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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> In short, there are many countries where moving from $20k to $40k is considered "socially mobile" but also others where moving from $20k to $60k income is not because the top bracket is $80k. Most people would probably prefer to live in the latter country.

I don't think that's actually true. Having the rich be a lot richer has a lot of sociological impacts, particularly within a democracy.

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Empirical evidence is not on your side here considering net immigration from Mexico to the US (or many other poor country / rich country pairs).

There is a big difference between the medians in those two places. I'm thinking more like the U.S. versus European countries.

Is there data on this? I'm having trouble finding it. Do we think that, say, more people move from US -> France than the opposite every year? I'd bet money on the reverse.

It sounds like you're looking to feed confirmation bias. Picking a country that most Americans love to hate isn't really going to give you accurate results. Try comparing the U.S. to Germany and Switzerland, or the U.S. to the Scandinavian countries.

Also, keep in mind that statistics on emigration only show you how many people moved between the countries. It doesn't show you whether people in Germany are more likely to be curious about the U.S. than vice versa, or whether the people are happier and have more freedom.

I am a European living in the U.S., and I agree the U.S. is a terrific country to be in if you are making a lot of money. But most people don't. The poor here are far worse off (and the rich are far better off--indeed, that is the definition of inequality.)

I picked France at random from the set of rich Western European countries. It was just the first one that popped into my head. /shrug/

I would predict the same outcome for England, Germany, Switzerland or Sweden.

Too your second point we were talking about where people would prefer to live not how happy they were or how free they were. Perhaps people would prefer to live someplace where they are less happy or free if it came with other benefits. Who knows.

Looking at net immigration rates is, I think, the best way to determine where people prefer to live.

> Looking at net immigration rates is, I think, the best way to determine where people prefer to live.

I don't think it is. I would prefer to live in the U.S. because my family lives here, but it has been tremendously difficult for me to get here, and has taken many years. Similarly, it's quite hard to just move to Germany or Sweden if you have no connection to those countries.

Considering that it's generally harder (legally speaking) to migrate to a rich country than to a poor country only strengthens my point.

No it doesn't. And it's quite laughable that you seem to be calling Germany and Sweden poor countries.

I wasn't calling Sweden or Germany poor. That would quite obviously be a silly thing to say.

The US, Sweden & Germany are all pretty rich and they all fairly restrictive in terms of how difficult it is to legally migrate to them. I thought that was what you means when you said "it has been tremendously difficult for me to get here" and "it's quite hard to just move to Germany or Sweden if you have no connection to those countries."

Yeah, let's ignore Canada and all the European countries.

I was just using the most striking example. But we can talk about Canada and Europe too if you would like.

More people move from Canada to the US every year than the opposite.

More people migrate from (poorer) Easter Europe to (richer) Wester Europe.

You seem to equate riches with inequality. Just because a country is richer doesn't mean there is more inequality. In fact, many of the poor countries have startling inequality in comparison.

Now compare Western Europe and the U.S.: They're capitalist, but it's hard to find "empirical" evidence that unbounded Darwinian capitalism is superior in this part of the world, since most of these countries top the U.S. in nearly every measure of human development--life expectancy, literacy, economic freedom, social mobility, and so on.

And yes, I'm nearly certain, more people move from Western Europe to the US than vice versa. Perhaps all of those measures of human development aren't all they're cracked up to be in comparison to other things?

Actions reveal preferences.

Or, perhaps, it's easier for someone of means to emigrate to a country where they can earn more money than it is for someone with few means to emigrate to a country where they would be better off.

I don't understand what you are trying to say here.

Indeed.

No really. All I'm saying is that if you could perhaps clarify the point you were trying to make it would make it easier for me to respond intelligently. Your wording was just a bit confusing?

See my reply to tptacek: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7164350

Aren't you making his point for him, then?

I don't think so.

When I say better off, I'm talking about quality of life, not money. Surely many of the American poor would want to live in Sweden if they knew how high the quality of life is for low-income earners in comparison to theirs -- but because they are poor they have very little chance of ever getting emigrating to Europe.

Conversely, someone who's fairly successful in Sweden might realize that they could be earning much more money in the United States--because of the income inequality--and thus might want to emigrate to the U.S. Chances are they'd have a much better chance of getting there, too.

I live in the U.S., but grew up in Europe. If I didn't have skills that were highly sought after, I wouldn't want to live here. (FWIW, the bigger reason I do live here is that I have immediate family in the states.) I'll bet you that's the case for most people emigrating here from Western Europe.

So you're saying that the net positive migration from countries like Sweden to countries like the US is due to the fact that generally only relatively successful people have the ability to immigrate? And that if all classes of society were able to move freely that the net migration would be in the other direction?

I'm willing to admit that this is possible, but at this point that sounds like a hypothesis than anything approaching a definitive statement about how reality actually works.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

> So you're saying that the net positive migration from countries like Sweden to countries like the US is due to the fact that generally only relatively successful people have the ability to immigrate? And that if all classes of society were able to move freely that the net migration would be in the other direction?

Yes.

> Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

I don't. Just a lot of anecdotal evidence from a life spent living in different European countries and U.S. states, talking to people and learning about their lives.

I do think that logic follows that a society with both a high standard of living and high equality would be a more attractive target for a low-income earner than one with a high standard of living but high inequality, but I am unsure if this means that, for example, Americans would actually want to emigrate to Sweden if they didn't know much about it. There are still a lot of misconceptions about what "socialism" means in Europe, how much freedom the U.S. has and Europe doesn't, and so on.

(I think that this is part of the reason that, if true, the U.S. sees more traffic from Europe: The entire Western world grows up with American movies, TV, songs, etc., but many Americans don't know very much about Europe other than that they used to be the HQ of nazis and other socialists. But yes, it's just speculation.)

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