God please let me move to Europe I don’t even care what language I have to learn I just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
THIS is how Duolingo will get my money. That’s some value-add right there.
But the quebecois stuff just sounds religious. Weeeird. (I kid, I kid. I once had a sergeant mutter ‘sacre bleu’ to me, and I almost chuckled realizing it was an actual curse, which is the only way the day could have been made worse)
If you work in academia, you don’t need to learn a new language. English is the working language. Also the 5 weeks of holiday is nice, but what really helps is the working day.
I started as a bioinformatician a month ago. I come in to the office at 0830 have coffee from 09:00 til 09:45 with my boss and colleagues, work a bit, have lunch from 12:00 untill 13:15, work a bit, go home at 15:30. That’s my day.
Work in IT.
Start at 9:00
Lunch 13:00-14:00
Go home at 18:00
Commute (if construction does not tear up the main crossing) is around 30min 1-way with bus or a 15-20min bicycle ride.
I think IT might not be as easy as you think. Academia is a bit more open.
IT isn’t quite high skilled enough to get in. They’d almost certainly need an employer to say they couldn’t find a European to do the job, which is exceedingly unlikely.
I think he’s saying it’s harder to get a work visa taking a job in IT, as the EU company would have to first prove that they couldn’t find a European citizen to take the job before they can start hiring foreigners.
It hasn’t been my experience though, we hire lots of foreigners on work visas. Many from India and former Soviet countries especially.
I’m not in a big corp so I can just assume:
Do some countries require to proof local citizens are not worthy enough so you need to import work force from abroad?
In Spain we do have non-EU people, but oftentimes they come here, live in Spain “irregularly” at some point, and then manage to get residency through means other than an employer sponsoring them. That might not be the case everywhere though.
Both of y’all are melting American brains trying to do the math on figuring out what times you’re talking about.
Most Americans have no clue that 13:00 is 1:00pm because 12+1 is too difficult, and God help you if you say 22:00, because 22-12 might as well be euclidean geometry.
Don’t know about other countries, but in Norway you always have the option of getting websites and government information in English. Everyone speaks it including cashier’s, cleaners etc.
This is true but also keep in mind that Dutch is still leading in most cases. E.g. if you have a contract that’s both in English and Dutch, if issues arise the Dutch translation will usually be the one that is followed
Sint Maarten should check-in and tell us about the English-Dutch separation and the class system it all but foments. It’s 90% fascinating if 10% disappointing.
For some reason France really doesn’t like giving english (or any other than french) options on their gov sites. Every other country in the eu are fine.
In France, I feel French is heavily a part of their identity; and contrary to Americans fairweather-jeering their best revolutionary ally, the French do not surrender lightly. It feels like that’s the one thing even the poorest French person has, and taking away one iota of that will be met with a resistance we’ve learned to respect.
Scandinavia is absolutely killing it for bilingualism, among so many other ways they’re killin’ it – no, really, other countries should just study them for clues in general. My experiences (just Sweden, Denmark and bonus Iceland, so far) is that they say Hej and listen for your “hello”, flipping over into beautiful and perfect English without hesitation. Their language programmes are just fucking astounding, really.
Spain’s fine in the touristy spots, but Spanish itself is VERY accessible as a language, so it’s kinda moot like France.
In Germany I will have to rely heavily on the kindness of strangers as I will never grok the language.
They’re exposed to English every day from multiple sources. You aren’t allowed into university unless you can read and write English to a high level. Your text books are in English at university and classes open to exchange students are taught in English. All English media is subtitled. And school lessons in English start when they’re 6. No mystery, just practice.
I would most certainly disagree that every person speaks English. Especially older people don’t, but in general many people here do not speak a good english
No, pretty much anyone in Norway can speak English, some don’t feel confident in their ability though. But if you ask any rando on the street if they speak English you get the answer of course ".
Those are summer hours. In the rest of the year I’ll be expected to work an additional 45 minutes. Officially we only get 30 minutes for lunch, but no-one cares. When our contact in admin is in we keep it to 45 minutes.
Well this might be an anomaly but the company I worked for in the Philippines gave you a dedicated hour for lunch and two 15-minute breaks, plus two hours weekly for any of the workshops/learning opportunities they provide.
