Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Place To Relocate? 999
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?"
Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
Good weather. Anglophone. Fun people. Healthy culture. Melbourne was just voted the most livable city in the world again. Economy booming because of natural resources being mined out of the ground and sent to China. All you really need to adapt to is driving on the left.
I hear what others say about Scandinavia, and those countries truly have their shit together, but I'd find the long dark winters to be very depressing.
Reading too much into the cover of The Economist (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like you are basing your decisions on a glance at the financial section of a magazine rack...
"Trouble in Europe"? Oh no! Better get out of here!
"Trouble in The US"! Oh no! Better not move there!
"Indonesia at a crossroads" Hmm, sounds promising!
Try opening the thing up next time and actually read what's going on. Then take the "am I ready to live in am emerging market?" quiz:
Do you like to have to bribe your way around the local bureaucracy?
Do you like to live within a mile of crushing poverty?
Do you like to endure social, natural, and economic crises?
If you answered yes to all of these, then yes an emerging market is for you (i.e. Brazil, China, India, etc). If you answered no to any of them, stay in a Western country. Keep your skills current and if the place goes downhill, just relocate again. Hell, you did it once, right?
Re:Australia (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I'd like to do it is alternate between the summer in Norway and the summer in Chile. I love mountains and seaside.
Re:Not sure what an IT "researcher" is and if it.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I moved to the San Francisco bay area last year and I'm loving it. Things to add to what AC said:
* Good weather.
* There is something here for everyone. If you like quiet, you can live in the suburbs. If you like more lively, you can live in one of the cities. You can go surfing and skiing on the same day.
* Yes, house and groceries are expensive. On the bright side, if you work for any of the tech companies, you will easily be able to afford things.
* Regarding visas: If you get a job with one of the larger tech companies, they will sponsor your visa. It may take a while before visas become available, though, as there is a quota.
* Companies here are definitely looking for more good people to hire, so if you have the skills they need, your chances of getting here are pretty good.
I don't know about the other places that have been mentioned, so I'll save the commenting on those to people who actually live there.
Look at Economics (Score:3, Interesting)
Oxymoron Question (Score:5, Interesting)
1st of all: If I would want to start a family I wouldn't plan to go anywhere for less than 20 years. Times are unruly enough as it is. With children you want a good school, a good community and - most important of all - a good wife and her our yours or both families near by. Everything else comes second!
If you want to start a family you should even consider a career change if that is required to provide for the other things mentioned above. The family will be your primary fullfillment, not the job, so you might as well work as a bricklayer, provided the income is enough. Also factor in: Free housing or easy real estate from your family or in-laws, quality of life, happiness of wife (where does she want to live and raise children) etc. All of these are *way* more important than monetary income. Especially in times like these.
If I'd start a family again, I'd move together with my girlfriend in the town she lives, simply because her career is way more solid than mine right now. And I wouldn't care if I were the main caregiver to children and would be driving a dump-truck on the side. Be prepared to do that aswell if your future wife turns out to be the vice-exec of some uprising company or having and wanting to keep a more stable career than you aparently have right now.
2.) If you want to earn money in IT and are prepared to leave everything behind, you do the full monty and should get prepared to move anywhere within a few weeks notice, at any time and occasion. Singapur, Silicon Valley, Moskow, Dubai perhaps and maybe some high-polpulation areas in china are where the partys at right now. Live out of the suitcase or in microapparments for the next 15 years, rake in some stable cash or real estate and buy/build a home for your old age.
3.) If you aren't prepared to go full-on cyberpunk and move around the globe for the rest of your working career you should stay put right where you are and adapt. If the Euro goes belly-up and the world finally notices that the US dollar isn't worth the paper its printed on then you'll be glad if you've got some contacts to a local farmer and some real-estate and a small shed on it somewhere in southern europe. And maybe some solar panels to power your computers. I'd be happy if I had that. I'm living in a single room sharing flat with 6 people in Germany and right now things aren't looking up, even for an expert like me. Living expenses are through the roof, the IT staff shortage is nothing but a legend to keep wages at the 2002 minimum and inflation is ramping up allready.
Bottom line: Move for the family you want to start, and *only* for that, go fully international and prepare to relocate to Timbuktu if the money and/or the benefits package is right or stay put, get by somehow and prepare for some elongated worldwide economic downtime.
My 2 cents.
Montreal, qc, Oh Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking for my church.
We don't have the recession, we don't have the climate problem, we don't have gun, neither any strong social/cultural problem.
We do have a strong IT/software development infrastructure from aerospace to game field or financial institution.
We are a multilingual and multicultural city, you can find food and language from anywhere around the globe here.
We do have apartment or house that doesn't ask you a arm.
We do have nice commuting infrastructure, the metro (subway) are underground, some apartment building and office building have direct access to the metro... so you don't have to but your nose outside during the cold day of the winter or the hot day of the summer.
We have a unique family policy that put the children as a societal value (6-8 month of parental care for a new birth, cheap children gardening, real restaurant with children place...)
