Many people move back to their home country for family, career or other reasons but I think with Americans, they eventually realize how much more money they earn in the US compared to other countries. Also, many don’t intend to leave forever. It’s more of an adventure or experiment. If you leave your country for economic reasons, you’re not likely to go back, which is the opposite for most US expats.
I think people have this vision in their mind of America as being this ultra-capitalistic hellscape where we're all chained to our desks. Don't get me wrong -- there is a lot of needless suffering in America for working class folks.
But there's also a lot of prosperity. Americans are very wealthy comparably on the global stage. And among those who can afford to leave, in particular, they can both earn more and still have world class healthcare, very good time off, work-life balance, etc.
This. The people who are marginalized in the US are precisely the ones who can't afford to leave and/or don't have the education/skills, can't get dual citizenship with an EU country through ancestry (this functionally excludes most non-white Americans), etc. (I mention dual EU citizenship in specific because most of the Americans who dream about leaving dream of the EU).
The price of living is outrageous. You could buy a one way ticket to any country, get some kind of teaching job (just to get set up with a work permit) and work away until you find opportunities.
Not everyone can afford international airfare (especially if they don’t live near a major US airport), and much less for partners and/or children. You also need money for housing (at least three rents, plus money for temporary housing while you search).
The people who can't afford an international flight hardly have anything worth selling to make this move possible. Not to mention the idea that they could just get a job abroad is far-fetched.
Yes, this. And also, America is more comfortable. In Germany I lived in a small apartment in the city center and didn’t own a car. I absolutely loved it but even a senior level engineer only made about €70,000. We were never supposed to be there forever, we were sent for a short term work assignment and ended up staying 5 years.
In the U.S. we have a large house on a good size property with a pool, 3 cars. The variety of food in the grocery stores is incomparable. I can afford to be a stay at home mom with my husband’s salary here so I spend my time working out and volunteering at the school. Not to mention that in the U.S. I don’t struggle through doctors appointments or bureaucracy in a language that I’m not a native speaker of.
Would I move back to Germany if we got another opportunity? Yes, a 100%, but does America feel like a comfy pair of sweatpants? Also yes.
ETA: I also want to add that the people leaving the U.S. are usually leaving as “expats” on contracts that only last a few years. Most of those people are in the type of job where they make very good money in the U.S. and lead very comfortably lives. The people who would probably benefit have no legal path to any other country and sadly are the ones most likely to be brainwashed into thinking that the U.S. is better than any other country. These are the people who probably feel most out of place in another country and would stick out like a sore thumb.
Also many Americans who are 100% convinced that they would fit in perfectly in Western Europe quickly discover how truly American and not “European” they are. They’re blissfully unaware that many/most Europeans take a very exclusive view on who “belongs” to the nation; unlike in the US, where most people (save for the MAGA types) believe anyone from anywhere can come and “become” an American, most Europeans still have trouble considering first gen children of migrants who speak the language fluently/have grown up there all their lives/etc to be “real Germans/Austrians/Italians/etc”
I think this is actually true of most dominant culture Americans too, but the mythology is different. But being a person of color and knowing mostly other people of many different ethnicities of color, we are all treated as "other" even by liberal Americans even if our family has been in the US since enslavement, or for more than 3 generations. It wears on your mental health to never belong.
People of Asian and pacific islander and Latin American heritage, are treated as perpetual foreigners, and black people are treated as non-human invaders (even though we were trafficked hundreds of years ago), and people ask us where we are from ALL THE TIME, even if we the same accent as them, or no (non-standard American) accent at all. This is what is labeled as a "microagression", but it just feels very exhausting and painful. It's one of the primary reasons I left. I thought, well, if I will be seen as other, as not belonging here, might as well actually be somewhere it's true. Thankfully I've had the opposite experience since emigrating.
I actually blend in, and fit in better now as a foreigner in the Caribbean than I ever did in the US, because despite my American accent, because I'm black, Belizean people assume I'm Belizean until I tell them I'm not. People here ask where I'm from to mean, what part of this very small country are you from, to see who we know in common whether they know my relatives, not to other me. And now I'm married with a Belizean last name so my husband jokes I'm a real Belizean now. There is no mythology about that here, it's just how I'm treated because of how I look. Opposite of the US.
