Out of curiosity, what kinds of things? I was born and raised in the U.S. (have lived in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, SF Bay Area, and Atlanta), and now live in Copenhagen, and don't feel like I am missing a lot so far, apart from the general experience of foreignness occasionally being strange (might be ameliorated if I were better at learning Danish). If anything the opportunities for personal advancement feel somewhat stronger, due to the social safety net meaning you can start companies or nonprofits or whatever without worrying about ending up homeless or without healthcare.

I'll probably move back at some point, but mostly just because it's where I'm from, not out of any particular dissatisfaction with Denmark. And I'll probably only move back if I have a good job with a salary and benefits lined up first...

I definitely felt like there was more opportunity in Denmark than here. Gotta say, I'm a bit jealous.

I ask because, for instance, it is harder to run a company in Denmark than in the US. Danish employment law requires months of notice before terminating an employee, and allows termination only with cause. It also appears to be somewhat expensive to incorporate there.

For starters, I should make clear that I was communicating two separate ideas in my comment: 1) that most people I know want to leave the US on an extended-permanent basis. 2) that Copenhagen is a desirable place to live for us.

I know only one person who has actually relocated to Copenhagen. Most have actually ended up in Asia, actually. Singapore, Thailand and Japan. Of the European countries that people I know have relocated to, it has mostly been the UK and Germany with a few going to Italy (family reasons).

Anyway, as far as "why Denmark", I actually have a handful of Danish friends who work in software. All of them are well paid and have a good quality of life. All of them live within city limits with a ~15-20 minute commute time. All of them either own an apartment or are in a rent-to-own situation and at reasonable rates. They all have _great_ financial situations. I'm from NYC where really none of what I mentioned is possible.

I understand that running a business may be more inflexible, but not impossible. I know it's really flexible to start business here in the US, but to do so in a good location in a fantastic city to live in is much harder.

I've done a ton of traveling around the US and other than New York, New Orleans is the only other city I've been to where I've said "I would really enjoy living here."

That statement comes much easier to me traveling around Europe with Copenhagen standing out the most to me. Quality of life seems to be really good there. Despite the generally pessimistic attitude towards the future that most Danes seem to have, prospects for the future seem really good there. I don't have a similar feeling about the US.

Something to consider about your evaluation of Copenhagen vis a vis the US: you're a software developer with enough career mobility to opt into working in Copenhagen; ergo, you are probably very much situated in the 10% of Americans that Tyler Cowan believes will be the US "elite". So: of course you find Copenhagen congenial: you get to pick where you live based on aesthetics and luxuries. (More power to you!)

But then: would most of the US middle class be well served by considering a move to Copenhagen? I suggest that they probably would not.

I am firmly lower-middle class, if such a thing even exists anymore. I don't have any relocation options, so you're correct that I would not be well served with a move to Copenhagen. It sure is a dream and a goal to work towards though. I don't see an optimistic future here.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that if I did make it into that 10% "elite", I see a better opportunity by leaving than staying.

So, even as someone who is kinda upper-middle class, economically speaking, from what I can tell, other countries are more focused on class markers like degrees;

As a 10%'er[1] without a degree, well the USA seems to have much more opportunity for the 'I have experience, but no degree' type than the rest of the world does.

(Now, I did a whole bunch of research on this a few years back, but I didn't actually try, so I could be wrong. From what I saw, it would be hard, but not impossible without a degree, and once I moved, well, I wouldn't be getting paid more than I can get here, and in most cases, I'd be getting paid rather less.)

So, uh, yeah. From what I've seen, yeah, you are way better off as a poor person in Europe, once you are in; This does alleviate some of the worries that come with entreprenuership. but getting in? yeah, they are going to make it difficult for you if you don't have the traditional markers of the upper middle class. And generally, you are getting the most cash on the barrelhead for your time here in silicon valley; If you want to finance your venture through your own labor (and are willing to live on the cheap) this is the place to do it.

[1]typical overpaid bay-area sysadmin/programmer contractor. Top 10%, in terms of income, if you mean the whole US of A; not so much if you only count silicon valley.

As an aside, I find it interesting that Americans tend to count income more than assets. Perhaps because it's easier? I am struggling to own some means of production, but... what I do own is difficult to value. Actually, at the moment, my income is way more complicated than that, too, as I'm dumping everything into that aforementioned means of production. But, eh, when I looked into this in 2006, I was making six figures working full time, so everything I said was true as of that time.