In the city of Montreal, you will find a lot of natural park and children park.
Park are big enough to do mountain bike, skying, and so on....
Lot of Europeans people work in the IT field in Montreal, you will not look that strange...
It's easy to have the canadien residence for a european
If you have a diploma from a know european university, you will have a job faster than the canadian residence.
Other places (Score:4, Interesting)
The US is still a great place to live, but assuming you are part of the new trend of US haters, I would recommend you look at the following places:
1) Vancouver, Canada
2) Japan (one of the non-irradiated sections)
3) Norway
4) New Zealand
5) Switzerland
But those would be my preferences, yours may differ.
Germany ! - Welcome to Germany (Score:4, Interesting)
1.) very reasonable priced health care ! (contributions will be transfered by your employer to the insurance company from your salary)
- the health care insurance company is not allowed to pick, they have to take anybody
2.) good job market
3.) reasonable priced rent
4.) you can mostly get along with speaking english,
but learning german is not that hard,
Example: that iranian young women whose face pic was taken from facebook by western media due to a name glitch, she was prosecuted by the mullahs,
got asylum here and after only one and a half year she is fluent and speaks execelent, she was on radio last week.
If you want to learn german the national public radio (not npr) has a livestream,
http://www.dradio.de/ [dradio.de]
you can also find places on the internet where you can watch our exported tv series ("Der Tatort" which translates as "The Crime Scene" or "Derrek" these got even dubbed with japanese language for Japan of course!!)
5.) state forced sponsored pension (will be transfered by your employer as part of your salary) after your 67 birth day these insurance benefits will be paid
6.) disabled persons & families are last to be fired (workers rights)
7.) strong unions
8.) from north to south, funny speaking people
9.) reasonable wages
When you negotiate your salary keep taxes and other things in mind (~%43 will be subtracted from your salary) so just add it beforehand !
10.) IT, Tech & Engineering Jobs
I love my country so I'd like to present my country to people in this world, european, african, asian, indian.
Think of finding a job ?
-> Try Germany!
Re:US (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course if money is your primary choice, I would suggest Australia.
As someone who thought the same a few years back, I'd highly discourage this as a course of action. In Australia, I made far more money than in my native New Zealand, but it was all eaten up with the ridiculous cost of living. Sure, some places might be cheaper than Sydney, but good luck finding a well paying job outside of Sydney (if you do, grab it - it probably WILL be worth it).
Since moving to Hannover, Germany, my pay stayed around the same or increased slightly and my cost of living went down by more than 50%. I feel significantly better off here than I ever did in Sydney.
Re:Australia (Score:2, Interesting)
Chile is awesome. Super stable economy, not just during the crisis. Very family friendly. Real estate is cheap compared to, e.g., Argentina. Not sure if an IT researcher could do exceptionally well there. There's no one industry that is killer (except maybe mining), it's just a really well rounded economy. It's also kind of boring, the way Colorado would be boring in the 1950s. That's either a good thing or bad thing, depending on what you're looking for. But that's also why it's not on anybody's radar. (Note, conservatives love to talk about their free market pension plan, but everybody hates it there. The newspapers regularly complain about the 20-30% vig the banks take, so don't move there because Paul Ryan likes it. You'll just be disappointed.)
If you want to move to Brazil, I'd suggest Curitiba. Built predominantly by emigres from Europe and Japan, it doesn't have a lot of the crime and crazy politics of the larger, older cities further north which struggle with more inequality. It's also a global poster child for sustainable urban development practices, not just because of any single media-hyped development, but because of 30 years of sane planning.
Hubris (Score:4, Interesting)
Also FYI, be good at what you do and no financial crisis can hurt you.
Deep, classical hubris.
FInancial crises promote societal upheavals. They crash stock markets. They wipe out real estate values. They destroy savings accounts. They turn cities into war zones. If you're rich enough, you get to learn all about the wonderful world of K&R insurance, and the wonder of placing full-time bodyguards with your children. You get to live behind more walls than most Supermax inmates. Your spouse begins to take their frustration out on you, as do your kids.
You become acutely aware of how far away the panic room is, and you push down any thoughts that someone might not come when you call for help from inside. You hire people to carry guns for you, and you have to worry as much about them as you do any bad guys. You become a family under seige. Even your kid's puppy love has to be fiercely vetted and worried about as a potential gold-digger.
Your whole world becomes as much about fear and survival as any plane crash victim lost in the wilderness. Your doctor recommends anti-anxiety drugs, and THAT becomes something to worry about.
So there you are, as grim as any soldier in a losing battle. Your food is exquisite and tasteless. Your insomnia is at least wrapped in silk sheets. Spend as much money on hookers as you want. You'll never get close to what a woman who loves you can do for you.
And remember, this is what happens when you have enough money to try to insulate yourself from the upheaval. "Being good at what you do," means you're just another working stiff, and the functional difference between $100K and homeless isn't nearly as much as you might like to think...
Re:A true American (Score:2, Interesting)
I've worked both in San Francisco (CA) and in Munich (DE). And I would never ever go back to San Francisco.