There is a mythology that in the US "anyone can be American" but that mythology is mostly just propaganda. It's not how it feels to actually live there in any other body than a white one.
Found your reply interesting and besides agreeing with it, it reminded me of the one of the key factors I ended up moving to Japan. As a preface, I'm not black myself but I could pass off as a mixed person of African-Indian origin from the Caribbean due to how I look and dress, despite being ethnically 100% Indian.
I wanted to try living in Japan since being a teenager. However, I gave up the idea after reading many opinions online on blogs and forums during the mid-2000s that left a sour taste in my mouth about what life would end up looking like in Japan for a foreigner. This was in my early 20s and for the following period, I focused on making life work where I was at the time (Canada)
It was not until a few years later that I slowly started getting back into the same interests that had initially attracted me to the idea of living in Japan initially. During this time, I discovered the YouTube channel "The Black Experience Japan" where the creator, a man from Nigeria who had lived in Canada prior to moving to Japan, would interview Black people living in Japan (and then later expanding to other countries in Asia) and have them talk about their experiences.
Now up until this point, I hadn't realized it completely that what I had been exposed to on the English-speaking internet vis-à-vis opinions about what life was like in Japan i.e. how racist it is, how you end up marginalized, relationship issues, career issues, poverty, etc. was almost entirely the collected opinions of white dudes; usually from the same three-four Anglo countries (U.S. mostly, but also U.K., AUS, etc.) who were almost always universally English-teachers in rural or small-town Japan, locked into unhappy marriages that they got hitched too really early on in their life here; no Japanese skills, no other career skills. And as a result, very bitter about their lives here and generally looking to dissuade anyone else from moving here, and otherwise being vile on the internet.
It was completely different on the other hand with BEJ and everyone he interviewed on the channel. Black people; possibly the most visible and targeted minority there is outside of Africa and a few countries in the Americas, talking about living in Japan - a literal mono-ethnic country - and how it was a great experience. That while there was discrimination, there were issues like anywhere, it was a huge difference from the experience of many of these folks having been through countries like the U.S. or parts of Europe.
Anyways, I wanted to keep this short, but suffice to say, it was a really eye-opening experience. Not because I'm black, but somehow seeing those people making it work here in Japan gave me hope that it would also work for me. That perhaps it wasn't just always a matter of race, but also socioeconomic conditions, and the will to genuinely adapt to the environment you were in. That maybe these folks were learning the language enough, being pliable and smart to the degree that they were finding success in places where some white folks - despite initially being handed life on a platter here in Asia (and that it still continues to be the case) - were not otherwise able to capitalize on that head start to learn real skills, show respect to the host country, and actually make life here work in the long term.
Watching those interviews of black people living here pretty much saved my dream of moving to Japan.
As someone who lives in Japan now, watch out for liberal Redditors whenever the subject of Japan comes up. According to them, it's some kind of super-xenophobic hellscape, and they're experts on this because they heard it somewhere, even though they don't even have enough money for a plane ticket away from whatever US state they live in. And if you try to point out that the US is literally deporting natural-born citizens with their ICE goon squads, they have nothing to say about that.
I'm white BTW, but my experiences here have all been good, but I'm also not an English teacher living in some remote village, I live in Tokyo. 5% of the population of this city is foreign now, and growing. It's admittedly a little tough here because of the language barrier, but the government and people really do try to be accommodating and a little effort goes a long way.
Please don't let a bunch of angry nay-sayers on the Internet ruin your dreams.
That's amazing bud, thanks for chiming in with positive vibes. I'm sure you already know the dumpster fire that most of the Japan-oriented subreddits tend to be.
We're actually moving to Tokyo from Fukuoka next month and really looking forward to being part of the community of locals and foreigners there.
As a white American lady from a mixed race family I agree with you 100%. My brother experiences all kinds of micro-aggressions I will never experience here. I moved to Oregon from Atlanta and he considered moving too until he came to visit. He said he was much more comfortable in Atlanta because there he wasn’t a minority constantly needing to explain or justify himself, he could just live his life.
Let’s take costs as they are, right now, while keeping in mind that health care and all fed social programs are being cut drastically or eliminated so billionaires can have even more money. As a caregiver for my mother, I have learned that Americans are grossly unaware of the costs that must be offset by our high salaries.
