United States is the country that's most likely to go to shit. All of us wealthy professionals here are sitting on a powder keg of inequality and delusional politics, and nobody will be decoupled from it when it blows up.
I plan to stay for a few more years, then return to my safe North European home country with a solid stash of savings. My kids can go to good schools where teaching is in their native language. When they get older, they can go to free college if they're willing to put in the effort. When I retire, I won't need to worry about exhausting my savings because I've got a home fully paid and a sufficient baseline is guaranteed from the national pension system. There doesn't seem to by anything that would make me want to stay in America — perhaps the worst place on Earth to retire.
The people cosplaying here by repeating the values that Peter et al want them to quake will be the ones left behind.
What inequality does is ensure that there will always be two markets of consumers: one that needs goods at low prices and one that can afford higher prices for luxury goods.
As long as the lower price market exists, hoarding sufficient wealth guarantees you’ll be able to at least afford the minimum standard of living, allowing you to safely retire. If everyone was wealthy everything would be expensive and then no one would feel wealthy enough to retire.
...what if "health care" is viewed as a luxury good as it is in the statse?
There was even a leaked secret recording of heads of banks, where they basically agree that the party is coming to an end for Western Europe (due to demographics) and admire Merkel and Holland for hinting that to the population, as opposed to ignoring the problem altogether.
> In America you can compensate yourself for this risk by simply getting a job where you are paid a higher salary than the average.
Oh wow! If I want a more secure life, I'll just get a higher paying job. I didn't think of that before!
The "ladder kicking" part misrepresents their point. I see nothing they said which would preclude another person from following their same path.
As for getting a higher paying job, the problem isn't whether you thought about this clever plan, but whether you are able to actually implement it in you country.
If everyone does that then it just drives the average salary up. In other words, the system can't survive unless there's a strata of people at the bottom who are below average and, by your definition, relying on a government that possibly won't help them.
In Europe as most people rely on the government everyone has an incentive to vote for parties that won't fail those people.
I'm not from America, but moving there as a high-paid, still-young software developer was a reasonable choice for me. I might advise others in my position to do the same. I'd be less likely to tell people "you should run your country more like America".
Running out of money to pay pensions is much more common, and it seems somewhat likely given the way demographics are headed.
It works, until it doesn't. In America you can compensate yourself for this risk by simply getting a job where you are paid a higher salary than the average. Then you don't really care what happens with the social safety net, you've already hedged against it by saving and investing for yourself, and possibly becoming very rich.
Personally I'd be stressed if I were in your position. Government welfare isn't some liquid asset. If you decide you want to go live in some other country with a higher standard of living, such as the United States, is your government going to give you $100k or more to go start a life there at the same standard of living you're used to? I doubt it. You'll have to start from scratch, little to no savings, no real credit history, and paying much more for things that were a lot cheaper back in your home country. And if you were to retire in the US, I have a dim view of your future if you have no savings for retirement. If you are already close to retirement and haven't saved anything, you simply will not be able to retire.
Basically you're locked in to your home country, and have no realistic options for leaving unless you become richer. If the country goes to shit, so do you. This is not the case somewhere like America, where how well off you are is decoupled from how the country is doing as a whole. Government risk is eliminated, your cash flow and net worth is all that matters. That's much easier to understand and helps you sleep at night.
Be careful.