I work in the public sector. If I start my day at 06.00, I can leave at 14.30 👌 Perfect for me since I am an early riser and the days are slowly getting darker and darker again
Idk I’m from the central US and I had a German foreign exchange student tell me we didn’t have a mimicable accent. I know it’s not true but it was interesting to hear that from someone who’s familiar with everyone around her speaking in a completely different way, even when using English.
That’s common if you don’t know a language too well. There is the variant that you learned, and since you don’t know more, you think that this variant has no accent and all the other variants (that you didn’t learn and thus are hard to understand) you think have accents.
Only once you spent significant time with multiple accents will you be able to pick up the differences.
Europe, or at least Sweden, unironically sucks ass. You won’t believe me so you have to go see it to believe it, but that place is beyond overhyped. After having been there for a good amount of time, I’m starting to understand that life is actually better in the US. Sweden is only better in very niche situations.
Sweden has an extremely shitty healthcare. I mean yeah it is free, but the quality is just not good. My relatives and I have had a lot of issues where the doctors would just straight up refuse to run tests or provide treatment no matter how much in pain you are… And that’s if they even see you. For example my grandfather was urinating blood and was in severe pain, but the doctors literally told him he was fine and sent him home… Only for him to be rushed back to the hospital the same day… Before being sent back again… Before being sent back again and finally having one of the doctors decide to actually diagnose what the issue was. My uncles have similar stories that they keep telling me. America has a very flawed healthcare system, but it’s not that bad.
The salaries are very, very low and the taxes are insanely high. I work in tech. A senior developer with 10+ years of experience there would make around $60,000 to $70,000 before taxes and that’s considered really good. After taxes, they get to keep about half of that (I’m not making this up, it’s literally half). I’m currently a junior dev here in the US and have only worked for 1 year and I already make more money than that. Not only do I make more money but I pay less taxes and deductions too. So even when we take into account health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, 401k contributions, and other shit like this, I still pay less than what Sweden takes in taxes. Basically professionals in Sweden get fucked over and their lives are not that different than minimum wage workers (Sweden doesn’t really have a minimum wage but you get the idea).
The weather is pretty shitty. It’s freezing cold most of the year and in the 4 months where the country isn’t a freezer, it keeps raining nonstop. But what’s more annoying than the weather is the location of the country, it’s too far up north. In the summer the sun doesn’t set and so it’s completely bright in the middle of the night. You go outside at 2 am and it’s like going out at 6 pm here in most of the US. It really fucks with your sleep cycle. In the winter, it’s the opposite problem where it’s dark all day every day for about 3-4 months. It’s perpetual night basically. You still have to go to work, buy groceries, and do everything you need to do while it’s freezing and dark. I found it too depressing to bear.
The immigration there is horrendous. Immigrants are everywhere and the vast majority of them aren’t assimilated. Not only are they not, but they refuse to. The immigrants don’t want to embrace Swedish culture, language, and values and are instead actively against them… Which is wild to me because I’m a first gen immigrant and I consider myself American. So do most immigrants here. Most immigrants in the US want to work, speak English, and try their shot at the American dream. The US really sells the ideas of cultural hegamony and the melting pot well. You can still keep in touch with your roots, but you’re American first. Not there. In Sweden the immigrants live in bubbles that are in line with their home countries. For example, if you go to Södertälje, it’s like going to Syria. Women are afraid to wear revealing clothes, crime is really high, they’re extremely racist towards native Swedes and other ethnicities they don’t like at home, you can’t criticize islam in public or else your safety is at risk, and they’re against Swedish values of tolerance, freedom, and equality. Also a huge chunk of immigrants don’t work and don’t want to work, they just leech off of government benefits and they want to keep it that way. I had people tell me of the different schemes and loopholes they use to extract as much money from the government as possible, it’s just sad. The thing is that virtually all the ethnic communities I interacted with were like this and it doesn’t matter if they’re old or young or whether or not they’re first/second/third generation immigrants. There’s clear tension, segregation, resentment, and hate between Swedes, immigrants, and the different immigrant communities. Things are getting worse, but everybody is too scared of talking about it because they don’t want to be branded as racist, and so nothing ever happens. Everybody pretends things are just dandy when they’re not.
Swedes in general, immigrant or not, are very ignorant yet very proud. We tend to think Americans are arrogant and ignorant, but it’s true there too. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who are genuinely shocked that I didn’t have any college debt but still ended up with a degree. They unironically think they live in a borderline utopia and that America is basically the same as Afghanistan. They don’t comprehend that the US is a first world country and they’re not open to learning from other countries. They’re close minded outside of their immediate geographic neighborhood.
