The Hollywood actor is a prominent donor to the Democratic Party in the United States. In recent years, that has regularly led to criticism from President Trump, who has called him a “second-rate movie star,” among other things. According to Clooney, it didn’t bother him much. “It’s not my job to keep the President of the United States happy.”
I think you’re making it much more difficult than it actually is. I just checked prices for a flight new York - Paris and it is less than 200€. That amount of money should be easy to source for pretty much anybody. Make it 1000 and you have 2 months of breathing time without having to immediately get a job. In Europe you can stay for 6 months without a permit; that gives you 6 months overall to find a legal job, which should not be too difficult. That way you get back to paying your debt and you can send your stuff in boxes from America to France. I met plenty Americans in Europe, they were not rich people. Although I’ll give you that most people who leave America did have some kind of problem in there and decided to leave. I met a bunch of people from other countries where mostly people want to see different places, and so they do that.
This applies if someone else depends on your income. Indeed, if you have children leaving the place where you are in such a way is a bit risky. Would be better to first get a job and then move. If you don’t have children or a family member that depends on you, I don’t see how losing one year of income could noticeably ruin your life. You’re always in time to go back and get back to your previous life, if you didn’t enjoy the new place.
Most of the country is not New York, and transportation is more expensive. Basing travel costs off of the cost at a major transit hub isn’t representative.
France requires you to file your visa applications before travel. If you show up on a travel visa and then apply for long term residency they’ll reject it because you didn’t follow the rules.
A residency visa requires €1400 a month in income, so good luck getting residency with €1000 cash. Particularly when a significant portion of Americans don’t have that to begin with.
No one said you had to be rich to leave America and move to France, just that it’s not available to most Americans.
Says the person who is obviously not American.
https://www.norc.org/research/library/most-working-americans-would-face-economic-hardship-if-they-miss.html Remember that we don’t have a social safety system here like most countries do. Being unemployed means you don’t get medical treatment , and even if you’re employed the costs can be devastating in their own right. You can end up homeless, where housing assistance can have a wait list of more than a year, if it even exists. Same for food assistance. The only medical care you’re entitled to is that the ER must do the minimum necessary to stabilize a life threatening condition.
That’s what’s looming over Americans when we weigh taking financial risks. Loosing a month of income can create an unrecoverable financial burden.
That’s what I mean when I say most Americans can’t afford to fail at something like that. They may be able to afford to do it, and it might work out, but if it doesn’t the consequences are crippling.
How often do you see an elderly person in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank doing menial labor at a supermarket or hardware store?
I do see your points, and I do reckon you have strong reasons supporting what you say. Please, understand that what I consider movin is indeed always a difficult and extenuating endeavour. It can be very moving and accomplishing, but that does not take away the difficulties. Please, read my messages above as a way to interpret the initiation of such an experience, rather than precise steps to take. See it more of a way to look at life. It may not be the way you like to live yours.
Regarding the points you raised, these are very valid, and all of them very good reasons to be afraid of moving. Very valid reasons to believe what I said is either uninformed or what would decide to do somebody who is desperate.
However, I do know many US citizens living in Europe. While I do have some survivorship bias, what I have said is not something impossible, and actually something quite realizable. Some corners are often cut in such occasions, I do reckon that.
I’m sure people are able to work things out.
While this is true on paper, I really have not seen this being applied. I know some people who stayed illegally several years and then got a job and regularised themselves.
Are Americans in such terrible conditions? That is a salary that I’d now consider a starting salary in Western European countries. Pretty much any full time job will get you that much.
Do people in the US with full time jobs earn less than that? Or is it difficult for many people to find a full time job?
I understand this as over half Americans make less than 1400€ a month. I assume you were exaggerating a bit.
Thanks for the linked article, a bit aged but very interesting.
Indeed very worrisome to live in a place where people can not get essential goods. I’m not sure how those are defined, but I imagine we’re talking about food.
Indeed, that is a huge limit.
Never seen, most homeless people around where I live are homeless because they do not work. Most of them is people who lost their job after the 2008 crisis and either got hooked on drugs or decided to stop working. I know many of them, they do not live a hard life according to their own interpretation. They either go to a cheap canteen dedicated for that, or either way people is very happy to gift food. Some of them beg for money, but that is mostly to get alcohol, crack or heroin.
Besides, I know many people doing odd jobs and working a couple days a week. Working this way allows them to safely rent a house, to have food and extra money for diversion as well as saving up for times in which there may be no available jobs. Most of them can probably go on one year without working with the minimal savings they have.
