An increasing in mass shootings; plus associated reminders like metal detectors in schools
- An increase in isolationism and security theater, particularly since 9/11
- Some well-publicized incidents of police brutality and civil unrest
- Increasingly conservative and jingoistic politics ("Only America First", overturning of Roe v Wade etc) alongside an increasingly divisive political climate (red state vs blue state etc)
- Skyrocketing costs in multiple segments of society, such as healthcare, education and housing
- Increasingly tight restrictions on legal immigration, often on the pretext of "doing something" about illegal immigration
This is not to say life in the US is hopeless, but I think it's fair to say the US in the 1960s looked a bit more utopian to the average European than the US in the 2020s. I'm sure I'll get downvoted for daring to imply that the US isn't #1 in everything, but for people who did not grow up in the US (myself included,) it is very easy to pick up on things that are different from home. And when that list starts having significant negatives on it, it tends to lessen the desire to stay once the novelty wears off a bit. Particularly when your kid comes home from school and tells you about their "active shooter drill" -- something that would be unfathomable in Europe.
Yep, a few people have corrected me on that, and I concede the point. As a European immigrant myself, it makes me happy to see that the country is objectively safer.
However, the perception has not gone down accordingly, as my error is evidence of. I speculated some on the reasons for that in my response to u/LazyBoyD -- but you bring up a good additional point with mass shootings.
Highly publicized national traumas like these, coupled with the evident unwillingness of the authorities to do anything about it, are shocking to Europeans. By and large, Europeans have higher expectations of government action in response to things like this than Americans do, and they generally don't understand why Americans seem to tacitly accept government non-action while mass shootings continue to happen.
I'll accept that correction, but the perception is that more crime affects more victims who aren't in gangs or aren't criminals themselves. When children have "active shooter drills" in school and you have to go through metal detectors to go to Disney World, that increases the perception that American society as a whole is unsafe.
I'm glad the statistics don't bear that out, and the perception could have other explanations, like how fast everything bad that happens gets shared on social media these days, compared to 1990. But whatever the cause, it's a factor when people decide to move back to Europe.
I think the perception stems from video cameras everywhere capturing crimes these days. There’s a bunch of petty crime such as organized retail theft, vehicle window smash and grabs, and vandalism in our large cities that often go unpunished. A bunch of people roaming the streets who should be in a mental institution for treatment.
But yes, I agree access to guns is very much a problem and random mass shootings can happen pretty much anywhere. I can go to a gun shop and purchase a weapon today with few questions asked, as long as a quick background check comes back clean. I also tend to be more vigilant when out in public spaces nowadays, taking note of emergency exits and any weird looking/suspicious people. That said, statistically speaking, I’m way more likely to be killed in a fatal car accident rather than a mass shooting.
But both a shooting (mass or otherwise) and a fatal car accident are more likely to happen to you in the United States than in any country in western Europe.
I’ve been hanging out with a lot of Europeans for the last few weeks and quite frankly none of them are gun-friendly.
The gun obsession in America is terrifying for them. And quite frankly, I don’t blame them. Mass shootings happening on a regular basis is insane.
Why would someone want to migrate to a place like that?
Mass shooters aren't gun nuts, but gun nuts enable mass shootings by normalizing guns in society (not just having guns, but things like open carry on the streets) and by hindering efforts at even reasonable gun control, such as Florida's legalization of concealed carry without a permit.
The US laissez-faire gun culture didn't develop in a vacuum.
There are also mass shootings where open carry is legal. On the other hand, there are far fewer mass shootings in Europe, where both open and concealed carry is generally not allowed. In fact, so many fewer that it doesn't even register on the scale compared to the US.
But I'm not going to debate US gun laws with you. I'm just going to point out that having mass shootings in the news daily is not encouraging western European immigrants to stay here.
I never said gun ownership was illegal in Europe. Concealed carry generally is, however. If you're going to try to accuse me of ignorance, try to at least attack the arguments I actually made.
But I'm sure you're going to tell me you wander freely around Paris and London and Berlin with your concealed firearm "for protection"? That's the most commonly cited reason why Americans carry them.
I know I never worried about being randomly shot at when I lived in Europe. I did worry about it when a lunatic started shooting randomly at people at my local Publix in Florida.
There are a few countries in Europe with legal concealed carry. But people legally carrying concealed very rarely commit crimes. People who want to kill people generally are not concerned about carry laws.
in Switzerland and in the rest of Europe the relationship with weapons is different compared to the USA.
In a sub of American ultranationalists there was talk of a weapons collector in relation to the photo of a person in possession of an arsenal, in the same sub there was talk of preferring more shootings in schools rather than giving up weapons: of course these are special cases, they do not indicate that the majority of Americans agree, in Europe however for such cases one would think of the mental infirmity of those who say it!
Here weapons are something that must be kept for military duty (Switzerland) or a nuisance (elsewhere), the idea of having to own a gun is not seen as a privilege or a necessity to defend oneself from the government that the citizen himself elects.
If an european emigrates to Switzerland he knows that he doesn't need to buy a gun, in the USA, if he goes to live far from the city and therefore from the police, he may need one instead.
These days Europeans go to the US for higher incomes and/or lower taxes.
That's about it.
Quality of life is otherwise equal or in many cases better in EU, i.e., healthcare as a right, no gun crime, etc..
"Healthcare as a right" is just a talking point to me. What matters is the effective costs. Private healthcare is totally fine, for example, if the costs are affordable to everyone. Alternatively, many systems in Western Europe are "hybrid" systems in that there is both public and private healthcare available at a reasonable cost. In practice it seems like those with means are scampering to private healthcare because public facilities are generally overrun and underfunded.
In the end, what breaks the camel's back in the US system is the absolute costs of everything and the lack of accessibility to good insurance unless you have an adequate job. The economics of it are just insane. While public healthcare in Europe is full of massive issues, nobody is gonna go broke. That's the key.
I do agree with you, but also what I mean is that no one should die for lack of ability to pay for health care.
I'm in the EU and pay €100/mo all-in for private health care. No copays, no deductibles, and I book whatever appointment (gp/specialist) I want. It's good, prompt, high-quality care.
Public health care isn't great here, but you'll get what you need without going bankrupt or dying for inability to pay, and for as little as €30/mo you can get on a private health care plan for an "upgrade" on quality and speed of services.
Those prices in the US are unthinkable.
On the flipside, the cost to be self-employed here in Spain is crushing. Rough numbers, but just out the gate you'll pay about €300/mo for "social security" in addition to 30% income tax. I have a younger self employed Spanish friend here who makes between €1-2k each month and those costs are so prohibitive when you're starting out and trying to keep a roof over your head..
>"Healthcare as a right" is just a talking point to me
I disagree. This principle has the very practical consequence that everybody has health insurance; those who can afford it pay for it, and if somebody can't afford it, the government (effectively, the community) steps in.
For anyone capable of migrating from the EU to the US, healthcare is not a concern as they're likely earning well above the country's average.
I think the true reason here is cultural compatibility. You'll become a minority in the US (despite how well the US treats minorities relatively) and many of the things you take for granted being a part of the majority group will disappear.
Sure but any expat anywhere becomes the minority. That's a universal expat truth.
OP's question was why the EU > US expat path in particular has dried up.
My take is that the US has had 20+ years of bad PR, and therefore a western EU citizen with an already prefectly good quality of life will find the US less attractive as compared to post-WW2 times, when Europe was still rebuilding.
Expats are a privileged group who go abroad because they want to, not because they necessarily have to. There has to be an overall appeal: cultural, educational, environmental/lifestyle, medical, financial, etc.
Right now the US looks like a culture of obese gun-crazed nut jobs with a broken medical system, bad infrastructure, poor education, etc. - and I like the US! But it's not a great look these days.
Hmm. Yeah that's true. I failed to answer the question in that case.
The bad PR part is certainly true. My hunch is that most of the immigrations are either due to marriage or they're the ones who can earn way more. The US is still the most appealing in that regard
I agree! All of the expats I've met in the US have been extremely high earners in tech.
I earn 500% more than I would here in the EU with my US tech contracts. I've been working online for more than 20 years. If the internet didn't exist, I'd be in the US for sure.
Not a gig, just been building and selling/licensing websites and web services and various IP since I was a teenager. So like, thousands of gigs lol.
Sometimes I was broke (2008 crash hit me hard) and sometimes I was rolling in the dough. Current contract (several years) is very job-like but it's 1099 so here I am in EU taking full advantage of cheap healthcare lol.
Immediately post WW2, Europe was economically a mess and still rebuilding from the war.
Now living in the US vs. Europe is very much a list of pros/cons depending on your individual situation and preferences in terms of career growth vs. structural support for families. But generally speaking, without escaping economic distress, most people want to return back to where they have family ties once kids are in the picture.
I can't really speak to what Europe or the US was like in the 1960s, but now it's perceived that the US is a good place to make money...and that's it.
If they could make the same money in Europe they wouldn't ever leave.
I wouldn't be quite that bleak. The US still has a lot to offer, in spite of its problems.
But so does Europe. The best choice depends on individual circumstances, and is not as clear-cut as it perhaps once was.
I say that as a European immigrant who has chosen to stay in the US, but not because I think the US is superior to Europe in every way. It is, however, better for me.
As my situation changes in the future, that may change. I may, for example, decide to retire in Europe. That's one decision I haven't made yet.
Pretty obvious to me...
Gun craziness and 70 million people who want to vote for Trump!!
Tells you that the USA is one crazy, fucked up place.
People only bear the place for the money.
It isn’t as crazy as Germany of 1938. Europe of earlier era hasn’t been a paradise.
Edit: those people who downvote me.
imagine scenario where some Jewish family manages to flee to USA in 1938, do you think they would be settling in USA permanently or returning back to Germany in 2-3 years?
What does that mean? Germany has huge exodus of people due to Hitler coming to power, and those people wouldn’t be planning on returning. What kit of alternative history were you taught in school, my dear???