Are you referring to formal immigration requirements, or the job market? I definitely agree on formal immigration requirements. But if you're an EU citizen (and therefore have freedom of movement), experience without a degree becomes pretty sellable again, at least in tech (less so in traditional industry, but that's also true in the US).

In the current market here, anyone who can program an iPhone app can get a job, or start a freelance business. Degrees are good, but not critical. They're seen as good in part because there's no tuition, and in fact you get paid a stipend while you attend school to cover living expenses. So there's kind of a view that there's no excuse for not having one: unlike in the U.S., it couldn't be that you couldn't afford to go to school, so there must be some other reason, and employers want to probe if it's a reason they should be worried about.

This was my perception as someone (without a degree) looking for a job that would have required going through the immigration rigmarole. A potential employer would have to want me enough to help me (or at least wait for me) to get through the government stuff, so... both.

Come to think of it, the closest I came was some startup in Israel who wanted me; Their interest level dropped a lot after they found out I didn't have any Jewish relatives (and thus would not have an automatic 'in' during immigration; I don't think this was racism on the part of the company; it was just the extra work they'd have to do.) I mean, I might have been able to get the job anyhow if I tried hard? but turns out wages in Israel are less than half what you expect in silicon valley, and I had this idea that I could make /more/ elsewhere, (which I now think is... pretty unrealistic.)

>Degrees are good, but not critical. They're seen as good in part because there's no tuition, and in fact you get paid a stipend while you attend school to cover living expenses.

Really? There are no good private schools?

Is there a time limit on the stipend?

Yeah, I wouldn't leave the Valley if you want to make a higher salary, unless it's a jump to some kind of high-level management position. The Valley has pretty much the highest tech salaries afaik. Switzerland might come close.

You might come out ahead in some places in lifestyle after cost of living, but it depends on your lifestyle. A nice thing about Copenhagen is that, while it's expensive to live in the city, it's not NYC/SF levels of expensive (or Paris/London, for that matter). It's maybe $1500-$2000/mo for a nice centrally located 2bd... rather than the $3000+ my friends in SF pay. And you can buy a condo for maybe $300k, which last I checked was completely impossible in SF.

As far as private universities, there aren't any: only state schools are accredited. There are some private professional institutes, like an animation school and a film school, but they aren't allowed to give degrees (instead they give their own certificates), and are seen as a different kind of thing.

The time limit for the student stipend is the regular length of the degree, with possibility in some circumstances to get another 6 months. So, 3 years for the bachelor's, plus 2 years for the master's. A hard max (after both degrees and extensions on both) of 6 years.

Typically students will do the two together as one five-year program; you can stop after the bachelor's, but the traditional Danish first degree was a 5-year degree (called a candidature), which is still sort of expected. The 3-year bachelor's/2-year master's split was introduced in 1993 to harmonize with other EU countries' systems, but a bachelor's on its own is still seen as not quite complete education (may change as memories of the old 5-year candidature fade).

Oh yeah; from what I understand, it's even more true here than anywhere else. But I was born here, so it's not a problem I deal with directly.

Your university system sounds like some kind of socialist paradise. Jesus. Do you know how good a 3 year vacation sounds to an American? (And yes, if I went to school, I'd likely study history, and that can't be rationally counted as anything but a vacation.) Even the top 10% jobs only give you 4 weeks a year of vacation time. (we get another 9 days or so of holidays, usually, which are on fixed days, and, of course, weekends.)

The problem though was something that you mention yourself - the difficulty of obtaining assets. Real estate prices in the Valley right now are through the flippin' roof. Arguably the definition of a middle class is the ability to obtain your own assets.

If you're making a high wage but can't convert that to assets where you live, are you really middle class? If you're making a high salary but spending most (or nearly all) of it on rent and upkeep on debt, I'd argue that you're still working poor; you may be comfortable but you're dependent on a paycheck coming in.

Well, a family of two folks making valley sysadmin/programmer wages is making like $200K/year. Even single-earners in that tax bracket can buy real estate. (during the crash, I know a lot of single people who bought condos.) Real-estate here is not unaffordable for employed Engineers.

I would certainly have a fairly nice place (or several shitty rentals) if I wasn't spending all my money on servers.

