I want to live in America

PowerToWait wrote: »

I presume you mean large chunks of urban USA. This isn't unique to America. Large parts of almost every city in the world are abandoned, soulless, derelict and grim af.

US has more of these dumps than the rest of the world. I was appalled when I went to detroit. A major world city and it's like the zombie apocalypse has come and gone. Junkies and crime everywhere. I'd rather work in spar than work in detroit.

Have you ever been to skid row Los Angeles. Another hell hole where the American dream went to die

I am probably going to attract a lot of hate in this thread but after living and the states and coming back home you could not pay me to move back there. Ill detail my reasons. I lived in NJ and Minnesota so I got a good spread of the states from different states. I ll try give the pros and cons of living there.

Pro:
Lots of different culture all over the country now I know a lot of people say America has no culture but you find areas of the major citys New York, Minneapolis have lots of areas with different cultures ok Minnesota not as much its mainly Norwegian, Swedish and they do hold onto their traditions and national dishes.

Lots of different work opportunity

Large country to move around if you dont like one part move across the country

Cheap petroil

Lots of different activity's to do

Cheap taxes

Cons:

Healthcare really sucks

Job market is not as good as you think its filled mostly with contract roles which means you have to buy your own health insurance which can cost from $300 to $1000 per month

Public Transport once you leave the big cities sucks.

People can seem nice but really they are pretty shallow and will back stab you if they think they can get ahead of you in life.

Public Safety big issue with violence and guns. Even NJ has tough gun laws but violent crime is a daily occurrence.

The food whist its varied and you get massive portions the food even the healthy stuff is very bad for you a lot include's GMO's and other nasty stuff that is not allowed in Europe.

No matter where you live state side you will have to deal with the treat of some kind of natural disaster. When we lived in Minnesota it was tornado's and blizzards, in NJ it was the Hurricane's and out west the earth quakes of forrest fires. We were driving along one day in Minnesota and seen in the distance a tornado we drove like hell to get away from it.

Buying a car you will really get ripped off by dealers I got a 2013 Toyota Carolla the price on the tag was $8999 but after the registration fees/taxes which go to the state, the warranty which they force you to buy if you want it on credit and the gap insurance the car came out to $14500 so wasn't a good deal after all.

We left as we were messed around a lot. Coming home and getting a job was the best thing ever. I can take days off now and get paid for them I never had that in the states. I did become a US citizen when I was there so I do hold an Irish and American passport. My misses is American we will not only go back for a visit to have fun.

If the op has questions Ill try my best to answer them

Chrongen wrote: »

I'll get all those in Spain, Italy and the Balkans, thank you very much.
I won't have to deal with white-supremacist bible-thumpers and asshole cops demanding "respect".

Funny how you mention European countries which are noted for racism and aggressive policing.

brendanwalsh wrote: »

Couldn't agree more with you. The best thing we've got in this world is our Irish passport. We are blessed. The social problems in the US are insane. The amount of mental health issues is gargantuan and that's due to the lack of available healthcare and the poverty these people are living in.

I will say one thing though, and that is that the value of your degree is worth ten times in the US what it is here. Any professionals who go over there can earn a multiple amount of money than that they could earn here. The United States really values education and a degree and will reward you handsomely for it. And equally a lot of Americans are priced out of a degree. In ireland a degree is worth nothing anymore. That BA from tralee IT would cost a Yankee 100k minimum.

I did earn more there than I did this side of the pond but for the work life balance Id give it up any day. Having time to yourself is key. One place that asked me to almost live at work in NYC go into work for 7am and home at 10pm. I almost laughed when the guy said we will do your laundry for you.

TOss Sweep wrote: »

I dont have a degree and work in IT and earn quite a large salary. As permabear said techs and community colleges can get you educated in IT when in state for the same as they would back home. Once you are in the door and have experience that is where you make your money. Most companies in the IT sector also pay for you to get certified so you get a job get paid and then educate further within the role and move up or move on eventually.

Issue with community colleges in the states my wife went to one so I know from experince you can only get a Associates Degree from them, which is the same as a higher certificate from DIT etc. Once you want to move on to a bachelors they do have partnerships with University's but then the fees go up.

I was making the point that if you get a free degree from trinity, you've saved six figures and are miles ahead of a large portion of the American population. Maybe Tralee it was a bad example.

Manic Moran wrote: »

The joys of choice. I agree with you that after security (Defence/police etc), the #1 priority of a government should be education. With a well-educated populace, a lot of the other problems ought to be minimised. It is a shame that the US (and, face it, most other governments) don't view it this way. However, the US situation is somewhat related to that of healthcare. We spend craploads of money per student (fifth highest in the world, after Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Norway, but our return on the investment seems to be rather limited.

Well, to pick a nit, the US is fifth highest in the OECD, not fifth highest in the world. To pick a slightly bigger nit, that comparison is for expenditure on secondary education, whereas most of the other posts in this thread are discussing the situation with respect to third-level education. On the figures for third-level education, the US is actually number 1 in the OECD. But note that the figures are not measuring government or public expenditure on education; they're measuring total expenditure.

And I'm not sure that it's fair to say that America's return on educational investment is limited. To some extent, this depends on what you're measuring. If you just think of the education system as a mechanism for producing workers for the economy, well, American workers are highly productive. If you take a broader perspective and talk about developing healthy, well-rounded, well-integrated adults and citizens, I guess that's harder to measure, but by most standards the US is a pretty successful and highly-functioning society. They're doing something right.

Of course, nowhere's perfect, and if you look for problems in the US you'll find some. And probably one of the problems that you'll find fairly early on in the US is growing inequality. The US is becoming a more unequal society. And, furthermore, this is becoming more strongly entrenched from generation to generation than used to be the case. It's harder, not easier, to "better yourself" by comparison with your parents than was the case a couple of generations ago.

The situation in this regard isn't necessarily worse in the US than in some other countries, but it's still a bigger problem, because the US's self-image and self-ideal is of a place where there is opportunity for all, hard work is rewarded, improvement is always possible, a country of earned rewards rather than inherited privilege, etc. So as this become less and less true, the US becomes more and more unhappy with itself about that.

And I think that colours the way people will look at education funding issues. A third of students graduate from college with no debt. Can I hazard a guess that that third come disproportionately from economically privileged backgrounds? Of the other two thirds, most have a relatively modest debt, but for some of them perhaps that was achieved by selecting a modest college, relative to the one they could have gained admittance to if debt were not a consideration. And of course some avoid debt because their parents, like you, had the foresight to join the military. But is it good for America that people should have to make such choices so that their children can be educated free of debt? (Not that I'm suggesting that this was your motivation.)

Permabear wrote: »

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Taxation? Isn't the low corporate tax the reason we have so many US multinationals here?