If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting from now on, we'd appreciate it.
LA is a car-centric sprawling cesspool. Even for the US, it’s uniquely terrible.
If you’d moved to some of the less desirable locations in Europe, you’d probably find them to be a shithole, too.
Your lack of perspective (“how much of a shithole the USA really is”) is something I’d only expect from someone half your age on their first backpacking tour of Europe.
I can absolutely confirm the sentiment of the OP, not coming from worst to best but coming from mid range to mid range. Europe has the better package. The amount of homeless, the amount of wasted landscape, the amount of beton, the car dependency, the disgusting public transport, the hotels, the water, ... I can rant for an hour. I love Americans, i deeply respect a lot what they did and do but life quality measured in every day quality ... Do not get me started on that.
It's so difficult to get Americans to grasp that this could be true. Most simply won't contemplate that it could be true. It does not occur to us that freedom to get healthcare without fear of going bankrupt is a freedom worth having. The simple act of walking from one town to another is alien to Americans. One thing that struck me when living in Germany was the lack of development around the lakes. In the U.S. lakes mostly are surrounded by houses with little thought to letting people walk there and enjoy the lake. I much prefer the European way of life. Europeans know how to live better than Americans. But we Americans can burn Korans, walk around with guns, and do Nazi salutes so we must be more free than Europeans....
Sie werden nicht für Demut gezüchtet, während die meisten Europäer heutzutage...
Ach. Ich editiere das mal: Beide sind so dumm, dass die Schweine sie beissen! Grunz
I'm a Canadian and I've travelled most of Europe, and most of the US (among other parts of the world).
The simple fact that the US doesn't have universal healthcare, and refuses to do anything real about it, or other endemic self-inflicted issues like gun violence - problems the rest of the modern world solved long ago! - kinda puts you at the bottom of the list of modern/developed countries in my book.
OP used a rather inflammatory term for sure, but he's not wrong when comparing pros/cons of first-world countries to the US. Y'all have real problems that you could solve but _choose_ not to.
It's obviously not all bad, there are lots of things to love about the US, but I would never ever choose to live there for the reasons above and more.
I don't feel like my reply was nationalistic (I'm Canadian, we're the least patriotic people around!), inflammatory or nasty in any way, but I will skip these kinds of convos in the future.
Swipes like the following are nationalistic putdowns, no different from the kind of thing we ask other users not to post here:
> kinda puts you at the bottom of the list of modern/developed countries
> Y'all have real problems that you could solve but _choose_ not to
> It's obviously not all bad
As a median middle-class person, Canada is pretty clearly the winner. Significantly less economic precarity, lots of mostly (cough Canada Post) well-run public services, and a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy that government can make people's lives better.
As a median HN reader, it's a little bit more of a mixed bag:
The pay for software development work in the US is probably about double in terms of PPP versus Canada.
The fact that the US is a much bigger market means that a lot of apps/consumer goods/services are available in the US months or years before they launch in Canada. For online orders, delivery is faster, prices are cheaper, and the selection is better in the US.
Lastly, and this is kind of specific to the Greater Vancouver/Victoria area, but you pretty much have to be part of the 1% to afford a nice house in any moderately interesting city. I think a lot of this has to do with having the mildest weather in Canada and the geographic constraints of the mountains and waterways (along with being fucked up in pretty much all the same ways as the US real-estate market). That said, in Canada the 1% isn't comically out of reach for a moderately prosperous software nerd.
My biggest gripe with the US is the overall sense of incuriosity. Say what you will about American Exceptionalism, if you answer every question of "why don't we <do thing> like <country that does it way better than us>?" with "because we're different", rather than asking if we could try to emulate the way that <country> does <thing>, it leads to a lot of unnecessary stagnation. If the US can at some point get over itself, it probably has a lot of opportunity for catch-up growth.
What is funny, is how many Canadians come to the US for faster or better treatment. No more 3 month wait list to get a basic procedure. It's almost like there are pros and cons to every system, eh?
I have a roommate who hasn't had health care most of his adult life because the cost is so high and the fact that most low-end jobs don't offer any. But fuck him I guess.
Well that's certainly not the majority of people, and I did say _universal_ health care, not "health care for those who can afford it".
Look, I get it... In the US, your worth as a person - and your access to essential services - is tied to your wealth.
And while that's a horrible and cruel way to be, it's all you know, so you don't see that it is, particularly if you've never been on the wanting end of that deal.
> I'm a Canadian
Presented without comment.
