alt Hacker NewsI’m not a PhD, just an engineer and I moved out of The Netherlands. It was no longer economical feasible to live there. I am very pessimistic about the future Western Europe. Right now it offers the one of the best QoL in the world for the average worker but who knows for how long. With the current brain and wealth drain there will no longer be enough people to support the social system.
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Where did you move? I understand you're retired: that changes the situation somewhat.
When I lived in Amsterdam, we were renting a flat. The gentleman we were renting from told us our rent easily covers all his expenses in South East Asia.
Sorry to hear you got priced out :( Unfortunately i am also quite pessimistic about the future of europe and the us, too.
Yeah, I was chatting with a friend living in Spain once, and ascending the ladder in responsibility didn't make sense, as whatever salary increase he got would be heavily taxed, and it didn't make sense to bear much more responsibility for just a little bit of extra money a year.
As you say, avg workers are "fine" there, but for anyone trying to standout or grow in their career, they will hit an income ceiling very fast due to the high taxation, so it doesn't make sense to keep on growing as you are not properly rewarded for it.
The Netherlands had effectively full employment until a few years ago, last I checked.
Unless things got dramatically worse in the past 3 or so years, I think you are massively overreacting.
I happen to have a few personal friends that live there, for that matter.
Right now I'm not sure there is a country where young people are generally satisfied and optimistic about their future. America is a mess, Europe is generally a mess, China is struggling with too many grads who aren't able to find jobs matching their qualifications... From what I've heard things aren't exactly great in India either.
Every country has its problems.