expatdaduniverseemigrating-blog - Tumblr blog

expatdaduniverseemigrating-blog · 4 years

Text

Why we’re leaving the US for good, USA → EU: (A quasi FAQ on why even skilled STEM professionals are also ditching the US: predatory end stage capitalism, workplaces that break your health, myths about US salaries, the gigantic debt trap that is US modern society)

I’m one of 3 siblings, 2 brothers and a sister, all of us parents and established well paid STEM professionals (at least formerly so, with reasonable working conditions), who are emigrating from the United States with our kids and resettling in the European Union, one of us along with extended family, having already completed the process. We’ve received countless queries and expressions of surprise about our emigration since we as senior STEM professionals are supposed to be “the exception” for whom the USA is a highly paid Shangri La, so we got suggestions to post why we’re leaving here. In fact we’ve gotten so many questions on the “why” of our emigration that we’ve opted to answer all the issues that come up in one place, so this is long but hopefully informative and helpful for all of you.

None of our reasons have anything to do with politics, they have everything to do with the fast deteriorating work and work-life situation even for high skilled Americans (myself an engineer and ex-Fortune 500 senior manager, my brother a doctor, our sister a teacher turned high paid tech wizard), how corrosive the US workplace has become for even the “winners” in terms of our health, families and peace of mind, and how so many supposed advantages of a US posting (salary, taxes, red tape) are now a mirage. Our single biggest regret was not leaving much sooner, even as we saw where things were going a decade ago. In addressing the “why” here (as many others have addressed the “how” better than we could), our main goal is to help others mulling emigration out of America to avoid the same mistakes and costly delays, in big part due to all the myths we fell for, that we did. So the details below are a hive mind reflection of what all 3 of us, and some extended family, have observed to push even us, of the supposedly well heeled professional class, out of the US for good. Much of this is a joint effort so please excuse the “we” and “us” alternating in with conclusions of “I” and “me” the engineer in the family.

We’ll summarize it in blunt terms. America as of 2019 and 2020 is in a state of what we can only call “end stage capitalism” or maybe late stage capitalism if you prefer, a horribly exploitative, predatory, crony capitalist transformation of the saner capitalist system we once had, that delivers the worst of the both worlds even to high skilled professionals — terrible work-life balance, family unfriendly, abusive workplaces by design, horrible health and diminishing incomes relative to cost of living and hours worked, plus high taxes (overall) with decreasing levels of public benefit, and disastrous public outcomes, the Boeing 737 the keynote example in my field. Irony is that, yes, we ourselves are descendants of pre-Ellis Island immigrants from Europe, and on paper we’ve lived the American Dream, moving up from working class to become STEM professionals and (allegedly) part of the 1%. But the cost to health, family, creativity and security in this end stage capitalist America is becoming so great that we don’t want our kids (many of us have to start families late in our fields) to grow up in it, and our expat colleagues in Europe have been experiencing greater social mobility than North America now. The essentials:

— — The ravenous short-term profit demands of late stage capitalism have made it so the American workplace over the past decade has become toxic to the point of breaking its workers, even very high skilled and paid STEM professionals, in mind, body and soul. It’s not only the mounting work hours themselves, it’s also the multiplying administrative and compliance demands that pile up more and more with little being removed, the emphasis on public humiliation and gaslighting (more on this below) as a way to “motivate” workers and discourage wage increases, fire at will policies that are more and more capricious, lack of vacation or maternity leave to recover, horrible safety nets and bankrupting healthcare and daycare costs, worsening litigiousness and constant risk to decades’ worth of savings, a toxic environment that discourages creativity and entrepreneurialism and — a driving force for all this — capture of the American government and lawmaking apparatus by the oligarchs who profit from it. We’re supposedly the “winners” of the American rat race, yet in reality the US workplace is now like that old Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man, a constant deathmatch where any tiny slip up (or none at all) will torpedo your career even with insane 80 hour weeks, and the “winners” win only by sacrificing their own health, family and peace of mind. The USA is now the only advanced country with a declining life expectancy, and exhausted workers literally dropping dead (all 3 of us are seeing more and more of this) is a big part of it — Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book Dying for a Paycheck produces the grim numbers if you’re interested. It didn’t use to be this bad, and you may be lucky to avoid this.. for a while. But this “grind the workforce into powder” mentality is now a metastasizing cancer in the US due to the form of capitalism that’s become predominant, and it will come for you eventually, as it did for my own once humane company. And these conditions will literally break your health and kill you, as recent research is proving, a link if you’re interested: https://www.seattletimes.com/explore/careers/excessive-work-hours-and-job-stress-can-be-deadly-un-report-says/