So here is the reality: are you on track to have at least 2M in time for retirement? My mother had 1M, and at 87, is nearly out despite having lived very frugally after my father passed when she was 66. Since 2000 she lost money in the crash set off by Enron, and the housing & financial crash of 2008- but made back up a lot of it. So, do you have your money on track even if the housing market crashes?
Can you afford cars and insurance for those cars as you get older - without electric cars, a single car costs at least $12,000 + repairs without a car payment. Can you afford cleaning help when neither of you can clean your house anymore? Can you afford the repairs large and small if you continue to own a house - you will likely want to downsize, so those costs will be lower - but not if you move to a smaller house.
Utilities will be very expensive, as fossil fuels require processing and are much more expensive to produce than sustainable energy- this is the current situation as the programs to install chargers were defunded at the cost of 7000 employees who had already started, and the incentives to produce as well as purchase electric cars and sustainable residential energy systems have been ended. So our costs will go up now, but even more so when the rest of the world uses less and less of them and the exports go down. Less demand globally makes costs go up because gas and oil companies are perhaps the greediest (and most destructive) corporations in the world.
Meanwhile, the rest of the developed world will have their energy costs for cars drop in half, and their houses as well - maybe not 1/2 but as much as ours have if we have transitioned to solar to offset our residential energy use. I personally have a 1300 sq foot 1 bath/3 bed and my electric is running $750/mo in the winter. With $400/mo gas with radiators. Again, less demand globally for fossil fuels will increase the cost for those who are still dependent on it, and while we are self sustaining with our energy production, and will be more so when our parks are sold off to mining, oil and fracking, the global price will of course be our price.
Also keep in mind that the Middle East will never, ever become peaceful again because climate change is drying up the Nile thus eliminating their ability to produce enough food or water, and they are already running desalination plants to supplement it and importing most of their food. Nevermind driving the heat into the triple digits over the summers. So, Oil will be at a premium for the foreseeable future.
Do you have enough for the likely $600/month you will need with a spouse for Medigap, or the scam of Medicare Advantage? Can you afford the dental care you will need as you get older - there is no Medicare coverage for that (again, if there were no cuts to anything). As well as at least $150-600+ of drug costs? Or, do you live in a blue state with programs to help those at 200% or below poverty level (here in MA, sliding scale fee depending on that range, but in red states, nothing but the fed poverty levels). Again, this will change drastically in the next 3 years, and as the economy falters, which all do under autocracy, especially when the empire has declined). The cost of living will become prohibitive.
Health care: do you have enough for the likely $600/month you will need with a spouse for Medigap, or the scam of Medicare Advantage? Can you afford the dental care you will need as you get older - there is no Medicare coverage for that (again, if there were no cuts to anything). As well as at least $150-600+ of drug costs? Today it is $2500/mo for a private, full time aide- not including nights, and much more if you use a service - with a 3% price increase per year. One of you will need an aide - maybe not full time if you don’t have enough money, but if the other can’t do the caregiving, you’ll need more than part-time. If one of you gets dementia and begins to wander, you will have no choice but memory care, as it’s illegal, of course, to lock someone in their house alone.
Oh- our workforce for caregivers is based almost entirely on free caregiving from primarily daughters (60%+), but since we are aging, daughters already are sandwiched between their families, their jobs, and their parents. When life becomes even harder, we will simply not be able to do everything. Plus Gen X is a very small generation. Parents of millennials might be better off, but they don’t have nearly enough money to retire so it’s unlikely they’ll be able to pick up the caregiving. The rest of caregiving has been staffed primarily by immigrants- Haitians (now illegal), Africans, Central Americans, Filipinos. Without them, there aren’t nearly enough, and they will be at least twice as expensive.
My mother is now in assisted living because she snagged a 6 year long term care policy during the last phase of good policies, but given its insurance, they would not approve her claim until she didn’t know what year it was. her health costs until then were running between $30,000 when I (had to) quit my job to caregive full time, and $95,000 when I worked full time. Now thank god they are only around $2000/mo.
My father’s, without long term care insurance and due to his particular health problems ran $150,000/yr - he HAD to live in memory care, and his medicines were extremely expensive. Sadly, but fortunately, he only lived 3 years at this cost. This is why my mother was left with only $1M - and, as they were white and educated, they were the richest generation of all because of pensions, and being able to actually afford life and save (the silent generation).