The markets there are bad, and the products they have are even worse. Common things that you wouldn’t even have on your mind aren’t there. Accent chairs? Nope. Memory foam mattresses? Nope. Upright vacuums? Nope. Bidets? Nope. The thing is that for the things they do have, they’re complete and utter trash. Their clothes are like towels, their beds are like tables, their appliances are like toys, and so on. The products have the same price tags as here, but when you buy it there’s nothing there. Oh, and everything is either domestic or regional. Want to buy an American vacuum and ship it there? Ha, good luck. They have import taxes that are as high as the price of the items and you also have to pay shipping which is also as high as the price of item. So if the vacuum costs $100 here, you would have to pay $300 to import it there. Fucking Walmart has greater variety and better quality than any of the stores there.
Houses there a joke. They’re extremely small and overpriced. Like 70% of the housing there comes in the form of condo complexes (kind of like the projects but nicer) or very small and crowded cookie cutter suburban styled house complexes… The other 30% are standard single family homes, and those are considered the peak of housing there but they’re mostly in rural areas. The thing is that even if you’re a masochist who enjoys living in a box, there are still things that are very annoying like for example, you don’t get to control when your heating comes on, the condo complex does. There’s no dryer, you have to book an appointment to use the complex’s driers. The toilets and sinks in the bathrooms are uncomfortably low. They don’t really have bathtubs there. It’s just not great.
The cities also aren’t that great. The centers of cities are dirty, most of the cities outside the centers are just swaths of strip malls with big parking lots that are segregated from swaths of condo complexes, you have to pay to use the public bathrooms, the drivers don’t give a fuck about pedestrians crossing the streets and will keep going at full speed, and there are sooooooo many smokers.
I know I’m making it seem like it’s all doom and gloom, but Sweden is a nice country. The healthcare is free (not good, but free), it is safe (becoming less and less true, but still safer than the US), guaranteed vacation time, guaranteed maternity/paternity leave, better worker protections, wayyyy better walkability, better public transport overall, Stockholm is fun to visit, the nature is pretty, a lot museums are free, and so on. But I was honestly disappointed. I went there with the idea that Sweden was basically the US but more competent, functional, and human orientated. While that’s true in some aspects, it’s not true in many others. For educated working professionals like myself, the US is much, much better than Sweden. Sweden is only really better if you’re a minimum wage worker or something along those lines, but that’s really about it. Sweden is a good country, but it is beyond overhyped and overrated. Some people have completely delusional views on the country, including myself and many Swedes themselves, and I only started putting things in perspective when I actually went there and experienced life there first hand. I hope this helps.
We’d love to fix what we’ve got if that were a reasonable option. For most people, it’s not.
See, politics are so broken here that it’s really just a dick measuring contest to see who can wax the best poetic. And then even when we do get a decent president—because let’s be clear, Biden isn’t a good president—they often cater to corporations long before they even think about making things better for the working people.
At this point, fixing our political system would require either:
A voting miracle, voting not on party lines but on the actual merits of the candidates, or at least voting for the actual best candidate in the primary of the “least” evil party.
A revolution, either through ratification of a new constitution or actual war.
Most people in America are too uninformed for number one to be realistic within less than an entire generation. Sure, newer generations are far more informed and are actually changing the voting landscape in some ways, but it’s not going to be enough to change everything while we’ve still got boomers voting for politicians who don’t have their best interests in mind. It will take years, if not decades, to get that far.
Meanwhile, most people don’t want to be involved in a revolution. Even if everything is peaceful (which it likely wouldn’t be), and we’re able to ratify the new constitution without many issues (which there would be a ton of), that still leaves us with a tumultuous period of transition. Not many people would really want to live through that. I admit that most people probably would because there’s not much of a better choice during that transition, but I guarantee there would be a huge spike in emigration from the United States.
Moving to Europe or Canada is just the best option for a lot of Americans who feel they can’t deal anymore with our broken politics, substandard workers’ rights, and/or dwindling human rights for LGBTQ people. My family has tossed the idea around of moving to Canada, since it’s close, or even Germany despite the fact that my husband and partner make decent money. We just can’t keep up sometimes, and as a polyamorous household of three AMAB people, two of whom are married, we’re worried for our rights, too.