— — The myth about America having higher salaries in STEM careers than Europe — yes we were bamboozled by this, it’s a big reason we hesitated for so long. It misses several bits of fine print. One is the HOURLY pay in STEM is, with ever greater prevalence, now lower in the US than in many European STEM centers, particularly in the more developed countries — Netherlands, Nordics, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the STEM hubs in Belgium, north France, even a few tech hubs in Spain and Italy. Over the nearly 3 decades I’ve worked in American STEM companies, the hours the engineers have to work has gone up — way, WAY up, from around 40–45 hours a week to routine expectations of 60–80 hour weeks in a growing collection of firms, and sometimes more like 80-100 hours a week, with impossible workloads and project deadlines. Yet salary hasn’t gone up anywhere near the same proportion. And those are stressful hours with no “reward” other than being belittled and gaslighted by senior managers for inadequate output and “laziness” even as the engineers are guzzling caffeine and energy drinks to stay awake. (Part of my job as a senior manager was to be one of those “whip holders” I’m now ashamed to admit, it’s why I ultimately bolted for another company that soon turned out to be not much better.)

I finally opened my eyes on assignments in Europe and noticed that my engineering colleagues there, even though they usually made a little less (*usually*, not always, in many cases their primary tech jobs *did* pay more than Americans in absolute terms on a monthly basis!), had much more reasonable hours, some not even 40 hours a week, and were almost to a person making a much better hourly wage than the American engineers were. And they were getting more done — maybe because Europeans work shorter hours, there’s less of the endless, useless BS with meetings and constantly mounting admin tasks. This meant our European counterparts, in the large majority, had more time to start their own businesses, make smart investments, and do other highly paid consulting or freelancing if they wanted — impossible for American STEM professionals to do when they’re slaving away for 80 hours a week. So the European hours not only made for better health, less stress and improved productivity in STEM, it also allowed more freedom for income making opportunities and becoming an entrepreneur. There’s also constant downward wage pressure on American STEM professionals’ salary from the way the H-1B is, even now, abused and its restrictions poorly enforced for some sectors and companies.

Meaning that, even on a purely monthly income basis as well, most of the European engineers and programmers were doing better financially than their American counterparts, with a lot more discretionary and disposable income, while having more control over their schedules, more manageable working hours and work-life balance, and having more opportunities to build up their skills, credentials and careers. Plus our Euro counterparts were also getting healthcare coverage, university and childcare in the bargain. Putting it all together, the European STEM professionals’ disposable, discretionary income per month and year, and even more so per hour, was above our American workers, yet with much more manageable working hours, work-life balance and options to start their own businesses, and they finished their university with no debt unlike American kids. Not to mention cost of living in US tech centers esp. Silicon Valley and Seattle is so outrageously high that American STEM pros’ real disposable income is even lower in reality. That’s the apples to other apples comparison, and most of the engineers in Europe (Europeans and expat Americans) were better off financially than Americans were in real, disposable income, job and income security and especially savings, with much less debt than Americans.

