[anonzzzies]

I agree with you on that one; I am still in favour of the EU and one of the last countries I would want to live is the US (it's a nice country (parts of it) to vacation in though), but yes, the EU has issues (in my opinion) that would be good and positive for 'the people' IF there would be an abundance of money coming from somewhere (there isn't); a) language (let's ffs speak english everywhere; I'm dutch, i speak dutch, german, french, portuguese and spanish, but it's just easier to have english as the first language, as as the common high value business language in the world) b) regulatory; small companies should be exempt from regulations and that should change per milestone the company reaches c) make it easy, cheap and attractive to start a company; as point b), start getting annoying when it grows beyond certain milestones, but not too annoying so it will leave d) make taxation so that it's attractive to invest in here e) boost our electronics, military and space faring research/development/manufacturing across the board; that brings jobs, money, investment and innovation.

But it's hard to balance with culture and liveability; I would never live in the US for fear of dropping from the few top % by some accident getting into extreme poverty. Here i'm not really scared of that (and i've been there in the distant past).

[JojoFatsani]

There’s a long way to drop between the 90% and the 10% in America. If you’re starting from a position of privilege with a personal savings safety net, you’d have to really F things up for yourself (drugs, gambling, over leveraging) to find yourself in extreme poverty.

[BobbyTables2]

What I find odd, is that moving between states in the US is relatively easy. Find a job and go.

But if a skilled English speaker wants to move to the Netherlands (whose population is smaller than Florida) or virtually any other European country, they’d have to be fluent in the local language. That’s a really high bar.

Seems like even for multi-lingual Europeans in the EU, this would still be challenging, especially for families. (Asking kids to suddenly attend school in a different language???)

Seems like Europe is the modern day Tower of Babel story.

[com]

I am a fluent English speaker who spoke not a word of Dutch for my first few years in the Netherlands. Got contract work, friends, and in the end language and citizenship.

One example is anecdote, not data, but I know an awful lot of EU and non-EU people both in the big cities and more regional places who landed without any local language and made successful lives and integrated effectively here.

There are harder places to do this but it’s getting easier by the year, especially in the countries that need people who speak other languages for global trade.

[anonzzzies]

Netherlands is a bit of an outlier I feel though, but I am from there; maybe it happens elsewhere too.

[anonzzzies]

It is a massive problem and all under the guise of ‘our culture’. I get it somewhat but equality won’t happen if you keep it this non equal on the basic level. I get that you learn a language when you move (I did a bunch of times), but it will never get better than my english or of course dutch (my native tongue, although I am starting to forget words after having been abroad over 20 years); all my colleagues do speak english but refuse because of culture they say. I feel this is a pretty basic issue and a massive problem.