My wish for all Americans; IAmsterdam life

[DFW]

34. Of course we do. Like I said--in the States they like to tell stories of Fantasyland

A hundred years ago in Europe, legend had it that the streets of America were paved with gold, too.

During the 2016 campaign, some (purportedly, anyway) Sanders supporters on DU were going on about how everything is "free" over here, as if there were endless quantities of money from endless taxes on endless rich people to pay for endless programs that made life here some kind of paradise on earth. The money was, of course, carefully distributed by pure-minded government workers with nothing but the good of the people in their hearts. About the only thing they DIDN'T claim was to have seen the Great Pumpkin rise on Halloween.

There is a reason the consulates of Germany, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries do NOT have two miles lines at each one with Americans desperate to emmigrate there. Besides that, there is always the language issue. Yes, most people here speak more English than average American speak foreign languages. But to LIVE here, and be accepted into society, you can no more integrate into Germany or Holland (and get a residence permit) speaking only English than you can integrate into Dallas speaking only German or only Dutch.

There IS no paradise on earth, not even here in Western Europe. You are absolutely correct: each country here has its own problems. One of my wife's best friends has suffered from mental illness for decades. She lives off a meager pension, in a tiny apartment in the basement of a building in Essen (Ruhr), and always runs out of food money at the end of each month. My wife often helps out--with money I give her. My wife's pension, for decades of social work that she went to college to master, is all of €850 a month--less than $1000. Now at over 65, she is covered by the German version of Medicare. I make up for that of course, but many millions more here in Germany do not. The train stations here are full, besides the foreigners, of Germans who fell through the cracks, and are begging for coffee money.

Most of the people do get by, of course--just like most Americans do. But nothing here is for free. What there is, SOMEBODY paid for, somehow or other. Doctors and college professors don't work for free here any more than they do in the USA.

Thank you for realizing that no country here in Europe is some kind of paradise from Li'l Abner. I have seen the stories on the political boards in the States. Some people make wild distortions of reality for their own purposes, and like Fox Noise, hope that no one fact checks them on them (or only try to appeal to people will believe them blindly in the first place).

You are spot on that you always hear stories in the States about Europe. They are all too often just that: stories. "I have a friend who got a heart attack in Frankfurt, and he was treated and cured for free, and given a free college education in English to boot, out of the good of their system." Or some such nonsense. Like I said, this is not the Valley of the Shmoon.