— — And that’s only the obvious, dollar for dollar or Euro for Euro calculation on why real wages are NOT higher for STEM professionals in the US than Europe when you consider hourly and disposable income, and especially debt and savings. The so called intangibles are much, MUCH worse for American STEM workers, and these were the push factors that finally pushed us out to raise our families in the EU. For one, again, the horrible hours, constant psychological abuse and gratuitously stressful conditions in the US workplace will take a toll and break your health in due time, no matter how tough you’ve always been. Let this again sink in — the United States is the only developed country to be seeing a falling life expectancy (and it’s already much lower than Europe), and no, this is not just because of opiate overdoses in Appalachia. It’s because American workers, even highly skilled STEM professionals, are being overworked to sweatshop levels and literally being worked to death. Even if American STEM professionals made more money than Europeans (and again we don’t in reality, as we laid out above), the cost to health would more than outweigh any such added salary. What would be the point of earning a little extra money as an engineer in the US if you wind up dying decades sooner from the increasingly corrosive, toxic American workplace?

When I started my career, only 6 of my forty- and fifty-something associates and mentors passed away over a decade. But in the past 5 years alone, I’ve lost almost two dozen of my associates in that age range from diseases and accidents clearly related to overwork and work stress and even scarier, a lot of twenty-something and thirty-something coworkers and proteges too! One had his heart literally burst after working almost two years straight of 80–100 hour weeks and downing energy drinks to stay awake, barely a week of vacation and fear of losing his job if even dared to call in sick, my doctor brother I think said it was a heart wall rupture or something similar. Another with a similar horrible schedule took his life when his wife left him and took the kids, so he was dealing with an emotionally and financially crippling divorce on top of his horrible working conditions. Another, a young protege of mine right out of college, was compelled to work non stop 80–90 hour weeks under abusive conditions to “prove herself”, causing her to fall asleep at the wheel one night and die after crashing her car against a guard rail. Their (possibly) higher salaries in the US meant nothing when their jobs were literally killing them!

As bad as job conditions have been in me and my sister’s fields, my brother the doctor has had it even worse. He’s worked 100 hour weeks almost nonstop for the past 5 years, and he’ll often work 120 hours a week! No that’s not a typo, and seems it’s not uncommon for his field in the US. I’ve been to my brother’s hospital many times and the doctors and nurses there are one step away from being zombies, they look sicker than their patients! Even worse, they all say most of that insane work week and workload isn’t even for patient care, it’s now mostly dealing with paperwork, insurance and writing up uselessly long medical documents. Even when my brother gets home, he gets to “enjoy” about 10 minutes of dinner with his wife and kids, then go down to his basement dungeon, that’s what we call it, to work for 3–4 more hours to do his medical documents (he has to lock himself in a windowless room due to Hippa, I think that’s the term for the privacy policy at his hospital), sleep a couple hours then wake up again at 4:30 a.m. the next day to start all over, including weekends.

Funny part is, when you break down his salary on an hourly basis — even more when subtracting all his insurance and other costs — it’s a whole lot less than most other professionals, STEM and non-STEM, on top of crippling levels of stress, even without considering he basically made a pittance in his years of extra training after medical school with debt gaining interest. He had a heart attack himself 2 years ago, another sign that it’s time to leave. I’ve seen sweatshops in SE Asia with better working conditions than what American doctors and nurses have to deal with, and it’s literally killing them from what my brother has said, US doctors and nurses have the highest suicide rate of any profession and thousands of others die from exhaustion-related diseases and car accidents every year. (The US is going to have one hell of a doctor shortage at the rate the docs are burning out and literally dying from overwork, so chalk that up as yet another reason to emigrate from America.)

— — For these and other reasons, the US has become a horrible place to raise kids. The insane workload demands especially in fields like STEM, and the constant and worsening stress, make it difficult to spend even a few minutes a day with your kids on many stretches, let alone to relax enough and block out activities to be a good mother or father. My poor doctor brother fell into depression last year after a horrible 120 hour work week and his own heart attack a couple years ago, when he realized that his own kids had become virtual strangers, unable to see him even when he finally did come home staying up with medical documents all night. I’ve had the same painful realization with my own kids, our emigrating cousins and extended family the same. This terrible lack of work life balance hampers kids’ development and endangers their long term prospects and safety. Child care is outrageously expensive in the US cities that have jobs, there’s no family leave and especially in the brutally cutthroat world of American STEM, if you have to take a day off to care for a sick kid (or get sick yourself), it’ll often cost you your job and with it, your health insurance. Extremely expensive private schools are more the norm in a lot of regions to get your kids a quality education, not to mention shield them from crime and drugs which are sadly more and more common even in affluent US suburban schools.