LA isn’t even the worst in that regard (I’d take LA over DFW)
I don’t know where you are from, but LA is actually representative of large swaths of the US, and highlights some of the best things about America (namely multiculturalism and diversity)
I share a lot of your perspectives too, but I’m pretty content with my little corner up in the PNW.
I actually grew up in LA, and now live in the foothills outside of Boulder on a large forest property — which is nothing like LA or Vienna.
I haven’t run into many areas of the US reminiscent of LA, and the US is enormous. It can’t be painted with a single (and such a reductive) brush.
No, not even close.
Not identical, but representative yes.
The USA is a huge shithole, and if you don't understand why anyone would think that, I have a bridge to sell you .. under which live 12 families, kids and all, who couldn't pay their medical bills after Mom/Grandpa died of cancer.
It is a very American thing to get so upset when the country is criticized. Haven't run into that in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, or Serbia. Okay, the Hungarians can match American nationalism at times, but for the most part you guys have a monopoly on incomprehensibly bone-headed nationalism occluding your view of the wonders of the rest of the world...
Another reason could be the mindless, abject hatred you seem to have of the country. If you approached your criticisms rationally they likely would be better recieved. Instead it sounds like you're spouting what you've read on woke twitter and have left no room for compromise. Saying "The USA is a shithole" is akin to saying "Europe is a shithole". It's a blanket statement that it not unilaterally true for either. I lived in Europe myself for several years and there were things I both loved and hated. There were nice areas as well as shitty areas. After spending those years in the EU, I've come to prefer the US. You're entitled to your opinion, you're not entitled to generalize an entire country and it's population and then insult someone when they object to those generalizations.
This would be a fair argument if you, as an American, weren't ignoring the fact that the USA is the worlds #1 cause of terror, war and torment - in countless other sovereign nations, whose infrastructure was torn apart so that Americans could feel good about themselves and their country.
Austrians, and Germans aren't dropping bombs on innocent people every twenty minutes. Your perception that America is unjustly criticized belies the fact that just maybe, you need to travel a bit more to see that a lot of the world is seriously fed up with America's bullshit. The point of travelling is to try to understand that a bit better, and I hope you do that. In the same way that I generalize about America being a shit-hole - Americans generalize, and then drop bombs.
When you say "a lot of the world" you really talking about a very specific subset of the world, while there is also much of the world grateful for our presence as we are the only real deterrent from NK, Russia, or China taking their country by force. Feel free to deny or say that I'm "othering" or am perpetuating a boogey-man, but there is very real data and intelligence to support these claims, I'm not just pulling it out of my ass.
One of the few things I liked about Trump was his statements that our allies need to spend more on defense. We should not shoulder the burden alone.
https://thediplomat.com/2015/06/evolution-of-the-u-s-rok-all...
Pax Americana has been the most productive time in modern history. Europe's track record is objectively worse
For a nation to be as wealthy as we are and to be in the state we are in I think it’s fair to say the U.S. is a shit hole country. Our patriotism and propaganda blind us to this fact.
Before you criticize everyone and everything else, take a look at your own behavior and see if there's anything you can do to mitigate harm at your scale.
I haven’t criticized everyone or everything else. I criticized the U.S. for being as wealthy as it is and being in the state it is in. It’s not a good look for you to complain about overgeneralizing and then write the above overgeneralization.
My presidential voting record:
George Bush 1992
Bob Dole 1996
Green Party 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012
Donald Trump 2016
My air is clean, my commutes are traffic free, the people here generally suck, and I have access to world class... everything, if I want it (well, maybe not transportation, but my car is nice, German even!, and I can get everywhere in it pretty easily). Because I'm wealthy, I can afford all of the things you get for free in Germany without it negatively affecting my way of life, which probably helps substantially, but that's part of America too.
I want to move to Europe from the US, everything you described is amazing, but maybe it's a shithole to you because you've only been to a few places in the US.
Hawaii is in the US. Puerto Rico, Alaska, The Everglades, Sequoia National Park, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park; it's hard to go to those places and walk away thinking they're "shitholes".
The USA is huge. Some of it is a shithole, and where you lived for 15 years is probably closer to shithole than not, but "The USA is a huge shithole" is probably not as true as you're making it out to be here.
As an outsider, this looks like the biggest problem in the US. The EU is no utopia, but standards of living, environment and way of life is pretty good for the "not-wealthy". In the US, it looks like you can also have a pretty damn good standard of living with a nice environment... but only if you are in the fairly wealthy minority. Which perhaps explains why there is such a focus on unobtainable "prosperity", to make it to the "other side".
