Is this solution to every issue in the US? Like if something is shit then instead of fixing just run from the problem? I guess that’s why you are stuck choosing between republicans and democrats every 4 years lol.
The reason Republicans and Democrats win all the time is partly because the US generally doesn't have ranked choice voting when it comes to something like presidential elections [0]. People are afraid of voting for a third party because it is unlikely they would win, so they vote as if betting or hedging, choosing the least bad and yet still likely to win against the worse option. With ranked choice voting, voters could choose their preferred candidate first, and their backup second, and this would introduce some dynamism into the political system.
lol this is probably most famous financial tool on the market. No wonder we have so many new software tools being created daily since some people don’t do basic market research.
I work in UI, but never in finance. I don't even own a stock (is that even the right word?) and have never invested.
Anyway, I wish I got to encounter this system earlier in my career... would've loved to experiment with a UI like that! News ticker under a real time map that you can use to drill down to specific regions to see what's going on? It's fascinating.
And it looks like their map is using some sort of serverside raster tiling where even simple arrows have to be redrawn on different zoom levels... just random things I'd be eager to try to improve.
Just as russian bots, israeli bots spreading fake news are worst thing that happened to our society. Crazy that people are falling for this but here we are
How many congressmen are dual citizens with Israeli citizenship? This is even worse. Also, AIPAC is allowed to exist. As a thought experiment replace Israeli with Russian citizenship for the Israeli dual citizens in Congress and replace AIPAC with a hypothetical Russian ARPAC. Imagine how crazy this would be. Yet the current situation is somehow completely acceptable.
> How many congressmen are dual citizens with Israeli citizenship?
I don't know. How many? I was curious and Googled, and couldn't find any good authoritative lists. This Quora answer [0] implies that the answer is zero, as does this Snopes article [1]. Both answers mention that there's various incorrect lists going around that are white supremacist propaganda.
They have defacto Israeli citizenship because of the law of return, no? Not saying I agree with who you're replying to, but if a few dozen congressmen had the same status in Russia, wouldn't you see them as being connected to said country?
I mean, they’re “connected” insofar as they have the potential legal right to move there and acquire citizenship. The question is - is that kind of connection meaningful here?
Speaking personally - I am ethnically Jewish, although I’ve never practiced, and of Polish descent. Technically, if I were to go through the necessary processes, I could acquire citizenship of Israel or Poland. Despite that: I’ve never been to either country, have no known family there, I don’t speak either Hebrew or Polish…the notion that I have any meaningful connection to these foreign countries beyond trivial historical facts is absurd to me. And the idea that, were Poland or Israel to become geopolitical adversaries of Canada, I would be viewed with mistrust, as less Canadian because, through quirks of family history and bureaucracy I’ve been made an offer I never accepted, is pretty disheartening.
At any rate, the upshot of this line of thinking - that we must be wary of Jews with matters of national importance because they are, through no choice of their own, supposedly beholden to a foreign power - is enormously problematic and, yes, anti-Semitic. Similar logic was used to justify Japanese internment camps.
Israel is meant to be a "safe" space for jews, and the Law of Return will allow you and your decedents to move to Israel when the anti-jewish takes power and you will not feel/be safe in your current location. Maybe you won't think it's so trivial then...
While it doesn't seems so today, that's the premise of the State of Israel after the Holocaust.
He may still be able to say he is Jewish or even deny that he is religious today the trend in the west is the same as in the 1930's. You see it in the UK, France, the US and even in Germany. It doesn't matter what these governments say today. They don't fight or even deny anti-semitism either from the radical right or the marxist and Islamo-left. The protests under the mask of anti-Israel are just these ideas peeking into the surface.
When his business gets boycotted, burned and stolen, when he won't be able to run for office or hold a government position, when his house gets marked and his kids won't be able to go to school the only safe place in that regard will be Israel.
I would just note here that Israel being a safe space after Holocaust is not in line with history. I am not denying that it had some aspects of being a safe space, but the project Israel started much before Holocaust, and Balfour declaration predates Holocaust by decades.
Again, I agree that there can be an argument that Holocaust was a culminating event of the antisemitism in Europe. But i never felt that the antisemitism in the west makes Israel a safe space, is not very congruent one when the both West and Israel touts a shared set of Western values. It is even more surprising since the current conservatives call Western values as Judeo Christian.
I would make it clear that people feeling being alienated even in presence of such values is understandable. But the events of establishing Israel, and the continued invasions of neighbouring countries, and the sheer atrocities committed in the process makes no sense to me. Not to say the constant attempts to portray people who have been living there as usurpers, harbouring Zionist Terrorists, are not the actions of some who seeks a safe space.
