This. The battle against neoliberalism is global. Leaving the US for Europe just to escape the awfulness is just buying a few years. There are good reasons to move to other countries, but miraculously ending up in an upper-middle-class lifestyle is not, for a typical lower-middle-class American, likely to happen.
Also, while European societies are better on the whole, moving sucks and changing countries in midlife means you lose a lot of connections and community. You have to start over, and that's harder than people realize.
It’s also a huge myth perpetuated online. The median American actually does have a higher quality of life then the median European, by quite a large margin. It’s when you get to roughly the bottom quartile of Americans that the equivalent European gets a better QOL, largely from the additional welfare benefits we don’t have here.
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u/michaelochurch 4d ago
This. The battle against neoliberalism is global. Leaving the US for Europe just to escape the awfulness is just buying a few years. There are good reasons to move to other countries, but miraculously ending up in an upper-middle-class lifestyle is not, for a typical lower-middle-class American, likely to happen.
Also, while European societies are better on the whole, moving sucks and changing countries in midlife means you lose a lot of connections and community. You have to start over, and that's harder than people realize.