For most people, moving to a different country is a fresh start, and the majority of them will do their utmost to make sure they respect the country they come into. There will always be some that don’t, especially when they’re coming from a country like America, but for the most part, all we want is basic rights that other people have and not having to worry about putting food on the table some days.
Too bad European countries are following the US footsteps. Finland just ousted their popular prime minister lady with a government of actual ultra right wing nazis, Germany’s AfD is gaining lots of traction and getting crazier with their conspiracy theories about great replacement, Italy is going far right too with their new government. UK and their Brexit night… At least Spain is still not having a far right party in the government, if they can form one.
My family has tossed the idea around of moving to Canada
Come to Canada! It’s 70% awesome and the rest is prairies and Republicans! Lend your income to our tax system and help out my neighbours and my family and also get some healthcare (still recovering from covid, but it’ll mend). Yay!
God please let me move to Europe I don’t even care what language I have to learn I just wanna be able to live without worrying about affording a doctor appointment.
Sprich Deutsch du Hurensohn.
That’s ich_iel spirit.
Is there a Lemmy version of r/ich_iel? I need it for research purposes…Nvm found it
I understood that!
Duolingo, you son of a bitch you’ve done it again!
Did Duolingo teach you what “Hurensohn” means?
If not duolingo, then certainly this year’s r/Place helped!
Yes. For everyone who missed it, “Hurensohn” ist the German word for CEO.
Just call your boss a Hurensohn tomorrow to impress them.
No, it was more for the joke but I was able to figure out roughly what it was before actually googling it to check which was nice.
Yes. Subscribe for the naughty words 😏
THIS is how Duolingo will get my money. That’s some value-add right there.
But the quebecois stuff just sounds religious. Weeeird. (I kid, I kid. I once had a sergeant mutter ‘sacre bleu’ to me, and I almost chuckled realizing it was an actual curse, which is the only way the day could have been made worse)
God I miss that comment chain on r/ich_iel! Made my day for real, even though I don’t speak an inch of German.
Inch of German lmao
If you work in academia, you don’t need to learn a new language. English is the working language. Also the 5 weeks of holiday is nice, but what really helps is the working day.
I started as a bioinformatician a month ago. I come in to the office at 0830 have coffee from 09:00 til 09:45 with my boss and colleagues, work a bit, have lunch from 12:00 untill 13:15, work a bit, go home at 15:30. That’s my day.
Work in IT.
Start at 9:00
Lunch 13:00-14:00
Go home at 18:00
Commute (if construction does not tear up the main crossing) is around 30min 1-way with bus or a 15-20min bicycle ride.
Experience: About 5 years without college/uni.
It’s München time
Entirety of Germany in my experience. Germans love their Baustelle
I think IT might not be as easy as you think. Academia is a bit more open.
IT isn’t quite high skilled enough to get in. They’d almost certainly need an employer to say they couldn’t find a European to do the job, which is exceedingly unlikely.
I don’t know if I quite get what you are saying…
You mean it from the perspective of a US based company?
I think he’s saying it’s harder to get a work visa taking a job in IT, as the EU company would have to first prove that they couldn’t find a European citizen to take the job before they can start hiring foreigners.
It hasn’t been my experience though, we hire lots of foreigners on work visas. Many from India and former Soviet countries especially.
I’m not in a big corp so I can just assume:
Do some countries require to proof local citizens are not worthy enough so you need to import work force from abroad?
Yeah, many countries do this. It’s common in Europe but the US does it also.
Kinda surprised because you read so much stories about outsourcing workforce to “3rd world” countries in Asia and Africa/S.America.
Yeah, that’s what I was saying.
In Spain we do have non-EU people, but oftentimes they come here, live in Spain “irregularly” at some point, and then manage to get residency through means other than an employer sponsoring them. That might not be the case everywhere though.
IT Job I left:
Experience: my soul.
Both of y’all are melting American brains trying to do the math on figuring out what times you’re talking about.
Most Americans have no clue that 13:00 is 1:00pm because 12+1 is too difficult, and God help you if you say 22:00, because 22-12 might as well be euclidean geometry.
Maybe you don’t need the language for work. But you will need te learn the language eventually for other day to day interactions.
Or the paper works outside of the labs.
Don’t know about other countries, but in Norway you always have the option of getting websites and government information in English. Everyone speaks it including cashier’s, cleaners etc.
The same thing is not true in Germany and Spain.
