I went on a date with a Mexican girl who spoke no English. Google translate app worked incredibly well for two-way translation. I mean it was perfect. She had been dependent on it her whole time in the US.
I read that the world needs both types of economies. The US is a dynamic, freewheeling sort with the most extremes. You can get incredibly rich, but the bottom has no floor. It's easy to amass capital and to pay workers. Or have western Europe, which is a relatively painful climate for businesses. Taxation for extensive social services is stifling, but at least most of the middle people are OK.
With the problem of western Europe having massive braindrain. A doctor in France who decides to work in China will easily quadruple his salary. likewise in pretty much any country. An engineer in France, working in the US will also triple his salary.
Of course, there's less safety nets, less benefits but for educated people who are part of the upper middle class (doctors, teachers, engineers, etc...), the increase in salary is such that it really makes no sense from an economic standpoint to stay in France.
I'd say it's better only for working class to lower middle class.
One estimate is that about 22% of state government is spent on public welfare:
>...Another 22 percent of expenditures went toward public welfare. Public welfare includes spending on means-tested programs, such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income.
>...Americans give around 3 percent of our collective income to charity — more than the citizens of any other country. Better yet, these are individual Americans, not the government, who are generating the lion’s share of the contributions.
A lot of the California ones are pretty decent. I dated a girl who lived in one. I also stayed in an Airbnb that was in one. The owner, who lived there, was a woman with a Stanford degree. They're cheap and reasonable places to live with a lot of stigma. The ones I saw around me growing up in Virginia were... shitty.
