I live at home and am gonna get a job. Despite our President here, life so far is OK for me. However, I do wanna see the world and at least travel to Japan, Norway, Sweden, or the Netherlands
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Southeastern US: do not recommend.
That’s foreshadowing, but in a religious context, it would be called a Prophecy! Don’t you know anything about how to tell a story effectively?
Belgium isn’t a country, it’s an experiment. I love it. I wish we could just see our fellow countrymen as people who just want to have a stable and secure life but somehow we’re on this journey to split the North from the South for the last 70 years.
Life is good but we all struggle under the continued issues that are challenging the EU and the rest of the world. Covid, Ukraine, Trump,… They are pulling us down.
Being a Belgian is a privilege and I feel like all Belgians should realize that more often.
In stead of the Netherlands, give Belgium a try. Visit Gent, Bruges, Leuven, Brussels…
Denmark is amazing. Especially in spring, when the beech trees sprout leaves in the most delicate green color.
Things just work here, food is good, the music scene is great, government is highly trustworthy, lots of jobs, lots of welfare. Yes, it could be better still, but I don’t know many places where it works nearly as well as here.
I live in the a quiet rural part of the US and I love it here. But Denmark is the ONLY place that I’m kinda jealous of. I’d love to live there. I always just hear and see good things about it.
I live in Japan (more than a decade now) and grew up in the US. Life here in Japan is getting harder as the currency weakens against others, inflation has been going crazy, and wages aren’t keeping up. A lot of energy is imported as are a lot of materials. Gasoline is up over 20 yen per litre since the start of last month and that will translate into increased costs for anything requiring shipping. It also means, at least for those of us with family overseas, that seeing family members is much harder and more expensive than before. It’s also hard to bring my wife because I never know what the ICE is going to do with a non-white woman who speaks almost no English and that’s a risk I won’t take.
We have a big overtourism issue which is leading to a lot of people thinking foreigners = trouble and giving racists an excuse. Japan just elected Japanese Thatcher which is a setback for the rights of women, LGTBQI+, and more (especially around the koseki system and marriage equality).
Tech jobs are in a bit of a crunch right now with the whole “AI” thing going on and some places wanting to go all in on that. I am starting to think I want to change jobs, but finding another remote software engineering job is going to be very challenging.
For everything else, though, rural Japan treats me quite well.
Recently my proxy shipping service announced a price increase in order fees from 300 to 500 yen per order.
I wonder why (/s)Corona unleashed the floodgates of price raises after years of stagnant prices and wages, so it may be related to what’s been unfolding since then. Current events, however, are of course not very helpful.
So far they havent raised the prices for > 4 (or 5 years).
So I’d say its a bit of getting a piece of the currency pie and trying to beat/compensate the domestic currency issue (it’s in Japan)
Germany: I think overall, compared to the rest of the world, it’s fine. As a German citizen you are well protected from most of the bullshit life can throw your way: We have strong legal systems, “free” healthcare and are relatively safe from the effects of climate change and military aggression.
But it’s also very frustrating because it could be so much better. Were the 3rd richest country in the world and yet our infrastructure is barely holding on. Bridges are collapsing and roads have giant potholes. Our train system is expensive and unreliable.
Our politicians are actively working against the interest of the german people and funnel money into companies instead. Corruption and malice against migrants is everywhere. Active climate change denial is also apparently acceptable. If you aren’t a retired homeowner who loves their car you aren’t relevant to the political conversation.
Yes your doctor is “free”, but you barely get a sentence in before youre send home with some generic advice or stopgap medicine and good luck getting to see a specialist. I pay over 400€ a month in taxes for this, I should be able to at least get more than a couple of minutes when I have some issues. Also teeth are luxury bones which are barely covered and glasses aren’t medically necessary either so have fun paying for those.
