...and I'd rather live there than here. That seems to make people angry. Here's another vent.
Wes and I have always agreed that we might end up moving overseas for lots of reasons. The reasons began with us just loving to travel - since we love new places so very much, why limit ourselves to only this country? The reasons grew as our (the US's) politics became laughable and broken, our education system went down the toilet, and our health care system reached a level of ridiculous we never predicted. If we were to raise children, why would we choose to live somewhere second-rate?
We get judged by people who claim that the United States is the best place to live. By whose standard? Sure, there are advantages to growing up here, and it's a much better place to live than many countries in the world. But "best of the worst" isn't close to "best" - and there aren't any advantages to hold us here. The only solid positive people can give me about the US is that "this is where the money is" - to me, all the more reason to leave. If the majority of the world's money is here, WHY do we keep falling in the rankings in terms of education, health care, etc.? It's absurd. It's greed. I don't care where the money is, I care about my quality of life. And other countries are better by leaps and bounds than here in terms of quality of life. Someone asked me how someone else could determine quality of life. In my opinion, it's not that hard to measure.
Mercer Human Resource Consulting, a AMERICAN company (started here, now operates internationally) does a study every year about quality of life. They take into account MANY things (you can see them all on the website link at the end of this article), including political and social environment, economy, health care, educational, natural environment, transportation, recreation, consumer goods, housing, jobs, etc. In the list of the top 50 cities in the world, the US only has 8, and they're at the bottom: Honolulu, San Francisco and Boston being our highest-rated. But the BEST cities aren't in the US at all. You can see which are at the top here (it links to the actual study as well):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_quality_of_living
Considering the research, why would we NOT consider moving to Europe or Australia? Cities there have superb quality of life, and that's what we care about - giving ourselves and any children we might have a great quality of life.
Someone actually made the statement that moving to Europe is a bad idea because Americans are hated in other countries. I say - not true - people around the world only hate ARROGANT Americans who think their country is the only great one in the world. So, yes, those people should probably stay here. But if all the ignorant/arrogant folks who really think they can claim the US is the #1 place in the world stay here and all the educated/open-minded folks move to other countries, the US is going to implode. It may already be imploding.
I liken that bad attitude to saying "Apple pie is the only damn pie worth eating and everyone should like it best!" - when you haven't considered trying any other pies. Eat apple pie all you want, but you may be missing out, and you need to be happy for other people who prefer peach or chocolate and not judge them even an inch.
I completely respect people being intelligent, doing the research, and then deciding the US is the place that fits their lives the best. That is wonderful for them, it honestly is. But for them to claim "it's the best country" and to not understand why others would want to move is pretty arrogant. Why don't they just say "The US is best for me right now, so I am here at this point" and respect that the same is not true of others?
There are some things we really like about life here. There are some things we hate. But this "we're #1" propaganda-fed attitude is one of the reasons I want out sometimes. It's uneducated, unfounded, and disrespectful to other countries who ACTUALLY have much higher quality of life ratings than us. Be open-minded. Have your opinions, live the way (and in the place) you feel best about, and be HAPPY for us if we decide our best place is not here. How could anyone claim to care about us if they weren't truly happy for us moving where life is best for us?
On a more positive note, Wes isn't sure about some parts of Europe (i.e. Austria and Switzerland), but WOW on the quality of life ratings for their cities. His only fear - that they might be too cold. I have the same fear of Canada, which has great ratings. Wes's family is in Auckland, and that's #4 on the list of the best, and it's really nice, but feels too small to me. Sydney, Australia is a place we'll consider highly, as is Melbourne. If we decide to stay in the US, we'll definitely be visiting San Francisco and Boston to check them out.
Links:
What they measure for Quality of Life: http://www.mercer.com/referencecontent.htm?idContent=1380465
Mercer Study Overall: http://www.mercer.com/qualityofliving
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