But yeah, I agree that if you only have income from labour and don't have any assets, well, you aren't really middle class in a meaningful sense of the word. I'm just saying that it's pretty reasonable for people in my industry to buy real-estate around here. And that's not the only 'means of production' you can buy; that's just the easiest means of production to get loans on. All my money goes to servers (well, I buy servers... I actually spend more money on labour, electricity, and data-center space, but I rent those things, which is a rather different thing.)

Edit: most of my developer friends aren't big spenders; if they don't own a house, they have a thick 401k, and often a stock portfolio outside of that 401K. Most of them have substantial savings. I think it's fair to call them upper-middle class, even if they don't own the house they live in.

(Note, I'm mostly speaking of the previous generation here; the 30+ folks who came of age during the first dot-com.)

As far as hiring/firing employees, it's not quite that bad. The standard notice is six weeks (on both sides, so employees can't just walk out tomorrow either). Termination does have to be with cause, but changing business conditions or revenues suffices as cause, so it doesn't require proving actual fault on the part of the employee or anything of that sort.

The official policy aim is "flexicurity" [1], though it's implemented to varying extents. The goal is to have a flexible labor market where companies can hire and fire as needs dictate (contrary to, say, the French model), and also, but separately, to have a safety net providing income security for workers (through systems like the a-kasse funds [2]). I don't think it's 100% as rosy as the goal, but it's much easier to run a business than in some European countries. It ends up basically tied with the U.S. in the ease-of-doing-business indices I know of. The World Bank's index places it just behind the US (#5 vs. #4) [3], while the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom puts it just ahead (#9 vs. #10) [4].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity

[2] Example: http://www.ca.dk/bliv_medlem/dimittend/466.html

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index#Ra...

[4] http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

I agree that the health care situation in the US is a real problem.

The "Ease of Doing Business Index" actually removed "how easy is it to fire people" from its indicators because of the controversy.

Do you think everybody in the USA would agree that being able to fire people at will is a good thing for the US economy?

In a 3-person company, particularly in knowledge work where headcount costs dominate all other operating expenses, a bad 4th hire is a catastrophic problem: it means 1/4 of your staff is dysfunctional, maybe 1/5th of your operating expenses are being wasted, and as many as 1/2 your existing employees are (a) unhappy and (b) steadily becoming harder to retain. Now imagine not being able to terminate that employee.

The Ease Of Doing Business index includes no metrics on employment law at all, not just termination; for instance, employee minimum wage, mandatory holidays, prohibition on contracted employees, prohibition of night work, and maximum work week are also not considered. That they aren't says more about the World Bank index than it does about the importance of these issues.

A few examples that have come out of the program here: http://conquistadorthegame.com/ http://machineers.tumblr.com/ http://www.knapnokgames.com/ http://gutefabrik.com/ http://duckandcovergames.com/ http://www.seriousgames.net/

Most of the small tech companies I know are pretty low-key, though. Besides the game company route, another common one is a small team of 1-3 people making a living doing iPhone app development, that kind of thing. Some congregate around hackerspaces like: https://labitat.dk/

Not as much of the typical 'startup' route per se, although there have been a few (Unity3d and Bitbucket come to mind). There's also Copenhagen Suborbitals, which isn't for-profit, but is probably the most widely recognized organization to come out of the Copenhagen hacker/maker scene.

Definitely a small tech company but larger than what was mentioned.

Those laws become a problem only when you start growing bigger. The real problems when you start are red tape, high labor taxes, and VERY high pension contributions - to pay the VERY generous pensions that generations up to baby boomers afforded themselves.

Whether or not they would agree, being able to fire people at will is critical for job creation. In countries where you can't fire people expanding your operation is a much bigger risk. So you avoid hiring people - automation, outsourcing, whatever it takes.

To remove this metric from any "Ease of Doing Business Index" is crazy, quite frankly.

And who said it should be risk free?

Better it being more risky for the employer than the employees.

More risk for me as an employer means I don't hire anyone until I've exhausted every other possibility. When every employer does that there's high unemployment, so if you do lose your job you can't replace it. How is this a benefit to employees?

Doesn't matter, there would be someone else who does hire. Or you thing jobs would dissapear if people dont have a cushy road to business success?

But not as many as there would have been otherwise. It doesn't take a big change in labor surplus to lower wages for everyone.

>Or you thing jobs would dissapear if people dont have a cushy road to business success?

