Best countries to move to/live in nowadays?

With all the dismal news about America lately, my home, I'm starting to seriously look at where else to move.

Putting aside for now the difficulty of actually immigrating to some countries, I'm curious on the opinions of others (especially people living outside the U.S) on this.

What I'm looking for in a country is, I imagine, similar to many people. I'm trying to find somewhere that will exhibit:

Low racism
Low sexism
Low LGBTQ-phobia
Strong laws around food quality and safety
Strong laws about environmental protection
Strong laws against unethical corporate practices (monopoly, corruption, lobbying, etc)
Strong laws for privacy
Good treatment of mentally ill, homeless, and impoverished people

Those are the real important things. Of course the nice-to-haves are almost too obvious to be worth listing, low cost of living, strong art and cultural scene, nice environment, and so on.

My actual constraints that might really matter are that I only speak English (and maybe like A1-2 level German). It seems incredibly intimidating to try to find employment somewhere when I can hardly speak the language.

I know nowhere on Earth is perfect, just curious what people may have to suggest. I hope this question isn't too selfish to ask here.

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kwedd 18 points a year ago

The Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia have all those things and people tend to speak English really well.

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space_of_eights 19 points a year ago

As for the 'No racism' part, skip the Netherlands. One of the current governing parties is openly racist and can even be considered fascist. Also, we have a huge housing crisis, so finding a place to live may be challenging.

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1rre 8 points a year ago

European racism is casual compared to even everyday American racism, even considering the likes of AfD

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mfed1122 2 points a year ago

Thanks for this counterpoint, that's exactly the sort of thing I think people need to see when thinking about moving (whether emigrating from America or anywhere else) - what's the big problems for people there, what's their equivalent of these problems. Would you mind telling me which party this is so I can do some more research on it?

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Diplomjodler3 10 points a year ago

I wouldn't rely on Germany to remain stable and democratic these days. The fascists are the strongest party and the new chancellor is an oligarchy stooge of the worst kind.

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kwedd 4 points a year ago

Things aren't much better in The Netherlands. The PVV is part of the government now. The good news is that having to form a coalition with other parties, seems to have reigned in some of their worst tendencies. Also, their minister of immigration is a total nitwit that can't get any sort of actual policy implemented. If they keep failing to make any kind of progress on this issue, hopefully they won't do as well in the next election.

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mfed1122 1 point a year ago

It certainly seems that way! Some of the ESL speakers I've met from Europe are more articulate than native speakers that I work with. What I most wonder about is the prevalence of English in the workplace. I think I'd feel guilty using English at work in country with its own different official language, unless it was really like, standard even before "the guy from America" joined the team, lol.

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kwedd 1 point a year ago

There are some large, internationally oriented companies where you can get by speaking only English. I've also seen more than one tech company hire programmers that don't speak Dutch. So it depends on the industry.

If you want to get some perspectives from Americans living in the Netherlands, you could check out Itz Sky's and Jordan Green's channels on YouTube.

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