[onecommentman]

Americans in HCOL locations have a third option to Europe, and that is the rest of the United States. RoUS provides close to a factor of two cost savings, you speak the language, same level of bureaucracy, close (enough) to family, similar enough culture to be comforting but with enough differences to make it interesting (desert Southwest, Deep South, New England, Florida Keys, Midwest, Appalachia, PNW, Intermountain West, Alaska, Hawaii, Texas…). Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean a drive/cruise away and provide their own long term opportunities. The United States is much more culturally diverse than the few places Europeans choose to visit for extended stays.

The United States offers a political stability that Europe has yet to demonstrate long-term (cherry-picking here, but let’s say over the last 150 years, two modern lifetimes). The comic opera/snuff film of European wars in the 1900s did provide 104366 young Americans with a forced permanent relocation to Europe. Not a positive memory for Americans.

And Americans can develop a community in the United States that achieves many of the charming aspects of European life. Americans have both the freedom and gumption to do that, if they wish. Americans are not limited by land nor resources, intellectual, cultural or otherwise, nor vision.