The US isn’t what it used to be. It’s definitely not the best place in the world to live for quality of life, on basically any metric.
The requirement of being permanently obligated to pay us taxes on global income, if you have any kind of global mobility, is not worth it when you look at the situation objectively. The US is the only country that requires this, and signing up is voluntarily.
So while US immigration continues to act as though people will jump through any hoop they put up in order to be granted the extreme privilege of being able to live in the country indefinitely, it’s worth realising it’s not the 70s anymore and thats a goal many people are no longer optimizing for. In fact the opposite - the most talented people I know are all planning their lives to not settle long term in the US.
There's a term called "US Person". Many European banks will refuse to open your bank account if you're a "US Person" and require upfront declaration that I'm not a "US Person."
Reason? Because banks don't want to deal with the mandatory annual reporting of the "US Persons" to US government on regular basis.
Their solution? Don't have a "US Person" as your client.
I’m an American living abroad. I know a bit about this. Here’s my experience:
- The USA passed a law called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which mandates that any bank doing business with Americans overseas must report certain information to the USA: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-...
- When anyone anywhere in the world opens a bank account, the bank asks if you have ever been a “US Person,” and if you have been, then you need to provide documentation about whether you currently are or aren’t (typically showing a USA passport or proof of having renounced USA citizenship)
- For banks that will work with Americans, they have to report basic information back to the USA every year, which includes highlights like your contact information, tax ID, account numbers, end-of-year balance, etc.
- Americans also must self-report this kind of information via the FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, technically FinCEN Form 114), which isn’t too horrible to fill out other than the fact that you file it through FinCEN’s clunky BSA E-Filing system, which still wants you to install Adobe Acrobat Reader like it’s 2010.
- FATCA is primarily annoying to banks because they already have to comply with CRS, the Common Reporting Standard, which is basically an international standard developed by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) where participating countries automatically report each other’s residents’ financial information. The kicker is that the USA never actually joined CRS, so banks have to run a whole separate FATCA process just for a relatively small number of Americans living abroad, which is a big duplication of effort.
This appears to have been downvoted but everything is completely factual in what the parent poster said. I have literally been told by many banks they can't help me due to this.
People said the same when the $100K fee for H1b was introduced, and said that the US won't be able to fill the 85,000 spots. But there were 211,600 applications in the last cycle.
Also, your other 'facts' are incorrect. The US for example has the highest amount of disposable income per family, has a lower tax burden (despite your complaint about it) then almost all developed countries, and there is one more (small) country with global taxation.
Correct - it has significantly shifted the makeup:
1. Master degree holders increased from 57.0% to 71.5%
2. Average wage increased by ~30% (estimated from the massive drop in the number of applications from the lowest category.
3. The balance has shifted from foreign workers to students in the US (F-1 visa), because they are exempt from the $100K fee.
I actually wish HN covered this, as many people were complaining about H1b being abused by abusive software companies bringing in cheap labor. About how hard it is for students studying in America to stay in America, etc.
But now we can't actually discuss a topic without attributing it to a person, so if it's attributed to Trump, all discussions become a shitshow.
The extreme privilege of being forced to pay a major portion of all income you make, regardless of where you earn it, to the us gov indefinitely. And they make it hard for you to apply to do this. Crazy.
> being forced to pay a major portion of all income you make, regardless of where you earn it
If you're a US citizen living abroad you get a Foreign Earned Income Exclusion of $130,000 for 2025 taxes. So if your income was $130k you'd pay zero in US taxes. You potentially also get to deduct housing costs and get a credit for foreign taxes you already paid among other things.
If you're paying a "major portion of your income" as a US citizen living overseas you're probably pretty dang wealthy. Go wipe your tears with your bands of $100 bills.
The FEIE and foreign tax credits are just there to limit the scope of double taxation, and often they can't even do that much. Then you have to consider the cost of compliance, requiring specialist tax advice encompassing two countries; the difficulty of obtaining financial services because of FATCA; the frequent impossibility of saving for retirement because of the way the U.S. treats foreign investment funds (PFIC).
There's a reason no other country on earth tries to do this.
Boo hoo double taxation. Normal people get double, triple, quadruple taxed all the time. I get (at least) double taxed every gallon of gas I pump. I get quadruple taxed just having a roof over my head. My labor gets FICA taxes (a collection of multiple taxes), payroll taxes, federal income taxes, and potentially state income taxes. Your million dollar stock trade hit a few different tax jurisdictions, boo hoo. Miss me with crying about "double taxation" nonsense, it's a phrase rich people use to make poor people feel sorry for them.
