Seems like it’s a well known fact that being poor or even middle class (if that will even exist anymore) in the US disposes one to a very low quality of life (e.g., living in areas with higher crime rates, bad healthcare, the most obvious being cost of living, …etc)
On the flip side, what are some reasons why the top 1-5% percentile would also want to leave the US? (e.g., taxes/financial benefits, no longer aligning with the culture? I would assume mainly the former)
If you are in the top 1-5%, is living in the US still the best place to live? (as many people would like to suggest)
While my money goes further in Europe, that’s not the primary reason I live here. I don’t like spending a lot of time in cars and European cities are more pleasant and walkable. The weather in southern Spain is among the best in the world. (I am from the SF Bay Area and lived years in Southern California and Baja. The weather here is better.) I have children and worry about US drug culture for bourgeois kids at private schools. Here is more sheltered. The lifestyle is more culturally conservative here without being churchy. As an atheist I like that. I have a daughter at one of the Phillips Academies in America as a boarder. I like the education there but the American kids are more materialistic than when I attended a similar boarding school forty years ago in Massachusetts. Only the very elite American restaurants hold their own against the top ten percent of European restaurants. The one exception to this is ethnic cuisine- Mexican and Asian and the like. There are more places to travel from Europe. Both in Europe and from Kenya to India.
America has declined a lot in recent decades. While a weekend in Cape Cod is nice for catching up with old friends, the lifestyle in Europe is better. With one caveat: camping and outdoor life is better in North and South America.
You’ve never partied with the pijos 👀
Could be. But in my small hometown in the US, less than 2500 year round residents, there were 14 fentanyl overdoses in a recent year. Three quarters of them under 25 years old.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but a few caveats.
California is not churchy at all
America, and especially California, is more culturally diverse than Spain. This is reflected in the food but impacts daily life as well.
It’s true that California is more diverse than Spain. Absolutely. I found upper middle class San Diego too churchy for me. I don’t like the assumption some people make that you have to be a believer. I was in military circles, admittedly. So you’re right there, too. I shouldn’t have tarred California’s reputation with that accusation. It’s more of a general American problem once you leave the coasts.
If you don’t believe in God and have a religion… then something else fills the void… what could it be… wokeism, climate change…
You must also like how it’s less “woke” there vs in CA
So I am not necessarily onboard with some of the excesses in America. (I was recently told by an American that she wouldn’t go to a Picasso museum because he “culturally appropriated” African art.) but America is a place of extremes. I am not keen on the GOP’s embrace of its far right, either. Spain is both socially conservative and politically liberal. In my town there is an LGBT safe space in the youth center, contraception is easy to come by, and people are non judgmental but respect social norms and don’t get mean with each other.
For what it’s worth I used to have a job that brought me close to a lot of US politicians in both parties. Of all of them, from Bernie Sanders to Mitch McConnell to Lindsay Graham, the single most impressive one I’ve met is Gavin Newsom, who I’ve worked and socialized with. I didn’t expect to like him. The first impression is of a slick pretty boy. But he’s the whole package and one political thing I miss about California.
Cringe. So sick of woke Americans in Europe. Go back to the states you ruined and bear the responsibility for your shitty voting behavior. So privileged to destroy your own states and then just leave the poor people behind to deal with the consequences, while you fly off to Spain and mess up their realestate market and leech off their taxpayer funded healthcare …
I have private healthcare. I vote in Massachusetts. Is that a problem for you? Why on earth? Oh. I see with have here a disgruntled racist Dutchman who has anger management issues. Relax. Life is short You can change.
Me fondly recalling the days when being woke was a good thing…
Oh well. I guess we can’t have nice things anymore.
Yes because the woke states turned out great … So great the people that made them that way I fleeing to Europe where they aren’t wanted.
Precisely.
Hello fellow atheist from the Bay Area! I’m also planning to emigrate to Europe for similar reasons that you described.
Great post, now I’m seriously considering moving to Southern Spain. Just gotta figure out the immigration situation.
Don’t bother. Americans are not welcome.
Ugh. It’s always people from the worst Democrat states too. Probably bringing the same shitty politics with them that destroyed their states in the first place. Stay in the US. We don’t want you here.
Take your meds
I am a Phillips alum and am moving my family to Europe for many of the reasons you outline. My daughter is in kindergarten and I see at 5 the materialism, irrelevant competitiveness amongst kids and parents alike from birth, and general deviation from the education I received as a child (both public and private) in MA. It makes me laugh, yet feel incredibly sad, when parents put their kids in hyper competitive, all-encompassing sports or activities from age 3+ and totally rob them of the experience of being a child. We’re hoping for less of that in Europe and more quality time, less social media influence on kids (we never see kids looking at phones in public in Spain), and a realignment of what is preached as “important” in raising children
The quality of life for children in most of Europe is so much higher than for the US. Children are prioritized.