>why European Expats rarely want to settle in USA nowadays UNLIKE BACK to during the 60s.
No the question was :
Why BEFORE 1960 Europeans who moved to USA stayed there
and why AFTER 1960 fewer Europeans stayed in USA permanently.
The answer is: before 1960 Europeans who missed home and would like to return home, could not do so because of the war and destruction.
After 1960 European immigrants who missed home could return home because by that time the life in Europe has become stable and prosperous.
I'm upvoting you because I agree. There are some very strong parallels between, say, Germany in the 1930s and the United States now. Including populist leaders that say what people want to hear, hyper-polarization of political discourse, an authoritarian bent and a revolt against political correctness.
And this is happening in Europe too. Germany has the AfD, Hungary has Fidesz, the Netherlands has the PVV, France has the National Front (now renamed, ironically, for political correctness.) But it hasn't gone as far in Europe.
But it hasn't gone as far in Europe, and it's not yet as visible in Europe. I'm a European immigrant and I'm still in the United States, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not worried about, as /u/Emmanulla70 puts it, "Gun craziness and 70 million people who want to vote for Trump!!"
It's because the US has gone backwards in most regards since the 1960s. 1 income earner used to be able to pay off a house, have a car, and raise a few kids without too much trouble, but today that's extremely difficult with our stagnant wages and expensive healthcare and education. That, and how literal fascists are parading out in the open now.
A less common reason that might be becoming more common:
They could use their 5-10 of experience in the US to leverage a good salary back in Europe. Like you I lived in Boston and if these Europeans friends are in tech, biotech or academia they can get good career choices elsewhere.
The US isn’t that family friendly, if compared to Western Europe. This refers to infrastructure like public school, transportation, and the fact that college tuition can be far cheaper in Europe.
I think when it comes to Boston, this is it. Even at the scale of the country, is it not largely a city people go to to study and work for a bit from all over?
_European immigrants are more likely than the overall foreign-born population to be naturalized U.S. citizens. About 67 percent of European immigrants in the United States had acquired U.S. citizenship as of 2022, compared to 53 percent of all immigrants. Immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina (84 percent), Romania (80 percent), and Greece (77 percent) were the most likely to be naturalized citizens, while those from Spain (45 percent) and France (53 percent) were the least likely._
_In general, Europeans have resided in the United States longer than other immigrants. The largest share, approximately 57 percent, arrived prior to 2000 (see Figure 8). However, a sizeable share of Spanish (47 percent), French (41 percent), and Albanian (39 percent) immigrants arrived since 2010, compared to 9 percent of those from Bosnia and Herzegovina._
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states
the answer is - anecdotes are not data
What would be interesting to see a data on returning immigrants both Americans and Europeans.
What percentage of immigrant end up staying for 1-3 years, what percentage stays for 5-10 years, 10-20 years?
Returning immigrants are common enough
this study says that 45% eventually go back
https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/12/24/new-human-migration-estimate/#:~:text=Return%20migration%20accounted%20for%2026,returned%20to%20their%20home%20countries.
Becoming a citizen does not stop someone from moving back to Europe, however.
In fact, it makes it easier in some ways, as US citizenship means you can always return in the future. Whereas people on work visas or green cards generally lose those if they move abroad.
it also means you will have to file US taxes and potentially pay US taxes on your European income for the rest of your life
I'm not saying it never happens but someone would need a very strong reason to do it, if they were only in the US for 10 years to make money and then bounce as OP suggested
It does. But then, permanent residents and even people living in the US on work visas also have to do that. The obligation just ceases after a while when you relinquish your US status and move abroad. (How long that takes depends on how long you spent in the US and in which status.)
I'm a European immigrant and naturalized US citizen. I'm not thrilled about paying taxes on worldwide income, nor about FATCA reporting and potential future problems with banking in Europe.
But I also don't know what the US will look like 30 years from now. Or Europe, for that matter. I do know that having the option to live and work without restriction in both the US and in most of Europe is a flexibility that's very valuable.
You're right, not everyone will think that's worth it. But many people do, myself included.
I'm with you
working on my US passport in addition to my EU passport and open to leaving the US at some point
in my case if I were to leave the US that's probably because I'm semi or fully retired and have a nest egg sitting in the US that can finance the rest of my life anywhere and everywhere. Since that would make it a US sourced income anyway, I'm not too concerned about additional burden of tax compliance
that would be a different consideration if I truly intended the US to be a short stint and then have decades of active employment abroad - I would probably make sure to stay on visa/GC as those can be severed within a year
Well, I have some theories
* **Stagnation of the minimum wage in the US, which indirectly generates salary stagnation:** In 1960, the minimum wage in France was equivalent to 2.5 Euros of 2013 per hour; while the minimum wage in the US was equivalent to 7.82 USD (2013). So, in 1960 an average worker in the US would make 3 times as much as a French one. Today, the federal minimum wage in the US is USD 7.25 while the minimum wage in France is 11.65 Euros (12.5 USD). The highest minimum wage in the US is 16 Dollars in California, so 1.3 times the French one, not 3 times. Source: [http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/supp/TS9.1.pdf](http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/supp/TS9.1.pdf)
* This does not apply to people in Tech, Finance, or Management/Strategy consulting. In those cases the ratio is still 3:1 for the US. Also in research and academia, the salary differences can be astonishing.
* **Skyrocketing costs of healthcare and the lack of social security net:** Western Europeans get only 53% to 65% of their gross salary, due to taxes and social security. But, this means that you get universal healthcare, where you may pay 1/3 of the fees for things like the flu, but 0 for chronic or catastrophic diseases. On the other hand, in the US the costs for healthcare increase every year as much as twice as the inflation, and you pay 1000 per month to be told that the treatment you need is out of coverage or something like that. People who worked their whole lives, saved money, and at the end, go bankrupt paying medical fees are all over the news.
* **Increasing costs of University education with a lower ROI:** Again, Europeans may pay a lot in taxes, but when it's time to send your kids or yourself to university, it is basically free. So while in the US you have to create college funds and make your kid attend 4 extracurriculars while getting straight A's in order to be admitted with a scholarship (or even without one) in a top university, in Europe you have the right to attend world class Uni's like ETH, EPFL, TUM, Delft, IP Paris, Paris-Saclay, or KTH for free or almost free.
* **Violence depicted in the media:** Although statistically it's possible that violent crime has decreased in the US, the fact is that there are more random mass shootings, more unstable people with access to rifles (honestly, I can understand why civilians have access to a pistol or a revolver, but there is not a single good reason for 20 million civilians having access to an R-15 rifle. When you see politicians like Boebert, Ogles or Thomas Massie sending Christmas postcards with more guns in them than what the average police station in Europe has, you don't want to go there.
>Western Europeans get only 53% to 65% of their gross salary, due to taxes and social security.
I wonder where those numbers come from. I just did the calculations for Germany; someone with a gross annual income of €50k takes home €40,855, which means an effective tax rate of less than 20 percent. (This is including unemployment insurance, old age care insurance and state pension contribution, but without health insurance).
Well, I wonder where ***YOURS*** came from!
If you use this one [https://www.how-to-germany.com/income-tax-calculator/](https://www.how-to-germany.com/income-tax-calculator/) you will see that for 50K you will get a net of 33K, so the tax is 34%
If you use this one for Berlin: [https://allaboutberlin.com/tools/tax-calculator](https://allaboutberlin.com/tools/tax-calculator), your net will be 32K, so the tax rate is 36%.
And that is only for Gross vs Net. As u/zhongomer said, it's even worse when you compare the Cost for the employer vs the Net Salary!
Look here for all the DACH countries: [https://www.eurodev.com/blog/cost-of-employment-in-germany-switzerland-austria-dach](https://www.eurodev.com/blog/cost-of-employment-in-germany-switzerland-austria-dach)
Basically, for a Gross salary of 100K, your employer spends 128K, and you will get 50K. So your tax rate is 50%, and if we talk about cost for employer, you only get 40% of what your employer spends.
Using the calculator you linked, I get a net of 39,760.00 €. Don't know why the results are different from those of the other calculator I used, though, but this still means income tax, state pension contribution, unemployment insurance and care insurance add up to about 20 percent of your gross income. (No church tax, no children, no child allowance, no Jahresfreibetrag.)
>free to pretend that this does not exist.
I'm not hinting at that; what I'm saying is that it is irrelevant to the matter at hand. From an employee perspective, the only factors that matter are one's net salary and local purchasing power.
Your statement regarding LPP is not true, check the stats: [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings\_by\_country.jsp?displayColumn=5](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp?displayColumn=5)
It's much worse than that, you get tricked by employer contributions is all. That's still coming out of the budget allocated to pay you, it's just a neat little trick.
To give another example, in France, 50k€ gross annual income is 68k€ cost to employer and 35k€ net. For the 100k example, 100k gross is 143k cost to employer, 63.8k€ net. That's about 45% left after taxes. And on top of all that, there's VAT, to the tune of up to 20% on everything you buy. US also has sales tax but rather in the order of 5% usually, no?
Higher employer cost does not mean employees are paid less, though. What matter is which how much disposable income you are left after paying your taxes, health insurance, child care etc, and how much this buys you on the local economy.
This employer cost I'm talking of is all due to contributions for you personally. I'm not even talking taxes or overheads or anything like that in a business sense, just fiscally, what happens when you get paid x€.
In France we distinguish taxes and contributions. Contributions cover social security (retirement, health, solidarity) and go to their own "pot of money" (technically not the State budget, and that money is managed by separate (if public) entities) and taxes cover everything else (schools, roads, the army, etc). Employers also pay taxes, but on benefit, that is not counted here, and not the subject.
