Did the 2 weeks have to be in the US? Or could you take a bus across the border into Mexico or Guatemala?
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This is a pretty broad brush with which to paint not-America.
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one of those had to be stateside, for taxe purposes, i believe(?). yes, i could, theoretically, have spent the other time with papi in Oaxaca. irrelevant, now, of course, i am here to stay.
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I think it is most succinct just to call it settler colonialism.
Pinch the management and professional class, hooked on comfy living, into helping establish an all encompassing extractive web. I don’t know if it’s an intentional conspiracy but I do know these are a set of tendencies resulting in neo-colonialism. It doesn’t occur to people conditioned under US individualism that there is anything other than a cover your own ass solution to slightly difficult economic conditions. I’m wondering if better living has more to do with creating better social and economic structures where we are, together, than becoming a rich, isolated harbinger in a cheap country.
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You must be psychic, because it’s all true! (Although I think he technically dodges legal issues around being a tourist by regularly crossing the border back to the US.) Although as a Trump supporter, there’s a lot that is remarkably predictable… the racism, the misogyny, the ignorance, the personality disorders…
Just the rough circumstance - my uncle would never consider himself an “immigrant” (that would make his hypocrisy too obvious). I’m sure he thinks of himself as an American who is acting as a benevolent patron to the local economy…
Some countries do - and Americans get very incensed about them. We’re Americans, after all - how dare they!
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If you were in the United States, would you be willing to throw a dart at a spinning globe and move to the first country you hit? Probably not, because the United States, all of it, has a higher standard of living than most of the world.
The reason I weighed in on this often-exasperating board is because I’m not sure people really grok that. A lot of the world does not have reliable food, or running water, or sewage systems, or physical security. Even “tropical paradises” are frequently this way, and people who want to move there are thinking about warm weather and palm trees, and not dengue fever.
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Nice straw man you’ve got there!
And since you dropped in on this thread you’ve managed to be condescending towards Mississippi, West Virginia, Detroit, the rest of the world outside of the U.S., and the people who post here in general.
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Yeah that was the amount we were told as well. Though no one in the family has the means to chip in, and I’m not desperate for it. Some day perhaps, but thanks for the info 
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It does. But if you’re not in top (say) 10%, the US has a lower standard of living than most rich countries, and that’s what’s upsetting folks. Not that it’s bad. But that it’s bad compared to how good it could be. Put another way, there are a lot of countries where it’s much better to be not-wealthy than the US.
As for the fever swamps of the tropics - I’ve been there, and the climb in the standard of living today compared to around 30 to 40 years ago is remarkable. There are some places I would never live, some places I wouldn’t prefer, and some I’d happily pick.
One conversation stands out in my memory: I was in Singapore, talking to a slightly lost-looking traveller in her early twenties.
She said “Oh, I’m not lost. I’m just a bit culture shocked. This place feels like it’s a century ahead of my home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Hull, England.”
That was 20 years ago.
So again: the issue isn’t “America bad!”. It’s “why is a particular rich country so hard to live in for most of its people?”
edit: clarity
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Whenever I hear numbers like this, I become skeptical of the whole thing. How do you save $1e6 without making at least that much? What time frame are we talking about?
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But you can save almost unlimited amounts of money by not buying expensive things! Look, I just saved $925 today by following Boing Boing’s financial strategy:
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I’m not buying things right now!
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And if you live like a local rather than complaining that everything is not like home then you will have a much better lifestyle.
I still am constantly amazed at westerners who complain about how small apartments are in Tokyo without recognising just how much better designed they are. I would rather live in a small well designed apartment than in a poorly designed McMansion.
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Most of us dont complain, and defintley not in main land Europe, in the UK where we have been infected with American media the right wing complains, but even then its only right wing politicians in receipt of American think thank money, i.e lizz truss, who actually want to cut tax’s for the rich, even in the UK polls show that 70% of people want more tax on the rich to fund the NHS etc.
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I mean, people here do complain about taxes. A lot. But then usually someone asks whether we want to end up like the US, and all but the extremists concede their point
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Despite their claims, not just anyone can successfully achieve FIRE. The people who do usually earn six figures a year and figure out ways to live on less than half of that (e.g. “geoarbitraging” as discussed here). Save and invest $40k-plus a year and you can get to a million within 15 years.
And again, it takes serious up-front capital to live that frugally and still enjoy basic comforts. Plane tickets to and immigration attorneys in exotic locations with low costs of living or reliable and clean insulated RVs aren’t free.
This discussion brings to mind the Albert Brooks comedy “Lost in America”. The whole joke is grounded in the premise that this Boomer Yuppie couple can only drop out to live their “Easy Rider” dream because they have the assets to buy a new RV, with enough left over for the fabled Nest Egg. And then of course they lose it.
There were also those right-wing British pensioners who’d retired to Little Englands in Spain and who supported Brexit. When they got their wish and their access to the benefits of the EU went away, they were genuinely shocked when they suddenly had the same status in their host countries that the immigrants they so despised had back in the UK.
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Most everything’s been covered, privilege, amenities, community, etc., but a couple things to add:
First: For people thinking of staying in the US but enjoying the #vanlife or RV or boat living, remember you give up ALL rights to privacy. And if your abode gets searched and seized, whether justly or unjustly, you are left homeless and without all your possessions while it works through the system.
Second: it doesn’t necessarily relate to any of the countries mentioned here, but Mark posted a list of best countries to be an ex-pat in his newsletter a few weeks ago, and it was really like a list for MEN to be ex-pats. At least a third of the list were not at all attractive to me as a woman. And I have a male partner. As a solo woman I’d be even less inclined.
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It does. But if you’re not in top (say) 10%, the US has a lower standard of living than most rich countries, and that’s what’s upsetting folks.
Okay, I get this. I was struck by a conversation where someone was retiring to Mexico, and people asked them if they weren’t worried about cartels, corruption, etc., and they responded, yes those aren’t great, but at least in Mexico it’s not illegal to be poor.
I reflected that although the United States doesn’t have shantytowns – permanent ones, anyway – it’s not because we don’t need them. The people who would have lived in American shantytowns are not invisible because they’re taken care of; they are invisible because they’re criminalized.
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This is largely what convinced me that full-time expat life is not for me (unless it’s necessary for safety). Political backlash against immigration and increasing violence directed at members of marginalized groups in popular destinations shrinks my list of potential destinations even more. 
The status of an RV in bankruptcy was in the news recently:
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I’m taking a career break from the UK, living in Fukuoka on a temporary visitor visa for 6 months. My monthly apartment is a 1R - basically a single room with tiny kitchen and a unit bathroom. And I bloody love it. It’s making me even more sure that I need less stuff and more time to travel.
I recognise my privilege - apartment is cheap ( 75,000 yen all in a month - about $490 ), and I’m riding on savings. But it’s giving me the space to figure out what the hell I want to do in the 10 years before statutory retirement age - and now they’ve dropped the digital nomad visa I have some serious investigations to do.
(oh, and the main reason to come was to learn Japanese - sadly I dropped out after 6 weeks of intensive classes, and the confirmation of my working memory issues just adds to the probability I would score highly on an ADHD assessment 
)
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