After expenses and taxes the average American household brings in under $1000 dollars a month. It varies by region since cost of living and wages vary significantly. 25% of Americans have no net income after expenses, and 1/3 have a net worth of $0 or less. In euros that’s less than €800 a month.
Essential goods usually refers to medical expenses, but it’s also used to refer to food, rent and utilities. Even if you’re employed and have insurance medical costs can be high.
I’m not in a bad situation at all, I’m actually in a very good one, and I pay about $400 a month for insurance and have a yearly cap of $6500 in costs, not counting medicine or the actual cost of insurance (so I’ll pay at least $4800, and at most $11,300+the cost of medicine+the cost of anything the insurance company thinks I didn’t need after the fact. ). I’ve hit the max for the past two years, once because baby and again because baby got a nasty cough and they spent a little being observed for safety.
My example was not homeless people. That’s what happens if you become elderly and have financial difficulties earlier in life here. A lot of Americans simply can’t afford to stop working, ever. I don’t remember a time I haven’t seen at least a person who should definitely be retired doing menial labor, and wheelchair and oxygen is common enough that it’s not really not worthy.
That is not how it is in America. Housing, food and recreation on a part time job is actually a laughable fantasy, and that’s before you add “having savings”.
America’s economic disparity and lack of social safety net makes risk taking exceptionally dangerous.
You seem like a worldly and well traveled person. Use that experience to understand that there’s a rational reason Americans tend to be risk adverse in this regard. We either actually can’t afford it, or we can’t afford it without a shocking risk.
I am confused, do you mean savings? What do you mean by after expenses? If we’re talking about the limit for immigration into France that is most likely 1400€ before taxation. I’d consider 1400€ net after taxation as a salary that is now starting to become a low salary in Western Europe. Do you mean that on average an American, after taxes earns 1000$ or by expenses you mean basic needs such as insurance and housing and those 1000$ still have to be spent on other things?
I’ll give you a real example with the prices in where I live. Earning 1400€ allows you to save a bit of money if attempting to save, but can also be spent quite easily. 350/400€ on housing if sharing a decent house with other people, 700-800€ for a flat with 2 bedrooms. 300€ on food. If you have a car, account a minimum of 200€ in general expenses across fuel, maintenance and insurance. I myself spend 350€/month on housing, eat good food and enjoy life every day with friends to which I spend some 500€/month, that is beers with friends every day and restaurant a couple times a month. I need no car as I live in a small city. I like travelling, let’s say 100€/month go into my travel budget. Some 50€ spare expenses. That sums up to 1000€/month, 400€ is savings. If you need to you can stretch that down by some 300€ and live comfortably.
I used to live with a guy earning 600€ a month (that was a university doing some shady stuff, as such salary was below minimum wage) and he was still doing pretty good.
In Europe poverty rate varies across countries, but it’s about 20-30%.
Wow, that feels like nothing. I work in a hospital and have some idea regarding the prices of treatments, and I do know that the same treatments are way more expensive in the US. 6500 is really nothing, especially if the medicine is not included. Where I am there are treatments that just for the medicine are 40,000€/year/person for the government to acquire. Or maybe I didn’t understand exactly: you’ll have to pay treatment either way unless it is more expensive than 6,500$ or will they pay everything up to 6,500$ per year? That feels like it could cover a broken bone and very little more.
Frankly it sounds like you’re probably better off with any odd job in Europe if you put it that way. I’m not really convinced this is the case, it would feel strange.
I have been only twice in the US past year. But I’ve been in rich states which may not be representative of the nation: California and Florida. I did see a lot of poverty in both places. I believe San Diego was the place in the world where I felt most in danger. Even then, I do remember talking with many people and many people telling me they did need to work 3 jobs to be able to survive. That at first shocked me, and I believed this was a terrible way to live. However, when I asked why did they need to work so much and why did they need those amounts of money, most people explained to me the kinds of expenses they were going through. While indeed the medical insurance was a part of it, many of those expenses were luxuries when compared to life in Europe. Most of them had a house with multiple floors, they had a car and a big loan to pay for it, they spent a lot of money on restaurants and other services. And they were not talking about 1000$ a month but rather something around 3500$ a month.
I’m not saying that poverty isn’t real or that those issues do not exist. It is just something that felt strange to me. I guess it’s a different perspective of life. In the same conditions of these persons I’d have dropped a job and moved to a flat. In fact, here it is quite common only for well off people to be able to afford living in a house, that is not something common even amongst middle class families.
