[harrygold]

My Italian ex-roomates/friends (Italian 30-something entrepreneurs living here in L.A.) echo many these sentiments you write. No matter how much they love their country and families they are living (and creating) here and in New York for many of the reasons you mention above.

[vidarh]

As an expat myself, you would expect expats on average to be substantially more inclined to be critical of their home countries than others: After all we left.

Not all of us left because we were unhappy, but almost all of us left because we for one reason or other saw more opportunity elsewhere (e.g. in my case I left because getting larger financing for my startup at the time was easier in the UK). We're on average likely to be horrible misrepresentative of our countries as a whole.