Even if I can afford it, that concept of society doesn't appeal to me at all, it feels pseudo-elitist based on something that is mostly dictated by random opportunity - sorry if that sounds horrible.
You're mostly right. Except the threshold for a nicer life isn't the wealthy minority. i'd hazard a guess that it's somewhere below median income i.e. i could get so much more in most of the US for the median income vs what i could get in most parts of Europe for the median income. however the bottom quarter have so many more problems here. Coincidentally this is about the amount of people struggling to afford medical care.
Personally (having lived many places) i would want to be in a much higher income quotient in Europe.
Romania and Bulgaria are part of the EU. Some 25-30 million people in total. Do you think the standards of living are "pretty good" for the non-wealthy Bulgarians?
Even with this caveat, there is a difference in principle that I believe distinguishes the way of life for the less wealthy in the US compared to most of the EU. A big part of US culture seems to be something along the lines of "everyone for themselves", and "paying your own way", which neglects those not blessed with opportunity and seems to encourages larger wealth disparity. I do not believe most of the governments of the EU share this principle, but I welcome counter examples. That said, it's also not black and white: even the US borrows socialist tools to equalise such disparities where it's been proven to work best, such as public schools and libraries.
Because I too can reduce this comparison to a couple of well picked numbers like say per capita GDP or number of companies in top 100 by market cap and conclude that it is EU who should borrow capitalist programs from the US, not the other way around.
But I won’t…
Perhaps write from a place with less "preconceived conclusions" about the other commenters motives next time.
I don't think you have seen how poor people live on either side of the Atlantic and yet you believe being poor in EU is inherently better than in the USA. What is your source of information?
You have to understand though, when I travel to the EU, my personal quality of life drops, because of that fact. I understand why, and I don't think any less of the EU because of it (I want to live there someday), but if you're lucky enough to be marginally wealthy in the US, it's a whole different experience, and a lot of HN users will fall into that "fairly wealthy minority".
You're not talking to the median income folks in the US if you come to HN, I would guess. But we don't have to lift a finger to get to experience all the best parts of the US, without many/any of the downsides.
True, I think there probably is another geographical difference here.
Whenever salaries are discussed on HN there appears to be one or two zeros difference compared to the median salary over here for similar jobs - only as a casual observation, I can't be sure (i.e we get paid significantly less). If it's true, I suspect this is because of the differences in income threshold for a decent standard of living, and because of certain aspects that are mostly decoupled from salary such as social health care.
Another resulting difference then, might be that on average workers of tech jobs in the EU are more likely to rub elbows with and be more relatable to people of "less prestigious" jobs - which I think is probably a good thing - I feel like I'm about to be accused of being a socialist though :P
I grew up in Fayetteville AR watching my family struggle at multiple times... especially over health care emergencies. Ultimately this led me to leave the country. I'd recommend you take a look around your city / state and look at the damage we are doing to people who have less than us.
They deserve to rot in poverty for their regressive, racist views, and the hate the spews from that town and out into the rest of America.
They do so much more damage than I ever could by making a good living.
All Americans are stuck in a perpetual guerilla war that is American society, and until that changes nothing will change.
I think that most progress in society is made through the death of the previous generation and new ideas being more accepted. It is slow but crunches on over the bones of the old. And, this is why it is so important culture/society/government get in there to break the poverty cycle, break the ignorance, teach critical thinking, etc etc etc...
But the nationalist culture, the pride and arrogance, the ignorance of the cost to the rest of the world of American moral authority - this is prevalent no matter where you go in the USA.
And then, there's the social fabric. Go outside and find your nearest bum, living on the street. Get to know them and how they go there. That is a very American circumstance.
My worry for you is that this reaction is a visceral one, fundamentally rooted in a dislike for America's diversity.
It's a messy process, getting everyone to work together, and we're fucking it up pretty monumentally, but to call the effort a "shithole" seems like you'd prefer the US be less diverse? Fewer disagreements would arise, but at what cost?
Germany and Austria have... less than stellar records when it comes to human rights, and aren't exactly known for their exploding levels of diversity on a national level, so perhaps the "unity" you're experiencing came at a cost? Perhaps that very cost was something that disgusted you in the US?
I wonder how a Muslim would describe living in Vienna vs. living in, say, Chicago or DC.
Fully absent from your consideration is the fact that both Austria and Germany are part of the EU, a project in diversity maybe only outdone by the indian federal state.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_G...
