Who is better financially?

You keep on hearing about how the Europeans are the happiest people on earth and how the Europeans (and Canadians and Australians ) have the best health care system on earth, but still have you realized that how many Americans have moved to these places. Granted there is and will also be migration from America to other places but how come we don’t see massive net migration out of the U.S. Although our health care system may not be the best or that we don’t have much financial cushion in the case of emergency but generally people are content over here. Most of the immigrants want to come to the U.S. even with our (supposedly) inferior services and unhappy people and happiness is a relative term too.

Although we may not have superior social services (like free health care, extensive vacation time, early retirement etc) but overall we are content with what we have and what we believe in. We can envy their systems but the trade off is low taxes on our part and the choice to choose our own health care and flexibility to change jobs and move around without bothering about different cultures and languages. As they say that the Grass is always greener on the other side of the pasture.