• it’s trading one capitalist place for another.

    Funny enough, my family also did this, but reversed.

    I was born in China and we moved to the US when I was 8 years old… my parents found more success here… I mean, not at the very beginning, but eventually… now they have more income and more time off vs back in China…

    I can’t speak for everyone, but in my specific case, my mom had to work long hours and did not have the 1.5 overtime bonus she has now and have less breaks vs now, and then dad… well… he didn’t really have a stable job, spend a lot of the time looking for jobs…

    social programs, healthcare, and such.

    Not according to my parents. My parents were kinda shocked how much welfare American Citizens have, and at one point, my parents claimed that “Americans are lazy and just wanna not go to work and live on welfare”.

    And in terms of housing, okay when we were in Brooklyn, NYC, that place was so expensive it was impossible buy a house, so they bount a house in Philly moved our family here… where we’ve been living ever since…

    Okay it was like approximately $100k around 2014 but this place has very shitty schools :/

    But both the Brooklyn place we rented and this house in this ghetto place called Philly, both looked nicer than the neighborhood where used to live in Guangzhou, a CITY btw… (okay to be fair there are a bunch of problems in this current Philly house but like that’s just parents being frugal lol)

    As for the healthcare part… eh… my mom really don’t trust doctors in China (well she also doesn’t really trust healthcare people overall, but especially those in China). Mom told me about a lot of situations that she felt like she got scammed, I can’t remember all the anecdotes she told me, but at one point, she told me how she thought the doctors are trying to get her to do a C-Section just to make more money (cuz surgery = more expensive bill), she thought it was unnecessary and wanted to give a natural birth, but she doesn’t wanna risk it being that, in fact, the doctors told the truth and then us dying, so she just gave in and went along with the C-Section. And she told me they want to overprescribe medicine so they get a kickback from the pharma companies. Bascially, my parents say US quality of healthcare is better for those who can afford it. But even then, because of their experiences living in China for so long, they just became so skeptical of the medical industry which is why mom really don’t want me seeking help for depression, cuz: “yOu dOn’t hAvE dEpReSsIoN, tHe dOctOrs aRe jUsT lYinG tO yOu!” cuz she thinks they are just trying to get paid fot overdiagnosing people… so because of their experience in China, they now kinda grew skeptical of medical professionals overall…

    Cuz there’s just so much sketchy stuff and scams in China, and on top of their own experiences, warnings about scams are always circulating throughout their WeChat.

    So it can look cheaper… but you risk running into corrupt doctors because corruption is a very big thing there, I mean they could easily bribe their way into having a medical license when they shouldn’t be qualified…