Salaries are nearly the same, taxes are about 10% higher in Germany, but you have free comprehensive healthcare and a generous pension system. And workers' rights are far higher in Germany: in all large companies unions control 50% of the Supervisory Council (nearly equivalent to the "Board" in US companies), shareholders have a limited power, they're not the "owners" of the company. Workers' dismissal is also far more difficult.
I'm afraid that people in the US are really convinced that they live in "the richest nation in the world" because they've been told that since they were kids. Sorry, it's only the most militarized country in the world, not "the richest": 10% of wealthy people, 90% of quasi-beggars.
Re:A true American (Score:3, Interesting)
My partner and I made the decision a long time ago to live anywhere but America. I have friends in the USA, and I visit fairly often, but I refuse to be in a country with the kind of politics that the US does. The fact that the abortion debate is alive and well is an absolute killer for us. Philosophically, we have trouble with a political system that thinks so little of its women and seems to be working hard to think even less of them. The split opinion on health care also baffles us; the fact that we don't have to consider our household budget or insurance plan when we need to see the doctor is pretty essential to us.
But, if you don't mind the politics and the guns (whether or not you get shot; you just need to not mind being around guns), there's a lot of nice folks there and a lot of opportunity.
So I can recommend Canada. Montreal, Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver are all amazing cities. They all have issues, but they're all wonderful in their own way. Vancouver will have the lowest taxes in that list, Montreal the highest. But the cost of living in Montreal isn't bad, so it kind of works out.
But ultimately, trying to predict the world economy and then trying to plan on where you want to live is a mug's game. Figure out where you want to live and see if you can make a living there.
Re:US (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. I'm in Seattle but if/when I move my list would be:
1) Wellington or Dunedin in NZ
2) Sydney
3) Vancouver, BC
4) Singapore
Re:Yes, and a massive one (Score:3, Interesting)
But as far as that goes, there are some days I wish it were possible to drop an atom bomb on the Pakistan frontiers where the Taliban take up shop. I suppose you think the Taliban are hard done by. Nice people who destroy national (and important to the world) antiquities, force women to wear tents, and shoot them if they see fit, poison school wells because they don't think students, especially girls, should learn anything that isn't in the Koran, etc. etc. etc.
If you can live with yourself implicitly supporting the Taliban, I can live with the drone war on them. It isn't a matter of you're either with me or against me, more you're either part of the problem or you're not. Not providing Afghanistan a look at what the alternative to the Taliban can be by providing schools and support for their fledgling police and government infrastructure just invites the Taliban back. Not preventing the Taliban from killing, poisoning, intimidating, is inviting them back just as much as anything. But of course you have already implied you think theocracies are just fine with you.
Sure you'll spout, let the people decide. How well can you decide anything if someone points a gun at your head? If someone were going to kill you or kill your children if you didn't suck a cock, you'd do it and ask for more. Unless you give the people a break from these thugs, they won't have chance. The Taliban preach their theocracy with a gun barrel. And these Taliban thugs won't stop. Hell just yesterday they attacked a base where the Pakistanis store nuclear weapons. So you'd rather we did nothing a would be OK if religious radicals were in control of nuclear weapons. Are you looking forward to Iran arming Hezbollah with nuclear bombs?
You think trying to do something against these scumbags is warlike? When the Pakistani government not only won't do anything about them often even where forced, but actively if covertly support them (Bin Laden couldn't have set up shop like that without government help). You really think combating these people is warlike? I don't fucking think so.
Chamberlain showed what happens if you choose to avoid a distasteful but needed call to arms. Don't give me any crap about some principle when I say his name, but Hitler could have been stopped early if the leaders hadn't been so afraid to do what needed to be done. Do you know who had the most heavy tanks in Europe in the late 1930s (including 1939/1940 during the phony war)? France; that's who. Not Germany. It had nothing to do with manpower or equipment. Thinking forcible disarmament of Germany was warlike and war mongering caused WWII and the deaths of 11.5 million people in death camps (the Jews weren't the only group thrown in the ovens). It lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousand of soldiers and civilians. It lead to Japan making the Nazi atrocities look like a kids sandbox game when they went into China and the Philippines.
Being forced down the path to war because diplomacy doesn't work, doesn't mean you're warlike. It just just means you do what you have to do. Being warlike means doing something like that when there is no need. Before the invasion in 2001/2002 the Taliban were asked to give up Osama Bin Laden and they said no, they didn't think he did anything wrong. In fact the Taliban government showed themselves complicit by providing training bases for things they knew Bin Laden was up to (terrorism). They were a rogue state in every sense of the word. Never mind a few years before they had fired artillery into 1000 year old massive carvings of Buddha on mountain walls, at least 100 feet tall when many in the world begged them not to... all because of religious principles (that is a good indication of how they think).
You want warlike? Genghis Khan was warlike. Napoleon was warlike. Wehrmacht Germany was warlike.The Khmer Rouge were warlike. Most dictators are warlike. The Taliban are warlike. Stopping those who would kill to forc