You probably won’t be able to afford a house ever and you need to save money for retirement. For context: I’m in my early 30s, got a masters degree, working on a phd and get paid enough that I’m in the highest tax group. My father could support my mother and 3 children with that income while still living comfortably. I pay like half my net salary in rent for a 2 room apartment, and retirement savings and don’t want to even think about paying for childcare.
I’m pissed this is the best my country is capable off. Not to mention literal fucking nazis are on the rise again and are probably going to start winning elections soon.
People sometimes focus on the bad things way too much. At my company, we just had elections for our work council*. Not many other countries, especially outside of Europe, make it possible for you to regularly elect a part of your management, let alone enshrine this right in their constitutions. And the council finished a LOT of projects to improve working conditions in the past few years, and more is to come.
Anything else? I’m about to leave and go to the park, so in short: The weather is splendid today, and despite living in a very dense and exciting area right in the heart of Europe, the good and continuously improving environmental regulations - including noise management - make me not even mind the busy highway nearby too much.* Betriebsrat
The economy has stagnated a lot. Fewer things are being made here, and those things that are, aren’t really improving all that much.
It’s no surprise that the car industry is being obliterated when they think innovation is unnecessary. The government will just bail them out anyway.
My health care experiences have been brilliant at least.
My biggest concern is the usual right wing swing when the economy falters. I live rural, and it is awful here politically. There are so many wonderful people… but then the big handful that throw out hate towards Turkish people. I even experienced a Notar throw out the N word like it’s nothing during official proceedings once. I hope things get better.
Gen X Australia, My countries a shit show and getting worse
Yeah, but the shitshow is so much worse elsewhere so we admire yours.
I live in japan and it’s ok as long as you don’t work for a Japanese company. I actually don’t like all the attention the country is getting on social media.
Though I actually do work for a Japanese company, but I love it. Maybe I’m lucky, or maybe not all Japanese companies are as scary as people picture them.
It’s like everywhere.
It all depends on the workplace, your status/title, the office society and the colleagues.
Some places can be caustic, some the best in the world.Really depends on the company and management, really.
Do you perhaps work for Calbee? Lol
Nah it’s a small-ish company in Osaka. Is calbee considered good?
Oh I have no idea. It was just a joke based on your username. Jagarico is a calbee brand, right?
Oh hahah, didn’t realize that!
Same, same, and oh my god SAME. Also maybe at least 50% of tourists might focus on other countries…
America Light® in a lot of ways. Its so damn big that most people that don’t live in the beautiful parts of the country might live their whole lives and never see it.
Housing is fucked, public transit is fucked, urban planning is fucked, we use migrants as cannon fodder for the minimum wage meat grinder… Man, the list goes on.
Its certainly not the worst place in the world to live but it’s really not as good as many people think.
Fellow Canadian?
Could be talking about Australia too…
Fucked housing situation, check. Shit public transport network country wide, check. Poor urban planning basically country wide, check. Migrants for minimum wage work, definitely check
your education system is also great at giving away money to foreigners.
I’m American and your government paid me $50K to study there. Half of my cohort were non-Canadian too.
At least in USA, most unis make foreign students pay a ton money to study here.
I’m American and your government paid me $50K to study there.
Wtf? Where do I sign?
You don’t sign, you apply to university. And if they want you to come they give you money.
How do you make them want you to come?
have something they want.
Norway: Pretty chill, at least in my corner of the country; squeezed in between three mountains and a fjord.
My biggest concern these days is that I was supposed to go down to Saudi Arabia for some work stuff, but that’s been put on hold due to… stuff you may have heard of…
The news cycle is kind of repetitive because of a douchebag who is related to royalty is on trial. Nobody cares, lock him up if he’s found guilty, that’s all. I guess it’s a sign that there’s not much newsworthy happening.
On a more personal level, I’m waiting for my meshtastic radios to arrive so I can put up some routers on nearby summits and see if I can reach the next tiny town over. No reason other than toying around with it, really.