The Zionist idea was to create a state where Jews could make their own destiny, which in part is to have a place where every jew can come with the rising antisemitism and pogroms as they could no loner be a people without a state. The Holocaust was one of the catalyst that a safe place for jews must be established i.e. no one will protect us but us. A prime example is the expulsion of Jews ,pogroms being a 2nd class citizen in Arab countries.
It's not surprising at all, should the Jews in the west just go about their lives with classic Christen, revived Marxism and newly imported Islamic antisemitism? These western government do nothing to counter it beside saying they condemn that, which means nothing.
Continued Invasions of neighboring countries?? Your bias is showing, every action of Israel is in response to aggression and terrorism by Israel's neighbors. Don't want to get invaded and bombed to hell? Shouldn't have fired thousands of missiles, rape, behead, mutilate, kidnap, harbor terrorists, dung terror tunnels, blocked trade blew up buses, restaurants and coffee shops. These "neighbors" of Israel always like to cry that Israel is the aggressor but it's always reflection.
I agree with you on all of that. I don't think there should be any mistrust either, but I understand that there could be biais towards the only Jewish state for Jewish congressmen. Again, that's completely normal (black congressmen have a biais for black related issues, Muslim Congressmen tend to be more pro Palestine)... Does that make any sense?
The downside of that though is that I've seen tons and tons of Jewish public figures completely downplay what's happening in Gaza, almost reflexively. Either that or unabashed support for the IDF. All of that is also common even amongst my more liberal Jewish friends/acquaintances. That's completely understandable in a way, to unite for that cause in this context but it also means that the biais is hard to ignore. Though I don't see it as loyalty to a foreign power at all, they are completely american/Canadian/whatever.
So I see it more as an issue that'd be similar to an all white congress voting on issues that mostly impact black people or other minorities. Is it loyalty? Nope. Is there biais (conscious or not)? Yes. The same goes for a congress with almost no Palestinian or even Muslim voices but a lot more Jewish voices imo.
But yes, the reality is that it almost always lead to a very dangerous way of thinking, and not just a discussion about biais
To my knowledge, zero. If you really mean Jews, I think there are roughly 40 between both houses of Congress. None of them are Israeli citizens. Jews are not automatically citizens of Israel though they do have dedicated pathway to obtaining it, but it's not as simple as merely showing up and claim you are Jewish.
"How many congressmen are dual citizens with Israeli citizenship"
By this do you mean Jews? Should be prevent Jewish people from being allowed in congress?
"AIPAC is allowed to exist"
Should we prevent it from existing becuase it supports a Jewish state?
You have no issue with the hundreds of other lobbying groups, just the jewish one.
It's not Jewish, it's pro-Israel (American Israel Public Affair Committee). Israel is a foreign country whose interests might be conflicting with those of the US. That's different, don't you think?
> OP's mention of "Dual Citizens" clearly meaning Jews
"Dual citizens" clearly means "dual citizens".
If the OP had the information that many Jews in Congress were dual citizens, he was wrong- although in fairness it's an understandable false belief when you have US politicians coming to Congress wearing their IDF uniform or propose laws to give IDF veterans the same benefits that US veterans receive.
> concerned with AIPAC and not the other foreign PACS. Wonder what the differentiating factor is?
Just look at the the first PAC in the list you mentioned: it's Accenture. Classified as foreign because their headquarter is in an empty office of a tax haven. AIPAC is not even in this list: it's in the "ideology/ single issue" list, where it stands as the only pro-<some country> PAC in the list (and the 4th largest).
> As a thought experiment replace Israeli with Russian citizenship for the Israeli dual citizens in Congress and replace AIPAC with a hypothetical Russian ARPAC
Is Russia the main American ally in the region that contributes enormously to American intelligence and R&D, while also supporting American military operations?
Have you considered that things might go the other way around: if Russia had such a strong influence on the US through its political action lobby as Israel does, Russia would be considered by politicians the main ally of the US, and the economic and military ties between the two countries would be unbreakable. Because the purpose of these lobbies is exactly to influence how a certain country feels and acts about another.
No. The US would be convinced it got another valuable ally- which is not the same as actually having one.
In pretty much the same way, those who fall for long distance romance scams didn't find the love of their life, despite believing so. They found someone who is taking advantage of them.
What operations did Israel support? If anything the US is over involved in the MENA area because of Israel. Before the cringy evangelical push for total support for Israel, the middle east wasn't hostile to the US. Actually the US was seen as the good guys (in the 50s and arguably 60s) because they were strictly pushing Great Britain and France for decolonisation.
