As someone who, like you, was born in Europe, I feel like half of those points are open for debate and the other half are nonsensical. Are you saying that the nation that is the home of the Flint water crisis and has a weaker Environmental Protection Agency than ever is something you move to in order to get "cleaner air and water"?

What do you mean when you say "diversity"? Have you been to the mid west? There are "un-diverse" and "diverse" areas of almost every country. People in the US are "optimistic"? "Friendly" and "humble"? The claim that Americans are "humble" when compared internationally is almost laughable (probably even by most americans), and I doubt that "friendliness" is really something you see drastic differences in around the globe. For the the last one there's no need to ask your gut because there are studies made regarding in what countries people feel the most optimistic about the future. As a matter of fact, most of them have pointed out China as the most optimistic country, which may make sense in a perspective of economical relative growth, but it doesn't on its own make me want to buy an apartment in Shanghai.

> I doubt that "friendliness" is really something you see drastic differences in around the globe

So, you have never been to Eastern Europe or CIS countries.

Does your definition or "friendliness" assume that you speak the local language? Because if the answer is yes, I have no doubt you can find equally friendly (and rude) people in Eastern Europe as you can in Beijing, London, Cairo or New York. You may have a different opinion but I believe that there is a basic level of humanity anywhere in the world, and that this level often has an inverse correlation with material wealth.[1] That being said, if you can't use mutually intelligible words for things, people tend to become a bit reserved. That's something that's true everywhere in the world.

If you assume an English speaker traveling around, I would argue it's not a fair comparison to equate the friendliness of a stranger in Russia with the friendliness of a stranger in the United States, for example -- not only because of pure language reasons, but also for simple reasons of historical, educational, and cultural context. Not that finding a rude American is hard, mind you. I'm speaking from experience as an ESL speaker who has been there several times :-)

(But, to answer your question, no, I have unfortunately not been to EE/CIS -- but I have been to China, which I think is a strong contender.)

[1]: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/save/why-poor-pe...

I was born and live in Eastern Europe. I have also lived in Israel for a few years, and have visited other countries for significant period of time.

People here are much less trusting and are much more aggressive to others. It is actually LESS visible if you're a foreigner, because people are also concerned with self-image, and don't really perceive you as a threat or a contender for anything.

As an American who doesn't speak Russian, you'll get a much better treatment from stranger on a street than another Russian would.

> I believe that there is a basic level of humanity anywhere in the world, and that this level often has an inverse correlation with material wealth.

Every possible crime statistics contradicts this. Poor countries in general view violence as something more normalised than advanced ones.

I know someone that spent several weeks walking and hitch-hiking around Georgia. Everywhere he went, the locals welcomed him in, gave him a place to stay and invited him to dinners full of local food, local wine and raucous toasting. His single bad experience was in a hostel with another foreigner who turned out to be a racist arsehole.

As I answered to another reply, you would also get a much better reception as a foreigner than as a local. Especially if you're tourist with money. Not because they make a cynical decision to appear hospitable, they're sincere in their sympathy to you: you're not a threat or a competitor to them, unlike another local.

Fine, but this whole thread is about why someone would move from the UK to the US.

In the zoomed out view shown by default the air quality is visualized as almost identical in Europe and the U.S. so I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I'd also encourage you to think about the correlation between air quality and population density -- compare the Scandinavian countries for example with the large swaths of land in the U.S. that have excellent air quality: they likely have one thing in common which is the amount of people that actually live there.

It is entirely unclear to me what that map represents. Is air pollution the worst in the Sahara, where practically nobody lives?

When you say unmatched that implies that nowhere else in the world can give opportunities in those fields that are equal, and that is plain wrong, in fact the USA is slipping from being the top in those. When you say population that's more welcoming to migrants, as someone from Africa, my own and those I know, our perception of the USA has changed so much that many people I know would not even consider moving there due to your current attitudes towards Muslim, Latin American and African migrants. When you say outdoors with cleaner air and water, I hear of your fracking, of Flint, of mass open cast mines across your country, of your president leaving the Paris climate agreement. When you say cheap prices, I've been all over the Third World and the USA is not cheap at all. When you say optimistic, friendly and humble, most of what I know of the USA's international actions is warmongering arrogance, of your far-right movements, of mass shootings and crazy abortion laws. I have many lovely American friends but they are not representative of the country that pushes a gun-friendly, war positive, women controlling message. That's why I wouldn't move to the US as it currently stands.

I'm European. I've travelled a lot for work though.

I'm not disputing your heritage or what you do, I'm disputing the content of your comment. You can challenge any points I made but that is a Third World perception of the USA.

I dunno if you have been to Europe but we have plenty of all that outdoors, clean air and water. From my location, it's less than 3 hours to the alps if you need even cleaner air and water with triple the outdoors.

And lots of diversity there too, almost any place has somewhere around 2000 to 1500 years of history on the books, you can walk from your current location to another place with wildly different customs and traditions within an hour.

You can say similar things about other parts of the world as well, not just Europe and the US too.

Don't underestimate the rest of the world.

Interestingly, 'villages of people with wildly different customs and traditions going back 1500-2000 years' is basically the opposite of what's meant by 'diversity' today, which is a high population of newly arrived immigrants.

The former exists precisely because people historically didn't mingle much.

The diversity of the US is largely imported, througout it's history starting from the first colonists, the US didn't have that much time to create it's own, cultural diversity to the extend that europe has yet.

I don't think most people would qualify diversity as "lots of newly arrived immigrants", even those who champion diversity, they'll likely get closer to "people from lots of different life experiences".

