How I View the US After 13 Years Living in Europe

How I view the US after 13 years living in Europe has completely transformed my understanding of what constitutes freedom, rights, and quality of life. When I moved from the US to the UK over 13 years ago, it was meant to be temporary – just long enough to get my degree and gain some international experience before returning to start my career. But something unexpected happened when I finished my studies: I didn’t want to go back.

This realization seems to be a unanimous experience among Americans who move to Europe. The longer I stayed in London, the more I began to notice all the assumptions I’d grown up believing in America – things I was taught were undeniably true and just the way the world worked. It turns out they weren’t true at all, and the differences go far beyond what I initially expected.

My name is Evan Edinger, and these are the nine biggest realizations I’ve had after moving abroad and the rights and freedoms I gained from leaving the land of the free. From consumer protection laws that got me a free $2,000 laptop to healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt you, the contrast between American promises and European reality is stark and eye-opening.

The Gun Culture Reality: Fear vs. Safety

My perspective on gun ownership and safety has fundamentally changed after living abroad. I was raised in a very pro-gun household in New Jersey, where we had multiple firearms including a 12-gauge shotgun, a 10-gauge, a black powder rifle, and a 410 shotgun for the children. My dad would take us shooting empty beer cans, playing pigeons, or hunting for pheasants and deer.

In school, I was taught that owning a gun is a fundamental freedom and inseparable from being American. The Boy Scouts reinforced this belief even further. The idea that other countries don’t allow guns was viewed as these countries missing a fundamental right, which is why conversations about gun control can get so heated for many Americans.

But after living in London where most police don’t carry guns and personal firearm ownership is almost impossible for the average person, I’ve never once missed the ability to own one. The main reason Americans own guns today isn’t to join a well-formed militia or for hunting – it’s fear-driven. Bad people have guns, so good people need guns too to protect themselves from bad people with guns.

Living in a country where the public doesn’t have access to firearms, my opinion changed dramatically, especially with the constant stream of horrendous shootings happening literally every day in the USA. There were six shootings yesterday alone – in schools, mosques, churches. People are getting shot up all over the place, yet politicians act helpless.

The Government Dysfunction: Democracy vs. Effectiveness

My experience has revealed the stark contrast between American democracy’s promises and its actual functionality. One thing drilled into you every year of American school is that American democracy is the end-all be-all of government and the beacon of freedom other countries look to emulate.

Once you become an adult and see how dysfunctional the US government actually is, you search for anything to feel better about it and usually settle on “well, at least it’s not a third world dictatorship.” That’s a pretty low bar, but it creates this weird false dichotomy where it’s either American democracy as it currently is or communism.

Living in the UK, I’m used to having a rather dysfunctional government too. We had a prime minister who couldn’t outlast a lettuce, and now we have one with the personality of an office stapler. But the interesting thing about the parliamentary system is that even when it’s dysfunctional, it’s by design so much more functional at getting things done.

In the US, you have this incredible idea of checks and balances to avoid consolidation of power. In theory, what mostly ends up happening is long periods where the two sides of the inevitable two-party system will never agree, so nothing gets passed and Americans get nothing. When one party does get control, they spend their entire time destructively trying to undo everything the previous party did until the next election when it just repeats.

The parliamentary system isn’t perfect, but if a party doesn’t get a majority in parliament, they pretty much cannot form a government. A re-election is called to try again, otherwise nothing would ever get passed. Politicians are encouraged to find middle ground, otherwise they lose their jobs. This form of government allows society to actually move forward.

Transportation Freedom: Cars vs. Walkable Communities

My understanding of transportation freedom has completely transformed. Growing up, the idea of freedom to me as an American was owning a car and being able to drive wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. This is intensely ingrained in American culture.

In the 13 years I’ve lived in London, not once have I ever needed or wanted a car. That’s a huge shift. Figuring out how to use trains and buses took some time, but I cannot begin to explain how mentally freeing it is to want to go somewhere and just go without needing a car. I could commute to work, head to the pub for drinks, take a day trip to Wales or Oxford, and it’s all as easy as walking.

