There are probably a lot of other reasons that it would not be socially acceptable to admit to.
Being an obvious foreigner can signal you have money and power without you having to say a word about it. In contrast, relocating to a small town in the US wouldn't bring such perks of establishing that the poverty stricken locals should defer to you and cater to you. Instead, you would be an outsider trying to "prove" yourself and get an in socially.
Going to a less developed foreign country allows some people to impose whatever mental models they desire on the landscape without having to try to understand local culture or respect it. To their mind, a less developed country is a social clean slate and folks their should just be grateful a rich Westerner has showed up with money to spend.
If you do run into problems, you can blame it on cultural misunderstanding and try to get a free "out" that no one would give you in a small town in your own country because you are expected to know better than that, even though the laws vary to some degree from state to state within the US.
For example, articles about Westerners drinking alcohol in a Middle Eastern country and being arrested for it are generally viewed sympathetically in the west. Readers are generally on the side of the person who drank alcohol and are critical of the "backwards" country forbidding alcohol. In contrast, if you smoke marijuana someplace where it isn't legal in the US, you get vastly less sympathy from most folks because you are supposed to know better than that.
The idea of moving to some other country that is super cheap and where the living is expected to be easy if you are a Westerner is rooted in historical colonialism. It's really rooted in an expectation of taking advantage of the locals and of their country while telling yourself you are doing only good things for these uneducated heathens -- so viewed because they are not educated in the same things you are educated in, a point of view that stands in part because of your own unquestioned ignorance of their culture and history that you probably think isn't worth studying.
I have considered relocating to another, cheaper country, both because I come from a multi-cultural household and haven't been out of the US in a long time and because I currently have a limited income and the idea of magically solving my financial problems by moving someplace vastly cheaper sounds like a wonderful easy answer. So I understand the appeal.
But I think a lot of people make it work for reasons I find problematic and can't mentally replicate, in part because my mother is an immigrant, so I can't manage to see the local economy as some kind of clean slate that I can impose myself upon and that appears to be a large part of the appeal for some people.
it's just natural extension of moving within your native country to maximize opportunity/cost of living
Extending something far enough can fundamentally change it's character. This is why we have concepts like predatory lending, a term we apply to loans whose terms are naturally extended to maximize returns.
Economic extraction doesn't have to involve resource extraction of the exact same type as old colonialism.
Sure. It's all about you and what works for you. No need to spend a nanosecond wondering how you impact the fabric of society by your choices.
(She says as she sits here wondering if anyone will get the irony of a rebuttal saying, in essence, "I'm not callously mistreating anyone! I was only thinking about me, me, me, me, me when I made this decision! I gave others no thought At All, thus my behavior couldn't possibly be negatively impacting them!")
Generally speaking, we see poor people going to rich countries as trying to take advantage. This is one reason Trump wants to build a wall.
But wealthy folks going to poor countries typically don't see themselves in similar terms at all. They typically feel superior to the people they live among and feel like they are clearly and unquestionably adding value and should be appreciated, obviously.
I did some research for a piece I wrote about a massacre of Native Americans that is little known. Natives hunted, fished, etc and lived lightly on the land. They were a mobile people. They had campsites they routinely used, but no permanent settlements.
Trappers and fur traders were the first to show up. They weren't that different from the natives. The natives were tolerant and welcoming, figuring there were plenty of resources to go around.
Then settlers came. The natives still saw no problem. They welcomed them.
But settlers built fences and homes and claimed land. Once they staked out a parcel of land, they saw the natives as tresspassers.
The early settlers took the best parcels. Soon, the natives were extremely restricted in where they could hunt and gather and were consigned to the least productive tracts.
Looking back on it, in order to protect themselves, the natives really should have murdered every trapper and settler as they showed up. They shouldn't have saved the settlers at Plymouth.
The Europeans coming here did not see themselves as theives taking the lands of the peoples who already lived here. The natives had traditional areas and an alien culture. The Europeans saw only open, undeveloped land free for the taking.
As the settlements grew, the natives became increasingly impoverished and we're soon begging for food from the settlers. The American response was to send in the military and massacre them. They were viewed as behaving badly, as troublemakers, as theives, as lazy, as unproductive.
The real theives were the oblivious settlers who did not see themselves as having taken anything from the natives.
People from developed countries routinely go into less developed areas, improve their own lives at the expense of the existing locals and then frame it like the locals are uneducated, stupid, unambitious, etc. They typically fail to acknowledge that they victimized them.
It's not quite that simple. The reality is that a hunter-gatherer lifestyle requires large amounts of land to support every individual. So tribespeople that live that way often have fairly brutal practices for limiting populations. Agriculture supports larger populations on the same amount of land and modern agriculture even more so.
Life expectancy is also generally higher in developed countries for various reasons. Quality of life can also be higher, though it isn't necessarily evenly higher.
But those gains frequently come at the expense of doing terrible things to local natives, natives who often helped the intruders initially survive at all. And this is how we repay their kindness.
My mother is an immigrant. I would love to spend some time in another country again before I die. But I'm not comfortable pretending that locals should just be thrilled I'm there, bringing my money and superior ways with me and so forth.
Being an obvious foreigner can signal you have money and power without you having to say a word about it. In contrast, relocating to a small town in the US wouldn't bring such perks of establishing that the poverty stricken locals should defer to you and cater to you. Instead, you would be an outsider trying to "prove" yourself and get an in socially.
Going to a less developed foreign country allows some people to impose whatever mental models they desire on the landscape without having to try to understand local culture or respect it. To their mind, a less developed country is a social clean slate and folks their should just be grateful a rich Westerner has showed up with money to spend.
If you do run into problems, you can blame it on cultural misunderstanding and try to get a free "out" that no one would give you in a small town in your own country because you are expected to know better than that, even though the laws vary to some degree from state to state within the US.
For example, articles about Westerners drinking alcohol in a Middle Eastern country and being arrested for it are generally viewed sympathetically in the west. Readers are generally on the side of the person who drank alcohol and are critical of the "backwards" country forbidding alcohol. In contrast, if you smoke marijuana someplace where it isn't legal in the US, you get vastly less sympathy from most folks because you are supposed to know better than that.
The idea of moving to some other country that is super cheap and where the living is expected to be easy if you are a Westerner is rooted in historical colonialism. It's really rooted in an expectation of taking advantage of the locals and of their country while telling yourself you are doing only good things for these uneducated heathens -- so viewed because they are not educated in the same things you are educated in, a point of view that stands in part because of your own unquestioned ignorance of their culture and history that you probably think isn't worth studying.
I have considered relocating to another, cheaper country, both because I come from a multi-cultural household and haven't been out of the US in a long time and because I currently have a limited income and the idea of magically solving my financial problems by moving someplace vastly cheaper sounds like a wonderful easy answer. So I understand the appeal.
But I think a lot of people make it work for reasons I find problematic and can't mentally replicate, in part because my mother is an immigrant, so I can't manage to see the local economy as some kind of clean slate that I can impose myself upon and that appears to be a large part of the appeal for some people.