Want to Leave America? Here's Where You Should Live Instead
Credit: Shutterstock
By Kristin Hunt
Every day, you read about some fresh horror besieging the U.S. Stock market crashes. Hurricanes. Netflix buffering! This stuff sucks! At some point, you just gotta give up. But where can a ‘Merican expat rest their weary head free from the threat of terrorists and/or universal healthcare? We’ll tell ya! It’s time to get the heck out of here before it’s too late.
More: The World’s Top 20 Cities, According to That Dude Who Visited Every Country
Credit: Flickr/Central Intelligence Agency
If you hate economic instability…
The NYSE is a constant source of dread, and we all still have lingering trust issues with banks after the '08 incident. Where can we go for a brighter financial future?
Move to: Switzerland
It made the top five of the 2015 Index of Economic Freedom, and its economy grew in the second quarter of the year against all odds. Pessimistic financial minds had predicted Switzerland would hit its first recession in six years, but it didn’t, because duh, that’s where Jason Bourne stores his money.
Credit: Flickr/Ben Amstutz
If you hate pollution…
The hazy mess pictured above is L.A, and it’s just one of our horrifically polluted cities. Our landfills are also exceptional, as is our carbon footprint. If you’re interested in a less-smoggy trash heap, there’s hope across the ocean.
Move to: Singapore
This island city-state made a strong showing on Yale’s Environmental Performance Index, with particularly impressive marks in health impacts, air quality, water and sanitation, agriculture, water resources, and climate and energy. Start packing!
Related: I Moved To Singapore and Transformed My Life
Credit: Flickr/U.S. Geological Survey
If you hate natural disasters…
With a historically huge El Niño all prepped to transform SoCal into Atlantis, and a seismic shift preparing to decimate Seattle, consider a relocation to a European island.
Move to: Malta
It’s consistently hailed as one of the safest places on Earth in terms of natural disasters, and not just by its own newspapers. The United Nations University compiles a World Risk Report that assesses the threat of natural catastrophe posed to each country, and Malta has been at the bottom with Qatar each year.
Credit: Shutterstock
If you hate terrorism…
Terrorists aren’t friends to many, but they definitely aren’t fans of America. So let’s all head to somewhere the threat level is consistently low.
Move to: Japan
The 2014 Global Terrorism Index placed this lil’ country on the “lowest impact of terrorism” side of the scale, and a map prepared by the UK Foreign Office just this summer marked it as “low threat.” Although the IS executions of Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto in March stoked a lot of fear, experts insist it's a blip on the radar (and point out that Yukawa and Goto were in a warzone, not on Japanese soil).
Credit: Flickr/Kate Gardiner
If you hate guns…
Annual mass shootings here in this Once Great Nation now outnumber the days in the year. That’s horrifying, but until someone tells the NRA to shove it, this is our reality. While you wait for Congress to grow a spine, head down under!
Move to: Australia
After a gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur in 1996, the Australian government passed the National Firearms Agreement. The legislation set up a mandatory gun buyback program that took 650,000 weapons out of the hands of citizens. It also required gun owners to prove a “genuine reason” for their particular weapon and instituted waiting periods. Since all that happened, there hasn’t been another mass shooting in the country, and firearm suicide and homicide rates declined as well. Although, as John Oliver pointed out, the law did tragically cut down several political careers in their prime.
Credit: Flickr/LetsAllStayCalmHere
If you hate illegal immigration…
It’s 2015, and NOT ENOUGH people are taking your proposal to build a wall with one big, beautiful door along the country’s southern border seriously. You know where they might?
Move to: North Korea
Absolutely no one is getting into North Korea without Kim Jong Un knowing about it. So you can rest assured that rogue foreigners who sneak over the border will be caught, booted out, or sent to a secret labor camp. Especially any filthy Americans. Oh… um. Right. OK.
Credit: Flickr/Nic Walker
If you hate socialism…
Waiting on the sheeple to wake up and realize Comrade Obama is piloting the U.S. straight through the socialist waters and into full-on, USSR-style communism?? Boy have we got a place for you…
Move to: Somalia
The African country didn’t have a real government at all for two decades and things were so chill. Rival warlords ran the show, allowing drought and famine to utterly decimate the population, and pirates got to go on all sorts of fun kidnapping adventures. It does have a government again as of 2012, which sucks, but since it’s still young, it probably won’t make you do too many lame things, like pick your own representatives or live past age 40. But if that’s not your scene, there’s always Canada!
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