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Where the dollar has reached 1-1 parity with the Euro for the first time in the 21st century. And while our gas is at $5 a gallon , Germany is offering monthly unlimited travel by euro-rail for 9 euros a month that’s now $9 bucks a month to travel all over a country unlimited travel
We used to say live in America because take home pay goes way farther , there’s no taxes to pay for healthcare and parental leave and massive social services, BUT
With the doubling and tripling of monthly rents, that more than equates what is like an average Joe getting hit with an encroaching cost of living that leaves NOTHING to be saved . And doing a cost-benefit analysis on moving to Hamburg, Germany or Barcelona, Spain or somewhere in Prague or a villa in Montenegro and working remote vpn …. And having those costs of living
Yes it looks like it is for the first time maybe ever in recent history , mathematically true that you can save more money not living in America than you can living in America …. Because thousands and thousands a month for rent gas and medical and student loans is hitting us harder than European taxes are hitting Europeans
where I can traverse a massive country relatively unfettered
You know that folks in EU can traverse a massive continent relatively unfettered, right? From Sweden to Ireland to Cyprus to whatever, it's all one land for them.
Being an American Soldier, I was exempt from most having my apartment inspected by German tax collectors since by German law, you have to pay a yearly tax on your TV and other furnishings you own.
Oh boy. Somebody scored big on a game of "What can we make the Yank believe?"
With jobs that pay 1/9th what ours do, and are 20 years behind us technologically. No thanks.
That's funny. Because in my experience, the time machine goes the other way.
When I moved to the US 20 years ago, I hadn't seen or written a check for years. But in 2002 and decades after, even Fortune 500 companies that I worked for still used physical checks. You could be fanmncy and setup electronic transfer by submittting a (paper) form with - a physical check attached to it. Heck, I paid a doctor's bill with a physical check sent by snail-mail just 3 days ago. It's positively archaic.
Traveling for the company? It's not 5 years ago I still submitted physical receipts in a special envelope. Again, a $6B company.
The infrastructure... Telco and electricity from poles, even in affluent neighborhoods. A stoic acceptance of brown-outs and rolling blackouts and whatnot. Roads surprisingly bad for a car-centric culture.
And let's not talk public transportation.
I like it here, don't get me wrong. Picked California, and that didn't steer me wrong. But technological advances... Nah. Not so much in everyday life.
This rarely applies though, since you aren't taxed on the first 110k (or whatever the number is today) in USA due to foreign income exemption. I'd guess the overwhelming number of US citizens working in other countries fall under the exemption, so they are taxed in the foreign country but not in USA.
I keep forgetting about that cap. But for higher earning Americans, they’re taxed double. This is one reason I explored renouncing my citizenship but in the end because my kids are in the USA I just put up with it.
I would not move to Europe even if the rent was free. Because in Europe you are never free.
How exactly are people living in Europe never free as you claim ?
Also do you believe that any developed country ( including the United States ) in the post 9/11 plus hopefully almost post COVID age can be described as free in the proper classically liberal sense of the term ?
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