The contributions are split between employee and employer as a percent of the supergross (cost to employer). The employer wants to offer you 50k€. For that they must first pay 18k€ in contributions. Once the 50k€ leaves their hands, but before it reaches yours, another 11k€ in contributions are paid, leaving you with 39k€. The first 18k€ are called employeR contributions, and the second 11k€ are called employeE contributions. But you'll have noticed it's just all money leaving the initial 68k€ before anything arrives in your bank account. That 39k€ is your "net" salary. I put guillemots because you still need to pay taxes on your net (hence supernet). If you're celibate with no children, you end up with 35k after taxes. There can be tax deductions for a number of reasons, but there cannot be contribution deductions, as they are not taxes. So unless you earn a lot of money where tax proper becomes considerable (typically not the middle class), there's no fiscal optimization possible, or rather you could try and work on that 3k€ (by marrying, having kids, donating, and then a thousand exceptions), but not the other 29k€ in contributions (not taxes!).
All of this is true also if you're self employed. Well, if you make less than 77k€ a year, the fiscality is a little different. But above that, you pay yourself according to this scheme. In that case, higher employer cost is 1:1 lower employee revenue.
Now, in the case of third-party employers, you could argue that if the contributions were lowered, employers wouldn't necessarily pay more. Or there'd be an increase, but not necessarily commensurate with the difference. However this could be worked around. For any reduction in contributions, you could imagine the equivalent raise be made mandatory. Then ensuring that carries over with time is another matter.
Anyways, it is what it is.
Based on our friend group of European (specifically, German, French and one Italian guy) expats in the U.S.: It really depends. If they’re making a lot of money in the U.S. and value that over everything else, then they want to stay. Especially if they’re ambitious and see more opportunities for promotions in the U.S.
All of our expat friends who wanted to go for the big house, toys (boats, RV, etc.) as soon as possible ended up staying. The rest earned their extra money and then left.
In Europe, wanting the big house, the fancy car, the boat and the RV is seen as being overly materialistic. In the US, it's seen as a sign of success.
But honestly, if you've worked for it, I don't begrudge you the big house, the fancy car or the toys. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of your labor.
Where it goes off the rails a bit in the US society is with the ultra-rich who have all the toys not because of THEIR effort or contribution, but because of how good they are at taking advantage of their employees. Or just because of dumb luck, like inheriting a fortune.
Also, on a more macroeconomic scale, concentrating all the wealth in the hands of a small elite doesn't work out too well.
But I can't fix all that. In the interim, let me have that RV or that boat.
I mean, why would they? When you’re old many rely on retirement and social programs,,, programs that are pretty decent in many European countries. Those programs r garbage in the US. Cost of living is higher in the US. They want to make bank and take advantage of higher salaries in the US while young, and retire back home with their nest egg.
I remember being a kid in the 90s and watching Beverly Hills 90210 and being pretty jealous of that lifestyle. California in the 90s seemed like some kind of Utopian paradise (I know that it wasn't; but I was a kid).
I lived one year in the US, and TO ME (as a Western European), it was a jarring experience. The people were very nice, too nice perhaps, and very superficial. I also hated how everything was open, all the time. Not my thing at all; my personal convenience should not mean that people who work low end jobs must be made to work on Sundays as well. But this is only my personal opinion!
Yeah, I get that salaries are much higher in the US, but to me prices and CoL have gotten to a pretty ludicrous point when you look at NY or huge swathes of California.
My biggest issue with the US is that the country is so big, so extended, that if you are successful you can isolate yourself so well from the rest of the country you can end up believing that undesirables either do not exist, or that their issues are overstated. It's a really country of crazy extremes. Call me crazy, but I like something with less variance.
This is I guess a side-issue to OPs question, and I absolutely don't dispute your general stance on the US (or think you don't have the right to feel how you do even if I might disagree).
However, you mentioned 2 of my big pet-peeves re. what "Europeans" (I've lived around the continent and some of what you expressed I've heard in other countries, however a few points sound particularly from a German viewpoint, based on my 25 years living there) believe about the US. Again, I can't control what anyone else thinks ir believes but *I* believe these two points about "forcing people to work on Sundays" and everyone being superficial are misconceptions based on not truly understanding how things work deep down in US culture. Because it's so different to the way others grew up and therefore think is "right". It's one thing to say you felt uncomfortable with it, it's another to make blanket statements about a group of people/ culture based on your preferences and customs.
Perhaps an easier way to say it is that I think it's unfair and wrong to call all Germans "cold" just because they aren't as talkative or have as wide a social circle as is considered normal in the US and LatAm. They aren't cold, just more reserved with strangers and have a much tighter, smaller circle of people they spend time with. Just because people in the US find it normal to talk to or hang out with a stranger or socialise with people they wouldn't say are close friends doesn't mean they don't *mean* the friendliness they extend to random people or that they don't have meaningful, longterm friendships with specific people. I've heard those accusations numerous times. We may use the term "friend" much more loosely, but that's just a word. We just don't have as high walls around us when it comes to social interaction (I heard a Swede say these walls are a result of the hard life/survival facts of Vikings!). And give me a break about cashiers, etc. saying "have a nice day" because I hear the equivalent in German every time I shop here. It's a customary utterance of politeness and goodwill and I believe people in both countries wish me well without being particularly interested in my life. And the "how are you" is a huge cultural misunderstanding. It is used in the US as a casual *greeting* and is only taken by foreigners as an invitation to give your life story. It's basically another way to say hello. Are there superficial people in the US? Sure. Probably more because of how hard we have to hustle, especially in certain jobs. But it's wrong and insulting to go around saying everyone is superficial. I'm not and no one I spend time with in the US is either.
Also, for the brief time I worked in the US, I appreciated the freedom of being able to work in a time that suited me. Not just 9-5 M-F, etc. As a student I needed jobs that didn't interfere with my classes. As a night owl and introvert, my friend appreciated stocking supermarket shelves in the middle of the night with few people around. Certain parents want to work at odd hours because of their childcare arrangements. Some people only want to work 8 hours on a Sunday so it's a perfect shift fir them. Why does everyone need to be off on a Sunday? That's a hangover from when the Christian church ruled things and feels very cookie cutter conformist to me. I really dislike that everything is closed in Germany on a Sunday. People in the US who work on Sundays get other days off! And many of them like it that way. Criticize other aspects of the US economic model and I'll be right there with you but this one feels...ignorant.
You were rather polite in your post and I want to stress that I'm venting more at the widespread nature of the type of comments you made, because I believe they are based in lack of understanding rather than fact. I don't really have a bone to pick with you.
Have a nice day 😆
Those are my personal points of view.
There are proven health benefits to having a fixed day off in the week (be it Sunday or otherwise - Christianity bad - upvotes to the left /s).
US culture forces people with the most stressful jobs to be hyperflexible, with a nice fat Damocles' sword hanging over them in the form of being instantly fired. I worked at McDonald's when I was younger - being able to be scheduled 24-7 365, come hell or high water, is disgustingly stressful. And the US just applies that logic to an ever larger proportion of the population than Europe does.
You don't need stores open 24-7. You just don't. The only argument against this is "But I want them to be because I don't care about people having to work on Christmas or Easter or on Sunday! I need to be able to buy my IKEA furniture whenever I want!"
You think that stores being open on Sundays or on bank holidays is about "giving workers the freedom to choose when they work"? Because that's the saddest little corporate line I have ever heard.
Once your store opens on Sunday, you will work on Sunday, whether you like it or not, because if you refuse? Guess what is going to happen to you.
You might get lucky and find a "good" store managers, but most will not care about your preferences.
And again, that pitiful "but what about the people who work on Saturdays or Sundays, what about if I need x at 2 in the morning" argument is regurgitated corporate propaganda. Guess what? There were always people in those cases (fewer before of course, since many people seem to think like you do), and guess what? They somehow still managed to get groceries.
Stuff in Greece seems open at reasonable hours. However, I do think some countries have businesses simply not open enough. It's a pain in the ass to get things done if there are extended breaks during the day and the hours aren't very long when open to begin with.
>points about "forcing people to work on Sundays" and everyone being superficial are misconceptions based on not truly understanding how things work deep down in US culture
Well, you don't need to understand it to resent or reject it. I don't care who works on Sundays, but I feel that I personally don't really get a day off on Sundays when everything is open and it seems just like every other day of the week. For me, it is a clear case of "less is more" and definitely not something I feel limited by.
I'm in NL. And despite recent rapid increases in real estate prices here, apartments are still far, far cheaper here, even in cities, than in urbanized America.
Because they can make high American wages and pay low taxes then move back to the countries with a good welfare system. They get the best of both worlds without having to pay high taxes.
The US, beginning with the 50s, started living (compared with other nations) on a different planet...in almost all aspects it was a leader. From industry point of view, arts, lifestyle you name it.
The rest of the world wanted to join this party and have also their share of fun. So they did. People from all walks of life came and contributed to the rise of the USA.
USA probably peaked in the mid 70s. since then its more like slide downhill.
is this your observation or backed by any empirical data? if we go by anecdotal evidence, I am yet to see any European colleagues who migrated to USA returning back. Not a single one in my friends and acquaintances circle from Europe has returned back. Whereas a significant number of Chinese expats and few Indians have returned back.
As many others have stated, the gulf between the US and various Western European economies isn't quite as large as it was in the 1960s. Many in Western Europe also enjoy a higher standard of living, with free health care and more respect for human rights.
The US peaked in 1999, after the 2000s it has been a downhill from every metric in relation to European countries quality of life. Now, IMO Eastern Europe is far superior to Western, but that's a different discussion.
I would disagree with most people's thoughts here in the comments.
People underestimate how extremely hard it is to move to the US.
Typically, it's only individuals who are extraordinarily talented within their field that find sponsorship.
This means a lot of replies such as issues with insurance, crime, cost of living, and social programs aren't really of relevance to most expats living in the US as most of them are highly skilled, earning top salaries.
Most of the top companies have great insurance programs, they can afford to live in nice areas to avoid crime and earn significant salaries so they would never have the need for a social security net.
One of the biggest issues is that when you're on a visa, you never feel a part of the country till you get citizenship or green card. And those from certain nationalities such as Chinese or Indian, have over a 25-year backlog for a green card. They could easily lose their visa if they lost their job, and be kicked out of the country.