And EU diversity isn't anything like American diversity. Your countries are nothing like our states, our "mixing" is a lot higher.
The US has to solve problems of a kind and at a level Germany and Austria will never have to deal with. The scales just don't compare, it's laughable to even try.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...
I was wondering if this might be because most immigration in Germany is actually from more or less neighboring EU countries, and according to [1], that group accounts for 2/3 of the immigrants.
[1] Figure 2: https://www.bamf.de/DE/Themen/Forschung/Veroeffentlichungen/...
I think this is thankfully becoming at least slightly less common, at least among educated Americans. For me at least the combination of meeting more people outside my bubble, travelling and learning more about the history of the United States has led me to a similar conclusion that you have reached.
A few weeks ago I returned to my rural Minnesota hometown to see people that had come from families that had lived there multiple generations wearing confederate flag clothing. I wonder if they had any concept of which side their forefathers would have been fighting with back then.
You were a tourist here. You lived in Los Angeles. Yet you somehow feel emboldened to call a nation of 330M+ people "A huge shithole"? And you haven't met any nationalistic Serbians? Sorry if I don't take you seriously.
OP seems to deal in intense absolutes
Florida had the highest net migration in the US both domestically and internationally. Here's the census data for 2021:
The largest net domestic migration gains were in Florida (220,890), Texas (170,307) and Arizona (93,026).
Florida (38,590), Texas (27,185) and New York (18,307) had the largest population gains from net international migration.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2021-pop...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/florida-affordable-h...
I get it that Floridians don't want a nanny state, but this kind of thing is why the below-median lifestyle in the state looks like a shithole from a European POV.
The fact that the 1% is so well-off makes the picture look even worse.
I'm convinced that other states and countries try to smear Florida because they're terrified what would happen if they themselves had the bravery to commit to Florida's level of governmental transparency.
https://uwf.edu/go/legal-and-consumer-info/florida-sunshine-...
Most of the time it’s just punching downwards.
You know it's working because people get caught trying to circumvent it[0]. The Attorney General hates it[1]. Without it, we wouldn't know about former governor candidate Andrew Gillum being a methhead[2]. I can't confirm this but I'm fairly sure we only know about the expired COVID tests because of this law[3].
I simply encourage you to educate yourself on Florida and to understand that their openness is something to be lauded, not feared or mocked.
[0]https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2022/01/07/2-...
[1]https://flaglerlive.com/95717/sunshine-law-snyder/
[2]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-gillum-found-at-scene-of...
[3]https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/desantis-conf...
Knowing that a former gubernatorial candidate is/was a meth head isn’t a crowning achievement.
Yes of course, making it a shithole for those who didn't.
edit: Now that I think about it your mentality fits very well with someone from Vienna, you've integrated well.
This. As someone who moved to the USA ten years ago, you do not understand "the bubble" Americans live in until you see it from inside and out. People here live on a stage with absolutely no idea that a global audience is watching them. People also can think and say things in absolute confidence which are considered ludicrous by 99% of the rest of the world.
I for a long time could not wrap my head around why so many people actively reject the idea of free health care, but it made me realize how little I appreciated when I had it.
... and it's scary how things just seem to be getting worse here with no real hope for improvement without massive reform. Reform that can only happen if something catastrophically bad happens in the near future.
edit: and I don't mean this in a critical way, I mean it objectively as possible.
Everything is so spread out and car centric. Our towns and cities are concrete jungles with massive amounts of parking lots that are rarely used. It’s very hard to live where you can walk to a grocery store. We are a nation of building dwellers using giant vehicles to take us from one building to another one. And the food; massive amounts of added sugar and fruit that is tasteless. Addicted to crappy fast food, lonely, and under exercised. Major changes are desperately needed.
Very hard seems like an exaggeration. More expensive, maybe, but millions of low-income people also do it.
I didn't have a car for most of my twenties, and the majority of my social group didn't either. Living in a more spread out area of the US is a choice-- one that comes with benefits, but still a choice.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/august/most-us-hou...
I think you can agree that in most places, if you are walking to get groceries, you are either living in a well to do area, or you are forced to because you can’t afford a car, and it isn’t a pleasant experience.
If you count entire cities as "well to do areas" then I suppose I agree.
And no it isn’t the same thing, but that was what parent comment was communicating. If people assume you are poor because you aren’t driving then you live in a place where you can’t walk to get groceries, in a practical sense, because clearly for any normal person the trade offs are prohibitive.