I think the term is generally used to refer to a melting pot of cultures as opposed to a bunch of adjacent monocultures.

I'm not passing judgement on either.

Europe isn't really a monoculture or a set of monocultures either. Over it's entire history, cultures have mixed and seperated all the time. I don't think the "melting pot of cultures" is any different here than in the US other than the US has less history with it.

It's different because in Europe you have people whose ancestors have lived in the same village for hundreds or thousands of years. They walk the land where their language was invented.

Maybe their ancestors aren't really as pure as they think, but it's still fundamentally different from a country where everyone is an immigrant within the last few generations.

People didn't really stay in the same village all the time, there is plenty of mixing going on in history. Languages have moved as well, the german-french border can write you a long essay about that.

Considering the current political climate in the US, the difference isn't that large...

It's a different kind of diversity. But Europe has plenty of ethnic diversity too. If you were to believe American right-wing pundits (you shouldn't) we're being overrun by Muslim immigrants here. That's an exaggeration of course, but there are many European countries with significant numbers of immigrants and expats from all over the world. Amsterdam, not New York, is the city hosting the largest number of nationalities in the world.

I'm born and raised in Europe.

If you were, which I doubt, I would assume you didn't move around much or went to vacations in and around Europe. I would recommend doing that at some point, it's lovely.

This article suggests that its not "more welcoming to immigrants than any other place in the world by far" if a single private IM can get a guy banned for life.

Still a great place to visit, but I'll take a burner phone next time. Maybe a Huawei device :)

They are not wrong. I am Russian living in Europe, occasionally visiting the US.

Here in Switzerland, and to a lesser extent in the rest of the western Europe, I will always feel like an immigrant. It is cultural, there is always a divide of those who lived here before and those two came after. Perhaps only my children or their children will be able to fully integrate here.

In the US it is different. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome to get there, including very insensitive TSA employees who have arbitrary powers over you, but when I come out of the airport building — I am an American. A Russian American, yes, but still there are nearly no differences in the attitude compared to everybody else. People are friendly and helpful, no matter if I speak with some strange accent or don’t look like a local. This is amazing, it is something that Americans take for granted, but it is a very big deal.

It's probably not possible to have both these things together in the long term:

* A strong distinctive local culture.

* Treating immigrants just like locals.

Immigrants aren't going to learn the local dialect of Schwyzerdütsch unless you give them some kind of incentive, are they?

The way I see it based on atemerev's comment, the American treatment of immigrants is part of their strong local culture.

A phone without data is just as likely to raise suspicion. It's come up before.

You must be joking or have never left the US for more than a few days.

I was born and lived most of my life in Europe.

Actually no European would say that, it would be (for example) "I was born in France and lived there, but also in Germany and Portugal".

sarcastic comments should have ~s after them. yours must be sarcastic as everything you have listed is fiction.

-Says CareerAddict, “The average scientist in Switzerland receives an annual salary of roughly $95,000 (in Euros, of course), making Switzerland the country with the highest salary for scientists in the world. The best scientists can earn over $100,000 per year, though that is primarily in the private sector.”

-An Investopedia article uses a World Bank report to rank Singapore as the top country for entrepreneurs (source: Best And Worst Countries For Entrepreneurs | Investopedia).

-The UK has scooped the first spot in The 2019 Best Countries for Education, maintaining its rank from last year, according to a study by US News & World Report.

-Japanese researchers have won many Nobel Prizes. Japan’s particularity lay down in the fact that they achieved results in every fields : from bio-technology to robotics.

-The claim that the USA is the best for immigrants is hard to disprove in terms of study's. but, sociopolitical it is quite clear The USA isn't as welcoming as seen. cough trump cough

-"outdoors" another almost impossible metric to prove/disprove, but i know for a fact that NZ (New Zealand) is held as the best place for adventurous activities.

-Finland sits at the top of the list with a 90.68 EPI score.(EPI = Environmental performance index.) https://improb.com/top-cleanest-countries-in-the-world/

-do you know about the flint water crisis? Switzerland has the cleanest water levels in the water, to the point that many places don't even treat their water with chemicals.

-cost of living is what i'll use to debunk the claim that america is "cheap" most expensive is Switzerland at COI= 121.16, USA is 20th at 69.91. below the USA at 99 countries, including at 24th the United Kingdom at 65.28, at 48 is Fiji with 50.93 and plenty more. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.js...

-Papua New Guinea is the most diverse, There are thousands of ethnic groups in the country, each with their own languages and customs.

-supposedly china is the most optimistic, "The survey found that 94% of Chinese youth – defined in most cases as those aged 12-15 – were optimistic about their own country’s future, compared with 64% of their American counterparts. "

-Portugal is the most friendly "Friendly attitude towards expats: 94%, Ease of making local friends: 58%, Expats likely to stay forever: 47%" https://www.forbes.com/sites/jennysouthan/2018/03/21/the-wor...

-i couldn't find any stats or studies about humble, but if you have to boast about how humble you are, you probably aren't.

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Now let's talk about some things America is the leader the way in:

-the US, Lesotho, Swaziland and new guinea are the only countries in the world that doesn't have paid mandate leave for mothers of newborns.

-also the only country to not require companies to have paid vacation.

-there is also no guarantee workers will get paid Sick days.

-The US's education budget is the largest, but the results are shocking poor.

-the US exports the most weapons in the world.

-have the highest incarcerate % in the world.

-highest healthcare costs, by a staggering amount.

-babies death rate is the highest than any other industrialised country.

-the wage gap between the "uber" rich and poorest is the biggest in the world.

no hate, just don't enjoy the spread of false information.