Shhh... don't tell them about Japan. We have most of the above!

In all seriousness, the language barrier among other things makes it a pretty big challenge to permanently move here.

Well duh! You coulda just said Europe is about equality of outcomes through high taxes (nothing is "free").

That's not a passive-agressive insult. To the contrary Europe made its mind up and does it.

"Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rah rah rah America at all, I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels"

The most direct, biting, focused, insightful criticism on America? Americans via familiarity breeds contempt.

Europe has a fundamentally different approach than does America.

Let me work this the other way as a half serious half not serious question to show the possible impasse to making the jump into the other's perspective: how did the bureaucrats in Brussels become so powerful and unbeatable that the UK wanted out?

Europe is not a country, and its members enjoy diverse governments, cultures, and policies. The question was why someone might want to exchange maximal compensation for other options, I answered that question. You’re welcome to choose your own priorities, nothing about my reply was prescriptive, or even making any explicit value judgments outside of my own admittedly subjective opinions.

If you (or anyone you care about) is working in the US tech sector on an H1B visa, are you currently better off in the United States? If you’re starting a family? If you’re deeply held personal beliefs run contrary to the local sociopolitical norms? If you want to work as a tech professional in academia? Non-profits? All of these classes are under the explicit threat of the Trump administration. This isn’t some liberal exaggeration, it’s plain to see in their words and actions. If none of that applies to you, then I hope you don’t take that good fortune for granted, as many in your profession right now are not as lucky.

So there are lots of reasons—good or bad from your perspective, they are still perfectly valid—and that was my only real point. I don’t think it’s a good choice for everyone, but I can easily see why many folks in many circumstances would indeed make that choice.

> If you make and save enough money - you can create your own safety net.

Once they finish gutting Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA, your little pile of gold is gonna get plundered quickly if and when you get sick with something that requires long-term care. Creating "your own safety net" is nothing more than an illusion unless you happen to be one of the lucky few oligarchs.

I'd rather live in a country where I know (with high certainty) that I won't die on the street for reasons outside my control.

> And it’s “free” only because I would pay more in taxes

I see it like this: it's a spectrum. At one end of it, you have the idealistic communism: "we all get the same treatment" (I know, it's more complicated than that). Which means that you definitely won't be homeless with no perspective, but you won't be mega rich. At the other end, you could have no government and let people pay for everything. No roads, no schools. The mega rich would be fine: they would build their own private roads where it matters, move with a helicopter, and their children anyway will have some kind of private teacher. But the average population is worse off, and the poor even worse.

If you go too much towards that second end (all for the mega rich), you risk a "revolution": if enough people have nothing to lose, they will hunt down the mega rich. Everybody loses.

Obviously, if you are part of the population that is today privileged, you may be happy with an unequal society (because you benefit from it). So if your goal is to be in a better situation than most of the population, and if you can achieve that, then you're better off in the US. Now not everyone is like that. Some people like it if the average population lives better, eats better, is better educated, better informed, less polarised, ... And in that sense, the US is not remotely at the top of the list.

Yes, I pay more taxes than I would if I was in the US, where I could create my own safety net. But that's a feature, not a bug. If I earn more than the average person, I'm happy to contribute more to the public infrastructure, because I can.

> And many countries in Europe are very much polarized if you are a Black person

Of course there is racism everywhere, not sure what you were expecting when you searched for that link. But I'm pretty sure it's worse in the US.

> And you 2/3rds consider themselves Christian - about the same as the US.

It's not about that, again. You can consider yourself a Christian and not be anti-abortion, for instance. Again, the US is worse than many European countries in many regards there.

> I think the countries policies suck on a lot of levels and much of the population is overly religious, bigoted, and naive and cheering as their Dear Leader is taking away services they need just because he “owns the libs”.

For many people, that's enough of a reason to prefer other countries.

> And by stable economic policies do you mean “stagnant”? The EU couldn’t innovate its way out of wet paper bag.

This is something where most Americans are simply ignorant. Do you know why the US economy is better? Access to fossil fuels. When you have more energy, you have more money and you can "innovate" more.

But "innovation" is not representative of quality of life. The US "innovates" with a lot of bullshit, or downright destructive technology. As long as is makes money, it's considered that it is good for society in the US. In Europe it's different (whether it's a choice or not, it does not matter). Europe does a lot of great things that contribute to society. If it improves society but doesn't print money, usually it stays in Europe. If the innovation has the potential to print money, usually it gets bought by the US (under some form, being just by having VC money available for that kind of technology).

Before saying "we in America invented all the modern technology", you should inform yourself a tiny bit, and realise that actually, a lot of it comes from the rest of the world. America is really good at making money in an unequal society (meaning that those innovations actually serve making the rich richer and the poor poorer).

Not saying that you should hate the US and love the rest of the world. What I'm trying to say is that many Americans believe that the US is the best country in the world, and more importantly that the rest of the world believes it as well. And that is very wrong: the American lifestyle is not desirable for a whole lot of people. Maybe it used to be in the last century, but not anymore. Not at all.