I made my reply assuming the parent comment meant literally what they said. If you are reading another meaning into it, that's fine and I don't disagree. But they also don't contradict my comment, so why frame it like an argument?
I find it odd that you’re asking why I’m framing it as an argument as though an argument wasn’t already framed.
I don't at all disagree that most of the US is not walkable. Both these things can be true at the same time, but I felt the literal statement of the parent comment was incorrect, so I corrected it.
And I really should apologize, I think some of my own frustration was taken out on you there. I personally would really rather not own a car, but outside of the northeast, it’s very impractical to do so.
The city boasts a strong spiritual history, which I sense, causes people to come here to either flourish, or get spit out. There's not much in the way of hiking/mountains around here, and the most beautiful natural environments are in the swamp amongst the gators and pelicans dancing through the soft and grassy patches of muddy land dotting the waters edge. There are no other cities I really like visiting within an hour. It's a bright blue dot in a fire-red state. Car-jackings are up 550% over last year, and the particular circumstances by which someone killed someone with a machete at the gas-station down the street from my house, I'm sorry to say, were unsurprising.
Having said that, I can't live the rest of my life not having *lived* outside of the US. I'll be moving to Berlin at some point, because that's the closest city that felt like it feels here. The food is cheaper, you can find Indian food, and there are more languages spoken. The government there doesn't feel like some morally corrupted festering cesspool of civil indifference and political myopia. Despite everything I love about this place, and that I'm quite certain I'll retire here, I'm eager to GTFO while I still feel young, to experience what its like to feel young in a place more free than the farce I've been raised to believe. I have friends in Berlin, and though German is pretty hard to speak well, I'm up for the challenge.
Anyone who hasn't has to be blind or something. Germany has a highly stratified society besides the N/S/E/W split.
In which European countries could you not do that? I’m in Scandinavia and can’t imagine what kind of problem regarding religious practice you would encounter here that you wouldn’t in the US or UK.
This has to be satire. In fact, this whole comment has to be satire.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/9/a-law-against-islam https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-passes-new-bill-to-tight...
Those who prefer to act in a non-secular way should find better places for it.
I’m white myself, but I actually heard the opposite from non white Americans while I was living in Spain(ie they preferred it there)
Similar to the US m, Europe is a fairly large and diverse place, so it’s not like I can paint it with a broad brush.
If you post like this to HN again, we are going to have to ban you. Please read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The quality of discussion we want here is at the opposite end of the pool.
Edit: you posted a lot of other flamewar comments to this thread too. That's not ok, regardless of how bad other comments are or you feel they are. If you'd please review the site guidelines and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
(And, btw, $2,000,000 is hardly "high-roller" status, spread out in taxes over 15 years... unless of course you're one of those "living under a bridge because medical bankrupcy" Americans, lol..)
I did not say America is wonderful. I don't know why you even quoted that word, when it did not appear in my post. I claimed American taxpayers protect Australia's sovereignty. Obviously your state can do better things with its budget when its defense is bankrolled by someone else. I do not care where you live, your quality of life would plummet if the prospect of being invaded by Russia or China was a real one, a prospect you are protected from through American military supremacy. See Ukraine.
Didn't seem to help the Ukraine at all last time around. :/
This is purely inflammatory rhetoric. Ironically coming from someone who immigrated, was afforded the opportunity to make enough to pay $2M in taxes in 15 years (and even goes on to brag about this payment funding blowing up brown kids), and found the "American Dream" by his own statement.
You're free to hate America. We're free to be happy you left. But really you're gone, just go on enjoying your life. America isn't perfect and has a lot of problems but I'm much happier here than I would be in Europe, it's definitely not a "shithole" to me, my family, or most of the people I know.
Replace Americans with any other nationality and see how offensive this sounds.
>"The weather was pretty good in LA. But, still: Americans."
The latter statement clearly negates the former. It's fascinating that the irony of those two conflicting statements was completely lost on you.
Further your use of a monolithic "Americans" is almost comical. Honestly it sounds as though maybe you didn't get out of LA very much in your 15 years. And as others have also pointed out LA is not at all representative of the rest of the country.
Looks like you gained a different one though.
Quality of life is pretty high in Australia, though, I have to admit. Nothing quite like hitting the beach after work - which I did a few times in LA, only to get a horrendous infection. But, still, I am lucky enough to choose my path and I am for sure never going back to Australia to live. Or, LA/USA.
People replying to you (Americans?) seem to take great offense to your (harsh) criticism of America but it's largely on the mark. The US has many good things going for it but they mostly have to do with having a lot of money/power, trying to get a lot of money/power or being ideologically way off to the right.