With geology like this, I have no idea how they manage to supply gigabit internet to my house. But I guess once you’re used to digging tunnels for basic infrastructure, running a fiber isn’t that big of a deal. My basement homelab enjoys the results either way.
Day-to-day life isn’t exciting. But it’s safe and secure; the good kind of boring.
I’d really like to visit sometime. I’ve been studying Norwegian (I’m roughly on the border of A2 and B1) and read the news for practice which is exactly as you point out, heh.
I have fiber in rural Japan as well, surrounded by mountains on 3 sides and the ocean on the other.
God this sounds wonderful
God, I wish life could go back to boring in the USA.
USA is a big place and most of it is quiet, safe, and boring. I live here, and life is very boring and quiet. Which I like.
Men kult! Vart köpte du dina Meshtasticradios?
Jag bor med i fjell og fjordlandskap så tenkte prøve setta upp på lokala fjelltopparna.
Har du tips till instanser på Lemmy/fediverse accounts att følja før att komma in och børja med Mestastic?
Jeg bestilte mine fra rakwireless.com. De er kjent for å være trege til å levere, men jeg er en tolmodig gubbe.
Så gøy!!! Jeg vil bo i Norge men akkurat nå bor jeg i USA
Strange weather this time of year. Frequent missile showers. Good thing there’s bomb shelters.
Too bad this doesnt really narrow it down.
Israel
Middle aged American from the mountain west. The people often suck but the scenery is beautiful. I live sorta alone, no other humans but two dogs, two cats, one fish, and four chickens. I work with dogs for a living, training/daycare/boarding/rescue, and I love my career. I live within my means and try and pay the support I’ve had from others forward. Travelled a lot in my youth (the rest of the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe) and enjoyed it even if I’m a bit more of a homebody these days. I have a lot of grievances with the current regime, the people who empowered them, and the capitalist assholes who fund them, but I do admit it’s been a boon for the punk scene. I haven’t seen this many shows a month since the early 00s.
America is great if you are rich, but even our rich people are very unhappy that they aren’t richer, which is annoying and basically what drives all our problems.
I am in the top 15% in my country, and I see it all around me among my peers. People with tons of money and success who are just deeply unhappy they they don’t have more of it. And if you claim you are happy with what you have in life, people hate you for it.
America is great if you are rich,
Every country is great if you are rich, though. Also, I’m very poor, live in the US, and I’m pretty darn happy. Lemmy is definitely not even close to having the same attitude as most of the US. lol
The doomscrollers here on Lemmy are crazy. lol
That’s interesting to me, as I’d always assumed that if you were poor in the US you were kinda screwed. I’m in Scotland where it’s basically impossible to be homeless unless you choose it, and if you’re sick you’ll get treated by the NHS. It still sucks to be poor here.
That’s interesting to me, as I’d always assumed that if you were poor in the US you were kinda screwed.
The US is huge in a way most people outside don’t fully grasp.
Lemmy pushes a lot of negativity, but let’s put the numbers in perspective. Lemmy has about 1.366 million registered users worldwide (with monthly active users way lower, around 48,000–50,000). That’s less than 0.0004% of the US population of roughly 343 million. And the portion actually from and living in the US is even smaller. On big instances like lemmy.world, only about 36% of traffic comes from the United States, with the rest scattered across Europe, the UK, and elsewhere.
So the voices you see are a tiny, often city-heavy or niche slice that doesn’t reflect most Americans at all.
The country covers about 3.8 million square miles (nearly 9.8 million square kilometers). With 343 million people spread across that, most of the land is quiet, rural, and empty. News almost always comes from 10–15 big cities where drama happens and gets amplified.
You rarely hear about the rest because… there’s nothing dramatic to report.
I didn’t see a homeless person in real life until I was 27 and moved to a big California city. Hated California and moved to different state just 3 years later.
Just last week I drove 16 hours through Kansas; 12 of those hours were straight fields of grass and corn, with a solid 5-hour stretch seeing zero people or cars.