Dutchie here, we do the same. Everybody speaks (some form of) English, almost everything is also available in English.
This is true but also keep in mind that Dutch is still leading in most cases. E.g. if you have a contract that’s both in English and Dutch, if issues arise the Dutch translation will usually be the one that is followed
Sint Maarten should check-in and tell us about the English-Dutch separation and the class system it all but foments. It’s 90% fascinating if 10% disappointing.
The Dutch speak better English than some parts of England.
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My experience is purely based on Germany and I hate it even as a native. Plus having ADHD and paper being a chore doesnt help at all…
Also most folks (in my experience of south west Germany) of age >40-50 have little experience with English and can’t converse beyond the most basics.
For some reason France really doesn’t like giving english (or any other than french) options on their gov sites. Every other country in the eu are fine.
In France, I feel French is heavily a part of their identity; and contrary to Americans fairweather-jeering their best revolutionary ally, the French do not surrender lightly. It feels like that’s the one thing even the poorest French person has, and taking away one iota of that will be met with a resistance we’ve learned to respect.
Scandinavia is absolutely killing it for bilingualism, among so many other ways they’re killin’ it – no, really, other countries should just study them for clues in general. My experiences (just Sweden, Denmark and bonus Iceland, so far) is that they say Hej and listen for your “hello”, flipping over into beautiful and perfect English without hesitation. Their language programmes are just fucking astounding, really.
Spain’s fine in the touristy spots, but Spanish itself is VERY accessible as a language, so it’s kinda moot like France.
In Germany I will have to rely heavily on the kindness of strangers as I will never grok the language.
They’re exposed to English every day from multiple sources. You aren’t allowed into university unless you can read and write English to a high level. Your text books are in English at university and classes open to exchange students are taught in English. All English media is subtitled. And school lessons in English start when they’re 6. No mystery, just practice.
I would most certainly disagree that every person speaks English. Especially older people don’t, but in general many people here do not speak a good english
Oh, I see that I totally forgot to mention I’m from Germany
No, pretty much anyone in Norway can speak English, some don’t feel confident in their ability though. But if you ask any rando on the street if they speak English you get the answer of course ".
never needed german knowledge to do standard burocracy stuff
im in the country for almost 10 years now without speaking a word. not true.
Seven hour day with an hour and fifteen minute lunch. What kind of magic is this? What’s the catch?
The catch is that you live in Europe and cops won’t beat you to death.
sOcIaLiSm
Those are summer hours. In the rest of the year I’ll be expected to work an additional 45 minutes. Officially we only get 30 minutes for lunch, but no-one cares. When our contact in admin is in we keep it to 45 minutes.
30-45 minutes for lunch, where do you live, in the Netherlands?
In France it’s 1h30 usually (give or take a bit depending the company).
We take around a hour and a half but we’re not officially supposed to.
Well this might be an anomaly but the company I worked for in the Philippines gave you a dedicated hour for lunch and two 15-minute breaks, plus two hours weekly for any of the workshops/learning opportunities they provide.
lol i work a third of that
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In what country do you work?
Norge
I work in the public sector. If I start my day at 06.00, I can leave at 14.30 👌 Perfect for me since I am an early riser and the days are slowly getting darker and darker again
Yeah I have flex time, but the daycare doesn’t.
If you avoid the flatlander areas, Canada may be for you. We also speak English; just, without the accent. :-P
(unless you live on the island that’s an hour’s ferry from France)
Speaking a language without an accent is like wearing clothes without a material
Idk I’m from the central US and I had a German foreign exchange student tell me we didn’t have a mimicable accent. I know it’s not true but it was interesting to hear that from someone who’s familiar with everyone around her speaking in a completely different way, even when using English.
That’s common if you don’t know a language too well. There is the variant that you learned, and since you don’t know more, you think that this variant has no accent and all the other variants (that you didn’t learn and thus are hard to understand) you think have accents.
Only once you spent significant time with multiple accents will you be able to pick up the differences.
Or typing without a font.
That said, I think they were having a dig at how some Americans believe they have “no accent” because they (think they) sound like movie people.
Dutch American Friendship Treaty.
Europe, or at least Sweden, unironically sucks ass. You won’t believe me so you have to go see it to believe it, but that place is beyond overhyped. After having been there for a good amount of time, I’m starting to understand that life is actually better in the US. Sweden is only better in very niche situations.