In the US, if I wanted to go to the grocery store, I would need to drive there. Pharmacy? Got to drive there. Go to the bar? Going to get drunk and then I guess I have to drive back. No other way of getting home. This is due to awful zoning laws in the US, separating areas where people live from areas with things people want to see or do.

Within a 10-minute walk of my flat here, I can buy groceries, pop by to see a friend, go to the pub, see a film, or just see some neighbors on the street. This isn’t just London – I’ve had this experience in Liverpool, Berlin, Munich, and pretty much every town in England I’ve visited. Small towns like Epsom, Marlow, and Maidenhead all have the same focus on walkable neighborhoods.

Food Quality and Safety: Consumer Protection vs. Corporate Profits

My experience has revealed shocking differences in food quality and consumer protection. The US already allows food manufacturers to pump so many unhealthy and unnecessary chemicals into foods in the name of profit. Groceries I buy in the UK and Germany are fresher, healthier, and contain fewer unnecessary ingredients as legally mandated, yet they’re still significantly cheaper than what you can get in the US.

Europe’s food agency focuses on possibilities while the US’s focuses on probabilities. Is it possible an unnecessary additive could be harmful? Europe prohibits it just to be safe. The US agency, the FDA, only steps in if the probability of it being harmful is high. So that risk is passed on to the average American consumer.

The ability to quickly pop down to a local shop that’s quite small with fewer options and takes me 5 minutes to walk there, pick up some ingredients for the day or week, is something I prefer so much more than having to do a weekly shop where I stock up on everything and throw it in the back of my car. Once you experience both, there is no contest.

Healthcare: Universal Access vs. Financial Ruin

My experience has shown me what real healthcare freedom looks like. If my health has issues, I’m glad it’s not something that would ever bankrupt me or cause me to think about how much it would cost just to be sick.

I’ve been to a hospital in London before and made a whole video about it. I was in incredibly intense pain, so I called the free NHS helpline. They gave me advice and told me to go to the GP, so I did. He gave me some meds that cost me 9 quid. When the pain got worse, I went to the hospital and waited to be seen until I got to see a proper doctor. It turned out to be intense gas pain, but thankfully I was okay. None of my hospital visit cost me anything at all.

I didn’t have to call up an insurance company asking permission to be sick. I didn’t have to spend $700 a month only to discover I still haven’t paid enough and need to pay more just to get proper healthcare. I just showed up, got the help I needed, and went home. That’s quality of life.

A country without a healthcare system like that is not an advanced nation. There are only two types of people against the freeing social safety net that is universal healthcare: people who have never experienced socialized healthcare and people who profit from the broken system. That’s it.

Consumer Rights: Protection vs. Exploitation

My experience has revealed the power of strong consumer protection laws. If you buy a tech product in Europe, you have a reasonable expectation that it should last you at least two years free of defects. If it’s not up to your expectations or breaks down before then, you can demand a return or replacement.

This law protects consumers from shady business practices. My 2019 Intel MacBook Pro was awful – constantly having issues, kernel panics, overheating, forced restarts. It was an awful device, and I didn’t pay for Apple Care because I knew I didn’t need to. I even made a whole vlog on the day I was returning it because I was so surprised that this consumer rights law would literally get me back the £4,000 I had spent on it.

Companies that sell products over here have to have higher quality control or they risk losing a lot of money on returns to people who understand that law is there to protect us. It’s laws like this where you really begin to notice a pattern that life in Europe gives more rights to the everyday person over giant corporations and shared benefit over private profit.

Workers’ Rights: Dignity vs. Exploitation

My experience has shown me what real workers’ rights look like. I’ve made an entire video breaking down the workers’ rights I gained moving from the US to the UK, but a quick summary includes 28 days minimum paid holiday, one year paid maternity leave, two weeks paid paternity leave, sick leave, and even the right against unlawful termination.