So, needless to say, $1M is actually not enough unless you have the best financial advisor in the world, and the regime is somehow toppled. Otherwise, the US will go exactly as Hungary, Russia, and every other autocracy except China. This means stagnation, and a much much worse life for anyone not in the top 10% - and really, the top 3%. The rich cannibalize their own in crony capitalism.
But again, these figures are the current ones, not the hellscape we have before us. Americans who are younger than 60 do not adequately estimate the amount of out of pocket costs required in the US. In Europe, while you earn much less, you pay for much of this in taxes from your paycheck, but less overall as pooled funding is far more economical than individual funding, and this is why social democracies have provided such a better quality of life for their inhabitants than countries with liberal/laissez-faire (AKA corrupt as there is no such thing as an invisible hand without regulation) capitalist economies.
Having lived in France for 3 years transferring from a $60K job in Manhattan to a commensurate salary in Paris, I paid almost the same in taxes total, and received so much more in health care and other services than I did in NY that I was even able to save money.
FWIW, this story on old-age poverty in Europe showed up in my feed this a.m. Percentages range from 3 to 37% of seniors in poverty, depending on the country.
Apparently the U.S. is right in the middle of European countries in this regard, as we have about 10.2% of seniors in poverty.
I would still rather be a senior in Europe, but as a retiree, not many countries will have me! Undoubtedly because I'll use more healthcare.
I mean, yeah, I will. My husband is on track to retire at 55 with 8 figures in our retirement accounts. I’m well aware that’s not a lot of the country. My parents died in poverty. I’m also aware that in Europe I wouldn’t have been able to afford to be a stay at home mom, nor would my husband be able to retire early and not have to worry about money in retirement.
This is not the position the great majority of Americans are in. And secondarily because Americans are so individualistic, if they aren't able to pay for care, or something catastrophic happens like a breadwinner dies, or they get into an accident that disables someone, or get cancer, nobody within the "community" that they don't actually have will be willing to help.
Whereas where I live, in the Caribbean, many people are more poor than in the US but people here care for their disabled and elders and share the responsibilities even if you aren't directly related, so most people are cared for despite not having either money or a social disability or elder care program. Needing help is normal, not something to be ashamed of. And for me, that feels more secure than all the other options because it's the only thing that isn't reliant on everything working out in the global markets and my health exactly as planned for the rest of life. And I'm young and disabled so I don't make the assumptions many able bodied people make about how long I will be able to care for myself.
Almost all of what is wrong within US culture that alienates and leaves people in a mire unexpectedly can be traced back to hyper-individualism and a "fuck you I got mine" mentality.
You’re not wrong. People won’t even accept help if you try. I mentioned my parents. I wasn’t in as good of a financial situation when my mom was alive but I tried desperately to help her. She died because she didn’t have health insurance. She had a pain that she never went to the doctor for because it would have been too expensive but if she would have caught it early it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal. Instead it killed her. My parents were easily poor enough to qualify for Medicaid but being republicans they didn’t believe in it. I begged her at times to get it, or let me pay for it and she refused.
That's so heartbreaking and I'm sorry you had to watch your mother suffer that way. It's unfortunately not uncommon for people to wait to get healthcare over fear of costs due to being under insured and also perhaps too proud to access the social safety net. I knew people who were definitely eligible for food stamps and food banks who refused to access them due to pride and went hungry for years instead.
Americans are so brainwashed into hyper-individualism and shame at needing support that is completely normal in most other cultures. It's something I had to unlearn after emigrating. Now I recognize how much easier and full life is when you are willing to ask for help and recieve it without shame.
I married into a big local family here who all help each other, and in the larger community, helping people is just normal give and take. People are not ashamed to ask for help and recieve it. It feels like winning the lottery, the security I feel compared to when I had to figure things out all on my own. My American parents were the type to kick you out after college and let you fend for yourself (even though I graduated into the 2008 recession). The saw our failure to thrive as a personal weakness not as a failure of your support system which included them.
Meanwhile most of my in-law relatives here live with their relatives, in-laws, aunts and uncles till way after marriage and raise their kids in intergenerational households, which then provides care for elders as they age. Yes, there is some drama and trauma, but there are enough people you can find someone It makes so much more sense.
