U.S. Is a Rich Country with Symptoms of a Developing Nation

If your friend emigrates, they may put a burden on the country they go to. Even if they are productive, the cost of their ailment (assuming its not just ridiculously ovepriced medicine in the US that is in reality really cheap everywhere else, in which case the nation he immigrates to should be overjoyed at the opportunity!) can slow economic growth over if someone with no ailment and the same qualifications emigrated instead.

So the US "sheds" a "cost center" and another country takes on the burden. American companies keep turning over record profits and stock valuations while its poor and sick suffer and die, while other nations are burdened with those America should have taken care of itself with its vast wealth if only it had any morality to care about its citizens.

- Allow time-based naturalization outside of marriage?

- Allow dual or more citizenship?

CH is on the more restrictive end, but it is one of the few European countries to allow either of the above. If you compare outcomes and hurdles, the U.S. has been more restrictive to foreigners coming in than CH (don’t believe me; tell that the the Canadians I know who moved to CH instead of working for U.S. branches due to U.S. not issuing family reunification visa).

So the question to ask: what do you want? Permit to enter, live, and work; permanent residency; citizenship? Each of these things are different.

If you're an EU citizen you have the right to live there no questions asked.

If you're not EU, you can live there to pursue gainful employment so long as your employer can show that you have skills they can't obtain from within Switzerland or the EU.

If you can get a job, you'll be given either an L permit, which is "temporary" but can be exchanged for a B permit after 2 years, which can then be renewed indefinitely. After 5 years, if you can demonstrate integration (criteria vary by canton), you can get a C permit, which is permanent (essentially a green card).

As a skilled worker, I actually found Switzerland to be substantially more friendly than the US, though a lot of the hard work was handled by my employer.

CH appeals most to rich and upper-middle class foreign tourists, but I distinguish between “visitor” from “foreigner living there”.

In terms of the latter group, I don’t think CH attempts to appeal: practically all paperwork is in local language with no attempt at furnishing anything in the language of my mother tongue. Further, your immigration status factors into contracts: subscriptions (telephony), rental agreement, etc. We were once turned down for an apartment because of it. Throughout my time abroad, a common trend is that expats (note: first use of that word) don’t bother to learn local language and are typically unhappy. Those that do attempt to are far happier. Does a host country afford and coddling for the former? I’ve never seen evidence of that no matter how rich. Is it hostile? No.

The story could be different for the super rich who live there like Tina Turner and former Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but that is not the circumstances of our family nor any other family we know by a long-measure. Citizenship cannot be bought here either. I think for a few million it is purchaseable in Austria or Hungary.

But at the end of the day, in my top-level reply, I had stated “at the moment.” We have lived elsewhere in the world, and the assessment of the overall problems the U.S. are facing would have been identical. The decline is palpable.

I think you can achieve a working level of any (European) language in around one year. And today we have Google translation in our phones, the job is 10x easier.

Nowhere is a "lifetime" commitment, but if you like a place, might just stay there.

Post war Germany has never had significant youth unemployment, and worries about "riots and social upheaval" because of that unemployment? That's a pretty outrageous claim.

Most rich countries have some kind of USP. That isn't an argument that they shouldn't try to replicate the more successful elements of other nations.

Germany is an anomaly in Europe, France also, along with Britain, Ireland, Italy, etc, etc.

Very simply, there are many sectors where the market works best. Healthcare isn't one of them.

High speed rail cost overruns are almost always due to how expensive eminent domain is more than anything. The estimations given to state officials are often an order of magnitude off how much land they would need to buy. Its also the kind of project beyond the scope of anyone but the largest companies to even attempt, so even if an investment firm could do the math to recognize the economic benefit of having high speed rail and thus they could capitalize on investing in it through other investments in other industries that would grow substantially in the presence of better transit they can't raise the capital to do it and the time frame to realize those returns is too long for any investor to consider reasonable. So we don't get public or private trains.