— — The USA now has downward going mobility — not only is social mobility now higher in Europe and Asia (you’re now more likely to rise from the middle or working class to make millions in Europe for ex., if that’s your thing), but even Americans in the middle and upper classes are at much greater risk of losing it all than any other advanced country. So even if you’re able to overcome all the toxic elements of the modern US workplace and save up some money, there are debt traps, hidden costs and risks lurking everywhere. A bad illness often ruins even very wealthy Americans financially because you have no security against crushing medical bills, even if insured. Out of network balance billing can cripple you with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in costs, and there’s not a thing you can do about it, as my (once-wealthy) cousin learned to her dismay when her daughter suffered a chronic autoimmune disease. I knew a wealthy entrepreneur from Italy who fulfilled his “American Dream” urgings in Texas, on an EB-5 visa, that turned to be a mirage when he was injured in a car wreck and learned his expensive insurance wouldn’t cover the costs. After that and a rival’s lawsuit, he lost everything, hundreds of thousands of dollars in family money plus what he’d saved up initially in Europe, returning to Italy penniless.

And on that topic, crazy litigiousness and complete lack of job security also contribute to the current American lack of financial security — no matter how many decades you’ve trained, worked hard, built up your life savings, you are never secure in the USA of 2019 and 2020. Ridiculous lawsuits will crop up for the most nonsensical reasons, and a single one can bankrupt you. My brother and his fellow doctors are at constant risk of losing their life savings in a malpractice lawsuit, even with their (more and more expensive) insurance, even if they’re perfect, a tall order with the long hours and their fatigue working 100 hours a week. My poor primary physician is under terrible stress caught in a damned if you do or don’t situation with opiates. If she is seen to “overprescribe” them, even if cases of clear medical necessity, she can have her license terminated and be sued into bankruptcy. But if she doesn’t prescribe opiates, some patients can downgrade her rating and sue her for that too — again terminating her license and depleting her life savings, as has sadly happened to several doctors my brother has known. And even if they’re “successful” in fighting the lawsuits, attorney fees can suck away hundreds of thousands of dollars in US courts, after all lawsuits are a “profit opportunity” too. Even my sister, when she was working as a teacher, had to deal with a constant lawsuit risk dangling over her head which did strike many of her fellow teachers. It’s part of what drove her to leave the profession, and then the country.

Divorce is also horribly common in the US and it’s often a catastrophe for both spouses. Ironically if you have a high-paying STEM job, the family courts can crush you financially — many states get a nice cut of spousal and child support payments, which creates all kinds of terrible incentives — by imputing an arbitrarily high earning expectation that may be way outside of your actual ability, and refuse to adjust it. Want to re-train, dial down your hours, deal with an illness or bad economy that temporarily reduces your earnings? Too bad, they won’t adjust it for you, and it’s pay up or go to prison. One of my own best friends from college, a doctor herself like my brother, had to deal with this horror after her own divorce and it nearly (literally) killed her. In fact my brother’s wife wanted to leave him due to his own horribly long hours and take the kids away, leaving him liable for hundreds of thousands in support payments, with my wife talking her out of it at the last second. If he had to face this, on top of working 100–120 hours a week, I have little doubt he too would have wound up one of the doctor suicide statistics. As bad as some European economies may have had it after the 2008 crisis, I never once encountered Europeans being utterly wiped out like this — the kinds of debt traps, catastrophic medical bills, divorce wipeouts and crippling injury costs, that can drain away the savings of even wealthy Americans in a single stroke, just don’t exist in Europe, which make your savings a lot more secure there.