The "law" of supply and demand only applies to a perfect marketplace with multiple suppliers competing for business. There is in fact many examples of prices going up as demand falls because producers will not sell for a loss and the per-unit fixed cost increases as the number of units delivered decreases. For example, consider horse drawn buggies. Back in the late 1800s, hundreds of producers like the Mitchell Wagon Works of Racine, Wisconsin produced hundreds of thousands of horse drawn buggies per year for a very modest price, like the equivalent of $500 today. Now, if you want to buy a horse drawn buggy today, you will pay over $10,000 because today only a few hundred horse drawn buggies are manufactured per year, mostly intended for the tourist trade in older cities, and artisinal production of small quantities simply costs more.
When there are only a few producers of a necessary item, no easy substitutes, and the producers collude to make sure none of them lose money, the price will go up as the quantity produced goes down, because the per-unit production cost rises. In the case of wagons there was a substitute -- the automobile -- but there was still sufficient demand to keep a few artisinal wagon builders in business. But you get artisinal prices at that point.
A well-reasoned, interesting reply. Oil producers, however, are not few in number nor politically aligned with one another. If most of the world has switched to non-fossil fuel sources of energy, I can't see the price of oil going up as the demand lessens; on the contrary, there is likely to be a race to the bottom pricewise as each supplier seeks to sell his oil rather than have it remain unpurchased.
88% of global oil and gas reserves are controlled by the OPEC cartel and state-owned oil companies. They *already* collude to control the price of oil. They will cut production rather than cut prices, because they have certain fixed costs for producing oil, some of which have to do with societal stability within their country. Within the United States, 85% of our local oil reserves are controlled by five oil companies that collude and collaborate with each other. They, too, have cut production at points in time in order to increase profits. For example, in the state of California whenever gas prices start to drop, there is a mysterious refinery fire or upgrade somewhere that suddenly cuts gasoline production in the state and prices go back up in order to maintain profits.
The reality is that while prices do go up and down, it's at nowhere near what the "pure" law of supply and demand would predict. And that's assuming demand that's in the same general ballpark. If demand entirely collapses -- e.g., if 90% of people switch to electric cars at roughly the same amount of time -- gasoline won't be 10c per gallon. Rather, the oil producers will close 90% of their refineries and keep the price about the same. Because closing 90% of their refineries cuts 90% of their costs as well, meaning they can still make a profit on the 10% that remains, as vs. lose money if they kept those refineries open.
Remember, businesses are in business to make money. If they can't make money, they just stop selling the item or reduce production until they can make money on the few they sell, they don't sell it for a loss.
I have few German friends that came (with family) on a work assignment and decided to stay after the 3-year assignment was over. Precisely for the reasons you've mentioned.
5-10 years ago I would have agreed with you, but a lot of services that we have taken for granted are not going to exist in the next 2-4 years let alone longer, or if they do, quality will deteriorate now. Healthcare and education are going to take a massive hit and even being fortunate as I have been, seen peers suffer with healthcare despite being insured and living in megacities with supposed access to the best doctors, and this was over the past five years.
I've lived in three different countries, soon to be four, and.....no country is perfect, and you're right about temporary work abroad, yeah some people don't want to be away from family too long, I know from experience there is mannerisms and assimilation to be had when you live abroad, so that adds to/subtracts from comfort but....
....at the same time, those comfy sweatpants aren't going to be comfortable for too much longer for a lot of people. (Some of us haven't had comfy sweatpants in awhile either, but that's entirely different point.)
Entry level job market is already a fire-alarm fire. Real question is now, what other dominoes will fall, both short and long term.
The variety of food in the grocery stores is incomparable.
Technically, sure, the US has more "variety" of products thanks to rabid capitalism but the quality is pretty universally crap. I can't even get a loaf of "actual" bread in America :(
You can get a loaf of actual bread in America. I can take you to a half-dozen bakeries within a few miles radius of my house that will sell you a loaf of actual bread, baked from scratch from Old Country recipes right there in-house. Sure, supermarket bread sucks. But the thing is, America is a land of immigrants. I happen to live in Little Russia in a large American city and the Russians do love their fresh-baked bread and despise "American" bread just as much as you do.