I think it’s not a facebook ban per se but more like set of regulations (like no nsfw content and so on) that you need to meet to operate a business in the country. Facebook couldn’t care to meet those rules so they aren’t allowed to operate. Apple, Tesla and thousands other american businesses can still operate.
It was that in the beginning. Then Zuckerberg had a change of heart and was willing to cooperate with the Chinese authorities on censorship and came to Beijing multiple times to express his newfound friendliness. Yet the Chinese government still shunned him. Not sure why.
Is it common for Germans to dream about getting out of Germany and moving to US? Congratulations to you that you managed to do that, I am wondering how hard for German is to migrate to US to puruse better life here.
It is not common. Most Germans consider would never use the phrase "pursue a better life" when talking about the US. Quality of Life is in most European countries better including Germany.
There are however some who want "freedom". Not that they lack freedom in Germany but the spiritual cowboy style, rocky mountain lifestyle freedom. Another reason for migration are obviously job offers in some industries.
Most Europeans moving to America for work do so for this reason. Live frugally in America, earn cash, use it to improve life when moving back to Europe.
As an American who values the quality of my life, there is little I wouldn't give for a working permit in any EU country, especially Germany. The grass is always greener I suppose, or maybe something of an ancestral longing (my paternal ancestor wasn't a willing emigrant, just a captured mercenary with no capo to negotiate with the British for the fare back to his Hessian homeland). Maybe a rarer inclination at present, but in another 50 years I doubt it still will be. It costs 40% less to live in Berlin (on average) than to live in my the fair Verona where I lay my scene, the San Francisco Bay Area, 40% less and a completely functional social safety net that doesn't let its old people starve to death on the streets! I am not sure what anyone means when they say freedom, its an amorphous concept but starving to death in the cold, that's a more visceral and topical thing I can see the hideous reality of by walking a block in any direction in SF. There but for God's grace go I.
The country you grew up in almost always has a big quality-of-life head start, because it's where your friends and family are.
If you're in a poor country and changing country will get you a 10x increase in salary, that might more than compensate for only seeing your loved ones for a few days every few years. But if you're already pretty well off? Not so much.
The headstart is also in your customs. If you are used living w/o e.g. social security, a migration to the US is far more easy/interesting than when you are used to social security.
We could start listing things, but there's probably a list that someone else has made. And depending on how much weight/value they put on things, they could say one or the other is better.
I actually did, and visited the US many times after. I saw the good and the bad. In both countries.
There is no hard feeling, except that I want to express that the US while being a nice country to life is not the "pursue a better life" destination. It is all very relative.
Honestly the number one thing I miss about America is the big supermarkets and sheer diversity of food products available. Also much better restaurants on average.
Germany is generally a better place to live if you have a low to average income. Think everything from transit to health care to tenants' rights. But like if you're aiming for really high salaries as a software developer, America is the place to be.
Most Germans I know in tech (lived in Germany for 5 years or so) would never want to move the US. Everyone prefers the Germany social security/insurance/pension system (even if it’s quite mediocre compared to The Netherlands and Scandinavia).
>Most Germans I know in tech (lived in Germany for 5 years or so) would never want to move the US.
And yet GP did, and others more like him. FWIW I had two German bosses who emigrated to the US(one to California, one to Atlanta), so the US is clearly an attractive place for them and they say they loved it there just like GP.
The majority of Germans talking about how much they hate the US, have never lived there but they hate it nevertheless because it's a populat thing to hate in Germany, and also they don't work in tech, or need to rely on the welfare state, or are already from well off families where the lower local salaries make no difference. The ones working in tech who don't rely on the welfare state, are quite open to the idea of moving there for the right money.
Sure, if GP was one of those Germans from a mid-upper class background with a nice inherited Bavarian house (unaffordable at any German working wage) then immigrating to the US makes no sense as he already would have enough prosperity at home, but if you have no wealth and want to build it, then working in the US tech sector is much better than working in Germany.
So no, a blanket generalization cannot be made of "Germans wanting to move to the US", as that highly depends on their social/wealth class and career.
Edit: seems I upset the apple cart with my comment. Sorry, next time I'm gonna parrot the HN accepted "Germany-Good, US-Bad" party line if that pleases the crowd.
I think you got downvoted because you answer like you're being attacked, when someone just stated their opinion/views. He mentioned this is an opinion of people HE knows. This is also an opinion of most people I know(and I work with a lot of people from central/western EU). People have their opinions and that's ok, you might know people with different opinions and that's also ok, noone is attacking you or US.
