(06-12-2013 08:58 AM)iknowexactly Wrote: The USA is one of the easiest places to make money, and then consumer goods are generally cheaper here. A shirt I would buy in Ukraine for $60 would be maybe $25 in Marshall's in the USA. There are many products you can't find anywhere else.
Women are sort of paranoid in the USA, they watch too much Crime Scene Investigators and have some bizarre ideas about the relative dangerousness of men.
The competition among men for attractive women is very harsh due to many men having enough money to provide a middle class lifestyle, combined with widespread obesity and an angry, perverted version of feminism reducing the number of attractive women; thus making even many of the physically attractive ones disagreeable to deal with in intimate relationships. The family court and child support systems are sometimes frighteningly harsh, always well organized, and essentially invincible if you have the type of profession where you work on the books. So any woman you have kids with has huge financial control over you.
However, people don't see the background that the USA is one of the most advanced civilizations that's ever existed. The virtual elimination of religious conflict, and widespread respect for science over superstition, and the generally effective rule of law (outside of our being swamped with firearms and religiously dedicated to using them on each other) are something people from other countries seem to like.
If you are involved in the fine arts, there is a huge community of highly intelligent and educated collaborators available. You can make some very obscure music or movies and there is someone that understands what you are trying to do and will work with you with an entrepeneurial spirit.
In poorer countries the women are more agreeable, but everyone is much more concentrated on survival and do not have time for pursuing the arts.
If you have some unusual talent in say, science or business, there are sometimes more opportunities here because there is simply more money present and a larger market as others have mentioned. Many, many geniuses and pre-eminent people from around the world come here and stay.
In my 10 trips to Eastern Europe and Russia, it seems they see us as naive and relatively honest, visitors don't see the huge undercurrents of corruption-- they aren't generally starting businesses and getting into life where there is significant conflict there. They also see us as sort of robotic and lifeless.
In other countries, there is a lot of ugly stuff going on that tourists don't usually see. I was assaulted by my landlord in Ukraine, the whole family came to beat me up so they could get me out and get more money from someone else. This kind of routine bullying, outside of ghetto areas, in the USA is pretty rare. The "police state" some complain of also results in people following the rules more. The pollution is relatively low-- because the state makes you smog your car. The drinking water is generally good--because the government enforces pollution laws. In Ukraine every time I want something to drink I have to pay 1-2$. Most of the law enforcement in the US is for the good in my opinion, but it is inconvenient, and many people on this forum here very rebellious and resent government interence. They want more of a Wild West atmosphere. Or they think they do until they get seriously ill, or victimized by criminals. In the US, most police at the state level and above are honest and professional. They make enough money so they are not as susceptible to corruption. In Ukraine they make only several hundred per month.
The vast physical beauty of the USA, with thousands of square miles of mountains, deserts, lakes, and seacoasts is probably as nice as anywhere else. There is no weather comparable to Norcal in EE where the hottest girls are. US Housing costs are relatively high due to the mortgage system which artificially increased prices as no one buys houses for cash except investors who are going to rent them, and guess what, they get as much as they can for them.
The praise of the US from
iknowexactly is soundly based. When I was 20, living with my older (29yo) GF in Amsterdam, I didn't recognize the clan and class-based mentality of the Dutch. It was there, but she was raised by her grandmother in her teens, after her banker-globetrotting parents tired of the task, living in Saudi, Calcutta, Jakarta, etc. She seemed to not recognize how
verzeiling, or the vertical social order constrained people socially and emotionally. And as a grad student of British lit and linguistics, she had no clue about how much freere Americans were than they and she. Merely visiting NYC or even the heartland could not open her eyes to this fact. They were prisoners of their culture in a way few - mostly immigrants like the Mexicans or those from East or South Asia - are, here.
But then take a 26yo Pole from Marie Curie University at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (think of a grad educated 'Penny' from "Big Bang Theory") whom I got to know one summer there some eight years ago. She simply loved American freedom of opportunity! She breathed it in, and spoke of the shame of buying trinkets from a fellow Pole at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, simply out of solidarity to her fellow countryman.
the boundlessness of the American Dream! The freedom to choose your destiny and reap the rewards....