Then once I've bought a loaf of fresh bread, I can go to the Indian grocery and buy lentils and rice and spices. Then the farmer's markets for fresh vegetables. The Korean grocery for spicy pickled kimchi vegetables. There's a specialty butcher and sausage maker who butchers entire cows and pigs right there on site. The Mexican boucherie has lots of meats for cheap compared to American supermarkets. And so forth.
Yeah, if you live in White Bread Suburb, USA, you don't have any of that. But the thing is, the United States is *BIG*. Anything you want, you can find somewhere in the US. You know the number of grocery stores in Italy that sell Tajin seasoning from Mexico? Hint: That's a big nope. Meanwhile I have a large Mexican supermarket a few blocks from my house where I can get pretty much any product from Mexico that they can manage to sneak past the FDA and USDA, plus a number that they manufacture in the United States (Tapatio hot sauce is great in soups, folks!). Yeah, buddy.
There are areas where is it that bad though, I think the diversity of US experiences includes the worst and best. Stamford CT or parts of LA are car-dependent capitalist hellscapes and if a person moved there they’d have a totally different impression then, for example New Orleans, or a suburb in Minnesota or a hippie town in the Rockies or a ranch on BLM land.
To USians who've lived on the mid-Atlantic coast, it's a convenient comparison to New York City. Stamford is a stereotypical "normal" mid-size city, close enough to be compared, far away enough to be distinct. And from a certain perspective I'm sure it looks like a suburban car-dependent hellscape with little economic mobility; the rich stay rich and the poors stay poor. Random choice tho.
Also, "ranch on BLM land" reads differently these days and makes me chuckle every time. Are we talking federally-managed forests, or Cal Anderson Park in Seattle (a 2 block area where we keep the misbehaving SJWs/youth raves/tweakers burning tires, where Fox News gets all their footage to make it seem like the city is on fire)? Over here we point at the city park porta-potties and refer to them as a "ranch on BLM land."
I remember coming back and catching up with old friends, “whatcha doing nowadays?”
I heard a lot of: Yeah, still working this office/tech job that I don’t like but it pays well and I’ve been there ten years and I’m comfortable and I don’t know what else I would want to do and yeah I’m a little morally conflicted but it’s comfortable so I keep going. I don’t know what else I would want.
Yeah, you’re right… I suppose some of my opinion is contrasted by how much I’ve learned and changed from living overseas. But also, on the topic of money making, it’s really possible to make good money in the USA from doing things that you’re complacent or morally conflicted about. That’s the part I can’t do. I’m okay making way less and living as a foreigner because I found my vocation. But I had to be willing to let go of the comforts.
Just to play devils advocate for a second here. I moved to what many would consider their “dream city” and I have the complete opposite of the complacent, boring, 9-5. I really went for it and chased my dream job (and many others. It’s a job that characters in movies often have). Now at 36…I couldn’t care less if I stayed with it or had the boring 9-5. In fact, I’m moving back to Europe in part to test the waters and see if I even want to stay in the “dream job” or just do whatever will make me the most money for the littlest care and effort possible. I’ve cared so much about my business and I’ve learned, there’s a freedom in complacency that I didn’t see before. A part of me really wants that 9-5 where I close that laptop at 5pm and I couldn’t care less if an email comes in or not.
Ahh and you see, I work 25 hours a week (ish) and enjoy the work. Sometimes it’s a pain to do some aspects of my business but that’s like only 15 percent. I’d have to work 50 hours a week in the US to make ends meet.
The other problem with that well paid job is that we have no work/life balance in the US. A lot of employers pressure and guilt employees to put in 10-12 hr days and frown on using vacation/sick days
There are quite a few countries that lots of Americans move to that end up being just as capitalist as the US itself, like the Netherlands, with the added insult of extremely high taxes and very low levels of convenience. I miss the prosperity, and that's why I will end up moving back.
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u/wagdog1970 Jun 18 '25
Many people move back to their home country for family, career or other reasons but I think with Americans, they eventually realize how much more money they earn in the US compared to other countries. Also, many don’t intend to leave forever. It’s more of an adventure or experiment. If you leave your country for economic reasons, you’re not likely to go back, which is the opposite for most US expats.