I stopped in a town of about 500 people: doors unlocked, bikes left on porches, everyone friendly, and the big topic was the weather. That’s normal in huge swaths of the US. But you won’t hear that because it’s boring and “boring” doesn’t get clicks.
Social sites like Lemmy and Reddit are full of urban posters. How often do you see someone post, “I live in a town of 200 people, went fishing, then came back and watched the high school football game, shared homemade food with everyone, had a great time, then came back to the house with my wife and watched NCIS on Netflix!”?
Guess what? That’s my reality. And the reality of about 70 million people in the US. Not very interesting news though.
The quiet, safe majority just isn’t loud online or in the news. Also, to tell you about Lemmy, I’ll get downvotes for posting this. lmao
Social services differ drastically from state to state. It’s possible to be happy and poor in a state run by the democrats. Probably not in a state run by republicans.
Honestly I don’t know why people call this a country when basic shit isn’t the same anywhere.
Social services differ drastically from state to state. It’s possible to be happy and poor in a state run by the democrats. Probably not in a state run by republicans.
Depends on the state. I grew up in republican states (tho I’m not republican) and I never had money. And I’m happy and fine.
I’d be happier and finer with more money tho! But that’s true anywhere in the world.
The culture in America certainly seems very, very focused on money.
But all a person really needs to be happy is somewhere nice to live, money for food and good friends.
Some people need to get cancer to understand what is important in life.
That’s because having tons of money is the only proven way to not have a crappy life in the USA. All the public services and citizen protections are undergoing rapid disassembly, without which one wrong move can put you on the street.
I don’t have any money and I have a great life. And I live in the US. All my neighbors seem pretty happy too.
I don’t have tons of money and I grew up with even less and my life is great dude.
You don’t need tons of money. What you need is to be smart with your money and way too many people aren’t. You don’t need a Lexus to be happy, but way too many Americans think if you don’t have a stupidly expensive car, you must be miserable.
You don’t need tons of money, until you get an Expensive Disease and all of a sudden you need a LOT of money.
The number one cause of bankruptcy in the USA is medical debt. Unless you have insurance, in which case the number one cause among THOSE people is … actually still medical debt.
If you’re the kind of person who worries, the idea of not ever being able to get ahead far enough to guarantee anything really, really sucks.
You have no control over that.
If you want to sit around being worried that you might get cancer one day and get bankrupted… go right ahead. But it won’t make a difference.
Even if you have all the money, you can also still die.
I don’t have tons of money and I grew up with even less and my life is great dude.
Same! The doomscrollers on Lemmy seem to enjoy being unhappy and have no clue how life is for most people. lol
America: If you’re not rich, then you can go fuck yourself.
It truly is a curse
Wonderful. Friendly people and a very decent government. Lots of freedom and lots of nature. Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world put together. We have a boat access cabin where we spend the summer. The winters are too long and the prices have gotten high lately, but the economy is strong and the people in good spirits generally. Since Trump got elected, Canadians have been more united than ever before.
We have a LOT of work to do because our healthcare has been severely damaged by COVID antivaxers dying and then politicians trying to cheap out in the rebuild, and our infrastructure is frail as well, and we have a Serious problem with faux-ristocrats in the flatlands just wrecking everything they can…
But it’s not bad. I won’t go bankrupt from a bad car accident, I can walk to the metro or for most of my groceries, I work from home and love it, etc.
Yeah, it’s not perfect but we can fix it once we’re done confirming girls and boys can kiss one another, that education is valuable, non-white people are cool, immigrants aren’t the cause of a housing shortage, and all that which I’m sure many other countries have a subset of. But we’ll get there.
I just hope we continue to make least-worse choices at the polls. The longer Trump is in power and dribbling into a microphone to remind us what conservatism brings, the better we are.
UK.
We are a safe, stable and secure nation. Yes there are problems but compared to anywhere else? I think we’re doing better than a lot of places.
I wouldn’t live anywhere else, and yes we have the financial means to do so.