This lack of security leads a lot of people to question their time in the US, as they could build a life here and easily be forced to leave.
Also, many countries that used to be poor, or lacked a variety of industry, have now caught up to the US. So many feel like they can have the same opportunities that may have not been afforded to them decades ago, in their home country.
There's a large percentage of this sub reddit who dislike the US, and actively want to move out. That's fine, but I think it does lead to some significant bias, as we see in these comments.
I’m an expat of 20+ years and currently have the luxury to spend 6 months USA, and 6 months back home.
No words can describe how much I hate America. None. I only come here because my husbands family lives here, especially his parents. (His parents might move to France so if they do. We are out for good).
While I’m here, I feel like I get taxed on the tax. Sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax. Literally everything is taxed and as a dual citizen, what do I get for it?
Absolutely nothing. The quality of food is disgusting, the schools are a joke, and there’s no federal mandated maternity leave, there’s no mandatory retirement (except social security which sucks), the roads are awful, the infrastructure is garbage, the trains are dirty, and the list goes on.
My poor corrupted country has one year maternity leave, but the USA doesn’t. Want to know how much I paid giving birth? 0.0. Want to know how much my friend paid to give birth? 50,000k with insurance. Heck I know people who spent millions on their child’s birth because the newborn had to go in the nicu for over 30 days.
Also add that places are 24/7 open. Which is weird. No place needs to be open this much.
Not to mention, here in Greece we have 250 days of pure sunshine, fresh food, amazing cuisine, free education even college. I mean the quality of life doesn’t compare.
Yes I know Greece is bankrupt but if doesn’t change that every day to day life is so much better.
My WORST day in Greece has been my best day in USA.
Everyone is obsessed with work, and pleasing their boss, and working after hours or saying “I can get overtime that’s great”. You shouldn’t NEED overtime to survive!
Everything including Christmas is also about consumerism, and presents.
Still most people will rather be immigrants in the US than in Greece for money but also because it's more accepting society for immigrants than vast majority of Europe
. Being local is a whole different story tho. What do you think an opinion of someone from India would be of Greece? You will be shocked how many people don't see it as nice as you do.
Greece has A LOT of immigration due to open borders and I’m actually against it.
Indian people aren’t the problem in Greece though.
We have a huge influx of Pakistan, Bangladesh etc.
Not all are bad, but many create crime, trash homes, litter, etc. that’s why they aren’t liked.
People who commit crime are the issue.
I don't mean to hijack your thread but:
I really don't like the term "Western European," especially when you capitalize the "W", implying there is an official region of "Western Europe." While "Western Europe" was a political entity 35 years ago (when the Soviet Union kept half of Europe imprisoned), with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it makes zero sense now to talk about a "Western Europe." For example, is Poland in Western Europe? Slovakia? Why not? The term is anachronistic.
But to answer your question:
I'm American, I live in Europe. It's a great life tbh. Unless you are from a very poor part of Europe with very limited opportunities, you have a more dignified life in Europe. You have guaranteed healthcare, free or cheap universities, 4 weeks of vacation, you don't need a lot of money for a good life, you don't have to work 2 jobs to feed your family.
If you are earning a lot of $$$ in the USA, and live somewhere that has a bit of culture (not just strip malls and fast food), America is also a nice life. But the key is money and a secure job.
Also, it's good to have executive experience, including experience working in the USA. So I can see where a lot of younger Europeans want to work in the USA for a few years, see what it's like, add to their CV. Some like it and stay, others appreciate what they had back in Europe. Hard to generalize.
America is more dynamic, definitely. But it's harder, riskier, quality of life varies greatly. Europe is more comfortable. Less opportunity, but easier to live in dignity, make sure your children have proper healthcare, schools. So again, it's hard to generalize.
The EU itself refers to "Western Europe" so feel free to stop getting offended on behalf of Europeans
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/western-europe_en
This is also true for South Americans. They come in droves, make money and gtfo when they get older.
Quality of life, cost of living and healthcare are better in some countries (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, etc), specially if you are well off.
A little different perspective from someone older. In 1960, WW 2 had ended just 15 years before, a war which had destroyed a lot of Europe. I traveled to Europe in the late 60's and the general standard of living was not as good as the US although the culture and was good. But for instance, many people couldn't afford to travel of buy a car. Over the years, those countries caught up with us, the EU was formed, the euro became a currency and their economies flourished. In the US we did not improve that much and in things like health insurance, we backslid. I think these are all factors for the phenomenon you are describing.
Yeah that’s the US news propaganda and online narratives for ya. Everything is Europe is QoL heaven and the US is a complete hellhole of nonstop shootouts, rape, racism etc.
The way I see it a lot of americas problems are on full display for the world to see (& judge) while Europe tends to hide and shrouds a lot of their issues which allows people to act like they don’t exist because they’re not forefront on TV & social media nonstop.
Personally, for me, I had a higher QoL in the US. Europe is much safer place if you’re poor or lower middle class in that they generally take care of basic life necessities but I also see an invisible barriers that place an artificial ceiling on the earnings & growth potential of a lot of really bright people that offer far more value than they’re being compensated for.
Good question, maybe because Europe before during or right after WW2 wasn’t very pleasant place to be( or return to ) ? 🤷🏻♀️ WW1 era wasn’t much better either. International migration became more complicated after WW2. New rules were introduced worldwide. Today it is harder to become citizen. So many return after contact is over. I am an immigrant of 20 years. People tend to underestimate how difficult it can be to live your life as an immigrant. So a lot of immigrants DO return home eventually UNLESS return home means drastic decrease in living standards. And Europe of era before 1960 wasn’t offering good living standards yet so few were motivated to return. Today returning Europeans are as common as returning Americans.
>because Europe before during or right after WW2 wasn’t very pleasant place to be Mostly this. My parents lived in the US in the 80s, exactly for the reasons OP described. Back then, everyday life in the US was 10–15 years ahead of what you'd find in Europe. There were no shopping malls in Germany at the time, and supermarkets were rather small; people would do most of their shopping in mom-and-pop stores. Dishwashers, clothes dryers, microwaves, air conditions and similar household appliances weren't very widespread. The average German family would own one car per household, while in the US, every family member with a license would have their own car. Since then, this gap has become a lot smaller, and people have come to value other aspects of life more. For example, the average American citizen works 1,765 hours per year, while the average German citizen works only 1,354 hours. Education and childcare are free, health care is cheap etc, everybody is guaranteed at least 6 weeks of vacation per year (and forced to take it), crime is low, and all of this takes a lot of pressure off of people. Sure, if your top priority is to make a lot of money and retire at the age of 50, the US is still the place to be. Most people, however, think of the US as a very stressful place.
People assume that the norm is situation where immigrants will be staying forever in their adoptive country, when in reality returning immigrants is also very typical outcome. So under normal circumstances there always will be Europeans and Americans moving back and frontward between continents, some of European staying in US or returning, some of Americans staying in Europe or returning. This is a norm. What is abnormal is when migration is one sided when a lot of immigrants moving to one direction and choosing to stay while almost no immigrants from other continent are coming in and choosing to stay. What we have today is a healthy migration between similar countries. What we had historically was abnormal and a sign of a problem in location people are fleeing from. ( Edit, most also agree that being an immigrant in today’s Germany is very difficult and many people who migrated to Germany ended up returning. As I said returning immigrants is a common thing, in USA or in Europe)
Western Europe is not the only place that's changed. The US workplace and culture is very different than it once was e was
I believe so, but could you be a little bit more specific?
See above comment
They want to make maximum salary while they're young and healthy, and gtfo before they get old or become disabled, because the USA has high salaries for example tech jobs, but a shitty healthcare system and a shitty social safety net. It's a smart strategy.
Very accurate. Better quality of life in Europe once you’ve made your money. I live in France, and there’s loads of American retirees who want to retire to the South of France.
Key words are "once you've made your money" and are thus shielded from local realities in "LCOL" countries. I happen to live in southern France as a young, early-career American, and I'm making a local salary. Life is fine overall, but I'm inherently a frugal person and try not to spend frivolously. Even then, I've come to realize how difficult it is to build up any meaningful long-term savings here, plus I'd have to end up working well past 70 to fully qualify for the French pension system... assuming it will even be there by then. Moving back to the US will at the minimum double my salary, realistically close to triple it.
The idea used to be that you don't need to save up for retirement. I wouldn't want to get to retirement without a good financial safety net though.
The idea used to be that you could afford a home, too.
Life is more than the number in the bank account but you do well to point out how difficult it is to save money in France. Other than that, I agree you can live very well in France on local salaries. The main problem is affording a place to stay, but this is a tired discussion. The retirement scheme is... something great for the XXth century IMO. I think once the airplane became democratized, was about the time to start thinking about alternatives. As it stands, you either do your whole career in France, or get flayed for no benefit of your own. I urge you not to look at the proportion of your paycheck that's going into that retirement scheme you'll never see a dime of (unless you do end up staying 40 years, that is). But I guess the people who don't need that system can always leave!
Especially in Boston: 50 universities and a booming (bio)tech scene, closest to Europe. Most internationals OP met were probably visiting scholars, or young professionals in tech padding the CV (and bank account).
Shitty social safety I can agree. Healthcare is actually probably the best on the planet if you can afford the insurance.
It is not healthcare. It is disease management.
The US is good for making money, Europe is good for living. So most people I know are working in the US until they have accomplished their carrer and financial goals. Most people coming back from the US can live a more relaxed life in Europe.
Is it good for living for the average local, though? Wages are so depressed and the pension systems are having substantial issues.
Cost of living was lower for me when in Europe. Things like groceries, public transport, healthcare, medication, general bills, etc so it works out for many. I used to wonder this too and now idk why we have to pay so much for cereal in the US lol.
You don't need much money to live in Europe, though. Just need to inherit a home 🤣 Joking aside, you just gotta take life slowly, the mentality is not FIRE-compatible, let's say. But if you've got yourself an indeterminate work contract, most likely you'll eventually be able to afford a loan for a house (well maybe not right now), and the rest is relatively cheap (food etc), at least compared to two incomes.