Yes, jobs disappear as it gets harder to fire people. That's what I've been trying to explain to you. That's why you don't want to make it hard to fire people - it's bad for everyone, but it's especially bad for employees.

Well, that's a laissez faire doctrine for the benefit employers. In my experience (and it's a European perspective) it's not true in practice.

When employers can fire more easily they just take advantage of that to create a climate where they threaten employees to work more (unpaid overtime, lower wages etc) -- so that they have to employ less people to do the same jobs. It's a give an inch, they will take a mile situation.

I don't think that's true. For most countries in Europe unemployment is high in the best of times.

That affects company founders (and mostly of non serious startups, that don't bring much to the job table in the first place).

The reverse, which affects employees (which are more numerous than employers by definition) is that it's easier to be an employee in Denmark than it is in the US.

Reframing in your preferred terms, framing always being a function of preferences and selection, just so happens here to speak to an instability in the US worksphere that has affected The American Dream (were that it ever existed).

I see you say that people in Denmark, including expatriates like you, can "can start companies or nonprofits or whatever without worrying about ending up homeless or without healthcare." Is that what you are doing, running your own business in Denmark? I recall that there are a couple of other HN participants who are Americans living in Denmark. Is the labor market for American expatriates that flexible everywhere in Europe? I have read of other countries in Europe where it is certainly possible to start a business, but then very complicated to hire workers as the business begins to grow. I'm curious about how that issue plays out in Europe.

And, to answer your question, I think that's what my family likes about America. On the one hand, the labor market is very flexible here, so we can trade off time with our children by adjusting our employment--my wife and I are both self-employed, in different occupations--to maximize our family life and personal schedule flexibility. My late dad had a catastrophic accidental injury just more than a decade ago--it would be catastrophic in any country, with any health-care system, because he was paralyzed from the chin down after the accident--and that hammered our family's time and thus our income for the last six years of his life, but I observed that the United States safety net was adequate enough to keep both him and us from becoming homeless. Taiwan (where my wife is from) has a single-payer national health insurance program that covered us the last time we lived there (until just before my dad's accident) but even though that is a vibrant, thriving country that I enjoy living in (and I can speak Chinese), we still prosper better here in the United States.

All of Europe is different.

American healthcare seems viciously regressive to someone with the NHS.

[1] I believe it's 2 now, labour reduced it to 1 a decade or so ago, think the Tories increased it again to 2 recently

[2] think it's usually verbal warning, written warning, some sort of meeting, then fire. Not sure if it's mandated or you just have to have a process

NB check this stuff for yourself, I'm merely reciting this from memory

I agree that the NHS is preferable to the 2013 US health care system. I'm optimistic that the 2014 system will, when its kinks are worked out, be comparable to the (superior) Swiss system.

The problem with comparing today with conditions a century ago is the peak in the USA was about 40 years ago by most metrics.

It would be easy to sell, say, 1970s Poland to 970s Polish, or even 1870s Polish. However not so easy to sell a future of 1970s Poland to, say, Americans who were alive in the 1970s. 1970s Poland is probably on the optimistic side of where we're headed. On the other hand the pessimists insisting we're headed toward 1970s China, 1870s Ireland, or 1970s Cambodia are probably equally unrealistic.

I'm not sure which US metrics the peaked in 1970 either?

The metrics request is a good one, having seen the graphs I'm certain of peak conventional domestic oil production, peak median inflation adjusted real world income, and peak housing affordability. I'm pretty sure of local minimum of parasitic services (FIRE sector etc) and a local maxima of educational affordability and a couple I suspect but have no proof of at this time like a peak in the metric of quantity/quality of health care divided by its cost and also social class mobility has statistically ended other than in a downward direction where it has expanded a lot.

Imagine living here since you were 7, 8, 9 years old and spending your whole life here not knowing anyone in your home country and not knowing if you could stay here either. Some of them had to leave. One of my friends took until he was 31 to get his green card and the first thing he did when he got it was get a job overseas. Most of them spent a number of years here in some sort of legal limbo, with some living here outright illegally. The Brazilians among them especially had to arrange marriages to be able to stay.

These are all the hardest-working people that I know, because they had to be to stay. It's really shameful how we treat you all here.