I'm from Poland and I would also not move to US, unless me and my SO had guaranteed high-paying jobs. I currently make around 85k USD/y(base) and even if I could double that easily just by moving there, my living standard would go down dramatically as my current salary already puts me in top 5% in my country. I absolutely love how big US is, amazing national parks, the access to nature and general diversity of people, foods and cultures, but lack of public healthcare and free access to guns would be an absolute no no for me unless I was paid obscene amounts of money for those 'inconveniences'.
>I'm from Poland and I would also not move to US [...] I currently make around 85k USD/y(base)
Well that's why, because you already make very good money here. But the vast majority of Poles, or even other Europeans in even more expensive countries, don't make anywhere near that money, while having much more expensive housing than Poland.
With that kind of money you're living the good life here already so there's no reason to move to the US even for 2x-5x the money as you can already afford everything you could ever need in Poland on your current salary. You're pretty much in a bubble and are the exception, not the rule.
Like I said before, people with good material situation in Europe have almost no reason to move to the US. But what about those on less fortunate salaries with no wealth to their name, who would get a shot in the US for a >10x pay bump?
A childhood friend's dad moved to work in construction in the US(also from eastern Europe), and with the money from working 15 years there he's set for life in Europe, already retired early and in a McMansion back home. There's no way he could have achieved that financial independence by staying in his eastern European country. Not everyone in Europe has the potential to earn 85k/year here, while in the US it's much much easier.
For many jobs, the EU-US discrepancy in pay is insane, and not just in SW dev.
> Well that's why, because you already make very good money here. But the vast majority of Poles, or even Europeans in richer countries, don't make anywhere near that money.
Sure but we're talking in a technical forum where most of people work in software. Most devs in Poland make good or really good money.
> But what about those on less fortunate salaries with no wealth to their name, who would get a shot in the US for a 10x pay bump?
I can't imagine a person who makes minimal and moves to US in hopes of making more. Most people in EU who make minimal salaries live from paycheck to paycheck, they don't save enough to risk moving across the world. I honestly think that this person either ends up homeless or makes minimal salary in US too and probably ends up worse, due to lack of public healthcare/social support.
If you want to make good money, you can do that in most countries(obviously with exception of 3rd world countries, countries with an ongoing crisis etc.). Moving to US won't suddenly make it happen.
If you already work in IT then the salary bump these days might be significant, but I would argue that salary to CoL ratio will stay roughly the same. Unless you're exceptional at what you do and have an extremely good offer, you're probably not going to improve your life significantly by moving. Why would moving to US give you 'a shot at 10x pay bump' that you didn't have in your own country?
>Sure but we're talking in a technical forum where most of people work in software. Most devs in Poland make good or really good money.
That may be, but on the topic of emigration from the EU to US, I was talking about the general population and what reasons they may have to move there since the initial question was about Germans wanting to move to the US, not about German devs exclusively wanting to move to the US, so please not move the goalposts to just to the SW dev bubble.
Yes, I'm aware many SW devs in Europe can build comfy lives, especially in low-Col eastern Europe with western wages, but again, that's a bubble of a small subset of the country's total workforce. The vast majority of Poles not working in tech don't earn that well at all (average salary in Poland is 20,265 EUR/year, and if you exclude well paid SW devs it's probably much lower) so pretty sure they might be more inclined to move to the US is given the chance at a 5x or so pay bump.
>I can't imagine a person who makes minimal and moves to US in hopes of making more.
The alternative to well paid SW dev careers in Europe is not minimal wage person living paycheck to paycheck. There are other jobs in between that pay mediocre or sub-mediocre in most EU countries but pay stellar in the US. For example my office mate's brother moved to the US(North Carolina) to work in banking just like he did in Austria but according to him he "gets paid bank just to move money from one account to another and has less stres than at his job in Europe".
Same for other average jobs as well, that while not living paycheck to paycheck in Europe, don't allow you to build any wealth either, but in the US can get paid significantly more even adjusted to CoL(North Carolina is not Poland cheap but it's not SV expensive either).
Maybe it’s not US-bad Germany-good or Germany-bad US-good, and more like home-good, away-scary or home-bad, away-alluring. Or maybe even home-good, adventure-exciting.
We can compare salaries, schools, freedoms, houses, and so forth til the end of time, but there’s always an intangible personal factor weighing down the scales to some extent. I think that’s what gets people to actually uproot and move, no matter which direction they go.
Exactly. Having just made an international move for a job and going through the research and decision making process, I found it really boils down to the intangible personal factor that you speak of. What does the individual value and what are they seeking? It's impossible to assign one answer as to which place is best.
>Same goes for your blanket generalization implying Germans are either rich, rely on welfare or like working in the US.
