I love Japanese society, it is complete opposite of the disorder and chaos I encounter in my daily life living in California. People leave leave their bikes outside without locks. I had my bike stolen within a few months of buying one back home. Always have to keep an eye out in case someone tries to harm me in any way, and it is really stressful living in the city here. In Tokyo, I felt calm even in a city that is more bustling than any I've been to. People there feel invested in their society, I think, because they take such great civil care. I don't think I ever saw any trash just all over the place like I do in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Nor do I think I saw any homeless people, considering their homelessness rate is 0.
Personally, I want to live in such a society where I can just live my life and work on my craft. Pay taxes, get some great societal benefits for it such as a working public transit system.. Having lived in USA and previously India, I can say with great confidence that my two weeks in Japan were some of the best and calmest so far in my 30 years. It just sucks that I struggle with learning new languages, and I only know english somewhat well.
I'd love to live in kyoto along the river, and just work on side projects and maybe teach programming or start/work at a company there. If someone can recommend me how to do that, that'd be great! Or if you want to hire someone who can do basically anything (business to engineering) at your company!
I'm planning to visit Sao Paulo either in the next couple months or starting next year (depending on Covid) and might settle there for quite some time; but for the time being I think Bangkok is the real deal except for humidity/heat.
Should the caveat be affordability, or just in dreams? Just in dreams I think it would be a large Japanese city, but if affordability comes into it, that complicates things.
I am content to live in Washington, DC. It has wonderful parks, it has the National Gallery of Art, one has suburban-feeling neighborhoods no farther from the White House than Murray Hill is from Wall Street.
Elsewhere? I'd vote for the upper Midwest, somewhere close to the Great Lakes between Cleveland and Milwaukee.
I think about this a fair amount. NYC immediately comes to mind. As does Tokyo. I think the better move might actually be Auckland.
Lately I've been trying to think about what parts of the world might be able to go back to normal faster than others and investigating moving there until the pandemic is over.
Back in 2001, when I saw it for the first time on my Honeymoon, I would have had likely picked San Francisco. My understanding is that things have gone way down hill in the 17 years since my last visit, which makes me sad.
Right now, I think I'd like to live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, up on the bluff that overlooks lake Michigan... but I can't possibly afford it.
I'm just outside Chicago right now, it hasn't imploded into Detroit or Gary levels of decay yet, but I'm worried. They deliberately let the riots go for days last year, and there have been more than 150 expressway shootings this year... it's rapidly becoming a no-go zone.
Sofia Antipolis is France's answer to Silicon Valley. It is smaller, slower, cozier, nicer, younger, healthier, happier French Silicon Valley. I love it.
Fort Collins, Colorado. Decent climate, not too humid, mountains nearby. Not too large, but Denver's an hour away if you want a big-city ballet company or a children's hospital or a major airport. (And when you don't want those things, all those people aren't in your face.) College town. Some tech scene.
About an hour out of Denver seems like a good distance. It has a university. It has some tech.
An hour south of Denver gets you Colorado Springs, which is approximately equivalent.
An hour east gets you Limon, which is approximately nowhere. No tech, no college. An hour west gets you Dillon, which is a nice resort town, but no tech and no college.
The towns between Denver and Fort Collins have some tech, and some have small colleges. They might be about what I'm looking for, or close.
You could think about someplace like Durango, which has a small college, or Grand Junction, which also has one. But neither has much tech scene. And if you need a some big city thing - a medical specialist, say - you're a long way from a city that has one. (That's kind of why I picked my "one hour" distance.)
Annoying that Wikipedia insists that Vardø and Varanger come from Norwegian Varg aka Wolf.
Methinks the original name was Varri-njarga or Várggá for short, which in Norhern Sami mean "Peninsula of Mountains" which Varanger peninsula truly is.
It's the best city in the country. I wish we had a bit more investment in infrastructure but the central government funnels most of the money into Catalonia.
I wish I could live there, but the wealth tax makes it impossible as I would owe 70% or more of my income :(
Which sucks as I just started a new business and was going to hire and build the business there but moved to Portugal instead. Spain really makes it impossible to have a startup with their broken tax system. I hope the Feb 2022 conference fixes that mess.
Yeah, Spain is a tax hell and the goverment keeps telling us they are actually lower than the European median, which is kind of true but also a big lie.
Some European countries have higher taxes (VAT and income) but also many exemptions to help new businesses which will end up generating wealth and paying taxes.
I don't know if you've heard about our last "startup law". New companies will pay a corporate tax of 15% instead of 25% the first years, which is stupid because no company makes money their first years so they don't actually have to pay anything. As a piece of propaganda it looks well but it's useless.
Then we have our broken pension system which eats almost 40% of the annual budget and everybody I know under 55 knows for a fact that they won't get one when they retire.
Especially since the wealth tax punishes giving equity to employees as well. IE, if someone has stock options or stock in a company worth $1 million they have to pay taxes on that every year, and if the company folds they are screwed and have nothing, they don't even get a tax credit for what they paid in on that valuation. It is one of the worst thought out tax systems I've ever seen. Nobody who invests in startups can ever live in Spain due to this system (verified this with several large accounting firms).
I also laugh as everyone just puts their money into real estate and that way they avoid the wealth tax by hiring someone at low wages and saying it is a business. But, that drives up the cost of housing...
I love taxes, but they have to make sense and work as a cohesive system. My dream is they increase property taxes, drop the wealth tax, and better align the progressive taxation for families. Some of the latest moves are weird as they also punish families by taxing individual units of the family...
Culturally the "empresario" or business man is considered evil in Spain and hence he has to be taxed and subdued.
That's why people want to be funcionarios. They get a job for life where they can't be fired and nothing are expected from them.
I guess I'll have to move in the end if I don't want to spend my whole life earning less than 30k, paying high taxes and receiving nothing in exchange.
Ya, it is weird to watch as I am a dual American/EU citizen and somehow both Spain and the USA are failing to make the economic system work for 70% of their citizens. Spain has gone way too far in protecting labor, and the USA falls very short. And, both situations nobody has a real future... just low pay, less options, and less dependability.
I feel for young people in Spain, you graduate and then you get shuffled around in "permalance" positions by horrible bosses. The stories I heard were insane.
I hope you end up somewhere good. I've met a lot of Portuguese lately that are working remote for German and American companies which was working well for them.
I love Japanese society, it is complete opposite of the disorder and chaos I encounter in my daily life living in California. People leave leave their bikes outside without locks. I had my bike stolen within a few months of buying one back home. Always have to keep an eye out in case someone tries to harm me in any way, and it is really stressful living in the city here. In Tokyo, I felt calm even in a city that is more bustling than any I've been to. People there feel invested in their society, I think, because they take such great civil care. I don't think I ever saw any trash just all over the place like I do in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Nor do I think I saw any homeless people, considering their homelessness rate is 0.
Personally, I want to live in such a society where I can just live my life and work on my craft. Pay taxes, get some great societal benefits for it such as a working public transit system.. Having lived in USA and previously India, I can say with great confidence that my two weeks in Japan were some of the best and calmest so far in my 30 years. It just sucks that I struggle with learning new languages, and I only know english somewhat well.
I'd love to live in kyoto along the river, and just work on side projects and maybe teach programming or start/work at a company there. If someone can recommend me how to do that, that'd be great! Or if you want to hire someone who can do basically anything (business to engineering) at your company!