I have no family, but currently I live in a house with 7 other people. This is a bit of uncommon situation: the house is quite large and allows it. But it is quite common for a flat to be shared amongst 3/4 people to lower the rent.
So, my intent is not to turn this into the misery Olympics or anything, so I’m just going to clarify a few points and say that the main thrust of my message was the end: if people are telling you what they can and can’t afford in a country you’re less familiar with, it’s probably better to assume they know their own economy better than you do, rather than deciding a nation of hundreds of millions of people are financially over cautious.
The $1000 figure is for all of the US, regardless of if it’s high income low cost of living or anything else, and refers to money that can be deposited in savings at the end of the month.
For example, the UK has this figure at roughly $1100 USD.
The city I live in has remarkably close to twice the expenses as yours. In the US a car isn’t optional unless you live in the biggest if cities though. It would take four hours for me to walk to my doctor’s office, and longer by bus, but there’s only four bus visits per day at the office. A fair bit of the roadway lacks sidewalks. Either way a doctor’s visit means taking a day off work if you don’t have a car.
The 25% rate isn’t poverty rate, it’s more a measure of financial safety margin. You can be well above the poverty line and still have zero net income, it just means you can’t tolerate changes in income or expenses without things becoming extremely problematic. Our poverty level is based on an idealized measure of food costs nationwide and does a poor job measuring things. It was originally put together before we had great knowledge of what contributed to poverty, and it’s been a political tool used as a lever to justify cutting assistance programs for a long time, so changing it has been difficult.
I think you got my description backwards. There’s an amount I pay no matter what, and a point after which I pay nothing (with caveats). So the most I pay is that $11k number, unless the insurance company decides a procedure was unnecessary or the provider was unsupported (if you end up in the hospital you might not be able to choose your doctors, and some of them might not be covered by your insurance, which you’ll find out later. Aforementioned baby delivery cost $650,000 . I paid $6,500. Then I got billed for another $12,000 and change because of stuff like the insurance company deciding some tests were unnecessary and not working with some of the nurses.). My insurance situation is pretty good though, since a lot of people have significantly less at a higher cost.
That is in many ways true. America has a higher cap on income but Europe generally has a better safety net. I’m fortunate to have ended up in a low cost of living area with a high salary job, so I’m currently better off where I am, but as children and myself get older, a social safety net that means my retirement isn’t at the whims of the stock market and an education system that won’t potentially put my children in debt for life has an increasingly large appeal.
San Diego is a very high cost of living area. $100,000 would be a modest income there that would get you a minimal comfortable life. Like, $3,000 a month for a 1 bedroom apartment.
San Diego is also one of the safest cities in the US. Fun fact: while confirming that I found out I live in one of the more dangerous cities in the country. So that’s fun.
So yeah, San Diego is gonna give you more wealthy people with higher costs of living and very low crime. Factor that in to your assessments.
Housing economics are very disparate between countries. You can’t directly compare them easily. A two story house is basic construction here, they tend to avoid building anything smaller because it’s not significantly cheaper to build or sell. Our houses are built with different objectives so they tend to be cheaper to make taller, and it’s just expected that it’ll get replaced in 50 or 60 years.
The person you talked to in San Diego was likely renting a house, which is often cheaper than an apartment. That fits with the price you mentioned.
Thanks for the nice conversation!
Wow! I have lived in quite dangerous places in India and travelled extensively through south America, in places that I do know are more dangerous than any place in the US. I have been in places in Bolivia where local people are afraid to visit and ended up meeting Evo Morales, not too long ago as he was already in hiding from the police.
Never have I felt in such danger as when walking in downtown San Diego. It was full of drug addicts all over the streets, I’d be looking behind corners afraid of getting attacked any moment. In Florida as well, I was in a small town and I stayed a couple nights in a hostel, when arrived I’ve been told very clearly: you can walk east, but do not walk west lest you want to get shot.
I’d be curious, how dangerous is a dangerous city in the US? What is the kind of danger you can come across, and how does that affect normal life? Do you need to take precautions when walking down the streets?
Honestly, nothing much really comes to mind as a special precaution that I would think of. Don’t go down alleys alone, don’t follow strangers that try to get you to go places. Don’t get drunk alone in unfamiliar areas that aren’t super populated. Don’t make flashy displays of wealth.
No real impact on daily life. I’ve gotten lost in bad parts of Detroit before and that was unideal, but that was because there’s still a lot of ability for people to know you don’t live there just based on appearance.