Notice too how the toxic American workplace described above not only cripples your health and relationships these days, no matter how much you’re making, but also makes it harder for you to hold on to whatever savings you’ve made for all that crushing hard work — the health problems, divorces and car accidents that result from those brutal American work schedules will not only sap your health, but sap your hard-earned savings too! And on top of that, American companies are now ever more willing to terminate you at the drop of a hat if you’re even slightly down and out, no matter how many years of good service you’ve provided. This happened too often at my old company and it corroded the souls of the managers who had to deliver the news to some poor soul that the corporate suits were kicking him while he or she was already down battling a severe illness or other setback.

— — Europeans in at least some EU countries are now more entrepreneurial than Americans now by a widening margin, so the “business-friendly US” stereotype is false. Example:

https://voxeu.org/article/how-sweden-became-more-entrepreneurial-us

This is not because of a lack of American ingenuity or entrepreneurial spark, but because of the issues spelled out above — the tightening corporate control of Americans’ lives (even outside of work) leaves little time or energy for your own entrepreneurial and creative pursuits, which are frowned upon by management as a fire-able offense. In just about any industry you all but owe your soul to the US company store, among other things because you also lose health insurance when you go entrepreneurial. Europeans with their more manageable work weeks, 6 weeks of vacation and long maternity and paternity leave? That’s not for lazing around — they’re better rested and more productive, and have the breathing room to innovate, be creative and start their own businesses, that’s in fact become a huge competitive advantage compared to the insane “work the wage slaves until they drop” style of North American capitalism now.

— — Even if your job is listed as having a high salary, especially in STEM, beware — in end stage capitalist America, capital is at war with labor, and there’s an increasing minefield of horrible, outright awful practices that are more frequently used to strip away what you’ve earned with your hard work. One of the worst is the ever expanding ways that US companies use to dock your pay, something I saw constantly, to my mounting rage, as a senior manager. For American engineers and programmers in particular, more and more companies employ a nasty practice where they’ll give you an impossible workload and impossible deadlines, even working 80–100 hour weeks, and then dock your pay severely when (inevitably) you and your team fail to meet those impossible demands. So that sweet $150,000 annual salary you thought you were signing up for? You’ll find out, to your dismay, that in reality the company was suckering you in, giving you impossible projects and then repeatedly docking your earnings, with your managers gaslighting you that despite your incredibly long hours and hard work, in reality you’re just incompetent and lazy and don’t deserve the salary you thought you’d signed up for. (I was actually given a damn script about this as a senior manager, to read to the engineers in my team to “justify” this horrible practice often in performance reviews, and sadly, the ones most severely affected were the ones with the best work ethics.)

So the company has broken your health, gotten 80–100 hours per week of your hard-earned, highly skilled labor, then used a slick deception to steal your labor for free. I was compelled to do this to countless earnest, hardworking, good people, and I hated this neo-slavery practice with every fiber in my body, it was ultimately the last straw that drove me to leave the company. And if you think this practice is illegal, think again — wealthy corporate donors and lobbyists all but control our legislatures and courts, and end stage capitalist America has virtually no labor protections, so this sort of horror is becoming ever more prevalent across corporate America as a way to “cut labor costs” and boost profits. (And again to be clear this isn’t a political statement, I’ve encountered this working in Red States and in Blue States just the same.)