> consider the cost of compliance
Oh so sad wealthy people have so many bags of money they can't keep track of them all themselves. Sounds terrible. Maybe they should sell all those assets and give the money away and rid themselves of such hardships. Send me a message, I'll take those struggles off your hand and relieve you of such burdens.
> the frequent impossibility of saving for retirement
You're already clearing more income free and clear from a US tax basis than most US households do. If you find it impossible to save for retirement after making probably far more than $130k (remember, the standard was "a major portion" of your income) then you should really think about how fucked the vast majority of your fellow citizens are.
It's pretty tone deaf complaining about how heavy all these bars of gold are.
> The requirement of being permanently obligated to pay us taxes on global income
Many countries have higher rates than the US and have reciprocal treaties to avoid double taxation. In practice it means many people end up paying zero taxes to the US. Of course it will depend on the country you want to reside in, but then what's the point of seeking out a US passport?
I would say some of the indicators are a little odd.
Some of them are questionable in terms of capturing the spirit of the idea ("violent crime" being the same in the UK and the US is a surprising one to me for example. It's capturing serious assault per 100k, but is then not considering murder as violent crime. You have murder later, but maybe combine / group them?).
Some are confusing because they are not clear politically: everyone wants less violent crime, but I don't know your politics and so have no idea which direction you have weighted net migration and asylum/capita.
To be perfectly clear. The US has a much higher standard of living than the vast majority of countries in the world and people from those countries hope to improve their lives by moving there.
The US has a lower standard of living than basically all OECD countries.
To use a sports analogy, the US is last place on the pro league ladder, while also being first place on the “everyone else” ladder.
I don’t think this captures the full story. The US has a bimodal standard of living reflected as a lower mean relative to other advanced nations.
It can be simultaneously true that immigrants to the U.S. from both advanced and developing nations both experience a higher standard of living than their countries of origin.
Immigrating to the U.S. with an advanced degree in an in-demand field: you likely will experience a higher standard of living.
Immigrating to the U.S. from a developing country without a particularly in-demand career: you likely will experience a higher standard of living.
> Immigrating to the U.S. with an advanced degree in an in-demand field: you likely will experience a higher standard of living.
And yet everyone here in SF has been mugged. Everyone has to deal with the poor air quality, crime, traffic, and a million other factors that impact daily life even when you are rich. Little paid time off, very short maternity leave.
I went back to Australia for the first time in 10 years, and even the guy stacking shelves at a liquor store had 8 weeks of paid leave, owned his own home, had a project car (a big V8), kids going to university, excellent healthcare even if he quits, etc etc.
Ordinary guy, better quality of life than many rich Americans.
> I went back to Australia for the first time in 10 years, and even the guy stacking shelves at a liquor store ... owned his own home
Australia is having the exact same situation with housing as most of the cities in the US right now and Australia lacks the rural population where things are affordable so this seems incredibly unbelievable to me.
Absolutely Australia has a huge housing crunch. No getting around that.
But everyone has healthcare. Everyone has university. Minimum wage is way, way higher than the US. Employee protections are huge (at will employment is criminal). Even the worst jobs have great paid time off and maternity leave.
Overtime is paid, by law. Working 60 hours a week is unheard of.
The US is the best place you _can_ immigrate to (at least until a few days ago) from a lot of different perspectives.
Poor people from the countries you mentioned won't be let into the countries with strong safety nets so, you can compare what it's like to be a poor Swede and a poor American but a poor Venezuelan has a 0% chance of becoming Swedish.
A well off Swede would likely make significantly more money in the US and doesn't really benefit much from the social safety net anyway, aside from healthcare, which, despite the price, is also better in the US.
Anyone in the world who is looking to leave their home country for more opportunity probably has the US high up on the list of places they'd consider going to that they'd actually be able to go to..
Literally how could he possibly know that? He's just saying racist things because he's obviously a racist. Haitian immigrants aren't eating cats or dogs either, we need to stop listening to him as an authority on anything. If Donald Trump is saying something, you should automatically assume it's a lie. Any other course of action isn't reasonable.
The requirement of being permanently obligated to pay us taxes on global income, if you have any kind of global mobility, is not worth it when you look at the situation objectively. The US is the only country that requires this, and signing up is voluntarily.
So while US immigration continues to act as though people will jump through any hoop they put up in order to be granted the extreme privilege of being able to live in the country indefinitely, it’s worth realising it’s not the 70s anymore and thats a goal many people are no longer optimizing for. In fact the opposite - the most talented people I know are all planning their lives to not settle long term in the US.