What I didn't know at the time was how difficult the US government would make it for me to first get a job and then to become a permanent resident. Every dealing I do with the government I feel the undercurrent of not being wanted here - as if they are looking for an excuse to reject me, as opposed to actually wanting my skills and intelligence to contribute to the economy and doing everything they can to make me stay.

If I return home now, with my degrees and five years of experience in a software company, I can easily start my own firm. I'm telling myself that if the US government throws one more obstacle my way, I'm going to say fuck it and do just that. (When I go back for vacations and talk to younger people who are considering coming here, I tell them don't do it - it's just not worth the hassle.)

I don't know what to say about immigration being inhospitable to you. Obviously, I think we'd be better off with more skilled CS grads, and shipping them back to economic competitors does not seem like a great long-term strategy.

What is the mechanism by which highly skilled professionals who have not yet emigrated are exerting pressure in Washington?

There is also a huge desire among highly skilled professionals to immigrate to the US, so much so that there's pressure in Washington...

You ascribe pressure in Washington to those prospective unemployed and unemigrated employees. That doesn't sound a little inverted from the state of affairs described from the perspective of the employers?

For now.

That is why your mindset is very dangerous. You are looking at how things are today, rather than following the trajectory of events twenty or fifty years into the future.

"The Asian Tigers or Asian Dragons is a term used in reference to the highly free and developed economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. These nations and areas were notable for maintaining exceptionally high growth rates (in excess of 7 percent a year) and rapid industrialization between the early 1960s and 1990s. By the 21st century, all four have developed into advanced and high-income economies, specializing in areas of competitive advantage. For example, Hong Kong and Singapore have become world-leading international financial centers, whereas South Korea and Taiwan are world leaders in manufacturing information technology."

[1] http://www.globalpost.com/globalpost-blogs/southeast-asia/si...

That's why I was wondering which specific countries/locales 'enraged_camel was talking about, because you can look at that company and make factual comparisons.

The image of middle-class Americans looking like rich people abroad is in rapid decline. If you are a middle-class American, get over there quick so you can experience what it's like before it's gone.

Let's start with Japan. There was a point, after WWII, where an American businessman could walk into a Japanese conglomerate and receive instant respect at the door. You could tell the level of admiration as Japanese women used to be instantly attracted to foreign men. Japanese looked to New York as a model city, although they had never visited. They only knew of the massive might of Western civilization from their WWII defeat.

Gradually, as the country became rich and successful, the image faded. Japanese now enjoy a GDP per capita that beats the European Union average, albeit still only 70% of the United States. Seeing expats around Tokyo became the norm. But foreigners from the West were no longer welcome at the fanciest members clubs, and Japanese adopted a more realistic view of the world from their extensive travel abroad. Businessmen struggled to negotiate deals as conglomerates like Sony bought prime New York real estate and the tables were turned.

Other countries in Asia aren't as far along with this process, but it's changing quickly. Let's take (mainland) China for example. Ten years ago being a foreigner meant hiring taxi drivers to personally wait on you all day - even on a student budget - and excellent chances in nightclubs of any first-tier city. For native Chinese, studying abroad and returning home meant an instant offer from a top-tier company, rock-star status, a fast path to owning an apartment and all the trimmings that entails like excellent marriage prospects.

These days, as the Western world stagnates, many of the Western oligarchs have chosen to send their money to Asia to invest, whether by choice or necessity to find assembly-line workers cheap enough to allow them to compete. The result is that enormous sums of money are flowing into China, and enormous sums are staying in China. Businessmen wire in what looks like small amounts of "real money" but thanks to the leveraged Western financial system they end up wiring in a significant portion of the American economy in real terms.

This means many of the Chinese are becoming rich very quickly. The government ensure this happens by strict rules such as under-50% foreign ownership of local companies. Women in first-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing are known to be very demanding - their men must purchase several hundred thousand dollar apartments to entertain love, or even multi-million dollar apartments at the top end - and this is beginning to apply to foreigners too. Can't afford an apartment? Forget it. As for foreign-educated Chinese, they return home from a place that caused the global financial crisis to a place where the local way is a global success story, entering the job race with a much smaller advantage.

This will eventually lead to the Japan situation, assuming the current level of growth. There are a lot of poor Chinese, so it will take some time. But it's only a matter of time.

Other regional countries like Thailand and Malaysia and the Philippines aren't at this stage yet, but if they don't hurry up the Chinese will make them vassal states and the local people will lose their respect for the West in that way instead.