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-   -   Why move to the US? (https://britishexpats.com/forum/usa-57/why-move-us-773422/)

Zen10 Oct 3rd 2012 2:03 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by MarylandNed (Post 10311476)
I don't agree. I think a lot of US TV and movies have shown the grim side of life in the US - gangs, guns, violence, drugs, poverty, crime, etc. In fact, many have magnified reality and glorified it just to gain an audience.

Point taken.


US healthcare is great if you have access to it. It's health INSURANCE that is the real issue - billions wasted in red tape and inefficiency and still there are people without any coverage at all. I happen to be lucky enough to have a decent health insurance plan and I can see top doctors at very short notice which is better than anything I experienced in the UK or Canada. Of course someone without coverage won't think the US system is better than the one in the UK or Canada. More of that polarity you mentioned elsewhere.
Ah, but what a private insurance company gives, it can just as easily take away.



I pretty much agree with this. Those people are called Republicans and will be voting for Mitt The Twit
!

Heaven help us all. Surely Obama must secure a second term!

snowbunny Oct 3rd 2012 2:46 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by Zen10 (Post 10311398)
Really it's more like 15% because the 8% figure doesn't include those who are not looking for work but say they have recently looked, which is straight unemployed by anyone's definition. Part of the problem is that the neoliberal economics which gave us deregulated banking and massive offshoring of jobs has meant that the US has lost 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since 2001 when China joined the WTO.

The unemployment will continue to rise and nothing can stop it except what stopped it in the 1930s.

I tend to agree with you, except that the massive unemployment was really only stopped in the 1940s when the rest of the world conveniently blew each other to bits, leaving us as the last source of goods standing.

Several Republicans have noticed this, and attempted to re-create it by unilaterally blowing other countries to bits.... but not nearly enough to help the country - only their cronies who got contracts to rebuild.

Then again, the job loss from all developed countries is horrific. With already high debt levels, can all the developed nations do a WPA/CCC?

HumphreyC Oct 3rd 2012 3:21 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by Zen10 (Post 10311398)
Really it's more like 15% because the 8% figure doesn't include those who are not looking for work but say they have recently looked

That's absolutely true - it's the U-6 rate in the U.S which is 15.3 percent. That includes people not in the labor force, but want and are available for work and had looked for a job in the prior year. The measures that are used are a real problem.

In the UK they had this argument back in February because the U6 unemployment methodology isn't used there. The TUC made an attempt at calculating it and they determined the real unemployment rate is something like 6.3 million if you apply U6. I think that's about 21.7% - which sounds too high to me - U6 is usually around 1.8 * U3 (the headline figure).

I have heard that the Spanish unemployment rate might not be as bad as made out because people have a tendency to claim jobless benefits even when they are working and there is a significant black market economy. No idea if that's true or not or what that does to the overall rate.

snowbunny Oct 3rd 2012 3:31 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by HumphreyC (Post 10311579)
I have heard that the Spanish unemployment rate might not be as bad as made out because people have a tendency to claim jobless benefits even when they are working and there is a significant black market economy. No idea if that's true or not or what that does to the overall rate.

It's true, and it cuts into tax revenues. Which is why governments are concerned about unemployment rates.

Steve_ Oct 3rd 2012 4:28 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by mwdake (Post 10310237)
Because for me it was

never being told I could not do something I wanted to do

never being told I did not come from the right background (social class)

never again having to listen to the teacher laugh at my best friend when my friend said he wanted to become a commercial airline pilot

never being told I did not go the right school

never being told I missed my chance to get higher education

never being looked down upon because of my working class background

never having to listen to that tripe about one's station in life or lot

and so on, I could go on.

Mind you I have been in the USA for > 30 years and I suspect attitudes in the UK have changed some

These are reasons to leave the UK, not necessarily reasons to move to the US although 30 years ago the US wasn't such a mess.

Frankly I find class distinctions to be growing quite profound in the US, not in the UK sense but definitely social mobility is limited. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer.

sir_eccles Oct 3rd 2012 4:40 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 
I suspect that for many of the people who do not neatly fit into the love, job or investment categories there is some underlying personal issue which they believe can be solved by simply moving (aka running away from the problem). Sadly they will usually end up realizing that the problem will follow them where ever they go unless they seek help to fix the problem first. All these comments regarding the things they don't like about the UK are more likely symptoms of the underlying issue (such as depression) rather than deep felt feelings about the UK itself.

Amateur psychology 101.

HumphreyC Oct 3rd 2012 4:48 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by Steve_ (Post 10311669)
These are reasons to leave the UK, not necessarily reasons to move to the US although 30 years ago the US wasn't such a mess.

I don't know about that. 30 years ago was 1982...

The US economy was still feeling the effects of high oil prices after the Iranian revolution and sharp interest rate increases. Home sales plummeted. The industrial base was decaying (which led to the rise of the Sun belt). Unemployment was above 10%. To cap it all off Reagan was in charge.

The music was good though - Thriller, Marvin Gaye, Rocking the Casbah. Shame I was a year old at the time.

Steve_ Oct 3rd 2012 4:54 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by goldenstate31 (Post 10310757)
theres a huge BIG WIDE WORLD out there and just because it suits some folks to stay cozy or 'play safe' with what they know for their rest of their lives. It doesnt suit others.

I wouldn't say play it safe necessarily, but you should have some logical reason, I have logical reasons why it would make sense for me to move there, i.e. family and friends and the weather isn't so bad during the winter. But logically when I look at it, I'd pay way more for healthcare (on the order of thousands of percent) and also the govt. there is highly dysfunctional. They can't even agree on getting rid of the $1 bill.