Whats not cool about Sweden? Genuinely curious
Sweden has an extremely shitty healthcare. I mean yeah it is free, but the quality is just not good. My relatives and I have had a lot of issues where the doctors would just straight up refuse to run tests or provide treatment no matter how much in pain you are… And that’s if they even see you. For example my grandfather was urinating blood and was in severe pain, but the doctors literally told him he was fine and sent him home… Only for him to be rushed back to the hospital the same day… Before being sent back again… Before being sent back again and finally having one of the doctors decide to actually diagnose what the issue was. My uncles have similar stories that they keep telling me. America has a very flawed healthcare system, but it’s not that bad.
The salaries are very, very low and the taxes are insanely high. I work in tech. A senior developer with 10+ years of experience there would make around $60,000 to $70,000 before taxes and that’s considered really good. After taxes, they get to keep about half of that (I’m not making this up, it’s literally half). I’m currently a junior dev here in the US and have only worked for 1 year and I already make more money than that. Not only do I make more money but I pay less taxes and deductions too. So even when we take into account health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, 401k contributions, and other shit like this, I still pay less than what Sweden takes in taxes. Basically professionals in Sweden get fucked over and their lives are not that different than minimum wage workers (Sweden doesn’t really have a minimum wage but you get the idea).
The weather is pretty shitty. It’s freezing cold most of the year and in the 4 months where the country isn’t a freezer, it keeps raining nonstop. But what’s more annoying than the weather is the location of the country, it’s too far up north. In the summer the sun doesn’t set and so it’s completely bright in the middle of the night. You go outside at 2 am and it’s like going out at 6 pm here in most of the US. It really fucks with your sleep cycle. In the winter, it’s the opposite problem where it’s dark all day every day for about 3-4 months. It’s perpetual night basically. You still have to go to work, buy groceries, and do everything you need to do while it’s freezing and dark. I found it too depressing to bear.
The immigration there is horrendous. Immigrants are everywhere and the vast majority of them aren’t assimilated. Not only are they not, but they refuse to. The immigrants don’t want to embrace Swedish culture, language, and values and are instead actively against them… Which is wild to me because I’m a first gen immigrant and I consider myself American. So do most immigrants here. Most immigrants in the US want to work, speak English, and try their shot at the American dream. The US really sells the ideas of cultural hegamony and the melting pot well. You can still keep in touch with your roots, but you’re American first. Not there. In Sweden the immigrants live in bubbles that are in line with their home countries. For example, if you go to Södertälje, it’s like going to Syria. Women are afraid to wear revealing clothes, crime is really high, they’re extremely racist towards native Swedes and other ethnicities they don’t like at home, you can’t criticize islam in public or else your safety is at risk, and they’re against Swedish values of tolerance, freedom, and equality. Also a huge chunk of immigrants don’t work and don’t want to work, they just leech off of government benefits and they want to keep it that way. I had people tell me of the different schemes and loopholes they use to extract as much money from the government as possible, it’s just sad. The thing is that virtually all the ethnic communities I interacted with were like this and it doesn’t matter if they’re old or young or whether or not they’re first/second/third generation immigrants. There’s clear tension, segregation, resentment, and hate between Swedes, immigrants, and the different immigrant communities. Things are getting worse, but everybody is too scared of talking about it because they don’t want to be branded as racist, and so nothing ever happens. Everybody pretends things are just dandy when they’re not.
Swedes in general, immigrant or not, are very ignorant yet very proud. We tend to think Americans are arrogant and ignorant, but it’s true there too. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who are genuinely shocked that I didn’t have any college debt but still ended up with a degree. They unironically think they live in a borderline utopia and that America is basically the same as Afghanistan. They don’t comprehend that the US is a first world country and they’re not open to learning from other countries. They’re close minded outside of their immediate geographic neighborhood.
The markets there are bad, and the products they have are even worse. Common things that you wouldn’t even have on your mind aren’t there. Accent chairs? Nope. Memory foam mattresses? Nope. Upright vacuums? Nope. Bidets? Nope. The thing is that for the things they do have, they’re complete and utter trash. Their clothes are like towels, their beds are like tables, their appliances are like toys, and so on. The products have the same price tags as here, but when you buy it there’s nothing there. Oh, and everything is either domestic or regional. Want to buy an American vacuum and ship it there? Ha, good luck. They have import taxes that are as high as the price of the items and you also have to pay shipping which is also as high as the price of item. So if the vacuum costs $100 here, you would have to pay $300 to import it there. Fucking Walmart has greater variety and better quality than any of the stores there.
