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)
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Safety for kids. Public transportation. Walkable cities. There are some things money can’t buy. The family from the Our Rich Journey YouTube Channel falls into the top 5% bucket and those are some of the reasons they listed.
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 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.
I think that the general way of life in other places is attractive for many (not driving everywhere for example, guns, easy access to healthcare, fresher food, more relaxed culture, less focus on consumerism) & the ability to be near more structural beauty. The US is pretty ugly in many cities imo