Even pay-docking practices and salary cuts that should be completely illegal have a nasty set of well-developed protocols that make them “legalish” enough to survive scrutiny. For example, ever been shocked at that dispiriting, demoralizing performance review you got, despite the long hours you were putting it and objective achievements and goals you met? Well there’s a reason for it in American STEM companies — the negative review gives them legal cover and leverage to later arbitrarily dock your pay, suspend you or lay you off to boost their quarterly report, while also having the “side benefit” of gaslighting you into doubting your own competence and work ethic, so the company can extract even more hours out of you and discourage raises. Ever wondered why what you thought was regular salary has been sneakily reclassified as “incentive pay”? Makes it much easier to dock the pay legally. And if you think you’re in the right enough to challenge these unfair practices, you probably are in the right — and you’ll still get nowhere, because the company has much more high powered attorneys than you can ever afford, and they will use them against you. Don’t think you’ll be an exception. You may be lucky for awhile but remember, in end stage capitalist America, labor is at best a necessary evil and cost to be minimized, and you being a highly skilled STEM professional doesn’t change that. If anything it makes you an even bigger enemy to the corporation’s profit goals since you can demand a higher salary. It’s things like this that make you realize the value of Europe’s labor protections, however imperfect.

— — As we alluded to earlier, the United States is now one gigantic debt trap, and no matter how aggressive you are at saving your earnings and avoiding debt, the structure of the US economy will make it impossible. This applies to almost everyone, even for most of the proverbial 1 percent — we have supposedly ascended to this level, yet we and those in our neighborhood are in constant fear and insecurity because the downward going mobility we mentioned above applies to us too, and the debt traps are real. We’ve mentioned some of those above — there’s college debt of course, and this is a hazard even if you’re frugal and try to do the old fashioned “state school” or community college route. Those costs are shooting up, but in the US, it’s pay to play, more and more you can’t get the needed skills for a good job without that college debt. Even trade schools have ways of putting you in the hole, and without a college degree, HR will largely toss out your CV wherever you’re applying. Medical debt from surprise medical bills is a constant nightmare and has, in fact, bankrupted many of our insured (and presumably well-off) neighbors and colleagues. And as mentioned divorce is catastrophic financially for both spouses in the United States, and a supposedly “wealthy” spouse will be drained almost perpetually financially for support payments because, again, the states get a big share of those payments themselves.

But there are other crippling debt traps too, which we often just take for granted and miss because the US economy itself is now debt-fueled. For example, when we mentioned above that the major US tech hubs (esp. Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, New York, increasingly even Austin and Denver) have such outsize costs of living that your “salary premium” is virtually worthless there? Part of the reason for such outrageous Americans costs of living in jobs hubs is that the US financial system has been structured to make debt the only way to cover the costs of essentials like college, healthcare bills and, yes, housing. The 30 year mortgage was almost unheard of in the US a few decades ago and such debt instruments are despised in most other First World economies, but they’re the norm in the US now, especially in the expensive cities with the most tech jobs. So on top of the multiple hits to your real earnings and disposable income above, you’re going to be sucked into a housing bubble with massive interest to be paid on the loans you take out for a home, whether you like this system or not, because it’s the only game in town and it’s inflated your home prices to madness levels.

Vehicle loans are now also at a record and they’ve been a factor at driving the cost of cars through the roof. Then there’s that curious, dangerous animal called tax debt in America. The tax authorities in the US right now are ruthless with the middle class, entrepreneurs and the “sub-billionaire” 1 percent, and once you’re in their cross-hairs you’ll become a cash cow for them, trapped in debt and likely never get out. Billionaires can buy Senators and politicians, but if you have assets and savings without enough to practically own a politician (high paid STEM professionals and entrepreneurs, that means you), you’re going to be a ripe, easy target. An associate and mentor of my sister’s, a software engineer who had helped her design her own online business, did very well for himself and was almost obsessive with making sure his taxes were paid to the letter, hiring two expensive accountants to make sure everything was done right. Didn’t matter — he was audited over a virtual triviality, stemming from minor paperwork filing errors which now, conveniently enough, are liable for massive fines even outside of any actual tax liability. Not only the debts levied, but also the time it took to deal with the auditing demands crippled his business and his health, and he eventually lost his home and his business, reduced practically to poverty. And this isn’t an uncommon story anymore, with the USA now $24 trillion in debt (and the states and localities struggling), and with the billionaire heir class virtually untouchable, the professional class and “tech gentry” as one of my old associates put it, are prime targets to drain revenue from for these deficits. So beware, even if you somehow dodge all the other debt traps and the health crushing, soul sucking world that is the US tech workplace these days, even your hard earned assets are vulnerable to be taken away from you.