When working part-time at Urban Outfitters in London, even though I worked less than 20 hours a week, I still got two days paid holiday per month. That’s insane, right? No, that’s just life over here. Meanwhile, I worked 5 years at a Pizza Hut in New Jersey for over 30 hours per week and never got a single day of paid vacation in my life.

They only paid me $2.13 an hour, which was insane then and is still insane now because they still haven’t increased it since the ’70s because it saves corporations more money. Yet again, corporations versus the people.

If I got a new boss in America and even though I’d been working at the same company for 4 years, he didn’t like me, he could fire me on the spot and I’d be out of a job. In the UK, it’s so much harder for an employer to fire you because the law requires dismissals to be fair in both reason and procedure.

Cost of Living: Quality vs. Quantity

My experience has revealed the true cost of the American way of life. The US has a much higher cost of living regardless of your state. There are cheaper states and more expensive states, but the basics are still so expensive. Groceries are more expensive, data plans are much more expensive, cable, healthcare, the costs associated with driving – all of these things add up.

It’s true that salaries for most office jobs are significantly higher in the US than what you can find in most countries in Europe. So if you earn a lot of money and money is your sole defining metric of success, then you can feel a lot more successful in the US.

But because the culture in Europe is work to live and not live to work, you might find that the stress and cost tradeoffs and quality of life erode the value of that higher salary quite quickly. I don’t care about GDP. I couldn’t give two shits about companies. What I care about is quality of my life, the things that make me happy.

What is affecting you is not having free healthcare, not being able to get around without forcing yourself to have to use a car, being able to have your kids go to school without getting shot. I find it bizarre to have a stance where my quality of life is dictated by the money that the richest in society make.

The American Dream vs. European Reality

My experience has shown me that the American Dream is often more accessible in Europe than in America itself. Nearly two in three Americans want universal healthcare, but America doesn’t offer that. Two in three Americans want European-style vacation policies, but America doesn’t offer that. And 53% of Americans would prefer to live in a walkable neighborhood, but America doesn’t offer that.

If America were an actual democracy, I don’t think many of these people would be having romanticized views of Europe at all because they wouldn’t need to. They could have everything they wanted in the country they were born and raised.

Judging from recent survey results showing that 52% of Americans feel they could have a higher quality of life abroad and that 43% of Americans think they would be happier if they moved abroad, I’d say these things are very much linked. This majority of Americans have seen how the US government actually operates counter to the will of the majority of the American people and have mentally given up the idea of the US ever improving in these areas that matter a lot to them.

A Real-World Example: Sarah’s Healthcare Journey

Sarah Martinez, a 28-year-old graphic designer from Austin, Texas, exemplifies how I view the US after 13 years living in Europe through her own healthcare crisis. After moving to Berlin for work, Sarah experienced a medical emergency that would have bankrupted her in America but cost her nothing in Germany.

“I was terrified when I got sick because I kept thinking about how much this would cost me back home,” Sarah explains. “In America, I had insurance through my job, but I still had a $5,000 deductible and would have been responsible for 20% of all costs after that. The hospital stay alone would have been $50,000 minimum.”

Sarah’s experience in Germany was completely different. She walked into the emergency room, received immediate care from qualified doctors, stayed for three days, and walked out without paying a single euro. “How I view the US after 13 years living in Europe is that America’s healthcare system isn’t just broken – it’s designed to extract maximum profit from people’s suffering,” she says.

“The peace of mind knowing I can get sick without financial ruin has completely changed my relationship with work and life. I don’t have to stay in a job I hate just for health insurance. I can take risks, start my own business, or pursue creative projects without worrying about medical bankruptcy.”

Sarah’s story reflects the broader pattern I’ve observed: Americans who experience European systems often find it impossible to return to the constant stress and financial precarity that defines American life, even when it means earning less money overall.