That's the America that's expiring today. Polls show that even the understanding of the American Dream is fast dying among the young.
Unionized schooling and the PC-university are killing it off. (It's only 49% of those under 30 who embrace American Exceptionalism; Obama sure doesn't - he says so.) Fast.
Quote:jimukr104 Wrote:
_ _ _
There is only 2 reasons i know people leave:
1. Avoid oppressive taxes. And the welfare state that Obama is bringing.I have considered this reason.
2. They have a shitty job because they thought going into 100k debt for a degree in basket weaving would be a profitable endeavor.
Let me add to jim's short list:
3. the need for adventure! Adventure, like new pussy, is especially a young mans game. It didn't start or end with Hemingway. But in America, you can remake yourself.
We bring this attitude to the world wherever we go.
I think it was the 1990s, and this Colorado couple who wound back in
Colorado, in publishing after meeting up in Aspen, working in Mass. for Harvard University Press, and in Berkeley for the University of California Press - and finally back in Colorado for its uni press.
What made them leave California? The sense that too many had gone there to remake themseves from the tragic ends of their own rope - risking it all and failing! - and too many being too willing to drag others down along with them! Chalk this smart observation up to the Dark-side of the very American urge to 're-make' oneself.
Who else but immigrants and sons and daughters of immigrants can do this? Again and again? Only Americans, I think. And we bring this dreamy vitality to others when we leave the US.
4. New foreign languages and cultures. I remember dating this young female doctor from Lincoln who graduated in Russian from the University of Kansas. In the '90s she joined an American export/import firm in Moscow.
But the violence of the Yeltsin years meant the firm ultimately pulled out of Moscow - too much violence on the streets spawned by corruption. The logic of that nation embracing the stark raving Authoritarian like a Putin therefore become obvious in its appeal and necessity.
5. Experience new peoples, search out new homes for vacationing, maybe retiring? With America in Alexandrian decline, it only makes sense to do so.
What is our Alexandrian Age? The late historian Jacques Barzun, himself an immigrant to the US from France, wrote:
Quote:In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads—in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within.
And today, as in culture, philosophy and morals (above), so in economic standards. Instead of currency ways - as was seen between the world wars - we are seeing interest rates wars, today. The hope is that countries can export their way out of economic miasma by competitive economic depreciation. If the Japanese can make their currency cheap, then they can sell-sell-sell abroad!
Thus, the US has done this Keynesian-style thru "stimulus" and Quantitative Easing - and Europe less decisively through bailouts - and now Japan through the most radical exercise of "QE" excess ever seen, resulting in the emerging market bubble (much of is US monies) bursting as we speak. This last, the latest chapter.
And it is making the greenback worthless. Raising the cost-of-living for anyone paid in US dollars.
6. For those looking at retirement options, the decline of dollar becomes yet another reason to travel and move away. For instance, I spent my last Christmas day with a sixty year old semi-retired petroleum engineer, after a day of skiing at Vail. I took him to dinner.
He explained how when he was fifty and happily retired and living to good life on the beach in Indonesia. A servant and a cook. He would have been happy to stay there forever.
But an opportunity he couldn't miss led him to leave and go to Colorado and new frontiers in oil and gas in nearby states. (Another friend has become fabulously rich, with his recently minted Ivy League EE background - same for his Cali state school educated Dad - in the fracking bonanza. Private jet rich - with much more to come.) Now he's doing a hike through Northern Spain before hitting the Middle East - after doing Micha Picu in South America.
He has the option of working, or enjoying his (single) retirement, since he divorced after his kids grew up.
Where else in the world can you go anywhere and find their bliss doing one of several or many things? Only Americans.
More so than the Brits and Dutch before us could. At least, today, more people than those smaller, much smaller nations ever dreamed of doing, even when they were the world-leading "rich."
These are my additions to the reasons jim offered for Americans to indulge their
wanderlust.
ENJOY THE DECLINE! Now, back to you,
Mr. Anderson.
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