[alephnerd]

In Western Europe, you have the primary city effect which is causing London and Paris to grow like crazy. For non-tech people, you are hard pressed to find well paying professional job opportunities outside of London and Paris in the UK and France respectively, and businesses began leaving Barcelona for Madrid after the political instability caused by the Catalonia Independence referendum.

Berlin's is probably the only major example I can think of a city growing due to actual growth opportunities, but then again Germany is also a much healthier economy than most of Europe.

The US on the other hand doesn't have a primary city in the same manner that most of Europe has - the US economy is pretty decentralized across multiple hub cities (Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle) the same way Germany is (Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg)

[brewdad]

We do get a primary city effect at the state level in many cases. At that point it can be a bit like jumping from Paris to Berlin. Perfectly easy to do for EU citizens assuming you can handle the life upheaval and expense. At least the US doesn't have the language barriers to deal with.

[alephnerd]

> a bit like jumping from Paris to Berlin. Perfectly easy to do for EU citizens assuming you can handle the life upheaval and expense

This is a MASSIVE assumption to have. The language barrier you brought up has a massive impact for example, along with other smaller intricacies (eg. Taxes, Drivers License, Immigration depending on your nationality, bureaucratic experience, etc). Moving from Paris to Berlin or Oulu to Varna isn't some walk in the park.

And several states don't have primary city effect either (eg. CA, TX, OH, FL, NC), and bureaucratic norms in most cases within the 50 states are normalized for individual cases.