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Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Place To Relocate?
New submitter tsakas writes: "I am an IT researcher from southern Europe looking for a good place to relocate. Markets are pulling the teeth out of the strong European countries by destroying the south. The U.S. is in debt and there is no way of telling how long this can go on. China and India are on the rise. Brazil and Australia are looking good. The question: Which city would you choose to go and start a family if you were to stay there for a) 5, b) 10 and c) 20 years?"
Canada is the place to be IMHO. With the stable economy, the speedy rise of the IT sector and easy Permanent Residence options, it should be your best bet, both in the short and the long run.
Stay where you are. "I believe I have the nondisprovable ability to predict worldwide economic trends" is a terrible reason to move.
As a person who was born in one country, brought up in a second, did college in a third, married a woman in a fourth, and when back to live in the country I did college in, I do not belong anywhere. I would move to any country that provided me with an opportunity I was interested in. There are stupid immigration hurdles and such you have to deal with, and those are artificial constructs that we have created to slow the movement of people like me.
There is a saying in my parent's tongue. I am a pigeon, I fly wherever the seeds are. You should do that too.
It depends on what you value. You're from "Southern Europe". That's semi-specific. What sort of place are you looking for? Good schools? What kind of community do you want? What kind of language skills do you have and/or are willing to acquire? What sort of culture are you looking for?
Plus, your economic analysis is overly simplistic:
The U.S. is in debt and there is no way of telling how long this can go on.
If the US experiences a major economic collapse, there is no place in the world where you won't feel the effects of that. Or at least, no place in the world where you can hold a job as an "IT researcher".
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Umm.. no. If you are going to North America, go to Canada. Specifically Western Canada. Crime is very very low compared to the US, the economy is very strong compared to everywhere else in the world, and we don't expect you to shed your culture.
Er, there's a rather large country with lots of open spaces right next door, that someone might consider as a viable option to the US or Europe. You know, Canada, that place where we've weathered the downturn better, are on track (in 2-3 years or so, unless Europe implodes) to eliminate the temporary deficits we ran up to keep our heads above water during the financial crisis and go back to running surpluses, have universal, single payor health care (at half the price per capita of US health care), similar standard of living, stable democracy, and politicians who are saner than the US ones, even if I don't like anything our current government is doing.
Just sayin'.
(We've got our own problems here, no question, but we're in better shape than the US, for the foreseeable future)
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
US Bond Rates (US Debt) is currently under inflation. Really that means countries are buying US dollars at a loss to them. In a global recession like this, the whole world is screwed. The US is strong enough to endure this. The idea of China is going to cash in all at once is ludicrous because if the US economy is killed so is China's.
What people don't seem to realize, we are in a global recession, during these recessions most of the normal rules of economics are messed up.
Recession isn't a lack of money but the lack of moving it around. So...
1. The Rich will hoard all their money they make. They will not start investing it out (trickle down) until the economy improves, right now many investments are too risky so they will hold on to their profits, vs using it towards growth.
2. Putting money in Low Yield but Safe investments. (High US debt,) US Bonds are the safest place to put your money... Yes at the rates you will loose money, but you will loose it at a slower rate then other investments.
3. Increased Crime, People who do not have an income will get what they want at any costs, also the rich who do have what they want will try every trick in the book to prevent too much loss. So more crime happens and the victims (sometimes poor, sometime rich) loose what is theirs, thus making life harder for them.
4. Radical Political Stance. Things have gone wrong. the guys in charge seem to be moderates and doing too little too slowly. Lets try to get someone who will make the trains run on time, and punish the opposition who possibly caused the problem in the first time.
5. Less funding on infrastructure. Things go in disrepair and we cannot benefit as much from it.
What happened with this recession (A very basic explanation/my opinion) is that it was building up for a long time (I would say from the mid 90's) Because between the mid-late 90's-mid 2000's we had a decade of bubbles (false economic success) First we had the y2k fix/internet tech bubble, we had a need to upgrade or redo our infrastructure to handle Y2K, being that a lot of it is just get new stuff, we started to take advantage of the new stuff (Aka Internet) so we had a bubble there, with young kids with Economy 2.0 and sell at a loss and make it up by selling a lot of it. After 2001/2 the infrastructure had been upgraded, and the stupid business models couldn't hold on for that long. So the Tech bubble popped. But at the same time, of the tech bubble popped we got the housing bubble. Like the tech bubble, we got a lot of bad (illegal) business ideas accepted by well known companies. Democrats and Republicans didn't do much to stop it, because citizens are getting the American dream of their own home, and the growth seemed endless. We saw signs of trouble but were ignorant of it because the bubble was keeping us going. After the housing bubble popped, we didn't have a strong bubble to go onto the next step. Thus a Huge recession.
It is a perfect storm that causes a downward spiral, that feeds itself. Unfortunately the only thing that will really fix it, is time. At some point there will some new invention or idea that will spur more innovation. The rich will want to expand again, and things will improve. Having this recovery be slow, although it is very painful for a lot of people, is probably a good thing over all. We are building strong fundamentals (which Bush was incorrect when he said that) again, our core values are returning, get rich quick isn't the mantra anymore. So things will slowly get better.
The United States has actually weathered the recession over all a lot better then most other countries.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The better question is where can I relocate and survive outsourcing? Outsourcing is the number one threat to job stability no matter what country you are in. When I was younger I thought it was a problem with job being outsourced from more expensive northern states to cheaper southern states - it was. As I grew older I learned that was just the tip of the iceberg and that outsourcing meant you were competing against people all over the world. Outsourcing means that your job can be sent all over the world.
It doesn't matter where you go, you will face the same problems. Not only that you will also face all of the challenges of being an immigrant. Over the years I have talked with IT people from places like India and even there they outsource their jobs to other firms.
The bottom line is that you have to find a job that is difficult to outsource. There are ways to do this, for example find a job that can't be outsourced out of the country for national security reasons. Find a job that involves working directly with people and requires face to face interaction as a consultant. Find a job that requires your presence and not your skills.
You can be replaced, and companies will spend a fortune to do do it because in the long run they /perceive/ that they will save an even larger fortune by doing so.
Hmmm. I disagree, as someone who left the US and moved to Canada to start a business.
The process is actually exactly as easy here, overall, my taxes are comparable- maybe slightly lower (Washington vs Alberta), and the crime rate in this city is substantially lower, despite it being a very close approximation of the same place in the US (Seattle vs Calgary).
Canada's economy has a stronger growth outlook for the 5 year horizon than the US, the dollar is stronger than the greenback (though that's bad if you're exporting) and the housing market has been much more stable. Plus, I don't have to shell out $900 per month per employee for health coverage. I'm not sure I could afford to do that, I'd probably just go without... And that sucks, but it's the price of being an entrepreneur in the US, and that's pretty fuckin' lame if you ask me.
If you look at studies, the US has a lower economic mobility and a higher prevalance of "social class" being an indicator of future success than almost any country in the world (it rivals Russia in this way).
Having seriously lived in both places and having moved to Canada to start a business, I'm going to tell you that you have been fed a line of patriotic froth and while you're free to blather on with your opinion, it's pretty funny to watch from here.
He knows exactly what exponential means.