It's not as if Canada is some fantastically better place either, it's not like the govt. are miracle workers, it's just that it's not badly run. I read some survey that said compared to the EU the Canadian healthcare system would rank near the bottom, but imx it's a heck of a lot better than in the US and I have a lot of experience.

Here is one example - in Canada the postal service is only subsidized by the govt. slightly, basically to provide service to remote areas. In the US, the USPS is subsidized by getting cheap US treasury loans. You get enormous amounts of junk mail, but the service is relatively quick, cheap and you have Saturday delivery unlike Canada.

In Canada also if you buy something from another jurisdiction, you have to pay your local sales tax on it, you can't avoid it like you can in the US by buying from another State.

As a result, companies like Amazon don't do so well here. Amazon is effectively subsidized by the US Govt. giving loans to USPS. This causes problems for retailers. In Canada, people go to the shops, it's quicker and cheaper (because you can't avoid the sales tax, so Amazon cannot subsidize the postage). In the US your taxes effectively subsidize the delivery of junk mail.

The US Govt. could simply pull the rug out from USPS, but will that ever happen, no because of endless lobbying from so and so about Saturday delivery, so instead there is some half ass measure that saves only a small amount of money and doesn't solve the problem.

And that is exactly what happens on US public policy issues all the time, whatever it is.

It's just this never ending general ineptness about everything that makes me wonder what the appeal of the place is nowadays. Basically there is a lobby for everything because the population is so large and people in Congress need so much money for their campaigns there is total gridlock.

Immigration laws being another perfect example, QED.

Where is it all going to end?

Sally Redux Oct 3rd 2012 5:23 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by sir_eccles (Post 10311681)
I suspect that for many of the people who do not neatly fit into the love, job or investment categories there is some underlying personal issue which they believe can be solved by simply moving (aka running away from the problem). Sadly they will usually end up realizing that the problem will follow them where ever they go unless they seek help to fix the problem first. All these comments regarding the things they don't like about the UK are more likely symptoms of the underlying issue (such as depression) rather than deep felt feelings about the UK itself.

Amateur psychology 101.

I think a lot of Brits are actually quite sheltered and think they have it incredibly tough in the UK.

GeoffM Oct 3rd 2012 5:42 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by Sally Redux (Post 10311741)
I think a lot of Brits are actually quite sheltered and think they have it incredibly tough in the UK.

Agreed, but I guess it doesn't really seem like it until you move somewhere else that doesn't have the welfare and NHS backup that exists in the UK. You don't know how good you have it until it's gone!

Sally Redux Oct 3rd 2012 5:52 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by GeoffM (Post 10311765)
Agreed, but I guess it doesn't really seem like it until you move somewhere else that doesn't have the welfare and NHS backup that exists in the UK. You don't know how good you have it until it's gone!

So true.

MarylandNed Oct 3rd 2012 6:58 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by Steve_ (Post 10311669)
These are reasons to leave the UK, not necessarily reasons to move to the US although 30 years ago the US wasn't such a mess.

Huh? The US was in a deep recession 30 years ago. The unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% in Nov 1982.

dunroving Oct 3rd 2012 9:25 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by Rose tea (Post 10310436)
Absolutely spot on, and I've only been here 8 years.

And I'll add my own reasons:

- Getting paid a living wage to teach at a university and do research

- Getting to work with some of the cutting edge people in my field

- No one pigeonholing me because of my background

- No provincial or Middle England attitudes (depends where you live for this one probably)

- No dismissive or negative attitudes right out of the door

- A focus on community building

- The ability to reinvent oneself

- The entrepreneurial spirit

I've been caught up in all of the bad stuff that's happened because of the recession, and things aren't always easy. But I'm doing far better there than any of my UK friends in terms of job security, income, housing, and a stable community of people around me. I've done better here than I ever thought I would because I never thought I'd find a job or a life to keep me here permanently. I could see going back to the UK one day, but I moved here at such a young age that I just don't know whether I'd fit back in.

Did you teach university in the UK? I think in some professions (like university teaching and research), working in the US is far more attractive than the UK. I was wondering whether you came from working in the UK, or US university teaching was your first experience in academia.

Derrygal Oct 3rd 2012 10:29 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by Sally Redux (Post 10311741)
I think a lot of Brits are actually quite sheltered and think they have it incredibly tough in the UK.

As we all know, Brits like to moan and groan about everything!! I'm not saying it's wonderful over there and I know there is a recession, but many people (including some very good friends of mine) seem to be doing okay, taking two (and sometimes three) vacations a year, eating, out, etc. My friends back home find it hard to believe that I haven't taken a week off work since 2010 since I have been saving my time off for a 3 week trip back to the UK later this month. They don't know how good they've got it back in the UK. It's just work work work here!! Gosh I really do need this vacation!!!

Sally Redux Oct 3rd 2012 10:49 pm

Re: Why move to the US?
 

Originally Posted by Derrygal (Post 10312171)
As we all know, Brits like to moan and groan about everything!! I'm not saying it's wonderful over there and I know there is a recession, but many people (including some very good friends of mine) seem to be doing okay, taking two (and sometimes three) vacations a year, eating, out, etc. My friends back home find it hard to believe that I haven't taken a week off work since 2010 since I have been saving my time off for a 3 week trip back to the UK later this month. They don't know how good they've got it back in the UK. It's just work work work here!! Gosh I really do need this vacation!!!

Have a great trip :D


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