And there are so many other subtle, unexpected debt traps lurking in end stage capitalist America, which can drain away years worth of savings in a single stroke. Privacy rights and protections in the US are horribly lacking, another disadvantage of America compared to other developed countries especially the EU, where privacy has strong protections. Result is that your personal data is in constant danger of being stolen and identity theft can cripple you. This happened to my niece (a doctor like my brother) and her husband as result of an unethical and corrupt merchant who sold her personal data for profit — an awful practice that was somehow, all the same, still legal. And it took a year of record gathering and tens of thousands of dollars (all while she was too busy at the hospital to pay much attention to it) to get things settled. Again it needs to be said, there is no financial security in the US anymore, not even for the supposedly comfortable 1-percenters, and downward going mobility is becoming the norm.

— — And on that topic, to wrap things up as far as push factors in case this comes up, our taxes in Europe — as we’ve confirmed among those of us already moved there — are NOT higher than in the US, another myth. Federal taxes and VAT are higher in Europe of course, but the US has a flaming pile of other taxes like FICA/Medicare payroll, state, local, transaction, plus things like vehicle license fees and ever escalating parking and traffic fines, not to mention the often crippling surcharges on support payments from a divorce, which again, many states get a cut of. There are overt taxes and hidden taxes across the US and they at least equal European taxes, and often exceed for some states, but with the difference that you, as a non-oligarch in America, will see very little benefit for your taxes. All while our counterparts in Europe, and more and more countries in Asia and South America, get the core social benefits (covered healthcare and university, childcare, family leave, startup support, better infrastructure) that lead to better health, life expectancy and social mobility, compared to the US. Some European taxes are even lower than those in the US, for example property taxes which are a much lower burden — a lifesaver if you’re retired on fixed income, or dealing with the ballooning costs of US starter homes. We’re not at all anti-tax, but one of the more dispiriting elements of living in the US these days is that our taxes more and more go to help fund American wars and benefits for the oligarchs who control the government, not for public benefit. Europe, Asia, Australia and South America aren’t utopias by any means, but for all their flaws, taxes there really do support the public benefit and well being of the people.

— — If even after all this, you’re still considering joining the meat grinder that is the American STEM workplace these days (or are stuck here as an American born citizen for the time being), then we’d strongly advise some precautions and a particular outlook to survive. For one, it’s now best to consider the USA what we in the business travel world and the diplomats call “a hardship posting”. Under some circumstances and contracts, if you can arrange it, you can make a lot of money here working for a few years, but it’s a temporary posting and absolutely not a place to settle down — basically a third world country where you can (sometimes) get a hazard pay premium due to the deteriorating conditions around you. That’s not an exaggeration anymore. The exploitation, overwork and debt traps in the US are so awful that you are literally endangering your health, and that of your family, by staying here. If you’re born here and can find a high paying STEM job and a way to save up, then start making your exit plan before the horrors of end stage capitalist America come for you. And keep in mind, all that glitters isn’t gold, and a lot of the common tropes about high paying US STEM jobs (especially ones that won’t ruin your health or in cities that won’t drain away your savings) are myths and hype.

Also, read every single word of your employment contract, down to the letter. This is true if you’re a born and bred American, even more if you’re coming to work in STEM as an H-1B or other work visa. Never, ever accept a position where your pay can be “docked for performance reasons” — this is a trap! You may pride yourself on your work ethic and your ability to “suck it up and get things done”, but in America today, the company sees you as a sucker easy to exploit, and they have no respect for you or your work ethic except in terms of what they can extract from you by guilt tripping and gaslighting you. Also beware of positions that for seemingly mysterious reasons, shift what should be regular salary over to be classified as “incentive pay” or something similar. This may seem like semantics to you at first glance, but in reality, it’s one of the many horrible methods that many US STEM companies are now using to “cut labor costs” — giving you impossible assignments you couldn’t complete even if you could work 30 hours a day, then docking your pay for “subpar performance”.