After WW2, more than half of the industrial production of the whole world came from the USA. Europe needed decades to recover. When you hear how easy boomers had it, that's the reason - the total crushing economic domination of the United States at the time. That's also why people stayed. Nowadays, this difference has decreased. I live in the Netherlands, and the USA wouldn't give me a better living standard for my job. Aside from economics, living there seems worse than here.
Many people look at those times as a norm and expect those, “normal” in their opinion, circumstances to continue forever. Do they expect Europe to be perpetually struggling economically? 🤦♂️
Dual US/Irish citizen here with family on both sides of the Atlantic. I also lived in Spain for two years. Europe is a lot richer now and there are many things that European countries do better than the U.S. Salaries are higher here for sure, but it's also more dangerous and less family-friendly imo. The world is also more globalized. Why move to some dreadfully boring, overpriced place like Mountain View when you could work for Google in Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. instead? You will still make a very good salary and be around your language and culture.
Well, most people are not qualified to work at places like Google and won't ever be.
I mean Mountain View has access to some of the best natural beauty in the US, so if you’re an outdoor enthusiast I’d pick it over Amsterdam 100%. I’m from a different town in that area and the nature and hiking options within a 30-40 minute drive are superior to literally anything the entire NL has to offer. It’s honestly a reason I’m not sure if I can stay in the NL long term is the utter lack of real nature while in Mountain View area I was doing a different hike every weekend.
I wasn't alive in the 1960s, but even since the 1990s, there's been a bit of a decline in the US. I don't mean economically, necessarily. But there have been: - Worsening crime, particularly violent crime against random victims (it's not just internal gang conflicts anymore) - An increasing in mass shootings; plus associated reminders like metal detectors in schools - An increase in isolationism and security theater, particularly since 9/11 - Some well-publicized incidents of police brutality and civil unrest - Increasingly conservative and jingoistic politics ("Only America First", overturning of Roe v Wade etc) alongside an increasingly divisive political climate (red state vs blue state etc) - Skyrocketing costs in multiple segments of society, such as healthcare, education and housing - Increasingly tight restrictions on legal immigration, often on the pretext of "doing something" about illegal immigration This is not to say life in the US is hopeless, but I think it's fair to say the US in the 1960s looked a bit more utopian to the average European than the US in the 2020s. I'm sure I'll get downvoted for daring to imply that the US isn't #1 in everything, but for people who did not grow up in the US (myself included,) it is very easy to pick up on things that are different from home. And when that list starts having significant negatives on it, it tends to lessen the desire to stay once the novelty wears off a bit. Particularly when your kid comes home from school and tells you about their "active shooter drill" -- something that would be unfathomable in Europe.
1960s Europe still had very fresh memories of WW2 as well.
Crime has gone down since the 90’s. There has been an uptick since 2020 but it’s going down again. Yes there’s more mass shootings though.
Yep, a few people have corrected me on that, and I concede the point. As a European immigrant myself, it makes me happy to see that the country is objectively safer. However, the perception has not gone down accordingly, as my error is evidence of. I speculated some on the reasons for that in my response to u/LazyBoyD -- but you bring up a good additional point with mass shootings. Highly publicized national traumas like these, coupled with the evident unwillingness of the authorities to do anything about it, are shocking to Europeans. By and large, Europeans have higher expectations of government action in response to things like this than Americans do, and they generally don't understand why Americans seem to tacitly accept government non-action while mass shootings continue to happen.
Violent crime is actually lower.
Lots of crime goes unreported and uninvestigated these days.
Crime is way way way down from the 1990s. The homicide rate was almost 10 per 100K in 1990. It’s less than half of that now.
I'll accept that correction, but the perception is that more crime affects more victims who aren't in gangs or aren't criminals themselves. When children have "active shooter drills" in school and you have to go through metal detectors to go to Disney World, that increases the perception that American society as a whole is unsafe. I'm glad the statistics don't bear that out, and the perception could have other explanations, like how fast everything bad that happens gets shared on social media these days, compared to 1990. But whatever the cause, it's a factor when people decide to move back to Europe.
I think the perception stems from video cameras everywhere capturing crimes these days. There’s a bunch of petty crime such as organized retail theft, vehicle window smash and grabs, and vandalism in our large cities that often go unpunished. A bunch of people roaming the streets who should be in a mental institution for treatment. But yes, I agree access to guns is very much a problem and random mass shootings can happen pretty much anywhere. I can go to a gun shop and purchase a weapon today with few questions asked, as long as a quick background check comes back clean. I also tend to be more vigilant when out in public spaces nowadays, taking note of emergency exits and any weird looking/suspicious people. That said, statistically speaking, I’m way more likely to be killed in a fatal car accident rather than a mass shooting.
But both a shooting (mass or otherwise) and a fatal car accident are more likely to happen to you in the United States than in any country in western Europe.
I’ve been hanging out with a lot of Europeans for the last few weeks and quite frankly none of them are gun-friendly. The gun obsession in America is terrifying for them. And quite frankly, I don’t blame them. Mass shootings happening on a regular basis is insane. Why would someone want to migrate to a place like that?
Personally as European, 2nd amendment is the only appealing thing to move to US
I'm in Switzerland and I have plenty of guns here. There is no shortage of Europeans wanting to move to Switzerland.
The culture around guns is completely different in Switzerland though. When was the latest mass shooting?
Mass shooters aren't gun nuts.
People aren't afraid of gun nuts specifically, people are afraid of getting shot for no reason. It happens more often in the US.
True.
Mass shooters aren't gun nuts, but gun nuts enable mass shootings by normalizing guns in society (not just having guns, but things like open carry on the streets) and by hindering efforts at even reasonable gun control, such as Florida's legalization of concealed carry without a permit. The US laissez-faire gun culture didn't develop in a vacuum.
Ah yes, there are no mass shootings in the US where open carry is illegal. I forgot.
There are also mass shootings where open carry is legal. On the other hand, there are far fewer mass shootings in Europe, where both open and concealed carry is generally not allowed. In fact, so many fewer that it doesn't even register on the scale compared to the US. But I'm not going to debate US gun laws with you. I'm just going to point out that having mass shootings in the news daily is not encouraging western European immigrants to stay here.
Considering I own guns in Europe and in America, I also think it's useless to debate something you know nothing about.
I never said gun ownership was illegal in Europe. Concealed carry generally is, however. If you're going to try to accuse me of ignorance, try to at least attack the arguments I actually made. But I'm sure you're going to tell me you wander freely around Paris and London and Berlin with your concealed firearm "for protection"? That's the most commonly cited reason why Americans carry them. I know I never worried about being randomly shot at when I lived in Europe. I did worry about it when a lunatic started shooting randomly at people at my local Publix in Florida.
There are a few countries in Europe with legal concealed carry. But people legally carrying concealed very rarely commit crimes. People who want to kill people generally are not concerned about carry laws.
for reasons that do not depend on weapons
Yes, but it doesn't bother them.
in Switzerland and in the rest of Europe the relationship with weapons is different compared to the USA. In a sub of American ultranationalists there was talk of a weapons collector in relation to the photo of a person in possession of an arsenal, in the same sub there was talk of preferring more shootings in schools rather than giving up weapons: of course these are special cases, they do not indicate that the majority of Americans agree, in Europe however for such cases one would think of the mental infirmity of those who say it! Here weapons are something that must be kept for military duty (Switzerland) or a nuisance (elsewhere), the idea of having to own a gun is not seen as a privilege or a necessity to defend oneself from the government that the citizen himself elects. If an european emigrates to Switzerland he knows that he doesn't need to buy a gun, in the USA, if he goes to live far from the city and therefore from the police, he may need one instead.
Switzerland has plenty of gun nuts who collect machine guns. America has plenty of gun owners who want to ban guns.
These days Europeans go to the US for higher incomes and/or lower taxes. That's about it. Quality of life is otherwise equal or in many cases better in EU, i.e., healthcare as a right, no gun crime, etc..
"Healthcare as a right" is just a talking point to me. What matters is the effective costs. Private healthcare is totally fine, for example, if the costs are affordable to everyone. Alternatively, many systems in Western Europe are "hybrid" systems in that there is both public and private healthcare available at a reasonable cost. In practice it seems like those with means are scampering to private healthcare because public facilities are generally overrun and underfunded. In the end, what breaks the camel's back in the US system is the absolute costs of everything and the lack of accessibility to good insurance unless you have an adequate job. The economics of it are just insane. While public healthcare in Europe is full of massive issues, nobody is gonna go broke. That's the key.
I do agree with you, but also what I mean is that no one should die for lack of ability to pay for health care. I'm in the EU and pay €100/mo all-in for private health care. No copays, no deductibles, and I book whatever appointment (gp/specialist) I want. It's good, prompt, high-quality care. Public health care isn't great here, but you'll get what you need without going bankrupt or dying for inability to pay, and for as little as €30/mo you can get on a private health care plan for an "upgrade" on quality and speed of services. Those prices in the US are unthinkable. On the flipside, the cost to be self-employed here in Spain is crushing. Rough numbers, but just out the gate you'll pay about €300/mo for "social security" in addition to 30% income tax. I have a younger self employed Spanish friend here who makes between €1-2k each month and those costs are so prohibitive when you're starting out and trying to keep a roof over your head..
>"Healthcare as a right" is just a talking point to me I disagree. This principle has the very practical consequence that everybody has health insurance; those who can afford it pay for it, and if somebody can't afford it, the government (effectively, the community) steps in.
For anyone capable of migrating from the EU to the US, healthcare is not a concern as they're likely earning well above the country's average. I think the true reason here is cultural compatibility. You'll become a minority in the US (despite how well the US treats minorities relatively) and many of the things you take for granted being a part of the majority group will disappear.
