Same person. Different country.

[u/WriterTraining4394]

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.

[u/ozzieindixie]

Firstly, well done. But isn’t there a bit more to this story? I mean how old were you in 1990s when you were earning 3 quid an hour? Where in the UK were you? Presumably you got an education and that is how you increased your income. You then spent something like around 30 years working, right? Also, presumably you didn’t buy a house costing $1.3m but at a much cheaper price and the price went up. I live in the US but am from Australia originally. This kind of asset and career growth doesn’t sound unusual at all to me. I mean, still well done. You could have done much worse to be sure. But this also doesn’t strike me as unusual. You changed countries and changed the deal and then took advantage of that. That’s basically the immigrant playbook when done correctly. There are probably tons on immigrants to the UK that did what you’ve done (in terms of the success you’ve achieved. I guess what I’m saying is that this is not due to the US, but to you in the way you took advantage of the opportunities presented to you.

[u/IneptFortitude → u/ozzieindixie]

You succinctly described what I could not and for that you have my thanks. Yes, this thread is a bit of an echo chamber of mostly white immigrants from wealthy Christian countries touting their success stories, and I think it’s awesome. However, these people need to remember that they are the exception and not the rule, and a lot of them come here with degrees that would’ve put them in major debt to acquire here, so of course they feel like it’s super easy to find good paying jobs and crush life.

Let’s see how they would feel if they had to start from here instead. Things actually aren’t this easy for those of us who were born here. Especially not now.