I never said Germans are relying on welfare, I said the Germans WHO rely on welfare would not consider moving to the US for obvious reasons. Nor those who are already financially stable, again for obvious reasons.
>I myself would never consider moving there just for a higher salary.
I’m not German but French, however I do feel that this "Silicon Valley dream" upon developers was still existing in this era.
It was at that time that we started to have startups in Europe who tried to follow the SV culture. GAFAMs were still seen as cool enough to envy a well paid job at them. A lot of SV startups weren’t openly privacy hostile (or maybe the issue wasn’t took seriously enough).
But I felt that this "dream" was only upon developers at that time and it stoped sometimes after. In fact, in 2015, while on a trip to SF, I ate with a former French coworker who decided to live the dream and he was already saying to me that he wanted to come back in Europe because he couldn’t stand the ambiant culture anymore.
It wasn’t the job, he loved it, performed well, was well paid. It wasn’t even the people, he made some friends there, felt like people were genuinely nice.
But it was more the delusion about the SV-Life and the mismatch in cultural values and in the global society lifestyle in which he felt you were nothing to others / to the society without money.
Now I do feel like that this sentiment about the US is now more mainstream in Europe even amongst those who never came in USA.
ps : I urge you to not read any criticism in my comment, I’m describing a general sentiment from the other side of an ocean, probably with a big bias. But I do feel this sentiment is pretty recent and it’s probable that Trump made it way worse.
This is vastly different for native Germans and immigrant Germans. There are even some papers about how having a Turkish name immediately cuts your chances of getting a response to your job application in half. German job applications also require a photo on the application.
For a lot of immigrant Germans leaving Germany is very much a goal, since upward mobility in German society is very low compared to the US. So for a lot of "German Germans" the answer is no, but for the rest it very much is something people aspire to.
If you look at the statistics I believe outward migration is a little under inward migration, but I'd wager that there are a lot more people with higher ed moving out than are moving in.
I complain about the US a lot, but for me both the US and the UK were vastly better for my mental health and career than Germany was, even despite the average standard of living in Europe being much higher.
> German job applications also require a photo on the application.
I don't disagree with the rest of your comment but this is not true.
Technically an employer cannot legally require you to attach a picture to your application or judge you any differently if you do not attach one, since the AGG passed in 2006 – although I don't doubt that it plays out different in practice sometimes.
I remember even being told in Highschool though that we shouldn't attach a picture to job applications, since it's generally not done anymore to avoid discrimination.
Yes technically, and how could you possibly enforce that? There is no rule forbidding it, so by default most employers still require it in their applications, but if they don't and you don't supply it, they will be suspicious.
There is no way around that problem unless that practice is explicitly banned. Instead, you just get this weird workaround, that doesn't technically ban it, but makes it completely unenforceable, giving the German bureaucratic system an excuse that they addressed the issue without ever having to address it.
I would argue this measures governments services available to the poorest for free + to some extent how successful those government services are in fixing social issues (like teen pregnancy, "checked out" NEET youngsters, ...)
This Doesn't seem to me to at all measure how likely you are to get ahead if you try hard enough.
You can't get ahead if you get dragged down the bottom all the time, though. However, the chance of outsized success in the US if you make it, is larger though. I guess because of access to a larger market, but probably cultural factors, too.
Agreed. It’s much easier to assimilate than in Germany I’d say. The ceiling or bias simply doesn’t exist in US whereas perhaps due to historical reasons it exists in Germany. From experience, Turkish are treated as “mainstream” in US than Germany.
My wife is a researcher in Germany and because of something called the "Wissenschaftszeitgesetz", she is looking for a job outside of Germany for her next research project.
With having 2 kids, the US is definitely on our blacklist despite both of us having gone to school there, still keeping in touch with friends from that time and even professors actually offering her a position. We know many others who feel the same, so my impression is that for most Europeans, the US is not a desirable place to live anymore.
Not super common, but many people dream of having better jobs and there's few better jobs than software engineering in the US. It's harder to move to the US since Trump cracked down on immigration.
I have noticed you decided to use several German words in your reply, trying not to be petty but at least you should attempt to write them correctly. It’s either Wunderkind (German word for child prodigy) or english translation: wonder kid.
You are correct, though I must be Mandela Effect-ing, because I could have sworn that "wunderkid" was an accepted American English corruption of the original term, a la... Well, "a la" (à la).
My use of "schadenfreude", in general, can be attributed largely to Avenue Q and Death Note. Twice is coincidence.
I think the market is shit only in certain HCoL places like US or west europe, everywhere else seem to be normal maybe slightly wordless than last year (but last year was crazy good)