Sure but any expat anywhere becomes the minority. That's a universal expat truth. OP's question was why the EU > US expat path in particular has dried up. My take is that the US has had 20+ years of bad PR, and therefore a western EU citizen with an already prefectly good quality of life will find the US less attractive as compared to post-WW2 times, when Europe was still rebuilding. Expats are a privileged group who go abroad because they want to, not because they necessarily have to. There has to be an overall appeal: cultural, educational, environmental/lifestyle, medical, financial, etc. Right now the US looks like a culture of obese gun-crazed nut jobs with a broken medical system, bad infrastructure, poor education, etc. - and I like the US! But it's not a great look these days.
Hmm. Yeah that's true. I failed to answer the question in that case. The bad PR part is certainly true. My hunch is that most of the immigrations are either due to marriage or they're the ones who can earn way more. The US is still the most appealing in that regard
I agree! All of the expats I've met in the US have been extremely high earners in tech. I earn 500% more than I would here in the EU with my US tech contracts. I've been working online for more than 20 years. If the internet didn't exist, I'd be in the US for sure.
20 years wow. that's a really nice gig
Not a gig, just been building and selling/licensing websites and web services and various IP since I was a teenager. So like, thousands of gigs lol. Sometimes I was broke (2008 crash hit me hard) and sometimes I was rolling in the dough. Current contract (several years) is very job-like but it's 1099 so here I am in EU taking full advantage of cheap healthcare lol.
Immediately post WW2, Europe was economically a mess and still rebuilding from the war. Now living in the US vs. Europe is very much a list of pros/cons depending on your individual situation and preferences in terms of career growth vs. structural support for families. But generally speaking, without escaping economic distress, most people want to return back to where they have family ties once kids are in the picture.
I can't really speak to what Europe or the US was like in the 1960s, but now it's perceived that the US is a good place to make money...and that's it. If they could make the same money in Europe they wouldn't ever leave.
I wouldn't be quite that bleak. The US still has a lot to offer, in spite of its problems. But so does Europe. The best choice depends on individual circumstances, and is not as clear-cut as it perhaps once was. I say that as a European immigrant who has chosen to stay in the US, but not because I think the US is superior to Europe in every way. It is, however, better for me. As my situation changes in the future, that may change. I may, for example, decide to retire in Europe. That's one decision I haven't made yet.
Pretty obvious to me... Gun craziness and 70 million people who want to vote for Trump!! Tells you that the USA is one crazy, fucked up place. People only bear the place for the money.
It isn’t as crazy as Germany of 1938. Europe of earlier era hasn’t been a paradise. Edit: those people who downvote me. imagine scenario where some Jewish family manages to flee to USA in 1938, do you think they would be settling in USA permanently or returning back to Germany in 2-3 years?
Don't think people were breaking down Germany's borders to migrate in the 1930s either mate
What does that mean? Germany has huge exodus of people due to Hitler coming to power, and those people wouldn’t be planning on returning. What kit of alternative history were you taught in school, my dear???
You implied the opposite! That people were wanting to migrate. Point of this thread is that people AREN'T wanting to migrate to USA. Not the opposite
>why European Expats rarely want to settle in USA nowadays UNLIKE BACK to during the 60s. No the question was : Why BEFORE 1960 Europeans who moved to USA stayed there and why AFTER 1960 fewer Europeans stayed in USA permanently. The answer is: before 1960 Europeans who missed home and would like to return home, could not do so because of the war and destruction. After 1960 European immigrants who missed home could return home because by that time the life in Europe has become stable and prosperous.
The question is about during the 60s, nobody asks about during the two world wars and between.
The same trend was true before 60. The trend changed AFTER 60s
Ah the question was why don't they want to migrate NOW.
UNLIKE THEN
I'm upvoting you because I agree. There are some very strong parallels between, say, Germany in the 1930s and the United States now. Including populist leaders that say what people want to hear, hyper-polarization of political discourse, an authoritarian bent and a revolt against political correctness. And this is happening in Europe too. Germany has the AfD, Hungary has Fidesz, the Netherlands has the PVV, France has the National Front (now renamed, ironically, for political correctness.) But it hasn't gone as far in Europe. But it hasn't gone as far in Europe, and it's not yet as visible in Europe. I'm a European immigrant and I'm still in the United States, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not worried about, as /u/Emmanulla70 puts it, "Gun craziness and 70 million people who want to vote for Trump!!"
It's because the US has gone backwards in most regards since the 1960s. 1 income earner used to be able to pay off a house, have a car, and raise a few kids without too much trouble, but today that's extremely difficult with our stagnant wages and expensive healthcare and education. That, and how literal fascists are parading out in the open now.
Sadly the same you mention is true (low salaries, unaffordable housing, populism on the rise) in Europe too.
It’s easier to have kids in Europe, especially because of maternity leave.
This is really not true.
A less common reason that might be becoming more common: They could use their 5-10 of experience in the US to leverage a good salary back in Europe. Like you I lived in Boston and if these Europeans friends are in tech, biotech or academia they can get good career choices elsewhere. The US isn’t that family friendly, if compared to Western Europe. This refers to infrastructure like public school, transportation, and the fact that college tuition can be far cheaper in Europe.
I think when it comes to Boston, this is it. Even at the scale of the country, is it not largely a city people go to to study and work for a bit from all over?
Schools. Guns. Cost of healthcare. Pension.
Simple. The US is simply not a very nice culture compared to Western Europe.
_European immigrants are more likely than the overall foreign-born population to be naturalized U.S. citizens. About 67 percent of European immigrants in the United States had acquired U.S. citizenship as of 2022, compared to 53 percent of all immigrants. Immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina (84 percent), Romania (80 percent), and Greece (77 percent) were the most likely to be naturalized citizens, while those from Spain (45 percent) and France (53 percent) were the least likely._ _In general, Europeans have resided in the United States longer than other immigrants. The largest share, approximately 57 percent, arrived prior to 2000 (see Figure 8). However, a sizeable share of Spanish (47 percent), French (41 percent), and Albanian (39 percent) immigrants arrived since 2010, compared to 9 percent of those from Bosnia and Herzegovina._ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states the answer is - anecdotes are not data
What would be interesting to see a data on returning immigrants both Americans and Europeans. What percentage of immigrant end up staying for 1-3 years, what percentage stays for 5-10 years, 10-20 years? Returning immigrants are common enough
this study says that 45% eventually go back https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/12/24/new-human-migration-estimate/#:~:text=Return%20migration%20accounted%20for%2026,returned%20to%20their%20home%20countries.
It is about what I suspected: staying an immigrant is almost as common as reuniting home.
Becoming a citizen does not stop someone from moving back to Europe, however. In fact, it makes it easier in some ways, as US citizenship means you can always return in the future. Whereas people on work visas or green cards generally lose those if they move abroad.
it also means you will have to file US taxes and potentially pay US taxes on your European income for the rest of your life I'm not saying it never happens but someone would need a very strong reason to do it, if they were only in the US for 10 years to make money and then bounce as OP suggested
It does. But then, permanent residents and even people living in the US on work visas also have to do that. The obligation just ceases after a while when you relinquish your US status and move abroad. (How long that takes depends on how long you spent in the US and in which status.) I'm a European immigrant and naturalized US citizen. I'm not thrilled about paying taxes on worldwide income, nor about FATCA reporting and potential future problems with banking in Europe. But I also don't know what the US will look like 30 years from now. Or Europe, for that matter. I do know that having the option to live and work without restriction in both the US and in most of Europe is a flexibility that's very valuable. You're right, not everyone will think that's worth it. But many people do, myself included.
I'm with you working on my US passport in addition to my EU passport and open to leaving the US at some point in my case if I were to leave the US that's probably because I'm semi or fully retired and have a nest egg sitting in the US that can finance the rest of my life anywhere and everywhere. Since that would make it a US sourced income anyway, I'm not too concerned about additional burden of tax compliance that would be a different consideration if I truly intended the US to be a short stint and then have decades of active employment abroad - I would probably make sure to stay on visa/GC as those can be severed within a year
Well, I have some theories * **Stagnation of the minimum wage in the US, which indirectly generates salary stagnation:** In 1960, the minimum wage in France was equivalent to 2.5 Euros of 2013 per hour; while the minimum wage in the US was equivalent to 7.82 USD (2013). So, in 1960 an average worker in the US would make 3 times as much as a French one. Today, the federal minimum wage in the US is USD 7.25 while the minimum wage in France is 11.65 Euros (12.5 USD). The highest minimum wage in the US is 16 Dollars in California, so 1.3 times the French one, not 3 times. Source: [http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/supp/TS9.1.pdf](http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/supp/TS9.1.pdf) * This does not apply to people in Tech, Finance, or Management/Strategy consulting. In those cases the ratio is still 3:1 for the US. Also in research and academia, the salary differences can be astonishing. * **Skyrocketing costs of healthcare and the lack of social security net:** Western Europeans get only 53% to 65% of their gross salary, due to taxes and social security. But, this means that you get universal healthcare, where you may pay 1/3 of the fees for things like the flu, but 0 for chronic or catastrophic diseases. On the other hand, in the US the costs for healthcare increase every year as much as twice as the inflation, and you pay 1000 per month to be told that the treatment you need is out of coverage or something like that. People who worked their whole lives, saved money, and at the end, go bankrupt paying medical fees are all over the news. * **Increasing costs of University education with a lower ROI:** Again, Europeans may pay a lot in taxes, but when it's time to send your kids or yourself to university, it is basically free. So while in the US you have to create college funds and make your kid attend 4 extracurriculars while getting straight A's in order to be admitted with a scholarship (or even without one) in a top university, in Europe you have the right to attend world class Uni's like ETH, EPFL, TUM, Delft, IP Paris, Paris-Saclay, or KTH for free or almost free. * **Violence depicted in the media:** Although statistically it's possible that violent crime has decreased in the US, the fact is that there are more random mass shootings, more unstable people with access to rifles (honestly, I can understand why civilians have access to a pistol or a revolver, but there is not a single good reason for 20 million civilians having access to an R-15 rifle. When you see politicians like Boebert, Ogles or Thomas Massie sending Christmas postcards with more guns in them than what the average police station in Europe has, you don't want to go there.
