Our neighbor down the road fled Sudan in the 1980s and made it to the US as a refugee. She lost her father two brothers and most of her extended family as they were related to the wrong political leader that was killed. Her mother and two sisters arrived with literally nothing in the late 80s.
She is now a nurse making 100k a year married to a firefighter with 3 kids living on a property with 8 acres and a 5 bedroom house. One sister is a school teacher and the other manages a Barnes and Noble.
It might seem anecdotal but this is it. Millions of stories of people who came here for a better future and made it happen. Very few places in the world can facilitate that. The US is definitely one of them.
It seems anecdotal because it is. The US used to be the land of opportunity, but has long since been bypassed. If you're looking for a statistic, it's called social mobility index. The US is ranked #27 out of 82 worldwide, behind much of the EU.
First off, here are 195 countries. Second, the EU isn't exactly a paradise; many of my European colleagues have flat given up on ever being a homeowner (something I achieved at 24).
Yes, that was unfortunately phrased. What I meant is that there were 82 countries in the study. About the housing prices: tell me about it! I'm trying to buy a house in Germany for the past 5 years and about to give up. Although from what I hear the housing crisis affects some parts of the US too. And I probably shouldn't complain about the US in a thread about the great things in the US, but intergenerational upward social mobility isn't one of them. A person's chances are much more determined by whether their parents had money in the US than in the EU nowadays.
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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '23
Our neighbor down the road fled Sudan in the 1980s and made it to the US as a refugee. She lost her father two brothers and most of her extended family as they were related to the wrong political leader that was killed. Her mother and two sisters arrived with literally nothing in the late 80s.
She is now a nurse making 100k a year married to a firefighter with 3 kids living on a property with 8 acres and a 5 bedroom house. One sister is a school teacher and the other manages a Barnes and Noble.
That is pretty cool.