If yes, where would you move to?
If no, why not?
I ask this as someone who has moved around a lot (5 states) for better working opportunities. I often hear people say they wish they could leave their current city/state/country, but money is often (understandably) an issue.
I was recently on a group hike with a university club, and an Austrian exchange student kept talking about how good life in Austria is. He attends university for free, lives in a vibrant city with great public transit, and with affordable housing.
My city has unaffordable housing, shit transit, and an inept local government. We are staking our future on oil prices constantly going up. The last time oil prices dipped was catastrophic, with mass layoffs and unemployment in nearly every sector.
On top of this we are being hit extra hard by climate change. Last summer I couldn’t go outside because of wildfire smoke, and this year is going to be even worse. Every year there’s less and less water, to the point where year round drought seems like an inevitability. Our politicians are climate change deniers. The people who elect them couldn’t care less, and cry about any measures taken to mitigate it’s effects.
I don’t want to be stuck paying $2000 a month for a studio apartment as the climate around me slowly degrades, and my politicians try their best to turn us into America.
A sizeable fraction of the students I’ve talked to about this has or is playing around with the idea of leaving. Austria is just the first country that came to mind, but I would take almost any EU country if the opportunity was offered.
Honestly thought you weren’t talking about America until you said turn us into America. Which country is this?
Canada, awful wild fires last summer.
Canada, specifically Alberta. I would say that it’s better out east or on the coast, but housing over there is even worse than it is here.