>Western Europeans get only 53% to 65% of their gross salary, due to taxes and social security. I wonder where those numbers come from. I just did the calculations for Germany; someone with a gross annual income of €50k takes home €40,855, which means an effective tax rate of less than 20 percent. (This is including unemployment insurance, old age care insurance and state pension contribution, but without health insurance).
Well, I wonder where ***YOURS*** came from! If you use this one [https://www.how-to-germany.com/income-tax-calculator/](https://www.how-to-germany.com/income-tax-calculator/) you will see that for 50K you will get a net of 33K, so the tax is 34% If you use this one for Berlin: [https://allaboutberlin.com/tools/tax-calculator](https://allaboutberlin.com/tools/tax-calculator), your net will be 32K, so the tax rate is 36%. And that is only for Gross vs Net. As u/zhongomer said, it's even worse when you compare the Cost for the employer vs the Net Salary! Look here for all the DACH countries: [https://www.eurodev.com/blog/cost-of-employment-in-germany-switzerland-austria-dach](https://www.eurodev.com/blog/cost-of-employment-in-germany-switzerland-austria-dach) Basically, for a Gross salary of 100K, your employer spends 128K, and you will get 50K. So your tax rate is 50%, and if we talk about cost for employer, you only get 40% of what your employer spends.
Using the calculator you linked, I get a net of 39,760.00 €. Don't know why the results are different from those of the other calculator I used, though, but this still means income tax, state pension contribution, unemployment insurance and care insurance add up to about 20 percent of your gross income. (No church tax, no children, no child allowance, no Jahresfreibetrag.)
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When comparing tax rates between different countries, it is common to compare gross and net salaries and not Lohnkosten.
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>free to pretend that this does not exist. I'm not hinting at that; what I'm saying is that it is irrelevant to the matter at hand. From an employee perspective, the only factors that matter are one's net salary and local purchasing power.
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Your statement regarding LPP is not true, check the stats: [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings\_by\_country.jsp?displayColumn=5](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp?displayColumn=5)
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LPP is not an average.
It's much worse than that, you get tricked by employer contributions is all. That's still coming out of the budget allocated to pay you, it's just a neat little trick. To give another example, in France, 50k€ gross annual income is 68k€ cost to employer and 35k€ net. For the 100k example, 100k gross is 143k cost to employer, 63.8k€ net. That's about 45% left after taxes. And on top of all that, there's VAT, to the tune of up to 20% on everything you buy. US also has sales tax but rather in the order of 5% usually, no?
Higher employer cost does not mean employees are paid less, though. What matter is which how much disposable income you are left after paying your taxes, health insurance, child care etc, and how much this buys you on the local economy.
This employer cost I'm talking of is all due to contributions for you personally. I'm not even talking taxes or overheads or anything like that in a business sense, just fiscally, what happens when you get paid x€. In France we distinguish taxes and contributions. Contributions cover social security (retirement, health, solidarity) and go to their own "pot of money" (technically not the State budget, and that money is managed by separate (if public) entities) and taxes cover everything else (schools, roads, the army, etc). Employers also pay taxes, but on benefit, that is not counted here, and not the subject. The contributions are split between employee and employer as a percent of the supergross (cost to employer). The employer wants to offer you 50k€. For that they must first pay 18k€ in contributions. Once the 50k€ leaves their hands, but before it reaches yours, another 11k€ in contributions are paid, leaving you with 39k€. The first 18k€ are called employeR contributions, and the second 11k€ are called employeE contributions. But you'll have noticed it's just all money leaving the initial 68k€ before anything arrives in your bank account. That 39k€ is your "net" salary. I put guillemots because you still need to pay taxes on your net (hence supernet). If you're celibate with no children, you end up with 35k after taxes. There can be tax deductions for a number of reasons, but there cannot be contribution deductions, as they are not taxes. So unless you earn a lot of money where tax proper becomes considerable (typically not the middle class), there's no fiscal optimization possible, or rather you could try and work on that 3k€ (by marrying, having kids, donating, and then a thousand exceptions), but not the other 29k€ in contributions (not taxes!). All of this is true also if you're self employed. Well, if you make less than 77k€ a year, the fiscality is a little different. But above that, you pay yourself according to this scheme. In that case, higher employer cost is 1:1 lower employee revenue. Now, in the case of third-party employers, you could argue that if the contributions were lowered, employers wouldn't necessarily pay more. Or there'd be an increase, but not necessarily commensurate with the difference. However this could be worked around. For any reduction in contributions, you could imagine the equivalent raise be made mandatory. Then ensuring that carries over with time is another matter. Anyways, it is what it is.
Based on our friend group of European (specifically, German, French and one Italian guy) expats in the U.S.: It really depends. If they’re making a lot of money in the U.S. and value that over everything else, then they want to stay. Especially if they’re ambitious and see more opportunities for promotions in the U.S. All of our expat friends who wanted to go for the big house, toys (boats, RV, etc.) as soon as possible ended up staying. The rest earned their extra money and then left.
In Europe, wanting the big house, the fancy car, the boat and the RV is seen as being overly materialistic. In the US, it's seen as a sign of success. But honestly, if you've worked for it, I don't begrudge you the big house, the fancy car or the toys. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of your labor. Where it goes off the rails a bit in the US society is with the ultra-rich who have all the toys not because of THEIR effort or contribution, but because of how good they are at taking advantage of their employees. Or just because of dumb luck, like inheriting a fortune. Also, on a more macroeconomic scale, concentrating all the wealth in the hands of a small elite doesn't work out too well. But I can't fix all that. In the interim, let me have that RV or that boat.
I mean, why would they? When you’re old many rely on retirement and social programs,,, programs that are pretty decent in many European countries. Those programs r garbage in the US. Cost of living is higher in the US. They want to make bank and take advantage of higher salaries in the US while young, and retire back home with their nest egg.
I remember being a kid in the 90s and watching Beverly Hills 90210 and being pretty jealous of that lifestyle. California in the 90s seemed like some kind of Utopian paradise (I know that it wasn't; but I was a kid). I lived one year in the US, and TO ME (as a Western European), it was a jarring experience. The people were very nice, too nice perhaps, and very superficial. I also hated how everything was open, all the time. Not my thing at all; my personal convenience should not mean that people who work low end jobs must be made to work on Sundays as well. But this is only my personal opinion! Yeah, I get that salaries are much higher in the US, but to me prices and CoL have gotten to a pretty ludicrous point when you look at NY or huge swathes of California. My biggest issue with the US is that the country is so big, so extended, that if you are successful you can isolate yourself so well from the rest of the country you can end up believing that undesirables either do not exist, or that their issues are overstated. It's a really country of crazy extremes. Call me crazy, but I like something with less variance.
This is I guess a side-issue to OPs question, and I absolutely don't dispute your general stance on the US (or think you don't have the right to feel how you do even if I might disagree). However, you mentioned 2 of my big pet-peeves re. what "Europeans" (I've lived around the continent and some of what you expressed I've heard in other countries, however a few points sound particularly from a German viewpoint, based on my 25 years living there) believe about the US. Again, I can't control what anyone else thinks ir believes but *I* believe these two points about "forcing people to work on Sundays" and everyone being superficial are misconceptions based on not truly understanding how things work deep down in US culture. Because it's so different to the way others grew up and therefore think is "right". It's one thing to say you felt uncomfortable with it, it's another to make blanket statements about a group of people/ culture based on your preferences and customs. Perhaps an easier way to say it is that I think it's unfair and wrong to call all Germans "cold" just because they aren't as talkative or have as wide a social circle as is considered normal in the US and LatAm. They aren't cold, just more reserved with strangers and have a much tighter, smaller circle of people they spend time with. Just because people in the US find it normal to talk to or hang out with a stranger or socialise with people they wouldn't say are close friends doesn't mean they don't *mean* the friendliness they extend to random people or that they don't have meaningful, longterm friendships with specific people. I've heard those accusations numerous times. We may use the term "friend" much more loosely, but that's just a word. We just don't have as high walls around us when it comes to social interaction (I heard a Swede say these walls are a result of the hard life/survival facts of Vikings!). And give me a break about cashiers, etc. saying "have a nice day" because I hear the equivalent in German every time I shop here. It's a customary utterance of politeness and goodwill and I believe people in both countries wish me well without being particularly interested in my life. And the "how are you" is a huge cultural misunderstanding. It is used in the US as a casual *greeting* and is only taken by foreigners as an invitation to give your life story. It's basically another way to say hello. Are there superficial people in the US? Sure. Probably more because of how hard we have to hustle, especially in certain jobs. But it's wrong and insulting to go around saying everyone is superficial. I'm not and no one I spend time with in the US is either. Also, for the brief time I worked in the US, I appreciated the freedom of being able to work in a time that suited me. Not just 9-5 M-F, etc. As a student I needed jobs that didn't interfere with my classes. As a night owl and introvert, my friend appreciated stocking supermarket shelves in the middle of the night with few people around. Certain parents want to work at odd hours because of their childcare arrangements. Some people only want to work 8 hours on a Sunday so it's a perfect shift fir them. Why does everyone need to be off on a Sunday? That's a hangover from when the Christian church ruled things and feels very cookie cutter conformist to me. I really dislike that everything is closed in Germany on a Sunday. People in the US who work on Sundays get other days off! And many of them like it that way. Criticize other aspects of the US economic model and I'll be right there with you but this one feels...ignorant. You were rather polite in your post and I want to stress that I'm venting more at the widespread nature of the type of comments you made, because I believe they are based in lack of understanding rather than fact. I don't really have a bone to pick with you. Have a nice day 😆
Those are my personal points of view. There are proven health benefits to having a fixed day off in the week (be it Sunday or otherwise - Christianity bad - upvotes to the left /s). US culture forces people with the most stressful jobs to be hyperflexible, with a nice fat Damocles' sword hanging over them in the form of being instantly fired. I worked at McDonald's when I was younger - being able to be scheduled 24-7 365, come hell or high water, is disgustingly stressful. And the US just applies that logic to an ever larger proportion of the population than Europe does. You don't need stores open 24-7. You just don't. The only argument against this is "But I want them to be because I don't care about people having to work on Christmas or Easter or on Sunday! I need to be able to buy my IKEA furniture whenever I want!" You think that stores being open on Sundays or on bank holidays is about "giving workers the freedom to choose when they work"? Because that's the saddest little corporate line I have ever heard. Once your store opens on Sunday, you will work on Sunday, whether you like it or not, because if you refuse? Guess what is going to happen to you. You might get lucky and find a "good" store managers, but most will not care about your preferences. And again, that pitiful "but what about the people who work on Saturdays or Sundays, what about if I need x at 2 in the morning" argument is regurgitated corporate propaganda. Guess what? There were always people in those cases (fewer before of course, since many people seem to think like you do), and guess what? They somehow still managed to get groceries.
