This feels like a hole in a quickly growing market--are there firms or orgs that help consolidate visa-sponsoring job info for high-demand professions, particularly in tech? Most of what I've seen out there is generic guidance and https://relocate.me, or is EU-focused for folks already in the EEU.
There are no system factors in place that would suggest any significant growth of innovation, entrepreneurship or hi tech advancements.
Isn’t it obvious?
Only military industry will get budgets and attention. But only until the war is over.
The game plan should really be more centered around making your money in the US and then moving for the better quality of life or to do something that aligns with your values. I'd say it's the moving wealth part where people are more likely to fall into traps (ever heard of an exit tax?), but even then you're probably still better off hiring a local account (cost me 2k when I first moved to Denmark, and another 2k when I left :facepalm:).
Where else other than USA does tech pay such a multiple of median salary?
“Huff puff I’m going to leave” is easy. Finding somewhere to actually go isn’t.
Why, indeed?
In all seriousness, the language barrier among other things makes it a pretty big challenge to permanently move here.
That's not a passive-agressive insult. To the contrary Europe made its mind up and does it.
And by stable economic policies do you mean “stagnant”? The EU couldn’t innovate its way out of wet paper bag.
We are talking about software developers. If you make and save enough money - you can create your own safety net.
And many countries in Europe are very much polarized if you are a Black person (https://fra.europa.eu/en/news/2023/black-people-eu-face-ever...)
And you 2/3rds consider themselves Christian - about the same as the US.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rah rah rah America at all, I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels and much of the population is overly religious, bigoted, and naive and cheering as their Dear Leader is taking away services they need just because he “owns the libs”. My still living parents grew up in the segregated South and my 6 foot 3 225 pound step son got crazy looks every time he stepped out of the house in our former home when we lived in what was a “sun down town” as recently as the mid 80s (yes this one https://youtu.be/WErjPmFulQ0?si=NN797D4aDsCGaItb).
But me personally and many of the people who post on HN and are in tech would be far worse off in any other country than here.
The most direct, biting, focused, insightful criticism on America? Americans via familiarity breeds contempt.
Europe has a fundamentally different approach than does America.
Let me work this the other way as a half serious half not serious question to show the possible impasse to making the jump into the other's perspective: how did the bureaucrats in Brussels become so powerful and unbeatable that the UK wanted out?
I don't understand what point you are trying to make, but Brexit was accepted thanks to a lot of misconceptions and downright lies from pro-Brexit politicians. Pretty sure it wouldn't be accepted today, and pretty sure that many voters have come to regret voting for it.
I see it like this: it's a spectrum. At one end of it, you have the idealistic communism: "we all get the same treatment" (I know, it's more complicated than that). Which means that you definitely won't be homeless with no perspective, but you won't be mega rich. At the other end, you could have no government and let people pay for everything. No roads, no schools. The mega rich would be fine: they would build their own private roads where it matters, move with a helicopter, and their children anyway will have some kind of private teacher. But the average population is worse off, and the poor even worse.
If you go too much towards that second end (all for the mega rich), you risk a "revolution": if enough people have nothing to lose, they will hunt down the mega rich. Everybody loses.
Obviously, if you are part of the population that is today privileged, you may be happy with an unequal society (because you benefit from it). So if your goal is to be in a better situation than most of the population, and if you can achieve that, then you're better off in the US. Now not everyone is like that. Some people like it if the average population lives better, eats better, is better educated, better informed, less polarised, ... And in that sense, the US is not remotely at the top of the list.
Yes, I pay more taxes than I would if I was in the US, where I could create my own safety net. But that's a feature, not a bug. If I earn more than the average person, I'm happy to contribute more to the public infrastructure, because I can.
> And many countries in Europe are very much polarized if you are a Black person
Of course there is racism everywhere, not sure what you were expecting when you searched for that link. But I'm pretty sure it's worse in the US.
> And you 2/3rds consider themselves Christian - about the same as the US.
It's not about that, again. You can consider yourself a Christian and not be anti-abortion, for instance. Again, the US is worse than many European countries in many regards there.
> I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels and much of the population is overly religious, bigoted, and naive and cheering as their Dear Leader is taking away services they need just because he “owns the libs”.
For many people, that's enough of a reason to prefer other countries.
> And by stable economic policies do you mean “stagnant”? The EU couldn’t innovate its way out of wet paper bag.
This is something where most Americans are simply ignorant. Do you know why the US economy is better? Access to fossil fuels. When you have more energy, you have more money and you can "innovate" more.
But "innovation" is not representative of quality of life. The US "innovates" with a lot of bullshit, or downright destructive technology. As long as is makes money, it's considered that it is good for society in the US. In Europe it's different (whether it's a choice or not, it does not matter). Europe does a lot of great things that contribute to society. If it improves society but doesn't print money, usually it stays in Europe. If the innovation has the potential to print money, usually it gets bought by the US (under some form, being just by having VC money available for that kind of technology).
Before saying "we in America invented all the modern technology", you should inform yourself a tiny bit, and realise that actually, a lot of it comes from the rest of the world. America is really good at making money in an unequal society (meaning that those innovations actually serve making the rich richer and the poor poorer).
Not saying that you should hate the US and love the rest of the world. What I'm trying to say is that many Americans believe that the US is the best country in the world, and more importantly that the rest of the world believes it as well. And that is very wrong: the American lifestyle is not desirable for a whole lot of people. Maybe it used to be in the last century, but not anymore. Not at all.
There won’t be a revolution because poor rural America is happy as long as Trump mistreats immigrants and non straight (and especially trans) people and as long as he protects Jews because they believe if Isreal doesn’t exist, Jesus won’t have a place to come back to (no exaggeration). No I don’t have any opinion one way or the other about Isreal vs Palestine.
The American people and especially the poor who overwhelmingly voted for Trump this time are going to get exactly what they voted for.
I would be more than happy for my taxes to support education, universal healthcare, fully funded pre-K, a better safety net etc. I wouldn’t have a problem if my stock returns decreased slightly because corporations paid more taxes to help a better safety net. But on the other hand I did move to state tax free (and warm) Florida when I started working remotely post 2020 and save a good chunk each year.
Why wouldn’t I take advantage of the arbitrage of being on the other side of inequality and make as much money as possible, keep 12 months expenses in savings outside of retirement savings and stack money? I vote for politicians who probably wouldn’t treat me as favorably as far as taxes to help pull others up.
The only people who believe America is the objectively best country are those who are on the other side of income gap like me and those who haven’t actually been anywhere else for any length of time and don’t realize how ridiculous for instance the American health care system is.
My wife and I have done the digital nomad thing domestically from late 2022-late 2023 only coming home to Florida for Jan-February.
Starting next year, we are going to spend a few months in Costa Rica and/or Panama City every year. I know how good and affordable the public health care system is there (caja) and even paying out of pocket is feasible for many things for health tourism. We are really leaning toward retiring there permanently or at least become legal residents.
Well, I said it was probably worse than in Europe, I did not bound it :).
> Why wouldn’t I take advantage of the arbitrage of being on the other side of inequality and make as much money as possible
If you're in the US it seems like you definitely should, because that's how it works there. My point was that if you're not part of those benefitting from that, or if you don't actually want to live in a country that values this lifestyle, then that's a reason to move to another country.
And many many countries are better than the US if you "don't mostly care about money", if I can say it like that.
On HN I often see messages from US people saying that "Europe is dying" and "Europe cannot innovate". My point is that a large part of the people in Europe would not want to live in the US, and there are reasons for that. And those US people seem to not realise it.