— — Finally we’ve focused on the “why” because the “how” of emigrating out of the US (especially to Europe) has already been covered much better by other Redditors, and the individual path to the EU, or destinations in Asia, Australia or South America will vary so much from person to person. A few pointers that can be generally helpful:

1. Remember that the EU has 27 countries to choose from after Brexit, and you don’t necessarily have to start in your goal country if the visa process is too challenging. Once you become established in one, you have free movement rights to the others. One of our cousins took advantage of this — not even in STEM himself, with no more than basic trade school education — to go to one of the Baltic countries in the EU where even his basic skills were in demand due to the shortage of so many young workers moving out to Western Europe. He, his wife and kids picked up enough of the local language to get settled (with very low costs of living), saved up and eventually moved to France, his original goal. (Other expat Americans, originally with similar goals, have fallen in love with the Baltics or other eastern European EU countries and planted roots there).

2. Have a long term plan in mind, especially if you have or are planning kids and thinking about where to raise them. This is one of the reasons we’re all headed to the EU in my close family (with two other extended family members going to Argentina and a wealthy region in Brazil). I loved Canada, the UK and Australia when I was posted there, but unfortunately, the US as “head country of the Anglosphere” is more and more infecting the rest of the English-speaking world with its end stage capitalism style, and we’re starting to see the same madness slowly pop in those countries too. For whatever its flaws, the European Union has much stiffer and permanent protections for workers to the point that the EU defines itself to a big extent around this philosophy. Not just as a matter of principle but practicality — EU workers are more productive, and since they’re healthier the healthcare costs there are less than America’s. It’s a smarter, much more First World way of running an economy. We’re not saying the EU is a paradise, we’ve had our share of irritations dealing with some elements of its bureaucracy, and there are certainly some areas for improvements. (Especially transporting pets--it’s obviously important to take reasonable precautions but the EU red tape around house pet transport is often horrible.) But when it comes to the big things most relevant to quality of life, health and opportunities, the EU gets it right, much more than the US does, and it’s why Europeans are now healthier and more productive than Americans, with much greater social mobility than North America now has.

3. Learn as much of the language as you can, but if you have an offer or option, don’t hesitate to make the move to the EU. We’ve been prepping our move to Europe for years so we’ve worked to learn the languages of where we’re going. But I talked to many American expats who, when they made their permanent moves, were not close to being fluent in French, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish or whatever the language was common where they were moving. In STEM, for now at least, you can often get by at first in the EU (even outside of Ireland) with English — operative phrase being “at first”. If you’re going to settle down there long term, it’s important to make some effort to pick up the language, after you’ve moved if you haven’t done so before, or you’ll be stuck as a social outsider even if you can use English where you work. Fortunately EU countries tend to be helpful in this and many even have free language classes especially for the bigger languages like French, German and Italian (one of our nephews took advantage of this), and of course it’s doubly important for your kids to be immersed as much as possible in the regional language. But again, don’t let your lack of language skills hinder you if you do have an opportunity to move.

4. Some EU countries have smoothed emigration process considerably in recent years for skilled and semi-skilled workers from outside the EU to move in. Germany in particular is one, and although I’m not too up on the details, I think it’s called the Skilled Immigration Act and functions something like Canada and Australia’s points system. If you’re able to show that you have needed skills and experience, won’t require public assistance and ideally can speak (or motivated to learn) German, you’ll have an expedited path to getting in. Some other EU countries have similar programs to lure in skilled workers.

5. And on that topic when it comes to the specifics, we had personal contacts to help us with the practical elements of our move, and I had the good fortune of years of exposure through business travel especially in Europe. But there are so many American expats now, especially in Europe, that there’s a wealth of information and initial contacts to smooth the process. So use and take advantage of every resource you can, and good luck to all of you.

0 notes