I don't know what you dislike about Australian culture but for me it's the parochial nature of the place along with the smugness combined with the cultural cringe. It does indeed have a great quality of life as long as you enjoy beer, sports and the beach. You'll find the most interesting Australians are elsewhere in the world. To give it due credit it is a country with massive immigration (30% of residents were born overseas) where people by and large get on very well with each other.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I mean, that's great that you can walk to places and eat tasty food but I feel like you left out a large part of what it's like to live somewhere.
Honestly, it took me 5 years to feel comfortable speaking fluent German - mostly because Germans just refuse to correct German-speaking expats, instead choosing to switch to their English ..
I had hitherto been unaware of this proclivity, thanks for educating us all.
Germany is still doing cleanup of WW2 damages today, everyone has experienced at least one evacuation due to old leftover bombs being found. It’s hard to support war when its damages are still deep in the collective consciousness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitali_Klitschko#Political_car...
>UDAR is supported by the German government and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation[93][94] and received support in particular from Angela Merkel and also politicians from the conservative European People's Party. According to information gained by the German magazine Der Spiegel, the target was to "set up Klitschko purposefully as a new strong man in Kyiv—in order to counter this way the Kremlin's growing influence".
>Klitschko was one of the dominant figures of the Euromaidan protests.
Germany hasn't exactly kept their hands clean over the last few years. But I'm glad you enjoy the propaganda.
Oh boy, this gave me a good chuckle. Thanks for that.
In my case, I am a native Czech who speaks flawless Czech, but some people actually refuse to acknowledge me as a Czech on account of my Bulgarian surname. (Funnily some of them cannot even write properly, but hey, they are Nováks or Kučeras and I am not.) Not a majority, but this kind of tribalism is more widespread here than in countries that were founded on mass immigration.
When I self taught, I primarily used Assimil and Pimsleur daily for the first six months. After completing those programs, I continued with the daily study (that’s the most important part!) and used Easy German the YouTube channel, watched a bunch of German shows, and worked on speaking just by narrating / describing random things and looking up words as needed.
LA has a reputation even within the US of being what you describe as a "shithole."
I lived in Germany for years, the former east, and it would be unfair to call Germany a "shithole" based on my own experience in the former Soviet bloc, which has struggled both pre and post reunification due to Communist rule.
Come on, dude. Germany was "communist" for less than 40 years. You have been "free" and cool for 33 and counting. The wall existed for only 28. Are you going to keep blaming "communists" for the next 400 years? :D
In fact, there is special income tax, Solidaritätszuschlag, that is paid on all income as special assistance in rebuilding and equalizing the former East.
And you know nothing about me.
I know you think the east side of Germany is not a good place today because what happened there more than 30 years ago.
But you know what? GDR commies said in the late 80s their regime was not a good place either because what happened there 40 years earlier! Sound familiar?
Did you go visit Srebrenica when you were there?
These are exactly the kinds of faux profundities I used to hear — and say! — traveling in youth hostels in my late teens.
It’s jarring to see them coming from someone ostensibly past forty.
You can take the train, no need to drive even better!
WHERE: I'm Australian, moved to LA when I was 18 and lived there for 15 years. Then, I moved from Los Angeles to Germany (Duesseldorf), and then to Vienna, Austria.
WHAT SACRIFICE: No more In 'n Out Burger, no more decent Mexican/TexMex food, no more LA food trucks. These are literally the only things I miss about the USA. Literally every other aspect of life has improved massively by leaving the USA - healthcare, food, social life. For the first 4 years I walked to work, ffs. Now I ride a bicycle in combination with the best public transportation options in the world (Austria, Vienna).
GAINED: I've completely lost the brain-dead nationalist mentality that had infected me in my earlier life, I've gained Immense amounts of respect for humanity, I've learned German, I've experienced professional software and hardware development away from Silicon Valley standard practices, and I get to see the USA from outside the decadent, rose-colored bubble from which it is usually experienced. I honestly wish I'd left sooner - every time I go back I'm reminded just how much of a shithole the USA really is ..
Plus, living and loving in Europe is just great. There is no greater joy than a trip through the Balkans for a week adventure, or maybe a jaunt to Spain or southern France. Just being able to travel an hour in any direction and being immersed in absolutely foreign culture is a joy like no other. Definitely a great way to ground oneself.
EDIT: The weather was pretty good in LA. But, still: Americans.