About 1 in 10 Brits live abroad

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6210358.stm

750,000 (of a population of 7.3 million) Israelis live abroad. About 10%

http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/1599_israelis_abroad.htm

2,000,000 of 65,000,000 French live abroad, so about 3%

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_population_of_france_this_year_2009

6.6 million of 303 million Americans live abroad, so 2%

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-arnold/pay-attention-americans-w_b_143843.html

I’ve been mentioning your post some because it is so well written and expresses something I’ve tried to say for some time. I especially like the concept of the mirrored curtain.

But some of them won’t even read it because of your sign off as Red Emma. Did you know there was a Red Emma anarchist?

It’s strange you would find this noteworthy. Countries, as a general rule, simply don’t have sizeable populations who have lived in other countries. That wouldn’t be normal. It’s normal to live in one country your entire life. It’s abnormal (as in – less common) to live in multiple countries. The vast majority of people are born in and live their lives in the same country. Neither Western Europe nor Japan have sizeable populations of people who have lived in the U.S. over the last twenty years, yet somehow this (obvious and normal) fact doesn’t lead you to similar conclusions about those places. Why is that?

If anything, people in the U.S. are more mobile than in most other parts of the world. First, because of the large % of immigrants (as you point out). Japan doesn’t have a lot of immigrants and is quite homogeneous, as you know.

Second, because the U.S. is BIG, and yet people move from one state to another (for jobs, etc.) with far greater frequency than you’d see people moving from, say, Italy to Norway or for that matter from one part of Germany to another. In many other countries it is actually far more common to be born in and live in the same town for much of your life than it is in the U.S.

Most of the natives of those countries don’t move here, because they find life over there more comfortable.

Actually the reason most of the natives of those countries don’t move here is because most PEOPLE don’t switch countries, period. It’s not a common thing to do! In fact, it’s quite remarkable that we get the amount of immigration we DO get – including, yes, from Western Europe and Japan. Far more people immigrate from those places to the U.S. than vice versa. One could draw some obvious conclusions from that.

Americans are not willing to save their dollars or work out deals with overseas employers because we don’t know anything about life over there.

Um, or because they’re perfectly content to stay here.

This is so weird: If I read you right, when people don’t move to the U.S. it’s because they’re happy where they are because other places are so much better than the U.S. But when Americans don’t move somewhere else, it’s because they’re too ignorant/lazy/spoiled to figure out how. Do I have that right?

Well, we could say, “Mixed economies and democratic socialism have been tried, with considerable success, in Western Europe and Japan

But what would be the point? We already have a mixed economy and democratic socialism here. What more exactly do you want? That would require getting into details, details that would be debated and voted on, on a case-by-case basis..which is what we have.

Because we don’t even know where to find out how they live.

This raises the obvious question, if you don’t know where to find out how a Swedish car mechanic lives, then how did you get so convinced he’s got it so good in the first place? Whatever you’ve read on that point that convinced you, all you have to do is link to it, right now.

“Fictive kinship.” Excellent, I love this. It DOES take a village full of faux uncles and aunts, who are very good in supportive roles outside of direct parenting. As you pointed out, we aren’t all geared up for the same life experiences.

I have one child. My half-sister has five. I work half as much, am more financially stable, and suffer less stress. My daughter has a definite advantage over her cousins in that she has more time to develop cognitive skills at home after spending much of her days in public school fine-tuning her social skills. If a parent is incapable of devoting adequate time to, in this case, all five children, each child will develop tools necessary for public interaction, but that doesn’t mean they’ll learn how to make right choices. I think we’ve all been subjected to The Lord of the Flies, yeah?

My father is retired clergy. He is unconventional, but has a doctorate in religious studies, nonetheless. We’ve discussed overpopulation many times, and he’s pointed out two major problems: irresponsibility and religious objection toward the use of birth control. (He asked me to consider on a religious level which the greater sin might be between practicing birth control and child neglect/abuse as a result of unplanned pregnancy, which I think is a great argument.) Additionally, as medical technology continues to advance in the fields of pediatrics and prenatal care, the survival rates will also rise, thus, impacting the aforementioned dilemmas.

I can’t control these people who want to have eight children without absorbing any of the responsibilities of good parenting. Therefore, all I can do is focus on my one kid, teach her what I know about overpopulation, and hope I’ve put her on the right path.

Really enjoyed reading your commentary.