Houses there a joke. They’re extremely small and overpriced. Like 70% of the housing there comes in the form of condo complexes (kind of like the projects but nicer) or very small and crowded cookie cutter suburban styled house complexes… The other 30% are standard single family homes, and those are considered the peak of housing there but they’re mostly in rural areas. The thing is that even if you’re a masochist who enjoys living in a box, there are still things that are very annoying like for example, you don’t get to control when your heating comes on, the condo complex does. There’s no dryer, you have to book an appointment to use the complex’s driers. The toilets and sinks in the bathrooms are uncomfortably low. They don’t really have bathtubs there. It’s just not great.
The cities also aren’t that great. The centers of cities are dirty, most of the cities outside the centers are just swaths of strip malls with big parking lots that are segregated from swaths of condo complexes, you have to pay to use the public bathrooms, the drivers don’t give a fuck about pedestrians crossing the streets and will keep going at full speed, and there are sooooooo many smokers.
I know I’m making it seem like it’s all doom and gloom, but Sweden is a nice country. The healthcare is free (not good, but free), it is safe (becoming less and less true, but still safer than the US), guaranteed vacation time, guaranteed maternity/paternity leave, better worker protections, wayyyy better walkability, better public transport overall, Stockholm is fun to visit, the nature is pretty, a lot museums are free, and so on. But I was honestly disappointed. I went there with the idea that Sweden was basically the US but more competent, functional, and human orientated. While that’s true in some aspects, it’s not true in many others. For educated working professionals like myself, the US is much, much better than Sweden. Sweden is only really better if you’re a minimum wage worker or something along those lines, but that’s really about it. Sweden is a good country, but it is beyond overhyped and overrated. Some people have completely delusional views on the country, including myself and many Swedes themselves, and I only started putting things in perspective when I actually went there and experienced life there first hand. I hope this helps.
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Nah, man. Stay where you are, we don’t want any 'muricans (assuming you are). Fix what you have instead.
We’d love to fix what we’ve got if that were a reasonable option. For most people, it’s not.
See, politics are so broken here that it’s really just a dick measuring contest to see who can wax the best poetic. And then even when we do get a decent president—because let’s be clear, Biden isn’t a good president—they often cater to corporations long before they even think about making things better for the working people.
At this point, fixing our political system would require either:
Most people in America are too uninformed for number one to be realistic within less than an entire generation. Sure, newer generations are far more informed and are actually changing the voting landscape in some ways, but it’s not going to be enough to change everything while we’ve still got boomers voting for politicians who don’t have their best interests in mind. It will take years, if not decades, to get that far.
Meanwhile, most people don’t want to be involved in a revolution. Even if everything is peaceful (which it likely wouldn’t be), and we’re able to ratify the new constitution without many issues (which there would be a ton of), that still leaves us with a tumultuous period of transition. Not many people would really want to live through that. I admit that most people probably would because there’s not much of a better choice during that transition, but I guarantee there would be a huge spike in emigration from the United States.
Moving to Europe or Canada is just the best option for a lot of Americans who feel they can’t deal anymore with our broken politics, substandard workers’ rights, and/or dwindling human rights for LGBTQ people. My family has tossed the idea around of moving to Canada, since it’s close, or even Germany despite the fact that my husband and partner make decent money. We just can’t keep up sometimes, and as a polyamorous household of three AMAB people, two of whom are married, we’re worried for our rights, too.
For most people, moving to a different country is a fresh start, and the majority of them will do their utmost to make sure they respect the country they come into. There will always be some that don’t, especially when they’re coming from a country like America, but for the most part, all we want is basic rights that other people have and not having to worry about putting food on the table some days.
Edit: commas and grammar
Too bad European countries are following the US footsteps. Finland just ousted their popular prime minister lady with a government of actual ultra right wing nazis, Germany’s AfD is gaining lots of traction and getting crazier with their conspiracy theories about great replacement, Italy is going far right too with their new government. UK and their Brexit night… At least Spain is still not having a far right party in the government, if they can form one.
Come to Canada! It’s 70% awesome and the rest is prairies and Republicans! Lend your income to our tax system and help out my neighbours and my family and also get some healthcare (still recovering from covid, but it’ll mend). Yay!