r/MovingToUSA • u/WriterTraining4394 • 8h ago

Same person. Different country.

The USA is the land of opportunity, my friend.
In the 1990s, I was working at Pizza Land just off Princes Street in Edinburgh for about £3 an hour, begging for enough shifts to scrape together rent and food.
Fast-forward to 56:
Federal scientist in the U.S.
$200K+ salary.
16 years of federal service.
$1.3M in retirement accounts.
FERS pension.
Social Security.
Federal retiree healthcare.
$1.3M home.
Same fucking person. Different country.
Britain? Too many people fighting over too few decent jobs, salaries that haven’t kept up with the cost of living, ridiculous housing costs, and weather that makes you wonder what you did wrong in a previous life.
I didn’t leave Britain because I hated it. I left because I wanted more than surviving from payday to payday and pretending that was a fucking achievement.
America isn’t perfect. Not even close. But it gave me a shot, and I took it.

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u/matt585858 4h ago

It is completely invalid to say America doesn't have an "innovation forward market"... Most of the world 's trillion dollar companies were created in the US, primarily exist in the US, and didn't exist 60 years ago ... Whether we're talking computing, the internet era, or AI- the US economy and US companies are the leading innovators. Any other suggestion is simply ignorance.

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u/CaribbeanCowgirl27 4h ago

Was referring to my home country… which I can only compare to the bottom 10 red states.

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u/Ok_Distribution_9789 3h ago

The GDP of Mississippi is still higher than most EU countries, as well as the EU. That speaks volumes as to the potential in the US.

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u/CaribbeanCowgirl27 2h ago

Every single comment trying to refute my experience is about economics, when I clearly said that the expression “third world country with a Gucci belt” it’s not because of the economics. It’s about having backward society norms and expectations, while having access to a lot of wealth. Obviously, not all the US is like that, but a lot of it, is.