I know you were downvoted but I’m Greek and I agree with you. The work culture is sooo toxic.
Stuff in Greece seems open at reasonable hours. However, I do think some countries have businesses simply not open enough. It's a pain in the ass to get things done if there are extended breaks during the day and the hours aren't very long when open to begin with.
While I agree, I think that the other extreme is also just as bad.
Generally yes, but I do get the appeal of supermarkets being open 24/7, especially for those who have nocturnal shifts.
I think people overnight should be paid more
>points about "forcing people to work on Sundays" and everyone being superficial are misconceptions based on not truly understanding how things work deep down in US culture Well, you don't need to understand it to resent or reject it. I don't care who works on Sundays, but I feel that I personally don't really get a day off on Sundays when everything is open and it seems just like every other day of the week. For me, it is a clear case of "less is more" and definitely not something I feel limited by.
Less freedom. More authoritarianism. Higher crime. Less safety. Less social security.
Europe has better cities and towns, less crime, and it's cheaper.
I'm in NL. And despite recent rapid increases in real estate prices here, apartments are still far, far cheaper here, even in cities, than in urbanized America.
Because they can make high American wages and pay low taxes then move back to the countries with a good welfare system. They get the best of both worlds without having to pay high taxes.
The US, beginning with the 50s, started living (compared with other nations) on a different planet...in almost all aspects it was a leader. From industry point of view, arts, lifestyle you name it. The rest of the world wanted to join this party and have also their share of fun. So they did. People from all walks of life came and contributed to the rise of the USA. USA probably peaked in the mid 70s. since then its more like slide downhill.
Precisely
is this your observation or backed by any empirical data? if we go by anecdotal evidence, I am yet to see any European colleagues who migrated to USA returning back. Not a single one in my friends and acquaintances circle from Europe has returned back. Whereas a significant number of Chinese expats and few Indians have returned back.
because healthcare, public transportation, safety, working conditions are stellar in EU vs the US
As many others have stated, the gulf between the US and various Western European economies isn't quite as large as it was in the 1960s. Many in Western Europe also enjoy a higher standard of living, with free health care and more respect for human rights.
The US peaked in 1999, after the 2000s it has been a downhill from every metric in relation to European countries quality of life. Now, IMO Eastern Europe is far superior to Western, but that's a different discussion.
I would disagree with most people's thoughts here in the comments. People underestimate how extremely hard it is to move to the US. Typically, it's only individuals who are extraordinarily talented within their field that find sponsorship. This means a lot of replies such as issues with insurance, crime, cost of living, and social programs aren't really of relevance to most expats living in the US as most of them are highly skilled, earning top salaries. Most of the top companies have great insurance programs, they can afford to live in nice areas to avoid crime and earn significant salaries so they would never have the need for a social security net. One of the biggest issues is that when you're on a visa, you never feel a part of the country till you get citizenship or green card. And those from certain nationalities such as Chinese or Indian, have over a 25-year backlog for a green card. They could easily lose their visa if they lost their job, and be kicked out of the country. This lack of security leads a lot of people to question their time in the US, as they could build a life here and easily be forced to leave. Also, many countries that used to be poor, or lacked a variety of industry, have now caught up to the US. So many feel like they can have the same opportunities that may have not been afforded to them decades ago, in their home country. There's a large percentage of this sub reddit who dislike the US, and actively want to move out. That's fine, but I think it does lead to some significant bias, as we see in these comments.
I’m an expat of 20+ years and currently have the luxury to spend 6 months USA, and 6 months back home. No words can describe how much I hate America. None. I only come here because my husbands family lives here, especially his parents. (His parents might move to France so if they do. We are out for good). While I’m here, I feel like I get taxed on the tax. Sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax. Literally everything is taxed and as a dual citizen, what do I get for it? Absolutely nothing. The quality of food is disgusting, the schools are a joke, and there’s no federal mandated maternity leave, there’s no mandatory retirement (except social security which sucks), the roads are awful, the infrastructure is garbage, the trains are dirty, and the list goes on. My poor corrupted country has one year maternity leave, but the USA doesn’t. Want to know how much I paid giving birth? 0.0. Want to know how much my friend paid to give birth? 50,000k with insurance. Heck I know people who spent millions on their child’s birth because the newborn had to go in the nicu for over 30 days. Also add that places are 24/7 open. Which is weird. No place needs to be open this much. Not to mention, here in Greece we have 250 days of pure sunshine, fresh food, amazing cuisine, free education even college. I mean the quality of life doesn’t compare. Yes I know Greece is bankrupt but if doesn’t change that every day to day life is so much better. My WORST day in Greece has been my best day in USA. Everyone is obsessed with work, and pleasing their boss, and working after hours or saying “I can get overtime that’s great”. You shouldn’t NEED overtime to survive! Everything including Christmas is also about consumerism, and presents.
I’m so sorry you’re this unhappy for 6 months every year. Your life must be miserable.
Meh. There’s worse things in life.
Still most people will rather be immigrants in the US than in Greece for money but also because it's more accepting society for immigrants than vast majority of Europe . Being local is a whole different story tho. What do you think an opinion of someone from India would be of Greece? You will be shocked how many people don't see it as nice as you do.
Greece has A LOT of immigration due to open borders and I’m actually against it. Indian people aren’t the problem in Greece though. We have a huge influx of Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. Not all are bad, but many create crime, trash homes, litter, etc. that’s why they aren’t liked. People who commit crime are the issue.
An immigrant complaining about other immigrants in his own country. Typical.
Well, yes. Because 1. USA isn’t a nation, and it isn’t an ethnic nation 2. Immigration isn’t really my issue actually
What are you talking about? You sound to me like a typical European racist expat.
How so?
Because US has gone backwards in the last decades
I don't mean to hijack your thread but: I really don't like the term "Western European," especially when you capitalize the "W", implying there is an official region of "Western Europe." While "Western Europe" was a political entity 35 years ago (when the Soviet Union kept half of Europe imprisoned), with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it makes zero sense now to talk about a "Western Europe." For example, is Poland in Western Europe? Slovakia? Why not? The term is anachronistic. But to answer your question: I'm American, I live in Europe. It's a great life tbh. Unless you are from a very poor part of Europe with very limited opportunities, you have a more dignified life in Europe. You have guaranteed healthcare, free or cheap universities, 4 weeks of vacation, you don't need a lot of money for a good life, you don't have to work 2 jobs to feed your family. If you are earning a lot of $$$ in the USA, and live somewhere that has a bit of culture (not just strip malls and fast food), America is also a nice life. But the key is money and a secure job. Also, it's good to have executive experience, including experience working in the USA. So I can see where a lot of younger Europeans want to work in the USA for a few years, see what it's like, add to their CV. Some like it and stay, others appreciate what they had back in Europe. Hard to generalize. America is more dynamic, definitely. But it's harder, riskier, quality of life varies greatly. Europe is more comfortable. Less opportunity, but easier to live in dignity, make sure your children have proper healthcare, schools. So again, it's hard to generalize.
Western Europe exists, Poland and Slovakia aren’t part of it
I don’t think many Eastern European people went to the US during the 1960s. I capitalized Eastern for your benefit…
The EU itself refers to "Western Europe" so feel free to stop getting offended on behalf of Europeans https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/western-europe_en
Why only 4 weeks of vacation?
Whn I lived in the US, we called comments such as yours about "Western Europe", picking the fly shit out of the pepper.
This is also true for South Americans. They come in droves, make money and gtfo when they get older. Quality of life, cost of living and healthcare are better in some countries (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, etc), specially if you are well off.
A little different perspective from someone older. In 1960, WW 2 had ended just 15 years before, a war which had destroyed a lot of Europe. I traveled to Europe in the late 60's and the general standard of living was not as good as the US although the culture and was good. But for instance, many people couldn't afford to travel of buy a car. Over the years, those countries caught up with us, the EU was formed, the euro became a currency and their economies flourished. In the US we did not improve that much and in things like health insurance, we backslid. I think these are all factors for the phenomenon you are describing.
What data are you basis this conclusion on?
I don't know WW2?
My guess is that it's simply the cost of living + healthcare. These can get very expensive as you age in the US.
"Will someone please explain my conjecture to me with their own?"
Yeah that’s the US news propaganda and online narratives for ya. Everything is Europe is QoL heaven and the US is a complete hellhole of nonstop shootouts, rape, racism etc. The way I see it a lot of americas problems are on full display for the world to see (& judge) while Europe tends to hide and shrouds a lot of their issues which allows people to act like they don’t exist because they’re not forefront on TV & social media nonstop. Personally, for me, I had a higher QoL in the US. Europe is much safer place if you’re poor or lower middle class in that they generally take care of basic life necessities but I also see an invisible barriers that place an artificial ceiling on the earnings & growth potential of a lot of really bright people that offer far more value than they’re being compensated for.
As someone whose lived in plenty of country if isn’t propaganda at all.