> the bloated military budget

Its not a money mismanagement at all though. The money allocated to the military that is squandered on hundred thousand dollar toilets and billions on fighter jets that don't even work and will never see practical application in aerial combat were all budgeted intentionally to make private defense contractors rich. Those contractors paid the bribe money to see the budget allocated to them and get a tremendous return on investment.

Something like comparing NASA and SpaceX can be reasonable, but you have to be nuanced about it. A large part of the SLS overrun, for example, was due to their contract with Boeing which was budgeted for 4B but overran time and money up to 9B. Thats "private enterprise" at work wasting tax money because they knew the oversight wasn't there to hold them accountable, as is the case with many government projects mired in corruption.

But you know what? If your government is corrupt, the solution is not to give private enterprise - those that corrupted said government - control over the functions government was supposed to fulfill. You fix your government. If NASA is unable to budget or deliver projects on time, you fire those given the responsibility of managing said projects, do independent investigations of why they failed, and if some party is culpable for the intentional sabotage or deception of the proposals arrest them. If theres a revolving door in Washington of defense contractors lining the pockets of congressmen for taxpayer money via the defense budget investigate and impeach the corrupt politicians. When you contract with a third party to budget infrastructure expansion make them culpable for failure to deliver or for budget overruns.

I'm confused.

If these are the opinions of Americans, then I think I have found out why the "US is a Rich Country with Symptoms of a Developing Nation". Viewing taxation as direct threat of violence 10000% will result in a crumbling society that is built on democracy and taxation.

Is this a fact? Would private industry do it better?

I ask because the VA is the closest thing we have to a single-payer experience in the US. Active or inactive, the VA is willing to treat you the only requirement being that you served.

Yet, when people bring up the failing VA they always pass along the Walter Reed VA hospital horror stories. I looked into it and you know what, Walter Reed is a huge military hospital base. It's so big there are multiple hospitals on site. And that site has government run VA hospitals and contractor run VA hospitals. And they are all called Walter Reed. But guess what? All the VA horror stories from Walter Reed come from the same contractor ran hospitals.

The sheer lack of perspective of Americans is baffling. You have no conception of just how difficult life can be and frankly, is, for the vast majority of people.

However, look up "mcdougall starch diet autoimmune". Here's a doctor who runs a starch based clinic (Starch heavy, avoid ALL animal products). He has client testimonies, a legit clinic, and patients who cured their autoimmune disease.

I personally find that the diet you recommend (albeit with more vegetables) is best for me, but the paleo vs vegan argument has proponents on both sides claiming they've cured autoimmune diseases. I cannot find strong clinical trial data favoring one side over the other. With that said, look up "Dine-CD research study" that is trying to be the first clinical trial of specific carbohydrate diet for crohns.

Be well and enjoy the steak!

Do you feel it’s a scientific approach to NOT test out something before concluding it doesn’t work?

I’m not a doctor and don’t play one on the Internet but everyone can think and test out things for themselves. A mostly carnivore diet is low risk to say the least considering that’s how almost all humans ate for thousands of years, the modern food supply and diet is what’s radical.

The suggestion to leave a stable healthcare situation for a hard to secure position at one of the top employers in the world in the most expensive to live place in the world is downright bad.

You can continue your exact insurance plan via COBRA and pay both your portion and your employer's portion of expenses. Having done this, I paid nearly $3k a month in premiums alone for continued individual coverage. That is not feasible for everyone who were just laid off and still have bills to pay.

To be eligible for Medi-Cal, you must make under 138% of the federal poverty line, or be disabled or elderly[1]. A tech worker who was just laid off would not be eligible for Medi-Cal unless they were recognized as disabled by the state, and the program they'd be eligible for during that tax year would require them to spend a significant portion of medical costs out of pocket before Medi-Cal kicked in.

There are special provisions to purchase health insurance on the individual private market if you're laid off. However, anyone with a chronic condition can attest to the problems that arise when you're forced to switch health insurance plans and continue treatment at the same time.

[1] https://ca.db101.org/ca/programs/health_coverage/medi_cal/pr...